Mamdani’s First Week
It has been an exhausting week, with kidnappings of foreign leaders and murders of random Americans by trigger-happy cosplaying warrior cops. And quietly, behind all that hysteria, a new leader has had a hell of an opening week.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani began the week with the same impulse that animated his campaign: listening to New Yorkers who tell him about the struggles of living in an expensive city with an imbalance of political and economic power. Two executive orders took aim at junk fees and subscription traps, two of life’s little indignities whereby companies extract cash not by creating worthwhile products but by cheating and outwitting their customers. Primarily the orders just empower the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, now under the direction of former top Lina Khan aide Sam Levine, to enforce the law against these deceptive practices. “[This week’s] order and Commissioner Levine’s comments are sending the message that Mayor Mamdani is serious about using multiple tools to carry out his affordability agenda,” said Erin Witte, a senior fellow with Protect Borrowers.
In doing so, Mamdani is essentially substituting for the federal government, which stopped enforcing consumer protections, including ending hidden fees and ensuring the ease of canceling subscriptions, approximately on Inauguration Day 2025. Mamdani is also holding “rental rip-off hearings” to hear from tenants living under substandard conditions and facing any number of housing fees. Direct testimony like this can inform future action.
Separately, key Mamdani ally New York Attorney General Tish James is questioning Instacart’s variable pricing tests that were the subject of a pathbreaking investigation by Groundwork Collaborative and Consumer Reports. At least in New York, consumer protection law exists.
But the big win in week one came from an agreement with Gov. Kathy Hochul to expand free, universal child care, a core promise of Mamdani’s campaign. A $4.5 billion statewide commitment in year one will universalize child care for all four-year-olds by 2028, according to Hochul. Mamdani will be able to use the funds to make 3-K universal for three-year-olds in New York City, and initiate a “2-Care” program for two-year-olds that would start with 2,000 kids and expand annually until it becomes universal in year four. None of these programs would be means-tested.
It’s not perfect: Only two years of funding has been fully committed, and the state legislature will have to approve it. Hochul managed to find the money for the first two years without higher taxes, but that may not hold indefinitely, as some stable funding source will be needed. Plus, it comes at a time when President Trump has paused some child care funding for New York and other blue states, though that is being challenged in court.
But many observers sniffed that Mamdani’s big ideas would surely fizzle once they came into contact with a hard-nosed political system. It turns out that he was the realistic one, and the critics were naïve. “To those who think that the promises of a campaign cannot survive once confronted with the realities of government, today is your answer,” Mamdani said at a press conference this week.
While national media fumes about Mamdani daring to host a news conference with influencers or meeting with Steven Spielberg, and a right-wing witch hunt targets individual staffers, it’s the substance of improving lives in the city that will maintain the mayor’s relationship to voters. And he’s fighting so they can have options for taking care of their children, so they aren’t ripped off by a gym membership, so they can be safer from onrushing cars when crossing the street. That’s a pretty damn good start.
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