Even Bill Kristol Says He Would Vote for Zohran Mamdani for NYC Mayor

Even neocon Bill Kristol would rather have a democratic socialist for mayor of New York City than Andrew Cuomo.

In a Wednesday interview with Claremont College’s The Forum, Kristol, now The Bulwark’s editor at large, stated that the idea of “going back” to Cuomo, who previously served as New York attorney general and governor, would be “ridiculous.”

Kristol said he would probably vote for Mamdani in the general election if he lived in New York City, although he wouldn’t have thought to rank him in the primary. But the bulk of his ire was for Cuomo and the establishment.

“The idea of going back to Cuomo is just, I think, ridiculous. I think if it had been the first round, I would’ve voted for someone else and maybe wouldn’t have even ranked Mamdani, and would’ve had other people who were more centrist, liberal types,” he said.

“All these big shot, you know, finance types in New York, they couldn’t get behind anyone except for Andrew Cuomo. It’s really pathetic, in my opinion. So now they’re rallying to Cuomo with some of them, but I don’t have that much sympathy for that,” Kristol continued.

An ex-Republican like Kristol is, in theory, the exact kind of support that Cuomo would be looking for. The fact that he can’t get it from even the center right is an indictment of Cuomo’s lack of juice, energy, and integrity more than anything else. Kristol doesn’t even seem to like Mamdani all that much, but his disdain for Cuomo overrules that.

“New York is a huge city. [Mamdani is] not going to destroy it, I don’t think. He’s gonna set up five silly government-run grocery stores, I guess. I don’t think he even will do that [inaudible]. And so they’ll be fine,” Kristol said. “I do think the right’s reaction to Mamdani has been a little hysterical. He’s a very impressive politician. I don’t know that he’s going to be a very good mayor. He’s 33 years old, he’s never run anything. They’re good people who could work for him though, in New York. So, who knows? I don’t know.”

The interview has yet to be released in full.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is one of a handful of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members who are hiding out on military bases so they don’t have to be exposed to the public that hates them.

The Atlantic reported Thursday that Miller, his wife, and their two children have relocated out of their home north of Arlington, Virginia, to a U.S. military base after local activists embarked on a campaign to shame Miller for his role leading Trump’s fascistic crime and immigration crackdown.

A group called Arlington Neighbors United for Humanity have organized protests near the ghoulish politico’s home, posted wanted posters with his address alleging he’d committed “crimes against humanity,” and written messages on the sidewalk in front of his house in chalk warning that “Miller is preying on families.” Katie Miller lamented that the day after far-right activist Charlie Kirk was killed, a protester approached her outside her home. She claims the protester said, “I’m watching you.”

Now Miller and his family have reportedly joined a smattering of political appointees who have fled to the safety and seclusion of military facilities, where the public’s anger can’t reach them and their own insidious policy ideas can fester.

Another unnamed senior White House official had also relocated to a military base after Kirk’s assassination, The Atlantic reported. They were not named due to a specific foreign threat. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved into military housing typically reserved for the Coast Guard commandant on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, after the Daily Mail described the location of her Washington, D.C., apartment building. A top administration official told New York magazine last month that DHS had stalled confirming any high-ranking Coast Guard officials because it could threaten to remove her from her new digs.

Both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live on “Generals’ Row” at Fort McNair, where Hegseth’s home was expected to undergo more than $137,000 in renovations before he moved in. 

These Trump officials’ removal to military bases risks deepening their cultural and political division from the Americans they serve. It puts a strain on military resources, while also emphasizing the military’s growing role in the Trump administration. 

“In a robust democracy, what you want is the military to be for the defense of the country as a whole and not just one party,” Adria Lawrence, an associate professor of international studies and political science at John Hopkins University, told The Atlantic.  

Meanwhile, Trump has stripped security details from his political opponents. It’s worth noting that the only politicians who have been assassinated in the last year were Democrats. 

The Trump administration is keeping Congress in the dark on its Caribbean boat bombings—and it’s angering people on both sides of the aisle.

The United States has committed 14 known strikes on small boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean over the last two months, killing at least 61 people.

But not all lawmakers are being treated equally when it comes to accessing information regarding the attacks. On Wednesday, it became abundantly clear that Democrats had been shut out of a Senate briefing on the extrajudicial killings, sending lawmakers on both sides of the aisle into a frenzy.

In an interview with CNN’s Eric Burnett Wednesday, Republican Representative Mike Turner emphasized that Congress had not “received the information that it needs to.”

“I do think that there are serious concerns as to both the legal construct as to what the administration is doing, and there needs to be more information that’s provided to Congress,” Turner said. “And I think both the logistics and the intelligence information needs to be shared more, more broadly.”

Turner, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, revealed that no one in Congress had received a “full presentation” of the scope of and plan for future boat strikes.

Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a venomous statement Wednesday arguing that the partisan information gap was “indefensible” and a “slap in the face” to Congress’s war powers responsibilities.

“Shutting Democrats out of a briefing on U.S. military strikes and withholding the legal justification for those strikes from half the Senate is indefensible and dangerous,” Warner posted on X. “Decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of one political party. For any administration to treat them that way erodes our national security and flies in the face of Congress’ constitutional obligation to oversee matters of war and peace.”

Warner then underscored previous commitments by State Secretary Marco Rubio, who Warner said had “personally promised” a face-to-face meeting on Capitol Hill regarding the details and alleged justification for the attack.

The White House has insisted the violence is justified, broadly accusing the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia. U.S. lawmakers have been more than skeptical, though—particularly since several of the boats were thousands of miles away in international waters, and since the attacks were conducted without prior investigations or interdiction.

Trump has blamed the attacks on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who has remained atop the country’s government despite Trump’s forceful attempts in 2019 to install then-opposition leader Juan Guaido.

On Friday, the Pentagon announced it would deploy the world’s largest warship—the USS Gerald R. Ford—to Latin America in an effort to ramp up the military firepower available for fighting the small watercraft.

But the escalation has only further strained America’s relationship with its Latin American neighbors. In an address to his country late last week, Maduro accused the U.S. of seeking “a new eternal war.”

“They promised they would never again get involved in a war, and they are fabricating a war,” he said.

That infamous Signal chat keeps coming back to haunt the Trump administration.

On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz was interrupted in the middle of a speech before a U.N. General Assembly vote on whether to condemn U.S. economic restrictions on Cuba.

“Mr. Waltz, this is the United Nations General Assembly,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said, cutting off Waltz. “It is not a Signal chat. Nor is it the House of Representatives,” he added, also calling Waltz’s remarks “uncivilized, crude and gross.”

Waltz was not happy.

“I am well aware of the location in which we are speaking,” the ambassador responded. “And this is also not a Communist illegitimate legislature in Havana.”

Waltz attacked the Cuban government as “illegitimate and brutal,” claiming that he was correcting “the fake news, the misinformation, and this false reality the regime seeks to create year after year with this vote.”

Ultimately, Waltz’s tough talk swayed few, if any, countries, as the U.N. General Assembly voted 165–7, with 12 abstentions, Wednesday to condemn the American economic embargo against Cuba, the thirty-third year in a row it has done so. The resolution is symbolic and carries no legal weight, but reflects global opinion.

The whole reason Waltz is the U.N. ambassador is because, while previously serving as national security adviser, he set up a Signal chat where secret military plans were discussed with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and other top government officials and then mistakenly added The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg. Waltz was removed from his position and instead nominated to the U.N. post, a job that requires diplomatic savvy, which he seems to be lacking.

In a massive rollback for LGBTQ rights, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that judges have the right to refuse to officiate gay weddings if they have a “sincerely held religious belief.”

This rule change came last week in a comment added to the state’s judicial code. “It is not a violation of these canons for a judge to publicly refrain from performing a wedding ceremony based upon a sincerely held religious belief,” the new rule reads.

This move essentially nullifies Canon 4 of the Texas judicial code, which blocked judges from doing things that would “cast doubt on their ability to act impartially or interfere with the proper performance of judicial duties”—like officiating weddings of straight couples but not gay ones. (In Texas, judges are not required to officiate weddings at all.)

In 2019, Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley was accused of violating the judicial code when she was given a public warning for refusing to officiate gay weddings. Hensley stopped doing all wedding officiating when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, but promptly started discriminating again when she returned to straight-only weddings the following year, refusing any same-sex couples who came to her. Hensley sued over the public warning she later received, but now, she’s been temporarily vindicated.

“Now going forward, every judge in Texas will enjoy the freedom Judge Hensley has fought so hard for in her case,” Hiram Sasser of the conservative First Liberty Institute said. “As for her case specifically, this amendment melts away the reasons the Commission relied on to punish Judge Hensley.”

“Judge Hensley treated them respectfully,” Texas Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock wrote, of the same-sex couples she refused. “They got married nearby. They went about their lives. Judge Hensley went back to work, her Christian conscience clean, her knees bent only to her God. Sounds like a win-win.”

Not everyone agrees.

“One of the claims that I think will be made in response to litigation that is likely is that, ‘Well, there are other people who can perform the wedding ceremony, so you can’t insist that a particular judge do it,’” law professor Jason Mazzone said. “But that, of course, is not how equal protection works, and it’s not how we expect government officials to operate.”

That one sentence at the bottom of the Texas judicial code is effective immediately, and may even have an impact on the right’s efforts to overturn gay marriage protections in the United States, adding the right to love to the list of quickly eroding liberties currently under attack.