Latest news with #DefundthePolice
Time of India
31-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Zohran Mamdani under fire over past ‘defund the NYPD' remarks; shifts stance after visiting fallen NYC officer's family; old posts resurface online
Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani faces criticism for visiting the family of fallen NYPD officer Didarul Islam due to his past support for defunding the police. Critics accuse Mamdani of shifting his stance for political gain, especially after his 2020 tweets resurfaced. Mamdani defends his actions, clarifying his current position on public safety and police funding. Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is facing backlash after visiting the family of fallen NYPD officer Didarul Islam, as critics pointed to his past 2020 tweet supporting "defund the police" stance. The controversy erupted after Mamdani, who recently returned from a trip to Uganda, visited the grieving family of officer Islam, one of four victims killed in a mass shooting in Midtown Manhattan. The shooter, Shane Tamura, opened fire on Monday, killing Islam and three others before shooting himself. Sharing a post on X, Mamdani wrote: 'Two days ago, an act of senseless violence took the lives of Officer Didarul Islam, Wesley LePatner, Aland Etienne, and Julia Hyman. Today, I visited Officer Islam's family and learned of his legacy. I ask you to join me in honoring the memory of these four New Yorkers.' However, the post quickly drew criticism, with users referencing Mamdani's previous tweets during the height of the 'Defund the Police' movement in 2020. Many accused him of changing his stance for political gain. One user wrote, 'You can't go from defund the police to never mind I love the police. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Luxury Awaits at Paras Floret | Paras Sector 59 Gurgaon Paras The Florett Book Now Undo You're asking New Yorkers to forgo their guns meanwhile you just had a wedding in Uganda with armed guards.' While another posted, 'Zohran Mamdani exposed as a total fraud. Mocking cops, calling them racist, then acting like he cares? No loyalty to America. He belongs in Uganda, not leading NYC. Deport him and protect our city!' Earlier at a press conference following his visit to the officer's home in The Bronx, Mamdani addressed the criticism and attempted to clarify his position saying: 'I am not defunding the police; I am not running to defund the police.' 'Over the course of this race, I've been very clear about my view of public safety and the critical role that the police have in creating that public safety,' he added. Standing alongside members of the Bangladeshi American Police Association—of which Officer Islam was a member—and labor union 32BJ, which represented another victim, Aland Etienne, Mamdani tried to strike a unifying tone. During the peak of the "Defund the Police" movement in 2020, Zohran Mamdani repeatedly called for major cuts to the NYPD budget. In one post, he wrote, 'We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.' In another, he said, 'There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt. Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence,' referencing budget talks around proposed NYPD cuts. Now, Mamdani has distanced himself from those remarks. When asked about them, he responded, 'My statements in 2020 were made amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers held at the murder of George Floyd.' Mamdani claimed that his current stance is more nuanced, stating that his previous posts were 'clearly out of step' with his recent campaign platform. He now supports maintaining the NYPD headcount while reducing its overtime budget. Despite this clarification, skepticism remains. Many police officers and political observers have accused Mamdani of shifting positions purely for political gain in a city where public safety remains a top concern for voters, New York Post reported. Adding to the political firestorm, former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, who are both trailing Mamdani in early polling for the 2025 mayoral race, weighed in shortly after the shooting. Mamdani fired back, accusing Cuomo of politicising the tragedy saying, 'It is beyond me that politicians are looking to use these days to score such cynical political points, on the very day that I held the father of Officer Islam in my arms and he could not utter a single word.' 'For the former governor to spend an entire day speaking almost exclusively about me and barely about the New Yorkers who have been killed is indicative of the very politics New Yorkers want to leave in the past,' he added. All three, Mamdani, Cuomo, and Adams are expected to attend officer Islam's funeral on Thursday.
Politico
30-07-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Mamdani backs away from ‘out of step' defund the police posts
During the news conference, Mamdani stood with the Bangladeshi American Police Association, of which slain NYPD officer Didarul Islam was a member, and building service workers union 32BJ, which represented Aland Etienne, an office security guard who died in the attack. Mamdani is returning to a city where polling shows him as the clear favorite , and he'll try to maintain that lead through the tumult of a crowded general election in an unpredictable city. Mamdani's opponents have homed in on his relatively limited political and management experience, and the past few days have served as a test of how the democratic socialist frontrunner would respond to a crisis — and the pressure that entails. At the height of the Defund the Police movement in 2020, Mamdani made repeated calls to slash the NYPD's budget. 'We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD ,' he wrote on X that year. 'There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt,' he wrote , referencing city budget negotiations around proposed cuts to the NYPD. 'Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence.' Mamdani distanced himself from the posts. When asked if he regretted the statements, he said they were made 'amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers held at the murder of George Floyd.' He also said multiple times that the posts were 'clearly out of step' with his current view of policing and his campaign platform. On the campaign trail, Mamdani has delivered a different message, frequently saying he wants to keep the NYPD headcount the same, while slashing the police department's overtime spending. He also plans to create a Department of Community Safety that would respond to mental health crises and combat homelessness with a $1 billion budget.
New York Post
28-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
How Zohran Mamdani's win upended the economics of NYC voting patterns
New Yorkers woke up to a new reality on Wednesday: A proud socialist won the New York City mayoral primary, beating out his nearest rival, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, by nearly 10 points. Zohran Mamdani ran an avowedly far-left campaign, one focused on kitchen table issues rather than the woke cultural battles we've become accustomed to from the left. Instead of promising to Defund the Police (though he supported that movement in the past) or hyping the historic nature of becoming the first Muslim mayor of New York City, Mamdani promised free busing, a rent freeze, government-owned supermarkets and free childcare — which he said he'd pay for by raising taxes on businesses and the rich. 6 Zohran Mamdani snagged the Democratic nomination for New York's Mayoral race by appealing to the working class, but securing the votes of the elite. Derek French/UPI/Shutterstock Despite the promise of redistributing from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, in an ironic twist, the socialist beat Cuomo handily with wealthy New Yorkers. Meanwhile, Cuomo crushed Mamdani by a staggering 19 points with New Yorkers who make under $50,000 a year. Mamdani also lost in a big way in New York's majority Black neighborhoods, which overwhelmingly chose Cuomo, as did neighborhoods with the highest Hispanic concentration. Cuomo succeeded with voters without a college degree, while Mamdani absolutely slaughtered him among voters with advanced degrees. Mamdani's support was strongest with 'youthful, renter-heavy neighborhoods known for their left-leaning politics,' as The New York Times pointed out. Gentrifiers of the World, unite! Welcome to the new Democratic Party, same as the old, with a slight twist: Instead of imposing cultural doctrine on working-class people of color with zero interest in their woke ideology, the Dems are now imposing a socialist economic agenda on those same recalcitrant normies who just won't get with the program. Mamdani's success with the educated continues a decades-long political realignment in which the working class has been steadily leaving the Democratic Party for the GOP, a process that turbocharged under Donald Trump, while the Democrats' base is now college-educated elites. Nine of the 10 wealthiest congressional districts are currently represented by Democrats, as are 65% of Americans making over $500,000 a year. 6 Mayor Eric Adams is running as an Independent in November against Mamdani. Brian Zak/NY Post 6 Despite being trounced by Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo has not yet agreed to bow out of the Mayor's race. Matthew McDermott The process culminated in the 2024 election with Kamala Harris winning the majority of Americans making over $100,000 a year, while Trump won with those making under. Rather than a repudiation of the trendline in the Democratic Party, Mamdani's success reveals that even when they talk about kitchen table issues, even when they talk about redistributing resources from the wealthy to the poor, progressives are doing so in a way that speaks to the wealthy and alienates working-class voters. Mamdani knew how to perfect the lingo of trust fund socialism from personal experience: He himself is from the exact over-educated, over-credentialed, elite background that the Democrats now represent — whether they are pushing socialism or wokeness. The son of a filmmaker and an academic and educated at a liberal arts college in Maine, Mamdani's campaign staff was equally elite, overrepresented in Ivy League graduates, as reported in the Free Press. Follow The Post's coverage of the NYC mayoral race This is not to say that Mamdani's campaign was totally devoid of cultural battles unpopular with working-class voters. Mamdani joined a protest against border czar Tom Homan at the state Capitol, shouting, 'Do you believe in the First Amendment?!' as Homan disappeared down a corridor munching an apple. Mamdani also opposes the existence of a Jewish state and defended the genocidal cry 'Globalize the Intifada' as being nothing more than a call for Palestinian rights; at Bowdoin College, Mamdani founded his school's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Like Free Palestine or Defund the Police, Zohran became a synonym for cool among young leftists, a brand for disaffected white college grads. And his victory signals where the Democratic Party might be going. 6 A crowd of people is taking photos and videos of Zohran Mamdani on a screen. Derek French/Shutterstock 6 Mamadani's supporters skewed younger, wealthier, and Whiter — the exact opposite of the New Yorkers he claims to champion most. Derek French/UPI/Shutterstock Wokeness is dead, but it's been replaced by something equally at odds with the working-class voters the Dems lost to President Trump: a redistributionist economic socialism that appeals to the elites in the same way that the 'anti-racism' of Robin DiAngelo and the Abolish ICE of AOC did. It turns out, working-class New Yorkers, like working-class Americans more generally, don't want government-run supermarkets any more than they want trans athletes in their daughters' sports. They don't want to abolish the police or ICE. They don't want a rent freeze for already rent-stabilized apartments. They want a fair shot at the American Dream. They want jobs that pay well, less immigration, good healthcare, and — most relevant to the mayor of New York City — safe streets. 6 Zohran Mamdani with his mother, film-maker Mira Nair, and wife, Rama Duwaji, on election night. REUTERS Will the Democratic Party ever learn? I wouldn't bet on it. The party's bigwigs have lined up behind Mamdani, with everyone from Chuck Schumer and Hakim Jeffries to Jerry Nadler and Bill Clinton posting in support of his victory. The media has tried to portray this as the right using Mamdani as the poster child for the Democratic Party, but they're doing that all on their own. The real lesson of Zohran Mamdani's win is this. Though the topic has shifted from culture wars to economics, the Democratic Party still has not learned that the way to get working-class voters is simple: Listen. Batya Ungar-Sargon is the author of 'Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women.'
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Heated exchange erupts over Andrew Cuomo's ‘Defund the Police' attacks in first NYC mayoral debate
Mayoral frontrunner Andrew Cuomo tried to make political bank during the heated Democratic mayoral primary Wednesday — by calling out his opponents' past support for the 'Defund the Police' movement. The former governor claimed the eight other candidates onstage during the highly-anticipated WNBC, WNJU and Politico New York debate had called for less money to flow to police. 'We wouldn't need more police if we didn't defund them in the first place,' Cuomo said. The attack prompted the Rev. Michael Blake – who emerged as the debate's breakout star in its first hour – to call out Cuomo for allegedly saying 'defund the police' when he served as governor. Blake pushed Cuomo to admit he used those three words. 'Are you saying you never said 'defund the police?'' he pressed. 'I used the words 'defund the police,'' Cuomo was forced to reply. 'I said I don't support 'defund the police.'' Cuomo gave the 'defund' movement legitimacy in 2021 while still in office when he said it was one of two schools of thought with the other option giving more money to law enforcement. The 'defund' attacks didn't just center around Cuomo. Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who is gaining Cuomo in the polls, was criticized by longshot candidate Whitney Tilson for past X post that called the NYPD 'wicked & corrupt.' The resurfaced post from 2020 is still live on Mamdani's account. It responded to a ProPublica investigation about alleged abuses by the NYPD's vice squad. 'There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt,' Mamdani had posted. 'Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence.' Mamdani responded to the attacks by calling NYPD a critical part of public safety in the city and arguing rank-and-file cops don't want to be handling mental health calls that other professionals can better handle. The two top Democratic candidates — Cuomo and Mamdani — also battled over President Trump. 'I am the last person on this stage that Mr. Trump wants to see as mayor,' Cuomo said when asked how he will deal with the president. Trump would cut through Mamdani 'like a hot knife through butter' if the socialist is elected mayor, Cuomo argued. Moments later, Mamdani also sought to add that the Trump-foe feather to his cap. 'I am Donald Trump's worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in and the difference between myself and Andrew Cuomo,' he said.
New York Post
05-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Heated exchange erupts over Cuomo's ‘Defund the Police' attacks
Andrew Cuomo and Michael Blake sparred over the 'Defund the Police' movement in a heated moment. The ex-governor criticized the other candidates on stage, claiming everyone called for less money to flow to police. Cuomo claimed that every other candidate on the debate stage called for less money to the NYPD. Stephen Yang Advertisement 'We wouldn't need more police if we didn't defund them in the first place,' he said. Blake called out Cuomo for saying defund the police when he led the state. The reverend then pushed Cuomo to admit he used the words 'defund the police.'
