I can’t remember the last time I haven’t woken up or gone to bed angry and, like so many people I know, I yearn for our political leaders to mirror that anger. This week, the Trump administration detained a Palestinian student-activist and legal U.S. resident, Mahmoud Khalil, for his political speech and for previously organizing protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Khalil hasn’t committed a crime, but the administration justified their horrific actions by citing Trump’s “executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism” and accusing Khalil of “activities aligned to Hamas.”
The response from Democrats has been relatively muted: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) issued a statement that basically condemned Khalil’s activism before questioning his detainment. Earlier this week, only 14 Congressional Democrats signed a letter calling for Khalil to be freed.
One Democratic politician, at least, did more than sign a letter. On Wednesday, New York City mayoral candidate and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (D), confronted Donald Trump’s immigration czar, Tom Homan, at the New York state Capitol. Homan was visiting to meet with Republican state lawmakers to apply further pressure to get the state to comply with ICE. In footage that’s since gone viral online, Mamdani shouts at Homan, “How many more New Yorkers will you detain?” as security personnel physically holds Mamdani back. When Homan—who supports Khalil’s detainment and told reporters at the Capitol that free speech has “limits”—ignored Mamdani, he yelled back, “Do you believe in the First Amendment?” We need more of this energy.
Mamdani addressed reporters about the incident afterward. “When we asked Tom Homan, all he had to answer for that cruelty was a smirk, because there is no answer for taking a man from his pregnant wife, who is due to deliver their newborn child in a month, from their Columbia University apartment,” he said. “The cowardice that is on display across our city and our state is unacceptable. New Yorkers are looking to us. They are looking to their leaders for courage and for conviction, and what they are finding instead is collaboration. And that is just simply unacceptable.”
To Mamdani’s point, Mayor Eric Adams (D) recently joined Homan on Fox News for a friendly interview, in which the two palled around, and Homan told Adams point-blank he’ll be “up your butt” if Adams fails to sufficiently comply with ICE. The short story of it all, if you’re new to the sordid saga of Adams’ extensive corruption, is that Adams was indicted on numerous charges of fraud and bribery in 2024. The Trump administration has since dropped those federal charges against Adams, in what appears to be naked quid pro quo to get Adams to effectively function as Trump’s puppet for the rest of his tenure as mayor.
Meanwhile, Mamdani’s main competitor for mayor seems to be former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), who resigned in disgrace in 2021 amid an investigation that found he sexually harassed 13 different female subordinates, as well as reports that his office tried to cover up the deaths of thousands of seniors in senior homes during covid. On Tuesday, Cuomo wrote a wishy-washy statement that, like Schumer’s, primarily condemned Khalil rather than the presidential administration that separated him from his wife for protesting genocide; only at the end does the statement mention that “the rule of law matters and we must never forget that regardless of the political views expressed, no matter how abhorrent.” The “abhorrent” views in question are Khalil’s demands that his university divest from a foreign country committing genocide; Khalil himself was born in a refugee camp after his family was displaced by the Israeli occupation.
“You’re not going to stop us, New York state,” Homan told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday, pledging to carry out Trump’s mass deportation agenda one way or another. In February, Homan spent an entire afternoon on cable news shows threatening ambiguous criminal charges against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for holding Know Your Rights workshops for immigrant communities, which… is legal. So, the threats are only escalating, and we need leaders who are actually willing to get confrontational and like they actually give a shit—like Mamdani did at the New York Capitol this week.
Also on Wednesday, the House held a hearing on Elon Musk’s DOGE bullshit, which has seen him attempt to fire and defund pretty much the entire federal government, while continuing to lavish his own tanking companies with lucrative government contracts. At least a few House Democrats finally appeared to show some bite: “Where’s Elon Musk?” Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) yelled during the hearing, from which Musk was very conspicuously absent. “He’s been on television the last couple of days talking exactly about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and what he intends to do: privatize it.” Larson continued, continuing to raise his voice—as all Democrats should be. “If he’s so great, if these plans and all the fraud and abuse that he’s found are so eminent—why isn’t he here explaining it?” “Shame,” he concluded. “Shame!”
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), the new Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair, leveled deservedly harsh criticism at Senate Democrats for insufficiently challenging Trump and Musk’s spending bill, which just passed the House. “Some Senate Democrats are being tempted to pretend to fight the Trump-Musk funding bill today, then quietly agree to give up on blocking it… Everything is on the line,” he said. “Democrats weren’t elected to put up a fake fight.”
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Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
