Yves here. This post makes clear the open thuggishness among opponents of Muslim candidate for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, whose second sin is being a democratic socialist and wanting government to do more things for lower income people. Having run a small business in New York, I do question the impact of some of his ideas, like raising the already nosebleed New York City Corporation Tax, but his policies are a work in progress and I anticipate they will be refined to more clearly focus on the haves versus the haves-much-less if he does become mayor. Notice in particular how DHS chief Kristi Noem makes clear her intent to assert heretofore unprecedented powers to sandbag Mamdani.
I am also amazed that Rudy Giuliani is allowed to leave his crypt.
By Jose Pagliery, NOTUS and Katie Honan. Originally published at THE CITY on July 2, 2025. Produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and THE CITY
Zohran Mamdani speaks at a rally with unions that endorsed him, July 2, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Advisory Council — a group that includes Rudy Giuliani, cop-turned-actor Bo Dietl and the founder of Bikers for Trump — held its first meeting on Wednesday to discuss the top threats facing the nation.
The conversation quickly turned to New York City mayoral candidate Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani.
After hearing Giuliani deliver a speech against asylum-seeking immigrants, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem chimed in.
“I want to ask you: Do you want to run for mayor of New York again?” she asked, drawing cheers and applause from around the conference room.
“Bo and I have been talking about putting together some kind of strategy. It’s doable if it’s one candidate. It’s a suicide mission if you’re three,” Giuliani said.
The longtime GOP politician called the Republican in the race, Curtis Sliwa, “our candidate.” He labeled Eric Adams — the current mayor running for reelection as an independent whose criminal indictment was dropped by the Justice Department to free him up to support Trump’s anti-immigration policies — as “kind of our candidate.” And he reserved the worst insult for former governor Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani in the Democratic primary but could still mount an independent campaign.
“I’ve known him since he was 15 years old. His mother would describe him as, ‘Well, Chris is the smarter boy,’” Giuliani joked, referring to the former governor’s journalist brother.
But all that was a prelude to a parley over Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist who’s running on a platform that champions the working class with rent caps for rent-stabilized units, police accountability and what he calls “Trump-proofing NYC.”
“This is not an exaggerated problem,” Giuliani told the 22-person council. “Somehow we got the combination of an Islamic extremist and a communist.”
Mamdani is Muslim, but Giuliani’s remark is an attempt to label as a threat a Democratic politician who has repeatedly said he does not question Israel’s right to exist as a nation but has called Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, a “genocide.”
The Homeland Security Advisory Council is not typically so heavy on politics. It was created in 2003 in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and, as stated in the Federal Register, is meant to provide “nonpartisan and organizationally independent strategic advice to the Secretary of Homeland Security on critical matters related to Homeland Security.” Its current charter, issued in March, says that it will spend about $800,000 a year and dish out advice on “terrorist attacks, major disasters, or other emergencies” from “national leaders” in academia, business, and experienced first responders.
The meeting’s rancor aimed at Mamdani continued when Noem called on David Chesnoff, a prominent Las Vegas attorney who previously defended Corey Lewandowski — yet another Trump adviser on the council — from accusations of making unwanted sexual advances on a Republican donor at a 2021 event.
“I want to do this because I’m tired of the normalization of anti-American philosophy, for example, in New York … it’s amazing you can have the Hezbollah flag being marched within shouting distance of where the towers fell,” he said, referencing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“We have somebody running for mayor … that applauds the very same philosophy and people that did that,” Chesnoff continued. “We need to send a bigger message to the American public of the danger that poses.”
That comment appeared to catch Noem’s attention. Noem, whose department oversees the increasingly militarized deportation raids frequently led by masked people who hide their names and badges, said she’s looking for creative ways to expand her power.
“The Department of Homeland Security has authorities that have never been utilized before … and I’m going to need some good minds on how to use those authorities,” she said.
Her comment comes just one day after Trump, speaking from a new mass immigration incarceration camp quickly built in the South Florida swamp, threatened to jail Mamdani if he attempts to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the city and disparaged him as a “communist.”
Following a rally where he received the endorsement of some of the city’s top unions, Mamdani responded to Trump’s comments and those from officials on the council Wednesday branding him a security threat, calling the comments a distraction “from what I fight for.”
“And ultimately, what I fear,” he said, “is that if this is what Donald Trump and his administration feel comfortable about saying about the Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City, imagine what they feel comfortable saying and doing about immigrants whose names they don’t even know.”
As many commenters here have been saying for some time now; the overseas ‘Forever War’ tactics will “come home” to haunt us all. All we non-believers in the official narrative are now “Enemies of the State.”
Using the power of the State to advance particular agendas is nothing new. What is new, for America in the last seventy-five years at least, is the naked intimidation and threats on display. Not since the days of HUAC, the House Unamerican Affairs Committee, orchestrated by the justly infamous Joseph McCarthy, has America seen such a naked appeal to emotion to justify outright political oppression.
America has already crossed the Rubicon. Soon, if this trajectory continues, America will cross the Styx.
Stay safe.
Will there be a homecoming parade?
There already was. On June 14th.
I wonder how far away we are from people like Mamdani becoming “tragic accident” or “brutal robbery” victims… Apologies if this sounds crazy.
I am reminded of the Costa-Gavras movie “Z”.
We are now seeing the use of aggressive tactics of intimidation and repression at home, which, in the not too distant past, were used only on protesters in third world country vassal states. Crazy? No.
Reminds me of that Trump-led obsession with Obama’s birth cert. From time to time a perfect object for people to join together to express crypto racism takes the stage.
Zohran Mamdani is an excellent candidate, witty, clear-headed, forthright. He will be a great mayor.
Democrats would do well to field additional able young candidates throughout the country, if they are to overcome the astonishingly lousy GOP policies we see these days.
He could be a great Mayor, if he’s allowed to govern.
I consider most of the talk about deporting Mamdani to (hopefully) be theater, but the possibility of Capital going on strike is real. It’s happened before – NYC’s “fiscal crisis,” i.e. the Bankers Coup, of 1975, the opening salvo of Neoliberalism – and would complement Trumpismo’s reflexive desire to punish cities.
The real test of the democratic establishment will be this:
Do they help insulate him from all of this or just let it happen.
I’m leaning towards the just let it happen and finger wag camp because they don’t seem too thrilled about him winning the primary.
They did it to Bernie, they will do it to Zohran.
Indeed. For years, the mainstream D’s have shown themselves to be more interested in undermining their Left wing than fighting Trump, who has always been a fundraising gold mine for them. As far as they’re concerned, better to have control of a dying Party than be irrelevant in a viable one.
More than likely the Democrats would probably be willing to work with the Department of Homeland Security to remove Mamdani somehow like arresting and incarcerating him on bogus charges or having him assassinated.
The Democrats like to maintain a public face of being against Trump’s policies when they actually support them 90% of the time. Trump just the says quiet part out loud. This is why if and when the Trump presidency ends and we get a Democratic president, he will do nothing to reverse Trump’s agenda and will probably expand upon it. All you get from a Democrat is a neocon with a more pleasant veneer.
Well they did try to incarcerate candidate Donald Trump to keep Biden, their own version of an “outside the box” president, in office. Frankenstein meet your Frankenstein’s monster.
People are revolting against the Bird of Prey with two wings or Mamdani wouldn’t have gotten the nomination. The Trump people aren’t very smart and don’t know how to keep oligarchy in the shadows.
I wish Mr. Mamdani well, and hope he makes it. New york city is a visible place and can be front and center in this culture war going on.
One of the sides, the zionist traitors to america; who are everywhere in politics and the media and business circles, will attack him with vitriol and smear campaigns. They also have a history of actually attacking this country and its leaders and it’s military , if they feel they can benefit.
Look at the USS Liberty in 1967, Listen to the survivors who described being attacked, and then attacked again, by the isreali’s. The fact that the isreali;s didn’t just try to cripple the ship. they kept attacking the survivors, trying to kill them all.
Look at the information coming out about james angleton ( a cia/ isreali asset) and his connection to the assasination of john F kennedy. Considering the mobs associated also were connected to the meyer lansky mob. Isreal, who at the time wanted the a-bomb…. seemed to be involved in many ways.
now the cia documents released about RFK assasination, the story of the cia blaming sirhan sirhan… a palestinian… and omitting the ballistics reports showing RFK was shot from behind, and sirhan was in front of him, and the ballistics report showing that there were 13 more bullets fired than could be fired from sirhan’s gun.
Never mind, those stories of who was the cut out who may have actually done the wiring to blow up the buildings 0n 9/11.
The israeli’s are hell bent……. on their cause….
and this current assault on the constitution of the US. the bill of rights. the first amendment.
when I was born…. we supposedly had free speech. and it was a “right”….
but now… if you want to accurately call out the crimes of the genocidal zionist psycho’s who control israeli policies… you can be charged with commiting the “crime” of anti-semitism.
It was bad enough when the zionists perverted the american cultural/legal system by making attacking the rights of americans who choose to do the right thing and BOYCOTT< SANCTION and DIVEST… legal in many states and corporations.
The Zionists of the world, are indeed a subversive and dangerous faction. One everyone ought to be aware of. And Israel is an enemy of the united states.
Darwinism in Hebrew.
You have to admit that Mamdani’s election came at a perfect time for Trump. After Project Iran proved an absolute fiasco and there was no regime change – kinda like what was planned for Russia with Project Ukraine – he needed a distraction for people to fix on. A domestic one. Enter Mr. Mamdani. Trump can now turn the whole thing into a political circus with his retinue of clowns and the media will lap it up. He can go on about how Mamdani is a communist and probably an illegal emigrant that ICE should kidnap and deport, how he may stop Federal money going to New York unless he ‘behaves’ and all the rest of it. Iran? What’s that?
„ I am also amazed that Rudy Giuliani is allowed to leave his crypt“
– thanks for the laugh of the day!
He does look awfully a lot like Count Orlok nowadays. Does he also drink blood, brings rats and flies and make people go insane?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dCT1YUtNOA8