There’s an old saw about the mayor of New York City being the second-hardest job in America. That might be true – it’s certainly the second-busiest – and week one of the Zohran Mamdani era has been no exception. The young socialist mayor has been signing executive orders, mugging for cameras, and basking in the glow of an inauguration that drew many thousands of New Yorkers to watch him sworn in on a frigid New Year’s Day. He’s also endured a new media firestorm, standing by a top aide, Cea Weaver, who, in deleted tweets from the 2010s, called homeownership a “weapon of white supremacy”. The Daily Mail, among others, has pounced. By the end of his first full week on the job, Mamdani was also forcefully and unequivocally condemning the fatal shooting of an unarmed Minneapolis woman by ICE, and made it clear he would resist any Trump administration incursions into New York City.
Inevitably Mamdani will need to contend with the Mad King president himself. Not that Donald Trump has directly attacked Mamdani – the two still seem to be somewhat chummy. But in addition to the looming threat of ICE, the president’s latest bid of insanity, the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and the possible launch of a regime change war, has also rippled out to New York City. Trump promised America First isolationism and has instead unchained the neoconservative war hawks, Marco Rubio especially, threatening to replay the disaster of Iraq. Trump has said the US will run Venezuela for the time-being; Rubio, the Secretary of State, has tried to retreat from this vow, but few people anywhere understand exactly what’s on the horizon. Maduro is gone but his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, has promised not to capitulate to Trump. The country itself is awash in paramilitaries that are more sophisticated and deadly than what American troops encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan. If Trump puts boots on the ground, the men in those boots will die.
What does this have to do with Mamdani? Maduro is now locked up in his city, in a federal jail a short subway ride from where I live. (When I ran for public office in 2018, Mamdani was my campaign manager.) Maduro will be tried, eventually, by the Trump-appointed US Attorney for the Southern District, which covers large swathes of New York City. The Southern District, referred to colloquially as the “sovereign district”, is where just about every major high-profile federal case ends up. Sam Bankman-Fried, Sean Combs (Diddy), and Luigi Mangione have been or will be tried there. The president appoints its top prosecutor, known as a United States Attorney – all top federal prosecutors are presidential appointees – and this prosecutor can end up famous in his or her own right. Though the Republican U.S. Attorney, Jay Clayton, isn’t yet well-known, Rudolph Giuliani effectively launched his political career from the same post, winning plaudits for prosecuting the mafia before getting elected mayor of New York City.
Mamdani, as a local official, has no say over where Maduro goes. He can only opine, as he’s done, and hope the distraction dissipates. It probably will. The reality is the US legal system, especially when it comes to cases like these involving notorious defendants, grinds on very slowly. Mangione was arrested on charges of murdering a healthcare executive in December 2024 and he has yet to face trial. Maduro will not stare down a federal jury for a very long time.
The Trump Justice Department, which has proven itself to be especially inept, may not even win. Revenge prosecutions against James Comey, the former FBI Director who has been a bête noire for Maga Republicans, and New York State Attorney General Letitia James, reviled by Trump for successfully prosecuting a civil fraud lawsuit against him, have already crumbled on procedural grounds. Maduro pleaded not guilty on Monday 5 January to charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. It’s unclear what sort of hard evidence the US government has marshalled against Maduro, and he can argue he was captured unlawfully. He can argue, too, he is still president of Venezuela and therefore enjoys legal immunity as a foreign leader. Will cooperating witnesses actually emerge against him?
All of this will be background noise for Mamdani, who intends to stay focused on leading New York City. The good news for him is that, unlike Trump, he remains popular among the people he governs. His favourability rating is 61 per cent, a sharp uptick from when he was elected mayor by a landslide in November. Trump, meanwhile, has seen his favourability and approval ratings slide nationwide over the last year. His net approval rating, according to pollster Nate Silver’s calculations, is -12.
Mayors of New York, due to the media scrutiny they receive and the inherent challenges of the job, inevitably grow less popular. There will probably be a time when Mamdani’s honeymoon fades. In the case of Trump, Americans have long been fed up with him – they’re pessimistic about the economy, alienated by his draconian immigration policies, and unenthused by a possible invasion of Venezuela. With the latter, Trump might be hoping for a “rally around the flag” effect, when a foreign conflict arouses patriotic fervour and popularity for the president momentarily skyrockets. Both George W Bush and George HW Bush enjoyed such boosts during their presidencies, and as Americans grow restless over inflation, healthcare costs and a slack job market, Trump could attempt to make more Americans care about the overthrow of a brutal dictator.
Except they won’t. Bush the Younger was extraordinarily popular in his first term because terrorists attacked US soil. He could hoodwink Americans into thinking the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were valid responses to September 11. When it comes to Venezuela, a vast majority of Americans couldn’t find the country on a map and haven’t given it a second thought. They may dislike Maduro, if they even know who he is, but there’s no appetite for their taxpayer dollars to be pumped into a regime change war. Outside of a small community of Venezuelan and Cuban exiles, many of them residing in Rubio’s Florida, the issue simply has no valence.
And so Trump, in these last three years of his presidency, will thrash about. He can do America and the world great harm. Vigilance is required. But he has squandered whatever goodwill he enjoyed with the American people. Maduro mouldering in a Brooklyn jail cell won’t change that.
[Further reading: The Zohran Mamdani interview]
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