Politics

Mamdani’s Nakba Day video that never was

Published

4 months ago

May 18, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has a long standing record of aligning himself with Palestinian rights and struggles.

DAYS THE BUDGET IS LATE: 48

WOULD HAVE IF HE COULD HAVE: Mayor Zohran Mamdani planned to appear in a video he released over the weekend to commemorate the displacement of Palestinians that occurred in connection with the State of Israel’s creation.

He only opted against being in the video — which drew backlash from local Jewish leaders — because he fell ill, he said this morning at a Bronx press event.

“I was intending to be there as part of it,” Mamdani told reporters. “However, I did fall sick, and we didn’t want to create any kind of complication for her.”

Mamdani was referring to Inea Bushnaq, a woman who lived in the British Mandate for Palestine as a child and was featured in the video released on the mayor’s official social media handles late Friday.

In the 4-minute video, Bushnaq, filmed in her home in New York City, recalls how she was nine when she and her family had to flee their home in East Jerusalem in 1948 during the “Nakba,” an Arabic word that translates into “catastrophe” and denotes the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians upon the establishment of Israel. “The Zionists were coming into Jerusalem,” Bushnaq says in the video.

Local Jewish leaders, including a member of Mamdani’s transition team, were outraged by the video, arguing it provided a one-sided, overly simplified account of the region’s history.

As noted by The Forward’s Jacob Kornbluh, many Jews around the world contend the displacement of Palestinians did not just occur at the hand of Israeli forces. Rather, they point to neighboring Arab states, including Egypt and Syria, which launched military attacks in response to the new Jewish state’s creation in the wake of the Holocaust.

At his press conference today, Mamdani was asked for a response to the criticism that his team’s video excluded critical context.

“I firmly believe that acknowledging any one people’s pain does not preclude you from the acknowledgement of another people’s,” he said. “When it comes to New Yorkers like Inea and so many others, not only has their pain never been acknowledged, but so often we have seen that even their identity is up for debate, and my message to each and every New Yorker is that this is a city for you and that we will continue to be proud of everyone who calls it home.”

His comments come as he’s set to host a reception commemorating Jewish American Heritage Month at Gracie Mansion tonight. The mayor’s release of the Nakba Day video has led some Jewish leaders to boycott the event. They include Mark Treyger, a former City Council member who now leads the Jewish Community Relations Council, and Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the FDNY’s chief chaplain and the executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis.

Assemblymember Sam Berger, a Democrat who represents large Jewish communities in Queens, was still incensed by the video when asked about it this afternoon.

“The mayor has spent his career bending reality with his policies and his budget, so it’s no surprise he’s trying to bend history too,” he said in a statement to Playbook.

The decision by Mamdani to release the video on Nakba Day is part of his longstanding record of aligning himself with Palestinian rights and struggles.

As a candidate last year, Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, faced criticism for refusing to initially denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which many see as a call to violence against Jewish people. As mayor, he has said he’s committed to combating all forms of hate, including antisemitism, while also continuing to accuse Israel of perpetrating a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza as part of the war launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack.

Gustavo Gordillo, the co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mamdani is a member, celebrated the video, saying it’s consistent with the chapter’s “history of standing up for Palestinian solidarity.”

“Representing the historic struggle of the people of the city is part of the mayor’s job, and I think that’s what he was doing here,” Gordillo said. — Chris Sommerfeldt and Jason Beeferman

FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

Beth Davidson, who is running to represent New York's 17th Congressional District, opposes congressional term limits despite campaign website language supporting them.

BETH DAVIDSON VS. BETH DAVIDSON: Beth Davidson’s congressional campaign has made it crystal clear on her website she absolutely supports establishing term limits — but if you ask her in person you may get an answer that sounds completely different.

Davidson, who’s running in the Democratic primary to unseat Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, says on the “priorities” section of her campaign website that she wants to “enact term limits and stronger ethics rules, to keep career politicians and corrupt insiders in check.”

But at a candidate forum in Ossining earlier this month, when she and her Democratic rivals were asked whether they would “support term limits for U.S. representatives and senators,” Davidson responded, “I actually don’t.”

“Some districts have members that have served them a long time. Some we’re done with after two years. I think it has to be up to the voters,” Davidson explained.

When asked about the discrepancy, Davidson’s campaign said the language on her campaign website is consistent with her support for term limits in the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Beth has clear plans to take on corruption in DC, including enacting term limits for Supreme Court Justices, banning stock trading by Members of Congress, and ending Citizens United to keep special interests and corporations out of our elections,” her campaign manager Ellen McCormick told Playbook.

Davidson was the only major candidate at the forum who opposed term limits for members of Congress, with her opponents Cait Conley and Effie Phillips-Staley supporting the idea. — Jason Beeferman

From the Capitol

Gov. Kathy Hochul met with Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials at their Manhattan office on Monday.

TRAIN DREAMS: Gov. Kathy Hochul this morning visited the state office building in Lower Manhattan where negotiators for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Long Island Railroad and five striking unions are meeting. As of mid-afternoon, no deal to end the LIRR strike had been reached.

In a video posted on social media, the governor said the morning commute had gone “smoother than expected” and that she was fighting to “protect our taxpayers and our commuters from having to pay hundreds of dollars more.”

Outside, picketers — one of them wearing a t-shirt that said “Fuck You, Pay Me” — chanted slogans like, “New York is a union town, Janno Lieber shut it down.” Lieber is the head of the MTA.

Hochul has so far appeared to stake out a more pro-MTA position than Gov. Mario Cuomo did during the last LIRR strike in 1994, which was also a gubernatorial election year. To quickly end the strike, Cuomo — whose son Hochul succeeded as governor — brokered a deal that gave the unions what they wanted.

But Hochul also appears to be keeping her political distance while blaming President Donald Trump for the strike.

In 1994, The New York Times reported that Cuomo was “positively hyperactive in confronting” the strike by cancelling public appearances, including a ticker-tape parade for the New York Rangers who had just won the Stanley Cup. The Times said he’d also “placed round-the-clock telephone calls to the top negotiators, members of Congress, Long Island leaders and the aides he sent to the bargaining table.”

This time around, Hochul has never publicly mentioned the possibility of Congress intervening. Trying to go that route is a nightmare for labor-friendly Democrats: Railroad unions are still bitter about when President Joe Biden got Congress to head off a freight rail strike in 2022. There were crickets from Congress last year when a union of train engineers went on strike and idled New Jersey Transit trains.

Trump said Sunday that until a day after the LIRR strike had begun he’d “never even heard about it.” (The president in September and again in January issued executive orders to create three-member panels to investigate the dispute and issue reports — a standard move in any rail labor dispute.) On Sunday afternoon, federal mediators summoned both sides to negotiations at the MTA headquarters. Those lasted late into the night and resumed this morning.

Hochul’s argument is that the Trump administration last year released the unions from one part of the mediation process early, a maneuver that set up a series of cooling off periods that ended Saturday, when the strike began. The part of the process she’s referring to allows federal officials to indefinitely keep unions in mediation without the ability to strike as long as there’s a reasonable chance of a settlement. Some of those mediations lasted for years.

This time around, all five unions and the MTA participated in mediation sessions between March 2024 and July 2025 before they were released in August. — Ry Rivard

FROM CITY HALL

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a second location for the City's municipal grocery store program on Monday.

FOOD DESERT: Mamdani’s plan to open a city-owned grocery store next year in Hunts Point could be a boon for access to healthy food in the bodega-dominated South Bronx, where diabetes and obesity rates far exceed citywide averages.

Hundreds of bodegas are spread throughout four ZIP codes in the South Bronx, accounting for 35 percent of all food establishments in the area, according to a Health Department analysis released last month. While most of the bodegas offered fresh produce, a third of them sold no fresh vegetables besides onions and potatoes — and, overall, healthy meal and snack options were limited, the analysis found.

For every supermarket in the South Bronx, there are four fast food restaurants and six bodegas, the analysis found.

In Hunts Point, the average cost of a standard grocery basket — which includes staples like eggs, deli beef, tomatoes, lettuce, bread, potatoes, milk and bananas — was $39.20 last year, but up to half of those items were generally unavailable, according to the analysis.

“Making sure every New Yorker can buy fresh, affordable groceries in their own neighborhood is a key part of our affordability agenda,” Mamdani said in a statement Monday.

The Economic Development Corp. is preparing a request for proposals for private operators to manage the Hunts Point grocery store and an additional store in East Harlem, which was announced in April and is slated to open by 2029. — Maya Kaufman

IN OTHER NEWS

— FRONT AND CENTER: Puerto Rico has emerged as a key issue in the race to succeed Rep. Nydia Velázquez, as rival progressive camps clash over the district’s political future. (THE CITY)

— PRISON REFORM: Still awaiting appointments from Hochul to reach a quorum, New York’s Committee on Correction is unable to meet or vote, delaying jail reform implementations. (New York Focus)

— LUIGI TAKES A HIT: A Manhattan judge ruled that the gun and notebook seized from Luigi Mangione will be admissible at his upcoming murder trial, while excluding items obtained during an initial warrantless search. (The New York Times)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

Politics

Gavin Newsom’s first 2028 test: This fall, in Nevada

Published

1 day ago

September 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

LAS VEGAS — If California Gov. Gavin Newsom runs for president in 2028, next-door Nevada will be a crucial test. This fall’s governor’s race is offering a preview.

As GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo runs for reelection, he’s trying to pin high Nevada fuel prices — a majority of which is imported from California — on “Gavin Newsom’s energy policies.” He lambasts California as too expensive and too regulated. And he’s hammering his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford, for accepting Newsom’s endorsement, betting that it will turn off Nevada swing voters.

“The contrast is simple: I’m fighting Gavin Newsom’s agenda and Aaron Ford is trying to import it into Nevada,” Lombardo said in a statement to Blue Light News.

This could be a test run for 2028, when Newsom may call upon Nevadans — one-fifth of whom were born in California — to deliver him a primary victory in the early-voting state, and possibly a presidential victory.

“They understand California costs more,” Donna West, chair of the Nevada Democratic Party’s senior caucus, said of Nevada’s California expats. “They also understand that California is the fourth-largest economy in the entire world, and that Gavin Newsom ran that as effectively as he possibly can.”

Newsom’s office declined to comment. A person close to the governor, granted anonymity to discuss the sentiment in his orbit, said they are “thrilled” Republicans are spending money to “plaster Newsom’s name across a key early state.”

“Republicans seem awfully concerned about an endorsement from someone who leads the 2028 Democratic field in Nevada by nearly 2-to-1,” the person said, pointing to a November 2025 Emerson poll of a hypothetical 2028 Democratic primary field.

Ford, for his part, shrugs off the attacks.

“Lombardo tries to cast blame elsewhere, but everyone knows that when the war started in February, that we saw our gas prices increase almost immediately,” Ford told Blue Light News after a recent town hall in Las Vegas. “People believe their own eyes, and they remember their experiences.”

The demonization of California is nothing new in Nevada politics: For years, Republicans have blasted their western neighbor as too expensive and too woke.

But the stakes are higher, and the connection more palpable, this year, as Newsom explores a presidential bid. He would likely need to perform very well in Nevada, now second on the Democratic calendar, to build early momentum toward the party nomination. And come November 2028, he’d need to fare well in Nevada again, this time among the state’s general electorate, a plurality of which are independents.

Newsom has stumped for Democrats across the country this cycle, and he blitzed through the South this week, including a swing through South Carolina, whose Democrats will vote first, right before Nevada, in 2028.

But Republicans are looking to weaponize Newsom’s Silver State swing in July, where Ford introduced him at a new Las Vegas field office as “the governor of the great state of California.”

“Our next president!” an audience member shouted, eliciting cheers.

The Lombardo-aligned Better Nevada PAC shared polling with Blue Light News in July showing Newsom’s favorability 20 points underwater in Nevada and losing a hypothetical 2028 head-to-head with Vice President JD Vance. Shortly thereafter, the PAC began an ad blitz tying Ford to the California governor.

Billboards touting Newsom’s endorsement of Ford, paid for by the PAC, now line highways across Nevada, and digital and streaming ads have run consistently since the visit. “Newsom and Ford: Shared vision. Shared values,” one ad says.

A person familiar with the PAC’s internal polling, granted anonymity to discuss private data, said it shows Newsom’s endorsement is now the second-most-known datapoint about the attorney general.

“Gavin Newsom is the singular most unpopular elected official in Nevada,” said Jeremy Hughes, a longtime Nevada GOP strategist running the Lombardo-aligned PAC. “Aaron Ford brought him into the state. … There’s no better way to help him out than to put up these signs and run ads, letting people know that he’s excited about being endorsed by Gavin Newsom.”

Republicans in the state have long blamed Californian expats for housing shortages and rising prices and connect their opponents to California liberals. A surge of ex-Californians leaving the state during the Covid-19 pandemic, some fleeing high taxes and cost of living, accelerated the trend.

Sam Brown, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in 2022, blasted the “energy policies of Gavin Newsom”; in 2018, GOP governor nominee Adam Laxalt lamented the “Californization” of Nevada, even as Californians bankrolled his campaign. During Lombardo’s first run for governor in 2022, he slammed incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak for taking his cues from Newsom: “Don’t let Steve Sisolak turn Nevada into California,” one post said. Republicans tied their opponents to Nancy Pelosi for decades.

Lombardo’s argument this time around is more focused. He notes that the vast majority of Nevada’s gasoline comes from California, and argues that California’s efforts to cut carbon emissions have caused fuel prices to soar. A gallon of gas in Nevada costs nearly $5, according to AAA, one of the highest prices in the nation.

“The policies coming from Gavin Newsom and California Democrats … don’t stop at their state line,” Lombardo said in a statement. “Nevada and other states import a significant portion of our fuel from California, so when Governor Newsom shuts down refineries and imposes regulations that reduce supply and increase costs, Nevada families feel the consequences at the pump.”

It’s a strategy that allows Lombardo — running in a difficult national environment for incumbent Republicans — to acknowledge voters’ economic pain without blaming President Donald Trump or his own party. Indeed, Lombardo shared an April column in the Nevada Independent that placed blame at the feet of both Newsom and Trump. (Lombardo, in his post, blamed only Newsom.)

Democrats don’t think voters will buy it. ‘“As far as gas prices, it’s so obviously increased since the war,” Rep. Dina Titus said. “People in Nevada aren’t stupid.”

Ford has his own millstone to saddle Lombardo with: the president. At a recent town hall in Las Vegas, he repeatedly blasted the “Lombardo-Trump economy” that is “making everything too expensive.”

“Voters absolutely tie the handling of the economy to Trump,” said Mike Noble, an independent Phoenix-based pollster who works in Nevada regularly. “Instead of blaming Trump, why not tie it to the boogeyman next door and blame California?”

Politics

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

Published

2 days ago

September 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Politics

Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

Published

4 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”