When a President Says the “C” Word
28 Jul 2026
1. Donny and the Commies
The specter of Communism loomed large over the White House this past July 4th. In his address to the corporate-sponsored[1] “America 250” event, Donald spent some time engaging in the tried and true American tradition of anti-Communism, saying, among many other things, that,
Communism is a loser and it always will be. The Communist system is the opposite of the American system and the Communist system has never worked. Our warriors did not fight Communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We're not going to let it happen. We'd like to stop a threat like that immediately and before it begins. It's like a cancer. You got to cut it out. You got to cut it out fast.[2]
This reflects a recent openly anti-Communist turn of the president’s, with similar comments being made the night before during a speech at Mount Rushmore, where he said,
There is now a resurgence of the Communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. You can be a Communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.
You do not have to be born here, but you do have to love what we have built, you must love our country.[3]
It’s in the context of the recent supposed “socialist” victories that we see Trump’s anti-Communism more clearly, as the two are directly related. The Mamdani train still has steam, and two other New York DSA democrats[4] won their respective primaries this past June, widely due to his and the DSA’s endorsement.[5] Donny really began to speak this way last year, directing the big “C word” at Mamdani as he was just starting his primary, saying that New York becoming “a communistic city” was “a terrible thing for our country.”[6] More recently, only three days after the recent NY primary wins, Donald went on a diatribe against the DSA “socialists” and Communism more generally at the June 26 Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference, saying,
The Dumocrats, they are horrible. They want to resume the transgender mutilation of our children. They want to restart the war on Christians and churches. And as you saw with the Communists elected in New York City recently – they're Communists, they're not social-democrats – they want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life.[7]
We should not be mystified by fascist rhetoric, or think that by pointing out its inherent contradictions (the basic fact that the Democrats are not Communists, for example) we are somehow resisting fascism’s encroachment. Donald’s supporters are not concerned with logical inconsistencies. They did not become his supporters because they appreciate logical thinking. They support him because he brings form to their anger and their unrest, and does it in the same reactionary and populist way of all fascist demagogues, in a way that is familiar to their degeneracy. All the vile spirits that haunt the dreams of reactionaries are said to possess the Democrats now, and this is in-keeping with the more overt fascist turn that the Republican Party has undertaken in recent years, and the new tactics it is adopting to stay relevant with the masses. The old imperial order is dying away and as the contradictions of capitalist-imperialism fall hard on the people’s heads, frustrating their quality of life, the masses are shrinking away from status-quo government and seeking alternatives. Old political forces are being revealed as irrelevant and must leave their seats, and new political forces must be brought on to simply maintain society – on both the left and the right. Trump has begun this process for the right, and made use of the reactionaries’ bubbling unrest to catapult himself to power, becoming a demagogue for the dispossessed petty and small bourgeois. Their unrest, and with it their reaction and violence, now has a place in “traditional” American politics, and has been given form. It will be appealed to by politicians from both sides of the aisle until the time that it bubbles over into open fascist rebellion or is quelled by an opposing progressive force. “Trumpism” does not end with Trump or the Republican Party, and the right will continue to utilize all kinds of reactionary tactics to demonize its opposition so as to win the support of their base.
Social-Democracy (or Democratic Socialism as it is known in the US), which is a revisionist and bourgeois political trend that should not be confused with any actual socialism at all, is the dialectical opposition that has fueled the president’s anti-Communist tirades, and, as DSA democratic socialites like Mamdani continue to make electoral advances through the use of socialist rhetoric, the rhetoric and attempts by the Trump clique to pin the bogeyman of Communism onto them increases in step.
2. A Burning Question
So, since they are being targeted so aggressively by the president and his reactionaries, the burning question is: are the DSA “socialists” capable of being a force of opposition, that is, are they able to struggle against “Trumpism” effectively? Whether they like it or not, the DSA “socialists” have been thrust onto the frontline and placed within the sights of arguably the most powerful government office in the world. The organization was mentioned by name in the Department of State’s July 20th report, “Cuba: the Capital of 21st Century Communism,” which, while ignoring the reactionary stupidity of such a claim and the report more generally (which we can blame on Secretary Rubio’s need to shill to his anti-Castro Cuban American base) called the DSA “a national infrastructure dedicated to moving extreme-left politics” that “serves as a particularly potent illustration of the ideological victory of Cuba’s effort to position itself as the spiritual capital of Third Worldist radicalism,” saying that they maintain “a fierce, almost religious commitment to the cause of the Cuban regime.”[8] These direct callouts by the government put the DSA into opposition with both it and the rising fascist tide. Their ability to struggle against the right is being tested, paramount for the fate of our country. If they are an appropriate opposition to Trump and fascism more generally, then they should be supported. But, if they are not an appropriate opposition, then we must propagate the truth that they are not, so that a better alternative, one capable of addressing the problem of Trump, can emerge. So, does the Democratic Socialist movement in the US actually oppose our country’s turn towards fascism? The Marxist-Leninist tradition answers this question clearly, but let’s suspend our a priori (previous) knowledge – as correct as it is – and look at the situation more empirically.
It certainly appears like the DSA is fully committed and capable of supplying this resistance to Trump and fascism. Mamdani, the DSA’s most successful electoral project to date, now mayor of the country’s largest city, campaigned on a specifically anti-Trump platform,[9] saying even, “My administration will be Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”[10] His and the DSA’s other recent victories against establishment Democrats in the state seem to imply that socialism and the people are stepping up, taking over from the Democratic Party’s sluggishness and serving as the energetic foil to Trump’s reactionaries. But those of us who have studied Marxism are not fooled by the aesthetics and phrases of Democratic Socialist reformists or, as they are more commonly known outside the US, Social-Democratic politicians, who were often the subject of Lenin’s criticisms, and who side decidedly with the bourgeoisie. We know that to resist “Trumpism” would mean not just to win more votes than Trumpist candidates, but to resist against the reaction coming from Trump’s base, to oppose the petty and smaller bourgeois’ reaction, which cannot be done except through acknowledging the contradiction between small bourgeois and the imperial capitalist financiers (whose financial oppression liquidates small bourgeois and sends them down into the proletariat, birthing nationalist movements), and working to solve it the only way it can be solved: by eliminating the producing class entirely via the socialist revolution. It is the contradiction between the imperial class of bourgeois financiers and the more domestic-bound bourgeois, who are strangled by their credit — a strictly bourgeois conflict — that births any political movement for national “rights” and “freedoms.” This contradiction, a contradiction that is part of capitalist production itself and cannot be solved by it, must be addressed and struggled against in a working class way to say that “Trumpism” is actually being resisted. In other words, in order to resist Trump, capital itself must be resisted.
Real socialism – proper, scientific, dialectical materialist, Marxist-Leninist, Communist socialism, developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao – is the only program that offers a complete resistance to fascism. It is the only theory that works to disempower and liquidate the bourgeois of all sizes, thus ending the contradiction of capitalist-imperialism generally, not to mention the antagonisms of the bourgeois which lead to their fascist movements.
While the DSA may be able to win seats against both the establishment Democrats and Republicans, they are not able to actually resist fascism, or even Trump’s reactionaries in the immediate view, because they do not address the conditions that created, and continuously reproduce, both. For one, despite how Donald and Secretary Rubio portray them to their supporters, the DSA “socialists” outright reject the only theory that addresses the conditions that create fascism and reaction, Communism. When asked outright, “Are you a communist?” Mamdani answered “No, I am not,” in a 2025 NBC interview last June,[11] reflecting his honest political orientation. And the recently-nominated Darializa Avila Chevalier, one of the two DSA-sponsored candidates in NY who won their primaries, has already backtracked from tweets and reposts she made praising Lenin and Stalin, deleting them along with other “anti-establishment” posts[12] and directly answering the question if she was a Communist with, “I’m not. I’m a Democratic Socialist.”[13]
The DSA makes this distinction between Communism and Democratic Socialism because they are uninterested in standing alongside the class of workers, and do not want worker supremacy over society. Rather, they want the workers standing in the voting booths, voting for candidates who are bourgeois and who will maintain a supposed “middle-road” between a radical worker’s program and a reformist bourgeois one.
Already we can respond with a resounding “no” to the question whether the DSA can offer appropriate resistance to Trump and his reactionaries. Already we have a profound failure to theoretically meet the problems the DSA purports to be the answer to.
3. The DSA’s Bourgeois Base
While Trump appeals to the reactionary small business owners, the DSA appeals to the “progressive” ones, specifically the minorities who are repulsed by the racial rhetoric coming from the Republicans these days, and believe in the traditional “human rights” of liberal democracy. The DSA, like Trump, are also opportunists, both supporting the interest of dissatisfied smaller bourgeois and both adapting to the political shifts of the country. They fulfil the societal role of bringing in new political forces from the “left” side, gaining votes by posturing as “socialist” and enfranchising a progressive and disgruntled section of mostly labor aristocrats, petty bourgeois, and intelligentsia (but also some workers), sections who were too progressive or alienated to care for traditional Democratic politics previously, but are paying attention now, because of the crisis in society generally, which has lowered their quality of life and forced politics upon them. These forces naively see in the words of DSA candidates some hope for positive change in their conditions.
The DSA bastardizes class theory, and isolates the violence of the bourgeois class of property owners into only their most egregious (but also least numerous) section, the so-called “Billionaire Class” (read in a Bernie accent), because the DSA represents the interests of smaller capitalists, and has found a political home in garnering their support, especially in the big cities where minority populations are growing rapidly. Any actual socialist line would speak to class struggle and the inherent contradictions of living in a city of bourgeois parasites and proletarian laborers. It would never fail to mention how this contradiction is a violent contradiction, one that cannot be brushed aside, and can only end with the victory of the workers over the property owners. Meanwhile, Mamdani, the Hallmark card, says,
At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest. But time and again — including 250 years ago — those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.
The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all.[14]
“Division” is bad for a liberal, who wants to keep the current orientation of the national boundary and its market intact for private accumulation, but it is necessary for any socialist, who, if they actually want to usher in the socialist society, must acknowledge the existence of class divisions, propagating this knowledge to the people and working for the victory of the workers against their antagonizers in the propertied classes. Mamdani and the DSA’s rejection of division, their saccharine insistence on unity and their denial of the class struggle does not, like they think it does, make them holy and morally superior, able to transcend the antagonisms of society through the grace of being “good” and “nice” to everyone. No, because there is a class divide, their denial of division and class struggle, their denial of reality, is accompanied with their programmatic support of power, of their bowing to the strongest side within the class conflict, who inevitably worm themselves and their capital into any political movement they can to get their interest met: the class of bourgeois. Just this last March, Mamdani’s administration ear-marked $80 million of public taxes for affordable financing to small businesses, supporting the class of bourgeois directly,[15] fulfilling his numerous campaign promises.[16] The capitalists don’t even have to worm their way into socialism when “socialists” like these invite them in. And the “socialists” have invited them in, in the most direct way.
4. Some Stinky-Ass Appointments
Mamdani chose as his First Deputy Mayor, the establishment Democrat, Dean Fuleihan, a veteran of the New York State Assembly and the New York City’s mayor’s office. This is Fuleihan’s second time as First Deputy Mayor of NYC, serving in the same position under a “socialist” as he did a decade ago under the decidedly non-socialist mayor, Bill de Blasio.[17] Before becoming a fixture in the mayor’s office, he was the chief fiscal and policy adviser to the State Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver, negotiating the state’s budget, which was reportedly more than $130 billion.[18] And were there any great sweeping socialist programs in those state budgets a decade ago? Decidedly, no. But regardless, Fuelihan now sits with the keys to Mamdani’s “socialist” kingdom, with wide-sweeping executive duties including overseeing “the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Finance, the Chief Efficiency Officer, the Chief Housing Officer, the Chief Technology Officer, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the Office of Policy & Planning, the Office of M/WBE (Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise) and the policies set forth across the other Deputy Mayors and their agencies.”[19] So Mamdani the “socialist” has chosen for this powerful position the exact same man as the Democrat Bill de Blasio and the decades-serving State Assembly Speaker who was found guilty of corruption[20] and died in federal prison in 2022 with 3 years left in his sentence.[21] Very progressive!
The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, another enormous appointment, is occupied by another veteran of de Blasio, Sherif Soliman, who served as commissioner under de Blasio’s Department of Finance. He also currently sits on the board of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA),[22] the state-owned company that runs the subways and buses in the city. Curious, since the combination of rising MTA fares and the increased violence required to police turnstile “hoppers”[23] is increasingly antagonizing the city’s working population. One would think a “socialist” would be aware of this problem and correctly identity an MTA board member as having the interest of the MTA, which, despite being a state company, still wishes to maintain and even raise its fare prices[24] in-line with the interest of its well-paid bureaucrat bourgeois, who use their high salaries to purchase company equity on the private market. Related to the subway issue, Mamdani has not only cozied up to the bureaucrat side of the problem, but also the law enforcement side, retaining Jessica Tisch, the billionaire-heiress[25] and Police Commissioner from Eric Adam’s tenure who has overseen the department since 2024. It is not likely that policing will get any humane or “progressive” reforms under this “socialist” mayor, since Tisch oversaw the NYPD’s recent dramatic rise in vile “stop-and-frisk” tactics,[26] and is a vocal supporter of Israeli settler-colonialism,[27]with the mayor himself on record as saying he will not decrease the NYPD’s headcount,[28] as we reported on last year.[29]
Outside of only a few positions which are filled by some younger people associated with Bernie’s teams, Mamdani’s entire administration is composed of de Blasio, New York State, or Adams alumni,[30] all professional bureaucrats who had nothing to do with socialism prior, and were perfectly content in their bourgeois positions. They will continue to have nothing to do with socialism, being perfectly comfortable in their bourgeois existence, even under a “socialist” mayor.
5. A Contradicted House of Cards
While the ostriches with their heads in the sand cluck on and on about “pragmatism,” we will continue to call a thing what it is. As Leninism has instructed for more than 100 years, the Social-Democratic political movement is an opportunist and revisionist movement, and has no genuine base within the working class. It has only revealed this character all the more today by its general rejection of Marxism and Communism outright. Social-Democracy is only directed at socialists and the lower-classes, appealing to their interest and distorting class politics, while its true interest is bourgeois. Is there any chance that a movement that attempts to balance both “socialism” and capitalism, speaking of the evils of American imperialism with one side of their mouth, and then advocating for “fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence”[31] with the other, as the DSA “socialists” do, is even remotely capable of achieving victory over a much stronger, decidedly bourgeois movement of the dominant American nationality? Moreover, can the DSA win when it must oscillate between bourgeois and working class “progressive” slogans, appealing to both the propertied and the propertyless? One side of their support wishes to fulfill the historical “values” of American capitalist exploitation, and the other is sick and tired of historical “America,” and have turned towards the DSA in the first place because they promise a new, less exploitative economic and political system. These are two vastly different forces that the opportunists in the DSA attempt (and fail) to balance. Their Trumpist opponents are not so divided. They openly preach capitalism and national chauvinism; not oscillating between workers and owners like the DSA does, but united in their chauvinistic, pro-business, and anti-worker worldview. As the contradictions between the divided bases of the DSA grows and the propertied and the propertyless reveal their opposing class interests, each demanding supremacy and the subordination of the other, whose side do you think the DSA will take?
Look at the path ahead and see how the DSA is a house of cards, destined to crumble due to their own contradictions, swallowed up by the wider class contradictions of society. Their supposed “resistance” will not grow with the masses as they reject private property and become more openly radically socialist due to their worsening conditions. Alongside their electoral victories, will the DSA construct, as Lenin tells socialists to, empowered councils of “workers and soldiers’ deputies” to “suppress the exploiters,” “to overthrow the bourgeoisie,” and “to destroy bourgeois parliamentarism”[32] in order to actually defend the people’s interest when all of capital unites against them in a direct way? No, the DSA and their opportunists will lag behind, maintaining their bourgeois interest right up until the very end, when the bourgeois themselves, terrified more and more of socialist sentiment and the loss of their property rights, generally abandon the DSA and the Democrats entirely, bowing to Trumpism and the right, since their camp is the one that consistently protects private property. At such a stage, all of the naïve “socialists” and even the “progressive” bourgeois (many of whom are minorities) who went along with the DSA circus will be effectively isolated for elimination by the right, known and public, but without any political force at all, or any means of defense. Despite the fact that Social-Democracy is somewhat “new” to our country, the DSA are no different from the tired reformist formations so typical in Europe, which Lenin wrote about, and which have co-opted socialism for the last century, keeping the anger of the proletariat from targeting the capitalists and their system and funneling it into their opportunist election machine, keeping the workers blind to the power of their class and delaying not only the sweeping property destructions and chaos of an angry underclass, but also the arrival of an actual political home for this revolt via the principled Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, which requires a popular socialist sentiment that is miles ahead of the opportunist sludge of “socialism” now, sludge which Social-Democratic formations like the DSA thrive upon and propagate.
The DSA will play this familiar game for as long as they can, shirking from the big “C” word that Trump and his administration throws at them while saying juuust enough socialistic phrasing to string along working class voters. Meanwhile, the actual “C” words, those who do not shirk away from the destiny and the struggle that being a “C” word entails, are being targeted; not for the death blow, at least not yet — an administration cannot poof policy into being with a simple order, moreover create the necessary logistical structures to enforce policy — but the inevitably of such a fierce anti-Communist assault occurring within the United States’ near future is practically assured. The reactionaries of all stripes are uniting behind anti-Communism, helped along by the loudest and most powerful executive office in government. Principled Communists won’t be defended by a Mamdani, or a Bernie, an AOC, or any other Social-Democrat, even while Communists do make up a good portion of the rank-and-file in their party. Our Marxist comrades will be especially victimized by Social-Democratic betrayal, picked off by state agencies and fascist militias while the upper echelons of the DSA skate away on their class privilege, prattling on and on.
6. Conclusion
But we would be speaking one-sidedly if we failed to acknowledge that Donald’s fascistic slinging of the word “Communist” onto the faces of his political opponents — as much as it cheers on his base and intensifies anti-Communist sentiment generally — intrigues and inspires a search for knowledge in folks who are quite opposed to both his and the DSA’s base, and to reaction generally: the working class, who are much more numerous than even the combined bourgeois classes. Though they speak confidently as if they own the place, don’t forget the obvious fact that not everyone in this country finds the thought of free healthcare or housing funny, as Trump and his supporters do,[33] or is able to ever so easily dismiss Communist ideas as “impossible,” as the moneyed classes must do (or else face their own mortality), and as Trump and his congregation does. As the people’s conditions worsen, more and more will be turned towards the socialist movement, seeing the necessity of collective actions against the capitalists, and helped along by the capitalists themselves, who always reveal their monstrous nature clearly in times of crisis. When the Marxist-Leninists are united in a working organization of the kind we outline in Where to Begin When We Already Started?: Revisionism and Organizational Strategy, they will then be capable of actually putting their ideological stamp — the stamp of dialectical materialism and principled Marxism-Leninism — onto not only Marxism, but socialism, the labor movement, and this interested section of revolting masses. Then the socialist movement will have the tools it needs to develop in the right direction.
Currently, to no one’s surprise, our movement is weak, disorganized, and confused. Through the work of principled, talented, and unabashedly Communist ideologists, it can learn, and it must. Although Democratic-Socialism will certainly not oppose, in the final view, our country’s turn towards fascism, and will be eaten up by the fascist camp given its contradictions explained earlier, it can buy the real movement some time. It is in our interest that the conflict between the “progressive” Democrat-sometimes-socialist faction and the Trumpists continues, that the DSA and the Democratic Party is able to engage the right for a long time, and that the right is too distracted by the possibly of “owning the libs” in government to carry out wider organizational work. While recognizing the doom of the “progressive” side, it’s the hope of every politically conscious worker and Marxist that both they and the fascists exhaust themselves on each other as much as possible. This will allow us time to prepare a legitimate opposition to both the decaying neo-liberal capitalist order and the rising fascist one that is attempting to take its place. Their struggle will likely blow up into “politics by other means,”[34] which will give our own side opportunities so long as we correctly organize, and allow for socialism’s development while we have time.
The spontaneous revolt of the masses will fill the DSA and every Social-Democratic party sufficiently for this feature of the revolution, without the help of “Marxists,” whose labor should not be used building Social-Democratic speed bumps for the fascists, but reflect the conscious element and be put to more practical revolutionary purposes.
It is not enough to be a revolutionary and an adherent of socialism or a Communist in general. You must be able at each particular moment to find the particular link in the chain which you must grasp with all your might in order to hold the whole chain and to prepare firmly for the transition to the next link; the order of the links, their form, the manner in which they are linked together, the way they differ from each other in the historical chain of events, are not as simple and not as meaningless as those in an ordinary chain made by a smith.[35]
We prepare for the next link in our chain when we correctly separate from all revisionism — Social-Democracy included. Socialism cannot develop and make use of the conflict between liberal democracy and fascism if we mistake the “socialism” of opportunists and the bourgeois for actual socialism. If we are Marxists, we must demand that socialism progresses. Rather than moving in lock-step with something that is decidedly unrevolutionary and bourgeois simply because it is popular, Marxists must hold fast to the next link in the chain. We must demand that the Social-Democratic mistake within socialism is corrected, and demand much more from (and for) our fellow comrades than bourgeois lies and delusion. Marxism-Leninism is here, as it has been for more than 100 years, despite how many “socialists” wish that it wasn’t.
Endnotes
[1] America250.org. “Sponsors.” Accessed on 11 Jul 2026. https://america250.org/our-partners/sponsors/.
[2] LiveNOW from FOX (@livenowfox). “LIVE: President Trump July 4th America250 Remarks in Washington, DC | LiveNOW from FOX.” YouTube. 4 Jul 2026. https://www.youtube.com/live/6UVmnNHG9v4?si=HH0CUrY8Gi2rryQW&t=1373. 22:53.
[3] Dias, Duarte. “Trump warns of ‘communist menace’ in speech at Mount Rushmore on eve of July 4th.” CBS News. 4 Jul 2026. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mount-rushmore-speech-july-4-communism/.
[4] New York Democratic Socialists of America. “Our Congressional Candidates.” Accessed on 11 Jul 2026. https://socialists.nyc/candidates/.
[5] Arikat, Said. “New York’s primaries signal a new force in US politics.” Aljazeera. 26 Jun 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/6/26/new-yorks-primaries-signal-a-new-force-in-us-politics.
[6] Mangan, Dan. “Trump calls New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani ‘a communist.’” CNBC. 27 Jun 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/27/trump-new-york-zohran-mamdani-communist.html.
[7] The White House (@whitehouse). “President Trump Delivers Remarks at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's 2026 Policy Conference.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/live/dikuG6dEQNs?si=sze37SGnNNH8BxC5&t=1322. (22:02).
[8] US Department of State. “Cuba the Capital of 21st Century Communism.” 20 Jul 2026. Pgs. 84 & 85. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Cuba-Report.pdf.
[9] Fitzsimmons, Emma G. “Mamdani Will Visit Each N.Y.C. Borough to Highlight Trump’s Impact.” The New York Times. 11 Aug 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/nyregion/mamdani-trump-cuomo-mayor-nyc.html.
[10] Ngo, Emily. “‘Trump’s worst nightmare’: Mamdani targets the president in his general election bid.” Politico. 11 Aug 2025. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/11/trumps-worst-nightmare-mamdani-targets-the-president-in-his-general-election-bid-00504123.
[11] NBC News. “Mamdani responds to Trump's attacks: 'No, I am not' a communist.” 29 Jun 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/mamdani-responds-to-trump-s-attacks-no-i-am-not-a-communist-242434629935. (0:39)
[12] Kaczynski, Andrew. “Deleted tweets on Darializa Avila Chevalier’s account had favorable references to communist leaders and Marxism.” CNN. 30 Jun 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/29/politics/darializa-avila-chevalier-communism-tweets.
[13] McDuffie, Will. “Avila Chevalier, after primary upset, says she is not a communist.” MS Now. 29 Jun 2026. https://www.ms.now/news/darializa-avila-chevalier-dsa-communist.
[14] New York City Office of the Mayor. “Remarks as Prepared: Mayor Mamdani Delivers Address Marking America’s 250th Birthday.” NYC.gov. 3 Jul 2026. https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/07/remarks-as-prepared--mayor-mamdani-delivers-address-marking-amer.
[15] New York City Office of the Mayor. “Mayor Mamdani Launches $80M NYC Future Fund, Expanding Affordable Financing For Small Businesses.” NYC.gov. 17 May 2026. https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/03/mayor-mamdani-launches--80m-nyc-future-fund--expanding-affordabl.
[16] Zohran for New York City. “Final Small Business Memo: Cut Red Tape and Reduce
Small Businesses Fines and Fees.” Accessed on 11 Jul 2026. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wuZ-s8VnnAHqHhqtHESwgzINiN7D95vy/view?pli=1.
[17] City and State. “Who’s who in Zohran Mamdani’s administration?” 16 Jun 2026. https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2026/06/whos-who-zohran-mamdanis-administration/409701/.
[18] Babin, Janet & Bernstein, Andrea. “De Blasio Names New Budget Director.” WNYC. 10 Dec 2013. https://wnyc.org/story/de-blasio-names-new-budget-director/.
[19] Green Book Online. “First Deputy Mayor.” NYC.gov. Accessed on 11 Jul 2026. https://a856-gbol.nyc.gov/GBOLWebsite/GreenBook/Details?orgId=6737.
[20] United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York. “Former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver Sentenced To 7 Years In Prison.” 27 Jul 2018. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-new-york-state-assembly-speaker-sheldon-silver-sentenced-7-years-prison.
[21] McKinley, Jesse & Ferré-Sadurní, Luis. “Sheldon Silver, 77, New York Power Broker Convicted of Corruption, Dies.” The New York Times. 24 Jan 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/nyregion/sheldon-silver-dead.html.
[22] City and State.
[23] McCann, Sam. “More Police Won’t Make Public Transit Safer. Housing and Social Services Will.” Vera. 17 Jun 2022. https://www.vera.org/news/more-police-wont-make-public-transit-safer-housing-and-social-services-will.
[24] Metro Transit Authority (MTA). “Changes to MTA fares and tolls in 2025.” 30 Sep 2025. https://www.mta.info/fares-tolls/2025-changes.
[25] Rosman, Katherine. “She’s a Billionaire. He’s a Socialist. Can They Get Along?” The New York Times. 21 Jan 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/nyregion/zohran-mamdani-jessica-tisch-nypd.html.
[26] Venkat, Surina. “NYPD Stop-and-Frisks Soared in 2024.” New York Focus. 2 Apr 2025. https://nysfocus.com/2025/04/02/nypd-stop-and-frisk-eric-adams.
[27] Vago, Steven. Campanile, Carl. Nesi, Chris. “Ex-mayors join Hochul, Tisch and thousands at NYC’s Israel parade — while No-Show Mamdani bizarrely rides bike around town in business suit, no helmet.” New York Post. 31 May 2026. https://nypost.com/2026/05/31/us-news/ex-mayors-join-hochul-tisch-and-thousands-at-nycs-israel-parade-while-no-show-zo-bizarrely-rides-bike-around-town-in-business-suit-and-no-helmet.
[28] Pazmlno, Glorla. “Mamdani confronts his past calls to defund police after an officer’s death in New York.” CNN. 31 Jul 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/31/politics/mamdani-defund-police-shooting.
[29]Sparkyl Magazine. “Is the Working Class of NYC Safe Under Mamdani’s Department of Community Safety?” 18 Oct 2025. https://www.sparkyl.org/articles/mamdanidcs.
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