Date: Monday, 13 April 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/nycs-new-mayor-zohran-mamdani-faces
https://theduran.com/nycs-new-mayor-zohran-mamdani-faces-hostile-mainstream
NYC’s New Mayor Zohran Mamdani Faces Hostile Mainstream Press
12 April 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
His only favorable news-coverage is from non-mainstream, non-billionaire-controlled, media, mostly the Mayor’s office itself. All of the mainstream media are trying to ditch any chance for him to rise in the Democratic Party so as to replace the Democratic Party’s current congress-members and Presidential contestants by persons who are not owned/controlled by the Party’s megadonors. Here are typical positive and negative current media reports about him:
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https://www.instagram.com/reels/DW7tOcLBMRF/
10 April 2026, Zohran Mamdani, NYC’s Mayor, from his office
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This is having a very, very difficult effect across our city on prices across the board.
00:05
And I think that it's important to say that we have a federal government that has found tens of billions of dollars to plunge millions into despair
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and refuses to use that same money to uplift working class New Yorkers and Americans at large.
00:21
And I hear so often from New Yorkers about this cost of living crisis and the fact that it is decades since it was first said.
00:29
But the people are frustrated that Tupac's words are still prescient about the fact that we have money for war but not to feed the poor.
00:35
And we're looking to advance a different kind of vision for government.
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https://www.instagram.com/reels/DUyUqoLkUiN/
10 April 2026, from Mamdani’s office.
This city is home to people of countless faiths. But no matter what you believe, one thing unites us: we are all New Yorkers. We will not allow ICE to terrorize our neighbors. …
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Mamdani’s administration scrambles on key appointment
Pushback over the mayor’s Department of Investigation pick, Nadia Shihata, is part of a widening spat with the City Council.
11 April 2026
NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani is scrambling to shore up support for a key appointment whose fate rests with the New York City Council — another twist in the mounting tensions between the mayor and the body of lawmakers meant to be a check on his power.
Mamdani’s team has been working behind the scenes to set up one-on-one meetings between Council members and his pick to lead the Department of Investigation, Nadia Shihata, according to four people with knowledge of the outreach granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The hope is the meetings will assuage lawmakers’ concerns about her past political support for the mayor.
The administration’s overtures — which come just days before lawmakers are set to vote on the nomination next week — indicated to at least one Council member that the mayor and his staff are worried about Shihata’s path to confirmation for the DOI commissioner post.
“Otherwise they don’t call,” said Councilmember Gale Brewer, who was among at least four lawmakers who received offers to meet with Shihata.
The sudden obstacle for Shihata’s nomination lands in Mamdani’s lap amid a broader and increasingly pitched budget feud between Mamdani and Council Speaker Julie Menin, as the mayor grapples with a $5.4 billion funding gap with few palatable options to close it. The tug of war over Shihata also comes as the Department of Investigation is probing allegations that a city employee was unlawfully fired for blowing the whistle on a romantic relationship between a high-ranking Mamdani appointee and her subordinate, an inquiry first reported by POLITICO.
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In February, Mamdani nominated Shihata, a former federal prosecutor whose experience at the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York’s public integrity section made her a logical pick for the job. However, the Mamdani team’s lobbying push comes after Shihata’s appearance at a Monday confirmation hearing where Council members grilled her on her independence from the administration.
Shihata donated $700 to Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral run and spent a day canvassing for his campaign.
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Because the Department of Investigation is tasked with rooting out corruption in city government, including in the mayor’s office, Council members questioned Shihata on whether she could, as the agency’s commissioner, maintain independence from Mamdani given her political involvement and relationship with one of his top aides.
Shihata pushed back, saying she and Kassem are not close friends — and that her long experience in law enforcement has shown she pursues cases without regard for the subject of a particular probe.
“I have investigated people I have supported in the past,” she said at Monday’s hearing. “That has not affected my ability to investigate them and reach conclusions driven by the evidence of the law.”
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Mamdani’s threat to increase property taxes, … would soak middle-class homeowners across the city, including in politically potent Black communities in Brooklyn and Queens.
All of it together makes the DOI confirmation process just one more headache Mamdani has to deal with at a time when he’s scrambling to address a budget gap that has thrown a major wrench into his expensive policy agenda.
The Department of Investigation has gone without a permanent head since its former commissioner, Jocelyn Strauber, resigned in mid-January after she learned Mamdani was considering replacing her.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
