Donald Trump waits in court during proceedings over a business records violation. He was convicted, but Trump and his supporters dismissed the case as a partisan attack. Mary Altaffer/AP
Donald Trump joked in 2016 that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not lose support. In 2024, after two impeachments and 34 felony convictions, he has more or less proved the point. He not only returned to the White House, he turned his mug shot into décor, hanging it outside the Oval Office like a trophy.
He’s not alone. Many politicians are ensnared in scandal, but they seldom pay the same kind of cost their forebears might have 20 or 30 years ago. My research, which draws on 50 years of verified political scandals at the state and national levels, national surveys and an expert poll, reaches a clear and somewhat unsettling conclusion.
In today’s polarized America, scandals hurt less, fade faster and rarely end political careers.
New York’s Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey’s Jim McGreevey both resigned as governors due to sex scandals, only to run again this year for mayoral posts. Both lost. Cuomo sought to replace New York Mayor Eric Adams, who never stepped down despite being indicted – with charges later dropped – in a corruption case that engulfed much of his administration.
The adulterous state attorney general from Texas, Ken Paxton, survived an impeachment vote in 2023 over bribery and abuse of office and is now running for the U.S. Senate. The list goes on – proof that scandal rarely ends a political career.
When scandals still mattered
For most of the previous half-century, scandals had real bite.
Watergate, which involved an administration spying on its political enemies, knocked out President Richard M. Nixon. The Keating Five banking scandal of the 1980s reshaped the Senate, damaging the careers of most of the prominent senators who intervened with regulators to help a campaign contributor later convicted of fraud.
Members of Congress referred to the House ethics committee were far less likely to keep their seats. Governors, speakers and cabinet officials ensnared in scandal routinely resigned. The nation understood scandal as a serious breach of public trust, not a potential fundraising opportunity.
But beginning in the late 1990s and accelerating throughout the Trump era, something changed.
According to my dataset of more than 800 scandals involving presidents, governors and members of Congress, politicians in recent decades have survived scandals for longer periods of time and ultimately faced fewer consequences.
Even at the presidential level – where personal legacy should, in theory, be most sensitive – scandals barely leave a dent. Trump and his supporters have worn his legal attacks as a badge of honor, taking them as proof that an insidious swamp has conspired against him.
This isn’t just a quirk of modern politics. As a political scientist, I believe it’s a threat to democratic accountability. Accountability holds politicians, and the political system, to legal, moral and ethical standards. Without these checks, the people lose their power.
To salvage the basic idea that wrongdoing still matters, the nation will need to figure out how to Make Scandals Great Again – not in the partisan sense but in the civic one.
As a start, both parties could commit to basic red lines – bribery, abuse of office, exploitation – where resignation is expected, not optional. This would send a signal to voters about when to take charges seriously. That matters because, while voters can forgive mistakes, they shouldn’t excuse corruption.
Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as New York governor amid scandal in 2021, fell short during his comeback bid for mayor this year. Heather Kalifa/AP
A tribal cue, not an ethical event
Why the new imperviousness?
Partisanship is the main culprit. Today’s voters don’t evaluate scandal as citizens; they evaluate it as fans. Democrats and Republicans seek to punish misdeeds by the other side but rationalize them for their own.
This selective morality is the engine of “affective polarization,” a political science term describing the intense dislike of the opposing party that now defines American politics. A scandal becomes less an ethical event than a tribal cue. If it hurts my enemy, I’m outraged. If it hurts my ally, it’s probably exaggerated, unfair or just fake.
The nation’s siloed and shrinking media environment accelerates this trend. News consumers drift toward outlets that favor their politics, giving them a partial view of possible wrongdoing. Local journalism, formerly the institution most responsible for uncovering wrongdoing, has been gutted. A typical House scandal once generated 70 or more stories in a district’s largest newspaper. Today, it averages around 23.
Evaluating surveys of presidency scholars, I found that economic growth, time in office, war leadership and perceived intellectual ability all meaningfully shape presidential greatness. Scandals, by comparison, barely move the needle.
Warren G. Harding still gets dinged for Teapot Dome, a major corruption scandal a century ago, and Nixon remains defined by Watergate. But for most modern presidents, scandal is just one more piece of noise in an already overwhelming media environment.
At the same time, partisan media ecosystems reinforce voters’ instincts. For many voters, negative coverage of a fellow partisan is not a warning sign. As with Trump, it can be a badge of honor, proof that the so-called establishment fears their champion.
The incentive structure flips. Instead of shrinking from scandal and behavior that could once have ended careers, politicians learn to exploit it. As Texas governor a decade ago, Rick Perry printed his felony mug shot on a T-shirt for supporters. Trump’s best fundraising days corresponded directly to his criminal court appearances.
Making scandals resonate
Even when the evidence is clear-cut, the public’s memory isn’t.
Voters forget scandals that should matter but vividly remember ones that fit their partisan worldview, sometimes even when memory contradicts fact. Years after Trump left office, more Republicans believed his false claims – about the 2020 election, cures for COVID-19 and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot – than during his presidency. The longer the scandal drags on, the foggier the details become, making it easier for partisans to reshape the narrative.
The problem isn’t that America has too many scandals. It’s that the consequences no longer match the misdeeds.
But the story isn’t hopeless. Scandals still matter under certain conditions – particularly when they involve clear abuses of power or financial corruption and, crucially, when voters actually learn credible details. And political scientists have long known that scandals can produce real benefit. They expose wrongdoing, prompt reforms, sharpen voter attention and remind citizens that institutions need scrutiny.
Ken Paxton has spent most of his years as Texas attorney general under indictment but survived an impeachment vote and is now running for the Senate. Eric Gay/AP
So, what would it take to Make Scandals Great Again, not as spectacle but as accountability?
One step would be to rebuild the watchdogs. Local journalism could use investment, including through nonprofit models and philanthropy.
Second, it’s important that ethics enforcement maintains independence from the political actors it polices. Letting lawmakers investigate themselves guarantees selective outrage. At the same time, however, political parties could play a role in restoring trust by calling out their own, increasing their own accountability by lamenting real offenses among their own members.
Political scandals will never disappear from American life. But for them to serve as silver linings – and, ultimately, to protect public trust – the conditions that give them meaning require restoration. That could foster a political culture where wrongdoing still carries a price and where truth can pierce through the noise long enough for the public to hear it.
President Donald Trump has called New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and a “total nut job.” Mamdani has called Trump’s administration “authoritarian” and described himself as “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”So their first-ever meeting, scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m. EST at the White House, could be a curious and combustible affair.Despite months of casting each other as prime adversaries, the Republican president and new Democratic star have also indicated an openness to finding areas of agreement that help the city they’ve both called home.Mamdani, a democratic socialist who takes office in January, said he sought the meeting with Trump to talk about ways to make New York City more affordable. Trump has said he may want to help him out — although he has also falsely labeled Mamdani as a “communist” and threatened to yank federal funds from his hometown.But for both men, the meeting offers opportunities beyond any areas of potential bipartisan agreement.The two men are convenient political foils for each other, and taking the other one on can galvanize their supporters.Trump loomed large over the mayoral race this year, and on the eve of the election, endorsed independent candidate and former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, predicting the city has “ZERO chance of success, or even survival” if Mamdani won. He also questioned the citizenship of Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized American citizen after graduating from college, and said he’d have him arrested if he followed through on threats not to cooperate with immigration agents in the city.Mamdani beat back a challenge from Cuomo, painting him as a “puppet” for the president, and said he would be “a mayor who can stand up to Donald Trump and actually deliver.” He declared during one primary debate, “I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in.”The president, who has long used political opponents to fire up his backers, predicted Mamdani “will prove to be one of the best things to ever happen to our great Republican Party.” As Mamdani upended the Democratic establishment by defeating Cuomo and his far-left progressive policies provoked infighting, Trump repeatedly has cast Mamdani as the face of Democratic Party.For Mamdani, a sit-down with the president of the United States offers the state lawmaker who until recently was relatively unknown the chance to go head-to-head with the most powerful person in the world.The meeting gives Trump a high-profile chance to talk about affordability at a time when he’s under increasing political pressure to show he’s addressing voter concerns about the cost of living.But that’s if the meeting doesn’t turn rocky.A chance for some Oval Office dramaIt was not immediately clear whether cameras will be allowed into the meeting. Trump’s daily schedule said it will be private, but the president often invites in a small “pool” of reporters at the last minute.The president has had some dramatic public Oval Office faceoffs this year, including an infamously heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in March. In May, Trump dimmed the lights while meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and played a four-minute video making widely rejected claims that South Africa is violently persecuting the country’s white Afrikaner minority farmers.A senior Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions said Trump had not put a lot of thought into planning the meeting with the incoming mayor — but said Trump’s threats to block federal dollars from flowing to New York remained on the table.Mamdani said Thursday that he was not concerned about the president potentially trying to use the meeting to publicly embarrass him and said he saw it as a chance to make his case, even while acknowledging “many disagreements with the president.”If the president does use the meeting as a public confrontation, Mamdani may be uniquely ready for it.He, like Trump, was a relative political outsider who rose to victory with a populist message that promised a break from the establishment, known for his savvy navigation of the spotlight and a distinctive use of social media.Mamdani, who lives in Queens — where Trump was raised — also has shown a cutthroat streak. During his campaign, he appeared to borrow from Trump’s playbook when he noted during a televised debate with Cuomo that one of the women who had accused the former governor of sexual harassment was in the audience. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.The moment evoked Trump’s tactics before a debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, when he appeared with accusers of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who denied the accusations against him.___Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington and Anthony Izaguirre in New York contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump has called New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and a “total nut job.” Mamdani has called Trump’s administration “authoritarian” and described himself as “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”
So their first-ever meeting, scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m. EST at the White House, could be a curious and combustible affair.
Despite months of casting each other as prime adversaries, the Republican president and new Democratic star have also indicated an openness to finding areas of agreement that help the city they’ve both called home.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist who takes office in January, said he sought the meeting with Trump to talk about ways to make New York City more affordable. Trump has said he may want to help him out — although he has also falsely labeled Mamdani as a “communist” and threatened to yank federal funds from his hometown.
But for both men, the meeting offers opportunities beyond any areas of potential bipartisan agreement.
The two men are convenient political foils for each other, and taking the other one on can galvanize their supporters.
Trump loomed large over the mayoral race this year, and on the eve of the election, endorsed independent candidate and former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, predicting the city has “ZERO chance of success, or even survival” if Mamdani won. He also questioned the citizenship of Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized American citizen after graduating from college, and said he’d have him arrested if he followed through on threats not to cooperate with immigration agents in the city.
Mamdani beat back a challenge from Cuomo, painting him as a “puppet” for the president, and said he would be “a mayor who can stand up to Donald Trump and actually deliver.” He declared during one primary debate, “I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in.”
The president, who has long used political opponents to fire up his backers, predicted Mamdani “will prove to be one of the best things to ever happen to our great Republican Party.” As Mamdani upended the Democratic establishment by defeating Cuomo and his far-left progressive policies provoked infighting, Trump repeatedly has cast Mamdani as the face of Democratic Party.
For Mamdani, a sit-down with the president of the United States offers the state lawmaker who until recently was relatively unknown the chance to go head-to-head with the most powerful person in the world.
The meeting gives Trump a high-profile chance to talk about affordability at a time when he’s under increasing political pressure to show he’s addressing voter concerns about the cost of living.
But that’s if the meeting doesn’t turn rocky.
A chance for some Oval Office drama
It was not immediately clear whether cameras will be allowed into the meeting. Trump’s daily schedule said it will be private, but the president often invites in a small “pool” of reporters at the last minute.
The president has had some dramatic public Oval Office faceoffs this year, including an infamously heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in March. In May, Trump dimmed the lights while meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and played a four-minute video making widely rejected claims that South Africa is violently persecuting the country’s white Afrikaner minority farmers.
A senior Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions said Trump had not put a lot of thought into planning the meeting with the incoming mayor — but said Trump’s threats to block federal dollars from flowing to New York remained on the table.
Mamdani said Thursday that he was not concerned about the president potentially trying to use the meeting to publicly embarrass him and said he saw it as a chance to make his case, even while acknowledging “many disagreements with the president.”
If the president does use the meeting as a public confrontation, Mamdani may be uniquely ready for it.
He, like Trump, was a relative political outsider who rose to victory with a populist message that promised a break from the establishment, known for his savvy navigation of the spotlight and a distinctive use of social media.
Mamdani, who lives in Queens — where Trump was raised — also has shown a cutthroat streak. During his campaign, he appeared to borrow from Trump’s playbook when he noted during a televised debate with Cuomo that one of the women who had accused the former governor of sexual harassment was in the audience. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.
The moment evoked Trump’s tactics before a debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, when he appeared with accusers of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who denied the accusations against him.
___
Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington and Anthony Izaguirre in New York contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump faced two major legal setbacks on Monday as courts in New York and Tennessee moved to constrain key parts of his domestic enforcement agenda.
Within hours, a federal judge upheld New York’s limits on courthouse immigration arrests, while a state judge in Nashville blocked the deployment of Tennessee National Guard troops to Memphis.
Newsweek contacted the DOJ and the office of the governors of the states for comment via email outside of normal office hours on Tuesday.
Why It Matters
Within the span of a few hours on Monday, President Donald Trump’s domestic enforcement agenda was hit by two separate court rulings that underscored growing judicial resistance to the administration’s attempts to expand federal authority in states that push back.
A federal judge in New York upheld a state law restricting civil immigration arrests at courthouses, while a Tennessee judge blocked the deployment of National Guard troops to Memphis, finding the move likely violated state constitutional limits.
Together, the decisions highlight the legal constraints confronting Trump as he seeks to intensify immigration operations and broaden the use of military force in U.S. cities over state objections.
What To Know
I. Judge Upholds New York Law Barring Immigration Arrests at Courthouses
President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda encountered a significant legal setback on Monday after a federal judge rejected the administration’s attempt to strike down a New York law restricting civil immigration arrests in and around state courthouses.
U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit challenging the 2020 Protect Our Courts Act (POCA) and related state executive orders.
In a 41-page ruling, D’Agostino concluded that the federal government’s suit amounted to an improper effort “to commandeer New York’s resources to aid in federal immigration efforts” according to the decision.
The court held that New York acted within its rights in limiting where federal agents may conduct civil immigration arrests.
The Trump administration had argued that the state law violated the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and unlawfully restricted federal enforcement authority.
Federal lawyers also sought to compel state and local law enforcement agencies to share information with federal immigration officials. D’Agostino rejected those claims, writing that New York was exercising “its permissible choice not to participate in federal civil immigration enforcement.”
POCA, enacted in 2020 in response to a sharp rise in courthouse arrests under Trump’s first term, prohibits civil immigration arrests of individuals traveling to, attending, or leaving state court proceedings unless agents hold a judicial warrant.
The measure was intended to limit disruptions to court operations and ensure that parties and witnesses could appear in court without fear of apprehension.
In recent months, federal immigration agents had intensified courthouse operations in New York and other cities as part of the administration’s broader strategy to increase removals of undocumented immigrants.
That posture led to renewed friction with states that maintain restrictions on local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Monday’s ruling marks a notable setback for the administration’s efforts to expand civil immigration arrests in sensitive locations.
The case, United States v. New York, challenged both POCA and executive ordersissued during former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration that limited state and local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
D’Agostino dismissed the suit in its entirety.
The ruling is likely to serve as a reference point for similar disputes arising in other states where federal immigration enforcement priorities clash with local laws or policies restricting cooperation with federal agencies.
II. Nashville Judge Blocks Memphis National Guard Deployment
Just hours after the New York ruling, the Trump administration suffered a second legal blow—this time in Tennessee, where a state court halted the deployment of National Guard troops to Memphis.
Davidson County Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal issued a temporary injunction blocking Republican Governor Bill Lee from continuing the activation of Tennessee National Guard personnel for participation in President Trump’s Memphis Safe Task Force.
The deployment, requested by the administration under Title 32 authority, was intended to supplement federal and local law enforcement operations in response to high violent-crime rates in the city.
In her order, Moskal found that the plaintiffs—including Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, local commissioners, and several state lawmakers—had demonstrated sufficient immediate harm to justify halting the deployment.
The judge wrote that the state’s militia law requires the Tennessee General Assembly to authorize National Guard activation for public-safety purposes and that crime conditions in Memphis did not constitute a “grave emergency” or “disaster” that would permit unilateral deployment by the governor.
The order temporarily restrains Governor Lee and Major General Warner Ross III “from implementing and continuing the activation and deployment of Tennessee National Guard personnel” under the presidential memorandum.
The injunction does not affect the presence of federal law enforcement officers already operating in the city.
In a public statement, Mayor Harris called the ruling “a positive step toward ensuring the rule of law applies to everyone, including everyday Tennesseans and even the governor.”
The state has five days to appeal the ruling.
The lawsuit argues that deploying National Guard troops for routine law-enforcement functions violates both the Tennessee Constitution and state statutes, which strictly limit the circumstances under which the militia may be mobilized.
The Memphis Safe Task Force, created by a September presidential memorandum, aims to increase law-enforcement presence and coordinate multi-agency operations across Memphis.
Plaintiffs contend that the National Guard deployment exceeded both federal and state legal authority.
The Tennessee ruling adds to a series of mounting legal challenges to the Trump administration’s domestic troop deployments, several of which are already moving through federal courts.
What People Are Saying
Kathy Hochul (Governor of New York) said: “Masked ICE agents shoved and injured journalists today at Federal Plaza. One reporter left on a stretcher. This abuse of law-abiding immigrants and the reporters telling their stories must end. What the hell are we doing here?”
Bill Lee (Governor of Tennessee) who had approved the deployment of an undetermined number of Tennessee National Guard troops to Memphis, said: “I think [AG] General Skrmetti’s a brilliant lawyer who understands constitutional law, and I suspect he’s got the right answer on it.”
What Happens Next
Both rulings are likely to move quickly into appeals, with the Trump administration expected to challenge the New York decision in the Second Circuit and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee poised to seek an emergency stay and appellate review of the injunction blocking his National Guard deployment.
New York’s courthouse-arrest restrictions will remain in effect during the federal appeal, while the Memphis deployment is paused unless a higher state court reverses the ruling.
Together, the cases set up parallel legal battles over the limits of federal immigration enforcement and the circumstances under which state-controlled military forces can be used for domestic policing—disputes that could ultimately reach the Supreme Court.
I can remember my life before and after I saw the interview. In one of several promo radio chats for The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift revealed her favorite lyric from the new album: “There’s a song called ‘Father Figure,’ where the first line of the second verse says, ‘I pay the check / Before it kisses the mahogany grain.’” She pauses and grins as if waiting for a gasp. It never arrives. She continues, undeterred: “I’m like, That’s my favorite type of writing, right? Where you have to think about, What do those words mean? Oh, somebody got the bill before it hit the table.”
Watching her explain the word mahogany, I knew I was doomed, both personally and as part of a larger species. I saw God himself signing the check for our obliteration (before it hit the table). It’s not just that Taylor Swift — one of our greatest aughts-era songwriters, who used to effortlessly shed lines like “You call me up again just to break me like a promise / So casually cruel in the name of being honest” — thought these lyrics constituted good descriptive writing. It’s not just that she smiles so proudly while providing an explicit description of paying a restaurant bill very quickly. It’s not just that the album also features the line “Did you girlboss too close to the sun?” and a startling, detailed account of how she plans to start a neighborhood full of children with inheritedCTE with the help of her fiancé’s gigantic football dick (“Have a couple kids / Got the whole block looking like you”). It’s that Swift wrote that mahogany line thinking, This is going to require a level of semiotic thinking that my audience is perhaps no longer capable of. And the thing is, she was absolutely correct. —Rachel Handler
The Stupiding of the American Mind
Within the first three minutes of Untamed, a 2025 Netflix drama about crime in the wilderness, two climbers scaling a mountain realize they’re in a tough spot. One of their anchors wobbles. A foot slips. Things already look iffy and then, from far above them, a dead body comes hurtling over the edge of the cliff, gets tangled in their ropes, and sends them careening off the rock face. Another Netflix show, Wayward, opens with a young man sprinting frantically out of what looks like a prison facility, covering his ears so he can’t hear the cultish mind-control texts being blasted at him from somewhere in the darkness. And in the first scene of Pulse (you guessed it — also Netflix), a school bus full of teens plunges off a bridge into a stormy ocean.
From a distance, it looks like a good strategy. Grab the audience instantly. Leave no space for viewers to feel bored or unengaged. Front-load the first 90 seconds of any new drama with peril, death, catastrophe, and contextless clues. Netflix is the worst but not the only offender here. This whack-you-with-a-plot mentality has proliferated on Prime this year, too. Take Ballard, which begins with Maggie Q holding an enormous gun while chasing someone through darkened streets and shattering a glass window before the guy sprawls on the floor in front of her. We Were Liars drops us into underwater footage of an unconscious woman with a head wound as the voice-over says, “Something terrible happened last summer, and I have no memory of what, or who, hurt me.” Each opening gambit becomes an advertisement for the thing you’re already watching, a blast of spoon-fed emotional stakes that treat viewers as mindless, tasteless sacks of nerve endings sensitive only to the highest-grade stimuli.
It all comes off as a cynical bid for attention based on an understanding that audiences do not react to insight or nuance or thoughtful tone-setting. No need to question, no need to wait for gratification. Even the shows aiming for prestige have to play along, at least in those first few minutes. The Beast in Me, a Claire Danes thriller, will show Danes, streaked with blood and wailing, scant seconds after we first hit “play.” For series that want to dodge the obvious choices of “person running through woods,” “person drowning,” or “instant discovery of corpse,” House of Guinness provides a model that’s somehow even more ridiculous than those. The show, about a somber, political Succession-style struggle over the future of the family business, doesn’t lend itself well to bodies falling off a cliff, so it cuts straight to big, flashing, wall-décor-style onscreen text that articulates exactly what this thing is about: Water. Malted Barley. Hops. Yeast. Copper. Oak. Fire. Family. Money. Rebellion. Power. —Kathryn VanArendonk
If the essential quality of good theater (as my colleague Sara Holdren has written) is that it should be something that can happen only in a theater — that it’s alive in the room with you, capable of literally leaping into the audience should the participants decide to do so — the relentless creep of giant glittering screens is its opposite. Now a staple of set design, the device does often serve some purpose: Jamie Lloyd’s production of Sunset Blvd. and George Clooney’s turn in Good Night, and Good Luck earlier this year, or Network and 1984 a few seasons back, deploy them to talk about issues of image and reality and surveillance. But in the actual room, the eye almost inevitably goes to the moving jumbotron image instead of the person, whether it’s a tracking shot of Nicole Scherzinger or merely projected clouds drifting behind the cast. When it’s a live feed, an extra problem can come into view: Because stage performance calls for bigger gestures and expressions than acting for the camera does, a real Broadway belter’s face can show up onscreen as a lot of straining neck cords and visible tonsils. The theatrical stage is the one place where — over 2,500 years or so — practitioners have figured out how to convey storytelling directly from one person to a roomful of viewers, fusing music and drama and comedy and dancing in three full dimensions. Now, somehow, we’ve pushed it back to two. —Christopher Bonanos
Earlier this year, I signed up to teach a course at the same prestigious university I’d attended more than a decade ago. The syllabus I prepared required students to read a short book for several of our sessions, which seemed reasonable. When I was in college, professors routinely assigned an entire novel or biography for a single class session.
A few months before the semester began, my proposed syllabus was reviewed by an academic committee. I was excited for feedback from experienced instructors, anticipating strong opinions on thematic consistency with pedagogical objectives and general rigor. But the only feedback I received was to make the readings shorter. The suggested limit was fewer than 100 pages per class, ostensibly to encourage accountability. I revised the syllabus. Narratives with movement and arc became excerpts and snapshots, curated to relay the essence and little else.
Is this really so bad? The truth is that when I was assigned a full book to read in college, I failed to finish it more often than not. But there was something in being told to try anyway, in the implication that a book worth assigning is worth experiencing in its entirety, and that the truth is best when distilled from the whole story. Students, meanwhile, are the same as ever. The ratio might have changed, but there is still a core who read and participate diligently, and I wish they could have reaped more benefit from my assignments. The rest have not done the truncated readings any more than they would have read a full book, but now they feel less guilty about it. —Anonymous
Watching debates is not a good way to learn things and form opinions about those things — change my mind! Over the past few years, debate as an activity has broken out of high-school extracurriculars, political elections, and cable news and has come to infect media and discourse at all levels. And now, it has escaped the manosphere containment zone. Debate content was once the limited domain of “Debate me, coward” dweebs like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, but in 2025, debate clips took over the internet, their snippets edited to reinforce the biases of the poster: Sam Seder “owning” Ethan Klein on leftist news feeds, the reverse on Zionist ones; Mehdi Hasan arguing with, essentially, Nazi youth. Outside the Twitch streams of individual debate-content creators like Destiny, much of this stuff comes from Jubilee, a digital-media company with 10.5 million YouTube subscribers that professes a corporate mission to “provoke understanding & create human connection.” Jubilee structures these oratorical face-offs like dystopian MrBeast challenges: “1 Conservative vs 20 Feminists,” starring Candace Owens. “1 Conservative vs 25 LGBTQ+,” starring Michael Knowles. The guest debater sits at a table with a chess timer in the middle of a circle of challengers, who enter the ring one after another to get TKO’d in a sort of battle royal for dorks.
The thing about debate as a rhetorical format is that it’s generally a dumb way to consume information. Winning strategies are often not intellectually curious or even honest: spreading, an overreliance on hounding an opponent about logical fallacies, overwhelming with a rapid-fire litany of (possibly incorrect) data, dodging, and needling. They’re more about persuasion than communication, more about building a case backward from a preordained point than building up toward something. When Charlie Kirk argues that trans women aren’t women (against 25 liberal college students), or when Mehdi Hasan faces off against 20 far-right conservatives, at least two of which turned out to be self-avowed fascists, a series of hateful, harmful lies gets repackaged into “points,” like neat little coins in a video game, toward settling a larger score. It’s brain rot with a veneer of serious infotainment. —Rebecca Alter
Rebecca Yarros occupies a rarefied spot on the best-seller list. Twelve million copies of her horny dragon books have sold in the U.S. in less than two years. The Empyrean series, which follows a young woman surviving military school with the help of a mind-body connection to a pair of dragons, was initially planned for three volumes, then stretched to five. When the third, Onyx Storm, appeared in January, it became the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years — a curious fact given that the book is borderline incomprehensible. Of course, few readers flock to this series for its prose, but the first volume’swar-college setting, where students gather in the quad every morning to honor their peers who died the day before, scratched a dystopian-fantasy itch I hadn’t felt since completing the original Hunger Games trilogy. Onyx Storm, however, is packed with so many new characters, locations, and magical abilities that I had to use a fan-made guide to keep track of it all. A quarter of the way through, I lost track of why exactly the main characters abandon the war to end all wars brewing in their homeland to travel halfway around the world, and I eventually stopped trying to understand it altogether. —Julie Kosin
When the first Jurassic Park premiered in 1993, reviewers found plenty to admire — its originality, the cinematography, Laura Dern. But a more consistent point of praise was how the movie, in many ways taking its cues from the novel it was based on, committed to accurate, or at least plausible, science. “It was the most scientific and realistic vision of dinosaurs we’d ever had,” paleoartist John Gurche told Le Monde earlier this year. One historian wrote that the film “did actually drive and develop the science and technology of ancient DNA research.” That has changed somewhat — we now know manymost dinosaurs had feathers and velociraptors were built like poodles — but even now, Dern and an ascot-adorned Sam Neill manage to deliver lines that are conceivable to the average fan with a museum-placard level of paleontology knowledge.
This is part of the reason why, when Jurassic World: Rebirth came out earlier this year, fans were disappointed not only with its meandering plot but also by the way the film’s principal paleontologist, Dr. Loomis (a distractingly hot Jonathan Bailey), occasionally felt, let’s say, unconvincing. “The greatest scientific knowledge that he demonstrates at any point in the film is high-school level biology,” wrote an aggrieved redditor. One paleontologist speculated that, “as opposed to the first film — no paleontologist had been seriously consulted.” (The movie does credit a scientific consultant.) Of course, all six Jurassic sequels have had their scientific follies (hello, mutant locusts of Jurassic World: Dominion). But the plot of Rebirth was science-fudging less in the name of spectacle than convenience. I will spare you the entire plot, but know that it relies in part on the idea that dinosaurs can live only near the equator — a detail repeated three times in the film’s first 30 minutes — because of the warm climate and “oxygen-rich” atmosphere, which, Loomis says, is similar to what the climate was like 60 million years ago. If that sounds overly simplistic, don’t worry — it’s also just wrong. Oxygen levels today are fairly uniform worldwide and roughly the same as those in the age of the dinosaurs, and dinosaurs themselves lived in a wide range of climates. Other grievances include the fact that mosasaurs, the movie’s main species, aren’t actually dinosaurs and that, no, dinosaurs didn’t live to be centuries old because of their big hearts. Fortunately, Loomis offers another kernel of wisdom: “Intelligence is massively overrated as an adaptive trait.” —Paula Aceves
A 2024 Pew survey revealed that the group of U.S. adults most likely to consult astrology at least yearly is LGBTQ+ women, at 63 percent. Pew must not have surveyed anyone in Brooklyn: Based on my own observations, I would put the number at something closer to 102 percent. Belief in superstition and magic has peaked among my friends. They no longer just consult the planets and stars and tarot decks and Chani Nicholas; now they believe in moon phases exerting their control, bringing good and bad auspices and explaining why a Hinge date went a certain way or why everyone at work has the sniffles. I could abide tarot and astrology as tools for people to talk about their lives, but the moon stuff, to me, comes across as a symptom of some widely adopted serf mind-set, a response to the economic realities of widening wealth gaps and billionaires acting like sun gods. Throw in the rise in stories about AI-enabled religious psychosis, and the transformation of Etsy into Taskrabbit for witches,and 2025 was the year of people literally believing in ghosts in the machine. —R.A.
Typically, the Supreme Court has decided the weightiest matters through its “merits docket”: a multistep, sometimes yearslong process that involves the parties to a suit, plus interested experts and organizations, taking their best shot at making their case in writing. The justices grill advocates during oral argument and, when they’re ready, can write hundreds of pages to explain their reasoning and provide evidence and case law to back it up. It’s not that this process cannot yield outrageous or specious results, but at least the majority has to give the public an explanation.
This year, a more expedient track has been found. First, the Trump administration openly breaks the law as it has long been understood, then a lower-court judge rules against it, and then the administration appeals on the “shadow docket” — which avoids the normal briefing-and-hearing process by claiming an emergency. Since January, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, the Supreme Court has ruled at least partly for the Trump administration in 20 of an unprecedented 23 emergency appeals. In these late-night orders, the public is lucky to get a few sentences of justification. Seven had no written rationale at all. In one dissent on terminating federal grants, Justice Elena Kagan called the majority opinion’s reasoning “at the least underdeveloped, and very possibly wrong.” —Irin Carmon
The word interview used to mean something. At the very least, it implied a conversation aimed at extracting real information. That idea feels quaint in today’s video-driven media environment, in which the balance of power has flipped: Famous guests hold the power because they now have a million friendly alternatives, and hosts are just grateful to be there. The modern “interview” is thus fluffy by default, oriented more toward gimmicks, get-to-know-me games, and general sycophancy. Intentional dumbness is now virtue-signaling relatability. Beneath it all is a dynamic in which the aesthetic of the interview (people in chairs with microphones between them recalling a history of more serious images) carries more weight than the interview’s substance. That dynamic reached a peak this year when Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on the bro-y, sports-and-bullshit-heavy Full Send Podcast with the Nelk Boys in July. The segment, criticized for offering a soft platform to a world leader amid a devastating humanitarian crisis, included the following exchange:
Interviewer: “You ever tried Chick-fil-A?” Netanyahu: “Chick-fil-A is good, actually.”
—Nicholas Quah
All around me this year, I’ve observed more and more people succumbing to the ease and inaccuracy of Google’s automated summary. I first noticed the tendency to rely on AI for answers a few years ago on a family trip when an early-adopting relative told me it would be simpler to ask ChatGPT why Union soldiers won the Battle of Gettysburg than to look into a dreary, more detailed article. Ever since Google dropped the option to AI search into everyone’s hand, it’s felt as if we’ve entered a new era: one in which people know they’re consuming misinformation and just don’t care. I talked to a friend who told me she spent her time in a historic castle while on vacation in Portugal asking AI to explain what was in front of her. “It was probably wrong,” she told me, “but it captured enough of the vibe.” I knew we’d crossed the Rubicon when I noticed people using AI to ask subjective artistic questions. This past summer, I sat next to a woman at a performance of Evita who opened her phone at intermission, typed in “Why does Che narrate Evita,” and then stared at the box as if it would help her understand Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s decision-making process. It did not. —Jackson McHenry
It’s not just that Andrew Cuomo seems to hate New York City. Nor is it that everyone knows he sexually harassed former staffers. It’s not even that he was spanked in the primary and insisted on running anyway. The stupidest thing about Cuomo’s mayoral campaign, besides the fact of its existence, was his team’s wholehearted embrace of AI slop. In the spring, the campaign released a housing plan that turned out to have been put together using ChatGPT, then blamed this decision, and the plan’s typos, on an aide who has only one arm. That humiliation did not stop them. Cuomo’s people followed it up with a parade of AI-generated ads. The first featured an AI Cuomo incompetently driving a subway train and melting down on the NYSE trading floor paired with footage of the real Cuomo saying woodenly, “I know what I know, and I know what I don’t know.” How was emphasizing his inabilities supposed to help? No one explained, but this ad was nothing compared with those that followed: One blatantly racist, soon-deleted video featured an over-the-top AI-generated parade of “criminals” — including, incredibly, a Black shoplifter in a keffiyeh and a Black pimp with a van full of battered white women — cheerfully boosting Zohran Mamdani. On Halloween, Cuomo’s campaign released an ad showing an AI-generated Mamdani trick-or-treating and scooping big handfuls of candy out of a bowl offered by an appalled couple while crowing, “I’m a socialist! Some people need to get tricked so others get a treat!” These videos are so bad that, even while we watch them, it’s hard to believe they exist — that actual people were paid actual money to release them. It’s even harder to believe they thought the ads would make this loser win. —Madeline Leung Coleman
LONDON (AP) — He’s the left-leaning Muslim mayor of the country’s biggest city, and U.S. President Donald Trump is one of his biggest critics.
London’s Sadiq Khan has a lot in common with New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani — but also many differences.
Khan, who has been mayor of Britain’s capital since 2016, welcomed Mamdani’s victory, saying New Yorkers had “chosen hope over fear, unity over division.”
Khan’s experience holds positive and negative lessons for Mamdani, the 34-year-old Democrat who beat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in Tuesday’s election.
Khan has won three consecutive elections but routinely receives abuse for his faith and race, as well as criticism from conservative and far-right commentators who depict London as a crime-plagued dystopia.
Trump has been among his harshest critics for years, calling Khan a “stone cold loser,” a “nasty person” and a “terrible mayor,” and claiming the mayor wants to bring Sharia, or Islamic law, to London.
Khan, a keen amateur boxer, has hit back, saying in September that Trump is “racist, he is sexist, he is misogynistic and he is Islamophobic.”
Khan told The Associated Press during a global mayors’ summit in Brazil on Wednesday that it’s “heartbreaking” but not surprising to see Mamdani receiving the same sort of abuse he gets.
“London is liberal, progressive, multicultural, but also successful — as indeed is New York,” he said. “If you’re a nativist, populist politician, we are the antithesis of all you stand for. ”
Attacked for their religion
Mamdani and Khan regularly receive abuse and threats because of their Muslim faith, and London’s mayor has significantly tighter security protection than his predecessors.
Both have tried to build bridges with the Jewish community after being criticized by opponents for their pro-Palestinian stances during the Israel-Hamas war.
Both say their political opponents have leaned into Islamophobia. In 2016, Khan’s Conservative opponent, Zac Goldsmith, was accused of anti-Muslim prejudice for suggesting that Khan had links to Islamic extremists.
Cuomo laughed along with a radio host who suggested Mamdani would “be cheering” another 9/11 attack. Mamdani’s Republican critics frequently, falsely call him a “jihadist” and a Hamas supporter.
Mamdani vowed during the campaign that he would “not change who I am, how I eat, or the faith that I’m proud to call my own.”
Khan has said he feels a responsibility to dispel myths about Muslims, and answers questions about his faith with weary good grace. He calls himself “a proud Brit, a proud Englishman, a proud Londoner and a proud Muslim.”
Very different politicians
Mamdani is an outsider on the left of his party, a democratic socialist whose buzzy, digital-savvy campaign energized young New Yorkers and drove the city’s biggest election turnout in a mayoral election in decades.
Khan, 55, is a more of an establishment politician who sits in the broad middle of the center-left Labour Party.
The son of a bus driver and a seamstress from Pakistan, Khan grew up with seven siblings in a three-bedroom public housing apartment in south London.
He studied law, became a human rights attorney and spent a decade as a Labour Party lawmaker in the House of Commons, representing the area where he grew up, before being elected in 2016 as the first Muslim leader of a major Western capital city.
Mamdani comes from a more privileged background as the son of an India-born Ugandan anthropologist, Mahmood Mamdani, and award-winning Indian filmmaker Mira Nair. Born in Uganda and raised from the age of 7 in New York, he worked as an adviser for tenants facing eviction before being elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020.
Similar big-city problems
Khan and Mamdani govern huge cities with vastly diverse populations of more than 8 million. Voters in both places have similar worries about crime and the high cost of living – big issues that many mayors struggle to address.
Khan was won three straight elections, but he’s not an overwhelmingly popular mayor. As Mamdani may also find, the mayor gets blamed for a lot of problems, from high rents to violent crime, regardless of whether they are in his control, though Mamdani made freezing rents a pillar of his campaign.
Mamdani campaigned on ambitious promises, including free child care, free buses, new affordable housing and city-run grocery stores.
“Winning an election is one thing, delivering on promises is another,” said Darren Reid, an expert on U.S. politics at Coventry University. “The mayor of New York definitely does not have unlimited power, and he is going to have a very powerful enemy in the current president.”
The mayor of London controls public transit and the police, but doesn’t have the authority of New York’s leader because power is shared with the city’s 32 boroughs, which are responsible for schools, social services and public housing in their areas.
Khan can point to relatively modest achievements, including free school meals for all primary school pupils and a freeze on transit fares. But he has failed to meet other goals, such as ambitious house-building targets.
Tony Travers, a professor at the London School of Economics who specializes in local government, said one lesson Mamdani might take from Khan is to pick “a limited number of fights that you can win.”
Khan, who is asthmatic, has made it one of his main missions to clean up London’s air — once so filthy the city was nicknamed the Big Smoke. He expanded London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone, which charges the drivers of older, more polluting vehicles a daily fee to drive in the city.
The measure became a lightning rod for criticism of Khan, spurring noisy protests and vandalism of enforcement cameras. Khan staunchly defended the zone, which research suggests has made London’s air cleaner. His big victory in last year’s mayoral election appeared to vindicate Khan’s stance on the issue.
Travers said that beyond their shared religion and being the targets of racism, both mayors face the conundrum of leading dynamic, diverse metropolises that are “surprisingly peaceful and almost embarrassingly successful” — and resented by the rest of their countries for their wealth and the attention they receive.
He said London is “locked in this strange alternative universe where it is simultaneously described by a number of commentators as sort of a hellhole … and yet on the other hand it’s so embarrassingly rich that British governments spend their lives trying to level up the rest of the country to it. You can’t win.”
___
Associated Press writer Eléonore Hughes in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this story.
Perhaps the most important thing that happened with the Democrats winning big in the off-year elections is the psychological boost. The Democrats haven’t had anything to celebrate for a year. Now, they’re high-fiving themselves. This is clearly a protest against President Donald Trump and Trumpism, which makes the victory a little sweeter.
Two women had especially big nights. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill is the new governor-elect. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger is the commonwealth’s first female governor-elect. Hell, even Jay “two bullets” Jones, who sent those awful texts about wanting to kill the then-House speaker, won his race for Virginia Attorney General.
If you live in those states, your life may change a bit.
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger celebrates as she takes the stage during her election night rally at the Greater Richmond Convention Center on Tuesday, Nov. 4, in Richmond, Va. Spanberger defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears to become the first female governor in the commonwealth’s history in an election that was seen as a national political bellwether leading into the midterms. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
But, it’s also a reminder that politics is not just about policy. Sure, the Democrats were shrewd to run on affordability, given that the president had promised to bring prices down. But ultimately, voters want someone they feel comfortable with, someone who can deal with unforeseen crises.
Yet on the national front, Trump still controls the White House. He still controls the House. He still controls the Senate. He’s largely backed by the Supreme Court, despite skepticism at yesterday’s oral argument about whether tariffs fall under his emergency powers.
So what has really changed?
The continuing government shutdown fueled a sense of frustration and impatience with the president, as he acknowledged in that terse response to the GOP losses — which extended to California, where Gavin Newsom pushed through a redistricting plan in response to Republican gerrymandering.
Trump was quick to note that he wasn’t on the ballot. But, in a very real sense, he was on every ballot.
The media invariably overinterpret these off-year elections in two left-leaning states. Trump sensed disaster so he just opted out, not wanting to be tainted by the coming losses.
But he’s still got all his power.
Let’s imagine it’s six months from now and the shutdown, now the longest in American history, is a distant memory. Let’s say the economy has improved somewhat — a big if, to be sure. Who knows whether that means the Democrats will romp in the midterms?
Joe Biden suffered no midterm losses when predictions of a blue wave never materialized. Barack Obama lost the House in his first midterm, and then lost the Senate in his second midterm. George W. Bush lost the House in his second midterm, making Nancy Pelosi speaker. Trump lost the House in his first midterm, in 2018.
Bush called it a “thumpin’,” Obama a “shellacking.”
It’s just too early to say whether Trump will suffer a similar fate in next year’s midterm elections, when Democrats would only need to pick up a handful of seats to take control.
Zohran Mamdani delivers a victory speech at a mayoral election night watch party, on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in New York City. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
The other unfolding drama is in the media capital, where Zohran Mamdani was elected New York City’s first Muslim mayor, beating Andrew Cuomo for the second time. Cuomo refused to make the traditional concession call, a petty move that was beneath him.
Talk about the power of personality. The obscure assemblyman, who’s never run anything, is a self-described socialist who started at 1 percent in the polls. He is beloved by younger people and put together a coalition that somehow combined wide-eyed liberals with working-class immigrants in Brooklyn and Queens.
Mamdani did blunder by making a fiery speech, almost yelling at times, rather than a more inclusive one.
He fared poorly among Jewish liberals, who are upset by his refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and threatend to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu if he comes to the U.N.
The mayor-elect will inevitably fail to fulfill many of his promises–free buses, free child care, free everything — because he won’t have the power and needs help from Albany. And some of his past comments from his defund-the-police, abolish-ICE days would have sunk a less charismatic candidate.
Mamdani now has 81 percent name recognition, in keeping with the high profile of New York City mayors, from John Lindsay and Ed Koch to Rudy Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio.
AOC is thrilled, but it’s the Republicans who couldn’t be happier.
Independent mayoral candidate and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks to the press after voting at a polling location at the High School of Art and Design in the Manhattan borough of New York City on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)
“A radical left earthquake just hit America. The epicenter: New York,” the spot says.
They had already been campaigning against Mamdani in trying to make him the face of an increasingly left-wing party. Some starry-eyed supporters see socialism as the answer, but it hardly plays as well in Butte or Baton Rouge as in the Bronx.
He is always about firing up his base and the party he has remade in his image, even if Hill Republicans are resisting his demand to abolish the filibuster.
The media are heavily anti-Trump, and in a visceral way, especially since their corporate owners keep settling his lawsuits. That’s why you’re seeing so many on-air smiles as they replayed the victory speeches all day long.
But these early proclamations of Trump’s inevitable demise may well turn out to be exaggerated.
Howard Kurtz is a media and political analyst and the former host of FOX News Channel’s MediaBuzz. Based in Washington, D.C., he joined the network in 2013 and regularly appears on Special Report with Bret Baier and The Story with Martha MacCallum among other programs.
NEW YORK (AP) — For many years, New York voters have found candidates listed twice, three times or even more on their ballots when they go to the polling booth.
It isn’t an error — it’s a practice known as fusion voting that allows candidates to appear under multiple political parties.
But such intentional duplications on the New York City ballot this year, along with other layout choices, have some outside observers around the country wondering whether they are seeing evidence of rigged voting in Tuesday’s widely-watched mayoral race.
Billionaire X owner Elon Musk, who briefly served as a top advisor to President Donald Trump, was among those criticizing the ballots.
“The New York City ballot form is a scam!” he wrote in an X post. “No ID is required. Other mayoral candidates appear twice. Cuomo’s name is last in bottom right.”
But there is nothing amiss about the ballots, which are in keeping with New York’s voting laws.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: New York City ballots are proof of election fraud because some candidates appear twice and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is listed low in the order.
THE FACTS: This is false. Candidates may appear more than once on ballots in New York if they are nominated by multiple political parties — a practice called fusion voting. Cuomo is in the eighth spot because he filed to run as an independent later in the process.
New York, along with Connecticut, is one of few states where fusion voting is legal and commonly used. The practice has existed in New York since at least the mid-20th century. It is also legal in Oregon, Vermont and Mississippi.
“This occurs pretty frequently and it enables the Democratic candidate to get the votes of people who don’t normally vote for Democrats and Republicans to get the vote of people who don’t vote Republican etc.,” said Richard Briffault, an expert on election administration and a professor at Columbia Law School, said of fusion voting in New York.
Two mayoral candidates appear twice this year on New York City ballots. Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani is also the nominee of the Working Families Party, while Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa is also the candidate for the independent “Protect Animals” party.
Fusion voting does not allow candidates to receive more than one vote from the same voter, as voters may only vote for a candidate under one party.
Cuomo is a Democrat, but is running as an independent under a new party he created called “Fight and Deliver” after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June.
Under state law, there are currently four official parties on the ballot in New York — Democratic, Republican, Conservative and Working Families Party — based on the number of votes their candidate received in the most recent gubernatorial and presidential elections. That vote count also determines the order they appear on the next ballot, from highest to lowest.
Candidates must file a petition to run as an independent. Boards of elections determine the ballot order of independent parties, which must appear below the official parties.
“In the case of the New York City Board of Elections, this is determined by the date and time stamp when the independent nominating petition was filed with that board,” said Kathleen McGrath, a spokesperson for the New York State Board of Elections.
According to McGrath, Cuomo’s “Fight and Deliver” party was the fourth out of five independent parties to submit a nominating petition, meaning that Cuomo is listed eighth on the ballot.
Mamdani is listed first under the Democratic Party and fourth under the Working Families Party. Sliwa appears second under the Republican Party and fifth under the “Protect Animals” party. Two other candidates running as independents — incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and attorney Jim Walden — dropped out of the race too late to be taken off the ballot.
“In short, Cuomo is only listed once because he was only nominated once, and he is low in the order because no recognized political party nominated him,” said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting. “Surely Elon Musk has people who could have looked this up for him.”
New York City does not require voters to show ID to vote unless they did not provide identification with their registration. The nation’s multilayered election processes provide many safeguards that keep voter fraud generally detectable and rare, the AP has reported.
Representatives for Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
(CNN) — Democrats’ dominance in Tuesday’s elections reset expectations ahead of next year’s midterm battle for House and Senate control, reinvigorating a party that has been in the political wilderness and leaving Republicans lamenting that the gains President Donald Trump made a year ago with key portions of the electorate all but evaporated.
“Last night, if that wasn’t a message to all Republicans, then we’ve got our head jammed in the ground,” said West Virginia GOP Sen. Jim Justice.
The list of Democratic winners spanned the party’s ideological spectrum — from Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist elected mayor of New York City, to Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, the moderates with strong national security credentials elected governors of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively.
Their wins could rally Democrats in competitive House, Senate and governor’s races next year around a message all three made central to their campaigns, in different forms: pledges to reduce the cost of living.
But the playing field won’t be easy for Democrats. Strategists in both parties agree that control of the House will be in play, but the net effect of redistricting moves around the country — particularly if the Supreme Court decides to weaken the Voting Rights Act — could leave fewer competitive seats for Democrats. And the 2026 Senate map includes only a handful of GOP-held seats that appear to be in play and multiple seats Democrats will have to defend.
Still, Tuesday’s results may embolden Democrats to continue their strategy in the ongoing government shutdown, while igniting new debates over what kinds of candidates can win, and where.
Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster, said the elections should be viewed within the broader context of a year in which the party’s voters have packed town halls and rallies, won key races like the Wisconsin Supreme Court contest in the spring and a slew of special elections, and scored candidate recruitment victories for next year’s midterms.
“Take the whole year into account and it tells a pretty similar story, which is that Democrats are motivated and Republicans are less motivated,” Omero said.
Trump, she said, “lost popularity and he’s lost altitude on all of his top issues, like the economy and immigration.”
“Where does that leave his supporters in a midterm or off-year election?” Omero said. “What are they coming out for, if he’s less popular and his policies are less popular and his agenda’s less popular?”
Voters cast their ballots at a polling station in Arlington, Virginia, on November 4. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images via CNN Newsource
In addition to the wins in governor’s races and mayoral elections, and a critical victory in a statewide vote to green-light a redistricting effort to add five more seats that favor Democrats in California, the party also scored a long list of lower-profile victories on Tuesday.
They broke the GOP’s supermajority in the Mississippi state Senate. They flipped two seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission. They defeated a voter identification ballot initiative in Maine. Their incumbent Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices prevailed in retention votes.
The results showed that many of the gains Trump had made in 2024 have evaporated. In New Jersey, Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli couldn’t match Trump’s support levels with Latino and Black voters. In Virginia, Spanberger notched the most impressive Democratic performance in recent years — besting the margins of the party’s last two presidential nominees and carrying a scandal-plagued nominee for attorney general, Jay Jones, to victory on her coattails.
For the GOP, the fallout could come in a number of forms — including altering the party’s push for redistricting to add winnable congressional seats in deep-red states, and changing how Republicans in competitive midterm races approach Trump.
“The picture is pretty clear,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “It is not a muddled message.”
Ayres pointed to several lessons Republicans should take from Tuesday’s results. In Virginia and New Jersey, two states Trump lost in all three of his presidential runs, Republican gubernatorial candidates tied themselves to the president, a “losing strategy from the start,” he said.
Republicans might also be inclined to rethink their strategy on redistricting, he said.
“Given the Democratic margins yesterday, about the last thing you want to do if you want to hold on to the House is weaken Republican incumbent House members, and that’s exactly what will happen if you’re trying to carve out more Republican districts,” he said.
Trump world deflects blame
For his part, Trump and his top allies publicly downplayed the election results, with the president noting on social media that he wasn’t on the ballot. He partially blamed the ongoing federal government shutdown, telling Republican lawmakers in a closed-door session Wednesday morning that they are getting “killed” politically by the impasse, a source told CNN.
Vice President JD Vance said that “it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states.” But he also warned that the GOP needs “to do better at turning out voters than we have in the past.”
“I said it in 2022, and I’ve said it repeatedly since: our coalition is ‘lower propensity’ and that means we have to do better at turning out voters than we have in the past,” Vance said Wednesday morning on X.
Vance also urged Republicans to focus on affordability. He said the Trump administration “inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz called the election results a “great lesson for the Republican Party,” blaming the losing Virginia gubernatorial nominee, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, for failing to excite Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
“Your candidate needs to be able to turn out ALL FACTIONS of our party, and they do that by being MAGA all the way,” he wrote on X.
Though Tuesday’s GOP losses were wide-ranging, Republicans focused on elevating one Democratic winner: Mamdani, the 34-year-old Muslim and democratic socialist mayor-elect of New York City.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called Mamdani “the new leader of the Democrat Party.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is “apparently a socialist now,” since Jeffries endorsed Mamdani.
Democratic ideological rifts remain
Mamdani’s victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City emboldened the left wing of the Democratic Party. Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, a group created to oust “corporate Democrats” and elect progressives, said Mamdani’s win marks a “turning point” for their movement and shows the importance of competitive races.
One long-simmering debate Tuesday’s results didn’t settle is the ideological battle within the Democratic Party over the way forward, with a host of competitive House and Senate primaries just months away and the 2028 presidential primary already looming large.
“Democratic primaries can and should be the battleground for the control of our party’s direction,” Andrabi said.
A supporter for independent mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo watches election night returns during a watch party for Cuomo in New York on Tuesday. Credit: Heather Khalifa / AP via CNN Newsource
However, in New Jersey and Virginia, the winning Democratic candidates are moderates with strong national security credentials. Spanberger, the Virginia governor-elect, criticized Mamdani in an interview with CNN just days before the election, suggesting his proposals aimed at reducing the cost of living will ultimately disappoint his supporters.
“We don’t need to settle,” said Omero, the Democratic pollster. “We’re able to have more moderate candidates in some places and more progressive candidates in some places. That feels like an important lesson.”
One area where Democrats appeared broadly on the same page Wednesday is the ongoing government shutdown — fueled in part by Democrats’ demand that Republicans make concessions on health care funding in order to pass a measure that would fund the government.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy wrote on X that it is “not a coincidence these big wins came at the exact moment when Democrats are using our power to stand for something and be strong. A huge risk to not learn that lesson.”
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani introduced his transition team while addressing the media in Queens, New York, on Wednesday after his victory against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.
It’s 9:30 p.m. on election night on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Curtis Sliwa is telling his crowd of supporters that his campaign spoke for animal lovers and the emotionally disturbed.
Polls in New York’s mayoral race had closed a half hour prior, with Zohran Mamdani quickly declared the victor, and while the Republican candidate and longtime city fixture only offered a passing concession—“so we have a mayor-elect”—he took the broader opportunity to reflect on his idiosyncratic presence on the edges of public life for several decades now. In the closing days of the campaign, Donald Trump had come out in support of Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent, in an effort to head off Mamdani’s momentum, and claimed that Sliwa, whose calling cards include his red beret, a much-referenced 1992 shooting in the back of a yellow cab, and the animals he and his wife keep in their studio apartment, “wants cats to be in Gracie Mansion.”
“Some of the most powerful people in the world,” Sliwa said, “made fun of Nancy and what we do to care for animals, to care for people.”
“You’re still our mayor!” a supporter in Gucci sneakers and electric blue color contact lenses shouted.
The audience on hand at Arte Cafe, a neighborhood Italian standby, amounted to a fittingly unpredictable mélange of Sliwa loyalists in streetwear, suits and fedoras, and pops of red in the form of Guardian Angels berets. Former New York governor George Pataki, whom Sliwa described as a key supporter in his speech along with Rudy Giuliani, was mobbed by cameras and microphones as he tried to make his way past the bar. In a quieter back room, was Brad Solomon, a Queens native who identified himself as a poker player and sports bettor by trade. He was vaping in a God Bless America hat as he described how he came to root for Sliwa.
“We don’t want Killer Cuomo,” Solomon says. “We don’t want communists. It’s an obvious choice.” He and Sliwa were once arrested together, he says, after protesting the arrival of migrants at a mental hospital next to a Catholic school in Staten Island.
“Curtis was the only one who stood up against that,” Solomon says.
George Pataki attends the election-night watch party for Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa at Arte Cafe on November 4, 2025 in New York City.David Dee Delgado/Getty Images.
Zohran Mamdani will be New York City’s 111th mayor, CBS News projects, capping a closely watched campaign in which the little-known state assemblyman energized voters with his focus on making America’s largest city more affordable.
Mamdani’s message centered around the cost of living, energizing a coalition of young and progressive voters, even as critics questioned his lack of experience and raised concerns about his stance on Israel. He pledged to freeze rents on rent-stabilized apartments and raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for a host of new services, like free buses and city-run grocery stores.
When he assumes office, Mamdani will make history as the city’s first Muslim mayor. At 34, he’ll also be one of the city’s youngest mayors, but not the youngest ever: That distinction belongs to Hugh J. Grant, who was 31 when he was elected to his first term in 1889.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani celebrates during an election night event at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater on Nov. 4, 2025.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Click here for complete New York City election results.
He said his win was one for the working people of New York and reiterated his campaign promises on affordability.
“Let the words we’ve spoken together, the dreams we’ve dreamt together become the agenda we deliver together,” Mamdani said. “New York, this power, it’s yours. This city belongs to you. Thank you.”
Mamdani’s background
Mamdani was born in Uganda and moved to New York City when he was 7. He attended the elite Bronx High School of Science before heading off to Bowdoin College.
In 2018, he became an American citizen.
His parents are political science professor Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair. Mamdani is married to artist Rama Duawaji. They live in Queens, where Mamdani has served as state assemblyman since 2021, representing Astoria, Astoria Heights and Ditmars-Steinway in Queens.
Mamdani’s policies
Mamdani focused his campaign around reducing the cost of living. He promised to freeze the rent for the city’s rent-stabilized units. He has also pledged to provide free bus service and to open city-owned grocery stores in each borough. Mamdani also says he wants to build 200,000 affordable housing units.
To pay for his proposals, Mamdani has said he would raise taxes on corporations and on top earners by 2%, but he’ll need the help of Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature to do it.
“I would not recognize any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race or religion,” he said in the candidates’ second and final debate.
He also said critics have wrongly accused him of more extreme statements.
“I have never, not once, spoken in support of global jihad. That is not something that I have said. And that continues to be ascribed to me. And frankly, I think much of it has to do with that I am the first Muslim candidate to be on the precipice of winning this election,” Mamdani said during the last debate.
Mamdani and the NYPD
Mamdani came under withering criticism for his past remarks regarding the NYPD. He previously called for disbanding the Strategic Response Group, which was the same unit that responded to the Midtown office shooting in July. He has since walked that back, saying he was opposed to using that unit to respond to protests.
“I am not defunding the police,” Mamdani said this summer. “I am not running to defund the police.”
In an October interview with Fox News, Mamdani again apologized for remarks he made about the NYPD in 2020, when he called the department “racist” and a “threat to public safety” amid nationwide protests after the killing of George Floydin Minneapolis.
“We used to ask officers to focus on serious crimes. Now we’re asking them to focus also on the mental health crisis, to focus also on homelessness,” Mamdani said last month. “Absolutely I’ll apologize to police officers right here. Because this is the apology that I’ve been sharing with many rank and file officers. And I apologize because of the fact that I’m looking to work with these officers, and I know that these officers, these men and women who serve in the NYPD, they put their lives on the line every single day.”
Mamdani also recently said he would ask Jessica Tisch to stay on as police commissioner.
Zohran Mamdani will be New York City’s 111th mayor, CBS News projects, capping a closely watched campaign in which the little-known state assemblyman energized voters with his focus on making America’s largest city more affordable.
The 34-year-old democratic socialist defeated Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent after losing a Democratic primary that he had initially entered as the clear front-runner. The mayoral race drew the attention of President Trump, who endorsed Cuomo the night before the election and threatened to withhold federal funds to New York City under a Mayor Mamdani.
Mamdani’s message centered around the cost of living, energizing a coalition of young and progressive voters, even as critics questioned his lack of experience and raised concerns about his stance on Israel. He pledged to freeze rents on rent-stabilized apartments and raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for a host of new services, like free buses and city-run grocery stores.
When he assumes office, Mamdani will make history as the city’s first Muslim mayor. At 34, he’ll also be one of the city’s youngest mayors, but not the youngest ever: That distinction belongs to Hugh J. Grant, who was 31 when he was elected to his first term in 1889.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani celebrates during an election night event at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater on Nov. 4, 2025.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Click here for complete New York City election results.
Mamdani’s background
Mamdani was born in Uganda and moved to New York City when he was 7. He attended the elite Bronx High School of Science before heading off to Bowdoin College.
In 2018, he became an American citizen.
His parents are political science professor Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair. Mamdani is married to artist Rama Duawaji. They live in Queens, where Mamdani has served as state assemblyman since 2021, representing Astoria, Astoria Heights and Ditmars-Steinway in Queens.
Mamdani’s policies
Mamdani focused his campaign around reducing the cost of living. He promised to freeze the rent for the city’s rent-stabilized units. He has also pledged to provide free bus service and to open city-owned grocery stores in each borough. Mamdani also says he wants to build 200,000 affordable housing units.
To pay for his proposals, Mamdani has said he would raise taxes on corporations and on top earners by 2%, but he’ll need the help of Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature to do it.
“I would not recognize any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race or religion,” he said in the candidates’ second and final debate.
He also said critics have wrongly accused him of more extreme statements.
“I have never, not once, spoken in support of global jihad. That is not something that I have said. And that continues to be ascribed to me. And frankly, I think much of it has to do with that I am the first Muslim candidate to be on the precipice of winning this election,” Mamdani said during the last debate.
Mamdani and the NYPD
Mamdani came under withering criticism for his past remarks regarding the NYPD. He previously called for disbanding the Strategic Response Group, which was the same unit that responded to the Midtown office shooting in July. He has since walked that back, saying he was opposed to using that unit to respond to protests.
“I am not defunding the police,” Mamdani said this summer. “I am not running to defund the police.”
In an October interview with Fox News, Mamdani again apologized for remarks he made about the NYPD in 2020, when he called the department “racist” and a “threat to public safety” amid nationwide protests after the killing of George Floydin Minneapolis.
“We used to ask officers to focus on serious crimes. Now we’re asking them to focus also on the mental health crisis, to focus also on homelessness,” Mamdani said last month. “Absolutely I’ll apologize to police officers right here. Because this is the apology that I’ve been sharing with many rank and file officers. And I apologize because of the fact that I’m looking to work with these officers, and I know that these officers, these men and women who serve in the NYPD, they put their lives on the line every single day.”
Mamdani also recently said he would ask Jessica Tisch to stay on as police commissioner.
(CNN) — Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist whose focus on working-class issues and personal magnetism attracted a diverse coalition of volunteers and supporters to propel a once-underdog campaign, will win New York City’s general election race for mayor, CNN’s Decision Desk projects.
Mamdani beat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for a second time, shattering the political scion’s hopes of a comeback after his loss to Mamdani in the June Democratic primary. Also running in the general election was Republican Curtis Sliwa, who refused to end his campaign despite pressure from Cuomo and his supporters.
Mamdani’s win marks a victory for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party at a time when national Democrats are divided over how to counter President Donald Trump. The president is himself a native New Yorker who has falsely derided Mamdani as a “communist” and suggested he’d “take over” the city if he is elected.
The results are likely to echo far beyond New York City, elevating both Mamdani’s profile and platform, including his proposals to freeze the rent for New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments, make public buses free to ride and provide universal childcare by taxing the wealthy.
Mamdani’s win completes a meteoric rise a year after the state assemblyman launched his bid for mayor, promising to make the most expensive city in the country affordable for its working class.
Who is Zohran Mamdani?
Mamdani is a three-term state assemblyman who entered the mayor’s race as one of several apparent also-rans to what appeared to be Cuomo’s race to lose.
Born in Uganda and first raised in Cape Town, South Africa, Mamdani moved to New York City when he was 7. He attended the prestigious Bronx High School of Science and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bowdoin College. He is the son of Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia University, and Mira Nair, an Indian filmmaker whose credits include “Mississippi Masala” and “Monsoon Wedding.”
Before becoming an assemblyman, Mamdani was a housing counselor and self-described C-list rapper who went by the name “Mr. Cardamom.” His short-lived music career was sometimes front and center in his opponent’s attack ads.
The music video for “Nani,” a rap song where Mamdani pays homage to his grandma and New York City’s South Asian culture, also shows him shirtless, donning only an apron, looking directly at the camera while he rocks side to side. The image was plastered across anti-Mamdani campaign ads to poke fun at his past music career and his lack of governmental experience.
Andrew Epstein, a campaign aide, noted that Mamdani’s rapping career helped him indirectly in his campaign.
“An incredible asset for anybody seeking to run for office is bravery in the face of embarrassment and being able to push through the natural inclination many of us have not to kind of introduce themselves to strangers or do things in a kind of silly way in front of them,” Epstein told CNN.
But Mamdani made a steady climb in the mayor’s race by producing a constant stream of social media videos, including interviews with voters who had supported Trump in 2024 due to the high cost of living. He ran a groundbreaking digital campaign in which he spoke in multiple languages and connected with supporters with a message anchored to affordability. During the campaign, Mamdani, who natively speaks Urdu, released campaign videos in Bangla, Spanish, and Arabic.
One of his most memorable viral videos tackled what the candidate referred to as “halal-flation.” He set out to interview street meat vendors about the high cost of running a street food business in New York City. With a mouthful of rice and halal meat, Mamdani detailed how an arcane permit system in the city is in part to blame for the prices of what should be cheap street food.
“This was one of the coldest nights of the year, bitterly cold,” Epstein recalled recently. “We were downtown by Zuccotti Park near Wall Street and Zohran just asking people on the street, ‘Would you rather pay $10 or $8 for halal?’ People were pushing through trying to get home, you know, it was rejection over and over and over and over again, but it never fazed him.”
Mamdani was cutting into Cuomo’s lead in public polling by the June primary. The city’s traditional power brokers, including the real estate and business sectors concerned with Mamdani’s democratic socialist identity, banded together in support of Cuomo and donated millions of dollars to anti-Mamdani super PACs. Business leaders argued Mamdani would drive wealthy New Yorkers out and discourage businesses from operating in the nation’s financial capital.
Their push ultimately helped Mamdani cast his campaign as a fight between working-class people and billionaires.
Still, his primary victory shocked much of the political world.
“I don’t think the line is so much between progressives and moderates. It’s between fighters and fakers,” said city comptroller Brad Lander, who ran against Mamdani but allied with him under the primary’s ranked-choice voting system. “What Zohran is showing is that it’s worth putting up big bold ideas for change, standing up and fighting for them, and that’s pretty hopeful. Yes, he’s a democratic socialist, but he had a bold vision for the future of the city and that excited people.”
The general election campaign
After taking a vacation in Uganda to celebrate his wedding, Mamdani returned to a city mourning the deaths of New York police officer Didarul Islam and three others in a Midtown Manhattan shooting. He was confronted with his years of tweets criticizing the police, including references to law enforcement as racist and wicked and calling for them to be defunded.
“I am not defunding the police. I am not running to defund the police,” he would tell reporters after meeting with Islam’s family, part of an overall shift away from anti-police rhetoric that culminated in recent weeks with his commitment to retain the current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch.
He also reached out to New York’s Jewish community, roiled by his criticisms of Israel’s government and questions about democratic socialism. Mamdani is an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, a supporter of the movement to boycott and divest from Israel and a fierce critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I hate my choices,” said Cydney Schwartz, a 33-year-old liberal Democrat who has lived in Israel and was in line to cast an early vote. She declined to say who she chose.
The last days of the campaign
In the closing days of the campaign, Mamdani referred to the race as a choice between “oligarchy and democracy.” His omnipresence on the campaign trail was on display during the last days of the race and in the lead-up to the last weekend of early voting in the city.
As more than half a million New Yorkers turned out to cast their votes early, Mamdani was everywhere: He was in church in the morning, calling into radio shows midday, stopping into ethnic supermarkets in the outer boroughs, popping up on influencer live streams, joining a Union Square freestyle rap battle and capping off his Saturday with a whirlwind tour of the city’s nightclub scene.
Paying homage to the city that never sleeps, Mamdani appeared to hardly do so either, stopping at six nightclubs in Brooklyn just to do it all over again on the last Sunday of early voting. He attended a church service with his parents, met campaign volunteers before stopping on the sidelines of the New York City Marathon, went to Queens for a meet-up with Gov. Kathy Hochul to cheer on the Buffalo Bills, and popped up in the nosebleeds of Madison Square Garden for a New York Knicks game.
Cuomo also campaigned across the city. Notably, he tried to cut into Mamdani’s core support of South Asian and Muslim voters by highlighting Mamdani’s opposition to criminal penalties for prostitution. He also laughed when a radio host suggested Mamdani would cheer another 9/11 attack, drawing allegations from Mamdani and others that he was playing to Islamophobia. Cuomo denied he was doing so.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams ended his independent bid and endorsed Cuomo. But Cuomo was unable to push Sliwa, the Republican nominee, out of the race, denying anti-Mamdani voters the chance to consolidate behind one opponent. Sliwa repeatedly and colorfully vowed he would die before making way for Cuomo, arguing he owed it to his supporters to keep running.
For Cuomo, Tuesday’s results are likely a coda to a long and eventful political career. He was governor of New York for nearly 11 years before resigning in 2021 after he was accused of sexual harassment, allegations he has denied, and amid criticism of how his administration handled Covid-19 cases in nursing homes. Running for mayor, Cuomo leaned into his executive experience, often pointing out Mamdani’s short career in politics and relative lack of work history.
He relaunched his mayoral bid as an independent after losing to Mamdani in June. He remained focused on public safety, promising to hire additional police officers and build more housing. Cuomo, who has a longstanding relationship with Trump, also sought to portray himself as the better candidate to fend off the president’s attacks on New York City.
A history-making mayor
Mamdani will be inaugurated on January 1, 2026. He inherits a deeply complex city home to 8.5 million people, a large bureaucracy, a municipal workforce of roughly 300,000 and a city budget of $115 billion.
Mamdani will make history as New York City’s first Muslim mayor, the first South Asian to hold the office and one of the youngest mayors elected in modern times. He recently married Rama Duwaji, an artist of Syrian descent who was born in Texas and moved to New York City to complete a master’s degree in illustration. Duwaji skipped traditional campaigning alongside her husband on the trail and while it remains unclear whether she will have any role in his administration, at 28, she will be the first member of Gen Z to serve as New York City’s first lady.
While Mamdani’s identity as both an immigrant and a South Asian New Yorker was central to his campaign, his connection to that community began to take shape long before he launched his run for City Hall. He first made national headlines in 2021 when he joined New York City cab drivers on a 15-day hunger strike seeking relief from excessive debt.
Mamdani has a strong connection to the cab driver community in New York City, which is largely made up of immigrants, including thousands of South Asians who were among his fiercest supporters. In the last days of the campaign, Mamdani made a stop at LaGuardia Airport’s taxi stand at midnight, catching cabbies at shift change.
“Without the night shift, there is no morning,” Mamdani told them.
Given the many excesses of Trump 2.0, and the desperate desire of Democrats for signs of a backlash, the results of off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia, California, Pennsylvania, and New York City would have inevitably been interpreted as in part a referendum on the turbulent first year of the 47th presidency. But Trump has also gone out of his way to make himself an issue on November 4 in various ways.
He has all but become Andrew Cuomo’s most important backer in New York City, and his threats to punish Gotham for the likely election of Zohran Mamdani is overshadowing the entire campaign.
He has directly campaigned for New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli, whose decision to embrace Trump this time around (after keeping his distance four years ago) was a major gamble.
He’s made a lot of noise in opposition California’s Prop 50, which was already being framed by its sponsors as all about retaliating for the president’s gerrymandering power grabs.
And even in a contest where he did not make an endorsement, the Virginia governor’s race, his snub of GOP nominee Winsome Earle-Sears has become a last-minute preoccupation, signaling that Republicans have given up on their candidate.
A Democratic sweep of these races would not just be a setback for Trump’s party; it would also put to rest the claim that 2024 signaled a pro-GOP alignment of the electorate for the foreseeable future.
The win was projected by both the Associated Press and NBC less than an hour after polls in the city closed. Mamdani spoke before a packed victory party shortly after 11 p.m. “Thank you to the next generation of New Yorkers who refused to accept that the promise of a better future was a relic of the past,” Mamdani said. He also acknowledged his opponents, namely Cuomo. “I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life, and let tonight be the final time I utter his name,” Mamdani said. And he used the stage to speak directly to the president. “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I’ve got four words for you: turn the volume up,” Mamdani said to raucous applause.
By Election Day, all eyes were on the race in America’s most populous city as an electoral proxy for Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House. There was Mamdani, the upstart, a Ugandan-born political organizer turned state assemblyman representing the Astoria neighborhood in Queens since 2021, the anointed Democratic candidate. Republican Curtis Sliwa consistently polled last in the race, though he found a slice of TikTok virality with a subset of Gen Z voters. And then there was Cuomo, soundly defeated in the primary but keeping himself on the ticket anyway running as an independent, receiving a last-minute cash infusion of $1.5 million from former mayor Mike Bloomberg on Halloween, days before voters headed to the polls.
Still, Mamdani didn’t forget, telling Vanity Fair‘s James Pogue via text in the days following Adams stepping back from the race that he had a message to voters: “I’d say listen to what Eric Adams said: ‘Andrew Cuomo is a liar and a snake.’”
Former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who was outraised by the Democrat and failed to earn the endorsement of President Donald Trump.The win flips control of the commonwealth’s governor’s mansion. While local issues and the biographies of the candidates played a strong role in the race, the results also reflect a contest where Trump’s presence loomed.Virginia has a concentration of federal workers in the north and has deeply felt both the impact of the president cutting the workforce and of the government shutdown.Virginia was one of two states, along with New Jersey, where voters were picking a governor on Tuesday. Voters were also selecting a new mayor in New York City, and in California, were deciding whether to approve a new congressional map that is designed to help Democrats win five more U.S. House seats in next year’s midterm elections. Here are the latest time-stamped updates from Election Day 2025 (ET): 8:15 p.m.Results for two high-profile mayoral races have come in.According to AP, Democrat Aftab Pureval has won the Cincinnati mayoral election over Cory Bowman, who is the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance.And in Atlanta, Democrat Andre Dickens won reelection over three challengers.8 p.m.Democrat Abigail Spanberger has won Virginia’s gubernatorial election, becoming the first female governor in the commonwealth’s history, according to AP projections.Spanberger, a former congresswoman and CIA case officer, defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.Spanberger ran a mostly moderate campaign, offering a model for Democrats who want the party anchored by center-left candidates.Spanberger tied Earle-Sears to President Donald Trump but kept her arguments mostly on Trump’s economic policy and her support for abortion rights.Notably, Trump did not endorse Earle-Sears.7:30 p.m. Economic worries were the dominant concern as voters cast ballots for Tuesday’s elections, according to preliminary findings from the AP Voter Poll.The results of the expansive survey of more than 17,000 voters in New Jersey, Virginia, California and New York City suggest they are troubled by an economy that seems trapped by higher prices and fewer job opportunities.The economic challenges have played out in different ways at the local level. Most New Jersey voters said property taxes were a “major problem,” while most New York City voters said this about the cost of housing. Most Virginia voters said they’ve felt at least some impact from the recent federal government cuts.7 p.m.Polling locations have closed in Virginia.Polls across the commonwealth’s counties and cities were open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Voters in line at a polling place at 7 p.m. can still cast ballots.Virginia voters are choosing a new governor and lieutenant governor. They’re also deciding whether Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares should get another term or if Democratic challenger Jay Jones should replace him. All 100 seats in the House of Delegates are also up for election.There are well over 6 million registered voters in Virginia. The last time these statewide races were on the ballot in 2021, overall voter turnout was 55%.This year, nearly 1.5 million people have cast absentee ballots, mostly through the mail or in person.Video below: Spanberger makes last push before Tuesday’s election for VA governor6:55 p.m.New York City’s Board of Elections released another turnout update Tuesday evening.As of 6 p.m., 1.7 million people have voted in the mayoral election.That’s the biggest turnout in a New York City mayoral election in at least 30 years. Just under 1.9 million people voted in the 1993 race, when Republican Rudy Giuliani ousted Mayor David Dinkins, a Democrat.6:45 p.m.Here is when polls close in states with key races. New York: 9 p.m.New Jersey: 8 p.m.Virginia: 7 p.m.California: 11 p.m. (8 p.m. PT)6:30 p.m.It’s not a presidential election year or even the midterms, but the stakes for Election Day 2025 remain undeniably high, with outcomes that could leave a lasting impact on the nation’s direction.Will California redefine the congressional landscape ahead of 2026? Could New York City elect a democratic socialist as its next mayor? And how will the perception of the Trump administration impact critical gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia?This week holds the answers to those pressing questions. Here’s what you need to know before the results start rolling in Tuesday night.
Former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who was outraised by the Democrat and failed to earn the endorsement of President Donald Trump.
The win flips control of the commonwealth’s governor’s mansion. While local issues and the biographies of the candidates played a strong role in the race, the results also reflect a contest where Trump’s presence loomed.
Virginia has a concentration of federal workers in the north and has deeply felt both the impact of the president cutting the workforce and of the government shutdown.
Virginia was one of two states, along with New Jersey, where voters were picking a governor on Tuesday. Voters were also selecting a new mayor in New York City, and in California, were deciding whether to approve a new congressional map that is designed to help Democrats win five more U.S. House seats in next year’s midterm elections.
Here are the latest time-stamped updates from Election Day 2025 (ET):
8:15 p.m.
Results for two high-profile mayoral races have come in.
According to AP, Democrat Aftab Pureval has won the Cincinnati mayoral election over Cory Bowman, who is the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance.
And in Atlanta, Democrat Andre Dickens won reelection over three challengers.
8 p.m.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger has won Virginia’s gubernatorial election, becoming the first female governor in the commonwealth’s history, according to AP projections.
Spanberger, a former congresswoman and CIA case officer, defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
Spanberger ran a mostly moderate campaign, offering a model for Democrats who want the party anchored by center-left candidates.
Spanberger tied Earle-Sears to President Donald Trump but kept her arguments mostly on Trump’s economic policy and her support for abortion rights.
Notably, Trump did not endorse Earle-Sears.
7:30 p.m.
Economic worries were the dominant concern as voters cast ballots for Tuesday’s elections, according to preliminary findings from the AP Voter Poll.
The results of the expansive survey of more than 17,000 voters in New Jersey, Virginia, California and New York City suggest they are troubled by an economy that seems trapped by higher prices and fewer job opportunities.
The economic challenges have played out in different ways at the local level. Most New Jersey voters said property taxes were a “major problem,” while most New York City voters said this about the cost of housing. Most Virginia voters said they’ve felt at least some impact from the recent federal government cuts.
7 p.m.
Polling locations have closed in Virginia.
Polls across the commonwealth’s counties and cities were open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Voters in line at a polling place at 7 p.m. can still cast ballots.
Virginia voters are choosing a new governor and lieutenant governor. They’re also deciding whether Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares should get another term or if Democratic challenger Jay Jones should replace him. All 100 seats in the House of Delegates are also up for election.
There are well over 6 million registered voters in Virginia. The last time these statewide races were on the ballot in 2021, overall voter turnout was 55%.
This year, nearly 1.5 million people have cast absentee ballots, mostly through the mail or in person.
Video below: Spanberger makes last push before Tuesday’s election for VA governor
6:55 p.m.
New York City’s Board of Elections released another turnout update Tuesday evening.
As of 6 p.m., 1.7 million people have voted in the mayoral election.
That’s the biggest turnout in a New York City mayoral election in at least 30 years. Just under 1.9 million people voted in the 1993 race, when Republican Rudy Giuliani ousted Mayor David Dinkins, a Democrat.
6:45 p.m.
Here is when polls close in states with key races.
New York: 9 p.m.
New Jersey: 8 p.m.
Virginia: 7 p.m.
California: 11 p.m. (8 p.m. PT)
6:30 p.m.
It’s not a presidential election year or even the midterms, but the stakes for Election Day 2025 remain undeniably high, with outcomes that could leave a lasting impact on the nation’s direction.
Will California redefine the congressional landscape ahead of 2026? Could New York City elect a democratic socialist as its next mayor? And how will the perception of the Trump administration impact critical gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia?
New Yorkers voting on Election Day at a polling site in the East Village on Nov. 4, 2025.
Photo by Adam Daly
The 2025 NYC Mayor’s Race is destined for history, regardless of who wins the election.
More than 1.7 million New Yorkers have already voted in the contest between Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, independent candidate and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. The final vote total is expected to be the highest in more than 30 years and could wind up being a number not seen at the polls in a mayor’s race in more than 50 years.
The NYC Board of Elections reported as of 6 p.m. Tuesday that 1,748,698 people had cast ballots in the race — a figure that included the more than 730,000 people who took part in early voting. Through 6 p.m. on Nov. 4, 1,015,832 voters had checked in to their polling sites citywide on Election Day — a figure exceeding the early voting turnout of 732,866.
Decades of voter apathy appear to have been shattered by the energy of the three-way campaign, largely defined by Mamdani’s presence in the race, and his social media and voter engagement tactics.
On its own, the 6 p.m. total would represent the most votes cast in a NYC mayoral election since the 1993 mayoral election between Rudy Giuliani and David Dinkins, which was also a highly contentious one.
In the 1993 contest, in which the Republican former federal prosecutor Giuliani toppled the one-term incumbent Mayor Dinkins, more than 50% of registered voters in New York City cast a ballot. Turnouts in the seven mayoral elections since that fateful race have never come so close to that number.
When all is said and done, the final vote total will likely surpass 2 million votes, a number not seen since the three-way, 1969 mayoral election in which incumbent Mayor John Lindsay won re-election to a second term on a third-party line.
The 1,748,698 total voter check-ins as of 6 p.m. on Nov. 4 represented 35.3% of the 4,954,908 active registered voters in New York City, based on data from the New York State Board of Elections. That would be one of the highest percentage turnouts in a New York City mayoral election in the 21st century.
The city is on pace to see total turnout in the 2025 election flirt with or exceed 40% of all registered voters. The last time more than 40% of registered voters, and more than 1.5 million voters cast ballots, in a mayoral election was in 2001, when Republican businessman Mike Bloomberg defeated Democratic Public Advocate Mark Green just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bloomberg would go on to serve three terms as mayor.
Just four years ago, the 2021 mayoral election, which saw Eric Adams prevail, had a 23% turnout, with roughly 1.14 million votes cast. It was the fourth consecutive mayoral election in which voter turnout was under 30%.
Without question, the 2025 mayoral election will take its place in history as one of the most exciting in recent memory, and the start of a new era in city politics where more voters become part of their democracy.
Nearly ten months into President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, voters in contests from coast-to-coast head to the polls on Tuesday in statewide and local elections.
And the key showdowns, including gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, are viewed, in part, as the first major ballot box test of Trump’s unprecedented and explosive second-term agenda.
“FAILING TO VOTE TOMORROW IS THE SAME AS VOTING FOR A DEMOCRAT,” the president charged in a social media post on Election Eve as he urged Republicans to head to the polls.
Grabbing top billing are New Jersey and Virginia, the only two states to hold contests for governor in the year after a presidential election. Their gubernatorial races typically receive outsized national attention and are seen as a key barometer ahead of next year’s midterms when the GOP will be defending its slim House and Senate majorities.
President Donald Trump, seen speaking at a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey on May 11, 2024, during the last presidential campaign, headlined tele-rallies in the Garden State and in Virginia on the eve of those states’ gubernatorial elections.(Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Also in the political spotlight on Election Day 2025 is New York City’s high-profile mayoral showdown, where 34-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani is on the verge of making history, the blockbuster ballot box proposition over congressional redistricting in California, the nation’s most populous state and three state Supreme Court contests in battleground Pennsylvania.
Here’s what’s at stake.
New Jersey
Republican Jack Ciattarelli, who’s making his third straight run for Garden State governor and who nearly upset Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy four years ago, is optimistic he can pull off a victory in blue-leaning New Jersey.
In a state where registered Democrats still outnumber Republicans despite a GOP surge in registration this decade, Ciattarelli appeared to be closing the gap in recent weeks with Democratic rival Rep. Mikie Sherrill.
While Democrats have long dominated federal and state legislative elections in New Jersey, Republicans are very competitive in gubernatorial contests, winning five out of the past 10 elections.
And Trump made major gains in New Jersey in last year’s presidential election, losing the state by only six percentage points, a major improvement over his 16-point deficit four years earlier.
Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli speaks to supporters at a tavern in Totowa, New Jersey, on Election Day eve, on Nov. 3, 2025(Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
The president, whose poll numbers are underwater among New Jersey voters, headlined two tele-rallies for Ciattarelli in the final stretch of the campaign in hopes of energizing MAGA supporters, many of whom are low propensity voters who often skip casting ballots in non-presidential election years.
“We appreciate what the president is doing to get the base excited, and remind them that they got to vote, as do all New Jerseyans. The future of our state hangs in the balance. Get out and vote,” Ciattarelli told Fox News Digital on Monday after a campaign stop in this northern New Jersey borough.
But in a state where Trump’s poll numbers are underwater, Sherrill has regularly linked Ciattarelli to the president, charging that her GOP rival “has really gone in lockstep with the president, giving him an A.”
The race in New Jersey was rocked earlier this autumn by a report that the National Personnel Records Center, which is a branch of the National Archives and Records Administration, mistakenly released Sherrill’s improperly redacted military personnel files, which included private information like her Social Security number, to a Ciattarelli ally.
Former President Barack Obama during a campaign event for Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee for New Jersey, in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025.(Adam Gray/Getty Images)
But Sherrill’s military records indicated that the United States Naval Academy blocked her from taking part in her 1994 graduation amid a cheating scandal.
Sherrill, who was never accused of cheating in the scandal, went on to serve nearly a decade in the Navy.
The showdown was jolted again during last month’s final debate after Sherrill’s allegations that Ciattarelli was “complicit” with pharmaceutical companies in the opioid deaths of tens of thousands of New Jerseyans, as she pointed to the medical publishing company he owned that pushed content promoting the use of opioids as a low-risk treatment for chronic pain.
Virginia
Explosive revelations in Virginia’s attorney general race that the GOP aimed to leverage up and down the ballot recently shook up the state’s race for governor, forcing Democratic Party nominee, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, back on defense in a campaign where she was seen as the frontrunner against Republican rival Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
The two major party gubernatorial nominees in Virginia: Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, left, and Democrat former Rep. Abigail Spanberger.(Getty Images)
Virginia attorney general Democratic nominee Jay Jones was in crisis mode after controversial texts were first reported earlier this fall by the National Review.
Jones acknowledged and apologized for texts he sent in 2022, when he compared then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert to mass murderers Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, adding that if he was given two bullets, he would use both against the GOP lawmaker to shoot him in the head.
But he faced a chorus of calls from Republicans to drop out of the race.
Earle-Sears didn’t waste an opportunity to link Spanberger to Jones. And during last month’s chaotic and only gubernatorial debate, where Earle-Sears repeatedly interrupted Spanberger, the GOP gubernatorial nominee called on her Democratic rival to tell Jones to end his attorney general bid.
“The comments that Jay Jones made are absolutely abhorrent,” Spanberger said at the debate. But she neither affirmed nor pulled back her support of Jones.
The winner will succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
New York City
The mayoral election in the nation’s most populous city always grabs outsized attention, especially this year as New York City may elect its first Muslim and first millennial mayor.
Mamdani’s victory in June’s Democratic Party mayoral primary in the deep blue city sent political shock waves across the country. And he’s come under attack from Republicans and from his rivals on the ballot over his far-left proposals.
From left, independent mayoral candidate former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani participate in a mayoral debate, on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in New York. (Angelina Katsanis/Pool-AP Photo)
Mamdani is facing off against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who came in a distant second in the primary and is now running as an independent candidate. Cuomo is aiming for a political comeback after resigning as governor four years ago amid multiple scandals.
Also running is two-time Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, a co-founder of the Guardian Angels, the non-profit, volunteer-based community safety group.
Embattled Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who was running for re-election as an independent, dropped out of the race last month. He recently backed Cuomo, but his name remains on the ballot.
California
Voters in heavily blue California will vote in November on whether to set aside their popular nonpartisan redistricting commission for the rest of the decade and allow the Democrat-dominated legislature to determine congressional redistricting for the next three election cycles.
The vote will be the culmination of an effort by Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Democrats to create up to five left-leaning congressional seats in the Golden State to counter the new maps that conservative Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a couple of months ago, which will create up to five more right-leaning U.S. House districts in the red state of Texas.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California speaks during a congressional redistricting event, on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025, in Los Angeles.(Mario Tama/Getty Images)
The redistricting in Texas, which came after Trump’s urging, is part of a broader effort by the GOP across the country to pad their razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.
Trump is aiming to avoid a repeat of the 2018 midterms, during his first term in office, when Republicans lost control of the House.
But three Democrat-leaning justices on the state Supreme Court, following the completion of their 10-year terms, are running this year to keep their seats in “Yes” or “No” retention elections.
The election could upend the court’s composition for the next decade, heavily influence whether Democrats or Republicans have an advantage in the state’s congressional delegation and legislature, and impact crucial cases including voting rights and reproductive rights.
While state Supreme Court elections typically don’t grab much national attention, contests where the balance of a court in a key battleground state is up for grabs have attracted tons of outside money.
The state Supreme Court showdown this spring in Wisconsin, where the 4-3 liberal majority was maintained, drew nearly $100 million in outside money as both parties poured resources into the election.
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in the swing state of New Hampshire. He covers the campaign trail from coast to coast.”
