Zohran Mamdani Won. What Happens Next?

With Zohran Mamdani pulling off a stunning upset and heading into the fall as the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, the next four-plus months promise to reshape city politics. As Jesse Arm writes, three forces will determine what happens next.

First is President Trump, who has already branded Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic.” Trump could endorse Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa—or appoint him to a federal post, clearing a path for Eric Adams, now running as an independent. “The question is which narrative Trump prefers,” Arm writes. “Does he want to run next year against the chaos of a Mamdani mayoralty—or play the hero who rescued New York from dysfunction?”

Second is Mamdani himself. “He surely knows that if he wants to become the Democratic Party’s most important new national figure,” Arm notes, “he may need to soften some edges.” Whether he chooses to recalibrate is an open question.

And finally, there’s the city’s business and philanthropic elite. They may not be able to stop Mamdani outright—but they still have the resources to shape what comes next.

Read more about the mayoral election here.

In collaboration with the Sun Valley Policy Forum (SVPF), several luminaries from the Manhattan Institute will speak at this year’s SVPF Summer Institute, on July 1st and 2nd. This two-day conference retreat will be held in the premier mountain town of Sun Valley, Idaho. Reihan Salam (Manhattan Institute President), Jesse Arm (Manhattan Institute Executive Director of External Affairs & Chief of Staff), Heather Mac Donald (Thomas W. Smith Fellow and Contributing Editor of City Journal), and Senior Fellows Jason Riley and Abigail Shrier will be featured in the programming, along with other notable thought leaders. As a benefit to City Journal readers, Reserve ticket bundle registrations will be upgraded to the Bronze pass level, which includes access to a private cocktail party. For more information on the program, go here; to register with MI benefits, go here.

While DEI programs have been in retreat since Donald Trump returned to office in January, his administration has moved to investigate institutions that previously engaged in discrimination in the name of “diversity.”

According to a new investigative report by Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe, one such institution may be Cornell University. Citing a whistleblower and internal documents, the report alleges that administrators explicitly sought a “diversity hire” for an academic position. The university, their sources claim, operated a “system of intentional discrimination in faculty hiring that rewards and punishes individuals according to their ancestry, rather than their ability.” Rufo and Thorpe argue that the allegations merit investigation by the Department of Justice.

New York governor Kathy Hochul’s recent pledge to build one gigawatt of new nuclear power capacity is the clearest sign yet of a seismic shift among Democrats—from the climate politics of the 2010s to the abundance politics of the 2020s, writes the Breakthrough Institute’s Alex Trembath.

Though nuclear is the nation’s largest source of climate-friendly electricity, Democrats influenced by the anti-nuclear legacy of 1960s environmentalism have long been lukewarm or hostile to it. That’s beginning to change, Trembath notes, “as data centers and electric vehicles push electricity demand upwards for the first time in decades, and as solar, wind, and natural gas face mounting supply constraints.”

Still, the abundance agenda faces resistance. “Pro-nuclear abundance may be ascendant in Albany,” Trembath writes, “but the anti-nuclear environmentalists will likely have to be dragged from the Democratic coalition kicking and screaming.”

In this episode, City Journal’s Rafael Mangual, Nicole Gelinas, Tal Fortgang, and Daniel Di Martino break down how Mamdani won, why moderates failed to unify, and what it means when a socialist backed by “Intifada” slogans becomes the Democratic nominee. They also take a detour to the Hamptons to ask: is it becoming the new Palm Beach?

“I think the eventual legal backlash is the only thing that will end this insane and ridiculous trend. Not common sense or reasonable caution or even medical ethics.”

Photo credits: Andrew Lichtenstein / Contributor / Corbis News via Getty Images