How Trump could hinder Zohran Mamdani’s agenda in New York

Moments after Zohran Mamdani won his battle to become the next mayor of New York City, the rising political star focused on his next fight: taking on the president of the United States.

In his victory speech on Tuesday, Mamdani turned to the cameras to directly mock the president: “So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn up the volume,” he said.

Minutes later, Trump responded on his social media site Truth Social: “…AND SO IT BEGINS!”

Since Mamdani won the Democratic primary in June, President Donald Trump has criticized the 34-year-old as the future “communist” of the Democratic Party.

In the run-up to the mayoral election, Trump endorsed Andrew Cuomo, a former Democratic governor running as an independent, and told New Yorkers that if they elected Mamdani, he would cut funding to the city.

It’s not the first time Trump, a born-and-raised New Yorker, has tried to meddle in city affairs, from stepping up immigration raids to trying to end funding for congestion pricing, a policy he opposes.

But Mamdani seems unfazed.

“If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city of his birth,” he said during his victory speech.

Since taking office, Trump has wielded federal power against several Democratic-run cities, sending in national guard troops and cracking down on immigration across the United States.

It has also cut billions in funding to cities since the government shut down on October 1, including New York, where it froze $18bn (£13.6bn) in federal money for major infrastructure projects.

Political experts told the BBC that Trump could easily cut more, and that could hamper Mamdani’s campaign promises to reduce the cost of living.

The self-described democratic socialist had campaigned for free and faster buses, a freeze on rents for rent-stabilized housing, universal child care and city-run grocery stores, among other policy goals.

“The reality is that the mayor-elect will have to focus a lot of his attention on President Trump and the attacks on New York, as opposed to all the issues he wants to address,” said Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University. “It’s going to be a problem for the city and it’s also going to be a problem and a challenge for the mayor-elect to stay focused.”

Mamdani did not respond to a BBC request for comment.

Mamdani, a former state assemblyman, faces several challenges besides Trump in achieving his ambitious policy goals, policy experts say.

He has suggested he could raise $10 billion in revenue by raising taxes on wealthy corporations and New York’s top one percent, but that would require approval from the state’s governor.

Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who faces a tough re-election bid next year, has so far hesitated to support Mamdani’s tax plan. Trump ally Elise Stefanik has said she will seek the Republican nomination for the state’s highest office.

Trump could poke more holes in these plans by cutting more federal funding, which last year accounted for about $8.5 billion, or 7% of the city’s total budget.

“There will be an issue of money to do anything in the city,” Zelizer said. “But if federal dollars start to run out, it will be much harder to do anything new.”

Those funds are used for a number of services, including the department’s housing, emergency disaster response and children’s services, as well as education funds for low-income students and school meals, according to the New York City Independent Budget Office.

Trump has not specified which federal funds he will target.

New York is legally required to provide some of these services, such as funding for homeless shelters. That means that without federal funding, city and state governments would have to make up the difference, putting pressure on other programs, said Sarah Parker, senior research and strategy officer at New York City’s Independent Budget Office.

“There are a lot of contingency plans being developed at the city and state level for a lot of scenarios,” he said.

Trump would likely face legal challenges for withholding funds that have been approved by Congress, including food aid, said Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, a professor of public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

“But it does slow down the process of getting those funds to the people who need them,” he said.

Trump has also used the threat of enforcement against Democratic-led cities. He has deployed National Guard troops across the country, including Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., portraying the cities as crime-ridden places in need of federal intervention.

He has so far refrained from sending troops to America’s largest city, but political experts said that could change.

“He already has the template,” Zelizer said. “It’s hard to imagine that not happening.”

Mamdani has said he would resort to legal challenges to respond to a National Guard deployment in New York, as other states have done. Many of the cases are still in limbo and moving towards the courts.

Political experts also expect Trump to expand his crackdown on immigration in New York, which has been a sanctuary city since the 1980s. That means the city limits cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

The administration has already stepped up enforcement in the city’s immigration courts, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested hundreds of people arriving for mandatory immigration hearings.

Current Mayor Eric Adams has mostly cooperated with the administration. But Mamdani, who came to the United States from Uganda when he was seven, pointed a different direction.

He said New York “will continue to be a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, starting tonight, led by an immigrant.”

“So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you’re going to have to outmaneuver all of us,” he said on election night.

Adams did so after Trump’s Justice Department dismissed federal bribery and fraud charges against him. The move prompted the resignation of New York’s top prosecutor, who claimed that Adams’ lawyers had asked Justice Department officials to drop the case in exchange for enforcing Trump’s immigration policies.

Mamdani will likely take some time to strategize how to respond to Trump’s early moves since he won’t take office until January, said Bob Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University.

Other Democratic urban leaders have taken a variety of approaches, including progressive Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who has frequently rejected the president. Trump once threatened to pull World Cup games from his Massachusetts town.

In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie reportedly turned to tech industry leaders to dissuade Trump from sending National Guard troops to the city, arguing it would hurt the economy.

Mamdani could take similar steps in New York to avoid federal troops, calling Wall Street leaders in a city where Trump made his career in real estate, Shapiro said.

In a policy document on “Trump-proofing” New York City, the mayor-elect said he planned to hire 200 additional lawyers to bolster the city’s legal department and respond to the Trump administration’s “presidential overreach.”

Mamdani faces big challenges in trying to implement his ambitious policy agenda, so he may pick his battles with the president to build support among anti-Trump New Yorkers for certain policies, de Benedictis-Kessner said.

“I think he will engage with Trump if it helps him achieve his political goals,” he said. “And I think he’s a smart enough politician not to do that unless he does it.”