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Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Thursday that his unannounced meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office was productive and expressed optimism about his pitch to build 12,000 units of affordable housing at Sunnyside Yards in Queens with the president’s support.
In a photo posted following the meeting, Trump is seen holding two front pages of the Daily News. One is from 1975, when then‑President Gerald Ford famously told New York City to “drop dead” (as the tabloid put it) after City Hall requested an emergency loan to prevent bankruptcy. The other is a mock-up with the headline, “Trump to City: Let’s Build,” with a subheading noting, “Trump delivers 12,000 homes.”
“I had a productive meeting with President Trump this afternoon. I’m looking forward to building more housing in New York City,” Mamdani wrote in the post directly after the visit.
Mamdani’s Press Secretary Joe Calvello said Thursday evening that the mayor presented Trump with the mock-up front pages as he pitched “a project with an estimated 12,000 units.”
“The president was very enthusiastic about the idea that we pitched him,” said Calvello.
He said that during Mamdani’s last in-person meeting with the President, Trump asked him to come back with “some big ideas on how we can build things together here in New York City, and that’s what he did today.”
“The mayor took him up on his offer and went to DC today to pitch him about a possible project in NYC that could deliver one of the biggest federal investments in housing of the past 50 years,” said Calvello.
In a statement issued late Thursday, the mayor’s office confirmed that the city is seeking $21 billion in federal grants to begin construction on the long-stalled, ambitious plan to build above the Sunnyside Yards.
In 2015, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio first suggested building on the site. In 2020, the city and Amtrak, the federal agency that owns the majority of the site, released a long-awaited ‘Sunnyside Yard Master Plan.’
The master plan called for the creation of 100 percent affordable housing with 12,000 homes, 60 acres of new open space, equitable home ownership opportunities, the long-sought Sunnyside Station, and necessary infrastructure and other public amenities.
At the time of the master plan’s release, the city’s Economic Development Corporation said the “generational plan” would likely be rolled out over several decades and involves decking over 115 acres of the 180-acre Sunnyside Yard. At the time, the estimated cost to build the deck would be about $5.4 billion– with the total cost of the platform and infrastructure about $14.4 billion. It then stalled under the Adams administration.
If the grants sought by the mayor are approved, Mamdani’s office said it would pave the way for the construction of those affordable homes, including 6,000 new Mitchell-Lama-style homes which were also outlined in the plan that was shaped by a series of public workshops and meetings held between May 2018 and the end of 2019. The project, city officials said, would create 30,000 union jobs and deliver new parks, schools, and health care clinics on the site.
“New York City is facing a generational affordability challenge,” Mayor Mamdani said. “Working families are being priced out of the neighborhoods they built. To meet this moment, we need a true federal partner prepared to invest boldly and act urgently. I appreciated the opportunity to speak directly with President Trump about building more housing in any single project than our city has seen since 1973.”
According to the city, the Trump administration agreed to “continue discussions in the weeks ahead.”
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Plea to release students in ICE detention
Also during Thursday’s meeting, Mamdani made a direct appeal to President Trump and secured the release of the Columbia University student who was arrested by ICE agents in her dorm building earlier that morning. The federal officers allegedly said they were NYPD officers looking for a missing child in order to gain access to the building of Elaina Aghayeva, a Columbia School of General Studies senior.
Mamdani said he received a phone call from Trump after leaving the meeting, and “he has just informed me that she will be released imminently.” Aghayeva later posted on her Instagram story at around 3:45 p.m. that she had been released.
Press Secretary Calvello said that after raising Aghayeva’s case, the mayor also gave Trump’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, a list of four NYC students in ICE custody, asking them to consider dismissing their cases as well.
The mayor made the unannounced trip to Washington, D.C. on Thursday morning for a meeting with President Trump, the second in-person meeting between the two leaders whose relationship has drawn national attention.
Mamdani’s visit was not listed on his public schedule and was first reported by The New York Times on Thursday morning. A source familiar with the meeting confirmed the mayor’s presence in the nation’s capital to amNewYork, but did not initially disclose the agenda.
It comes nearly three months after the two held an unexpectedly cordial Oval Office discussion in November, when then-Mayor-elect Mamdani traveled to the White House. During that visit, they discussed shared concerns about housing affordability, public safety, and the cost of living.
At the earlier November meeting, Trump praised Mamdani’s leadership potential and suggested a willingness to support initiatives to improve conditions in the city, even as both men acknowledged significant policy disagreements.
The 34-year-old mayor, a democratic socialist who took office in January, has repeatedly drawn sharp criticism from Trump, who during the 2025 mayoral campaign labeled him a “communist” — a false characterization, but the President has continued to use it. During the election, the president repeatedly threatened to cut off federal funding to the city if Mamdani were to win.
In turn, Mamdani previously called Trump’s approach to governance authoritarian and fascist, and his election victory speech vowed to push back against the president’s threats to defund the city and meddle in his administration. Since taking office, however, the mayor has toned down his campaign criticism of the president as he seeks to foster a good relationship with the federal government.
The pair have kept in constant contact since their initial meeting, and when asked about the content of their conversations, Mamdani has kept the content and frequency of those conversations closely under wraps.
Asked about it on Wednesday, after Trump shouted him out during his State of the Union address, Mamdani said: “I’ll keep the conversations that I have with the president private. I will tell you, however, that whenever they do happen, they always focus on how to better our city.”
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Adam Daly
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