USA

As Zohran Mamdani becomes the 111th mayor of New York, Republicans and Democrats are preparing for a political clash for the ages. The 34-year-old socialist (about to become one of the most well-known Democrats in the USA) is on a collision course with the US president.

On paper, the two New Yorkers couldn’t be more different. Trump, the 79-year-old former real estate baron, lived it up in Manhattan in the 1990s, calling Fifth Avenue his home. Mamdani is a social media savvy former housing counsellor from Queens, who has promised to “freeze the rent” for people living in the roughly 30 per cent of city units designated as “rent stabilised”.

Let’s get something straight about the civil war breaking out on the right: it’s not primarily about Tucker Carlson “platforming” or “normalizing” Nick Fuentes, or about Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ decision to defend Carlson, or even about the rise of antisemitism on the right.

The primary target here isn’t Carlson or Roberts, but Vice President J.D. Vance. And the people targeting him are Never Trump foreign policy interventionists who hope to destroy the MAGA movement and take back control of the Republican Party after Trump is gone.

In times of national emergency, should the Supreme Court dictate America’s grand strategy and international economic policies?

This question confronts the justices this week in Learning Resources v. Trump, a case that puts the president’s tariff powers to the test.

US President Donald Trump has said he would be reluctant to send federal funding to his hometown of New York if left-wing front-runner Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor of America’s biggest city this week.

“It’s gonna be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a Communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there,” Trump said in a television interview.