NYC Fire Chief to Quit Over Mamdani’s Stance on Israel for Some Reason

After Zohran Mamdani’s win Tuesday night in New York City’s mayoral election, some top city officials are heading for the exits.

FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker announced Wednesday that he will resign, and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Kaz Daughtry will likely follow, the New York Daily News reports. Tucker sent an email to Mayor Eric Adams only hours after Mamdani’s victory, saying that he will step down after December 19.

“Between now and then, I will continue to lead the greatest fire department in the world and will ensure an orderly transition,” the email said, according to the Daily News.

A fire department source told the newspaper that Tucker, who is Jewish and a Zionist, didn’t feel able to work well with Mamdani’s administration due to the mayor-elect’s views on Israel and Palestine. What that has to do with fire safety in New York is not clear, and Mamdani has unequivocally condemned antisemitism multiple times, including on Wednesday morning.

Last month, Mamdani told a Jewish congregation in Brooklyn, “I’m going to have people in my administration who are Zionists, whether liberal Zionists, or wherever they may be on that spectrum.”

Tucker, however, has political ties to Adams that seem to blur ethical lines. He owns a private security company that made some oddly timed donations to Adams without the required disclosures, before being appointed FDNY chief in 2024. He is currently traveling to Israel to meet with the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority, and may speak publicly about his resignation when he returns to New York.

Regarding Daughtry’s departure, the Daily News cited an unnamed source stating that the deputy mayor, as a member of the previous administration, didn’t see a future with Mamdani. Another Adams official told the Daily News that many other Adams staffers would likely resign in the coming days, as well.

President Donald Trump issued a nonsensical prophecy Wednesday for democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s term as New York City mayor.

While giving a speech at a forum of business leaders in Miami, Trump cited Mamdani’s victory as a means of criticizing congressional Democrats—though one of the party’s mainstream leaders never even endorsed Mamdani and didn’t appear to vote for him.

“If you wanna see what congressional Democrats wish to do to America, just look at the result of yesterday’s election in New York where their party installed a Communist as the mayor of the largest city in the nation,” Trump said, eliciting a round of tepid boos from the audience.

Trump went on to laud the city’s history of accepting refugees from Communist regimes—but quickly started fearmongering over the stunning results of New York City’s mayoral election the night before.

“Now the Democrats are so extreme that Miami will soon be the refuge for those fleeing communism in New York City. They flee, they flee!” Trump ranted. “Where do you live? ‘New York City, but I’m trying to leave because I don’t want to live in a Communist regime!’”

Trump continued to lament the supposedly rising tide of communism in the United States.

“After last night’s results, the decision facing all Americans could not be more clear: We have a choice between communism and common sense. Does that make sense to you?” Trump said.

No, it doesn’t, because much like failed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, whom the president had labeled a “Commie,” Mamdani isn’t actually a Communist. He’s a democratic socialist advocating for free city buses, cheaper groceries, and rent freezes—issues that ignited New York City’s electorate and garnered the most popular support of any mayoral candidate in the city’s history.

“And as long as I’m in the White House, the United States is not going Communist in any way shape or form, we’re gonna stop it,” Trump said.

“You know, I said [as] they were voting last night, ‘You could have a Communist or a thug,’” the president said. “And they took the Communist, you know? We could’ve done a little bit better in terms of candidates.”

Earlier this week, Trump issued a last-minute endorsement of independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York. After Mamdani’s victory was announced, as part of a wave of Democratic victories Tuesday, Trump took to Truth Social to try to convince his followers not to blame him for his party’s abject failure.

At least other MAGA Republicans didn’t take the loss too hard—oh wait, no, they immediately started decrying the imminent destruction of New York.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is starting off with a big move: bringing former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan to co-chair his transition team. 

Mamdani made the announcement during a speech Wednesday morning at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens. Khan will be joined on Mamdani’s transition team by women leaders from previous mayoral administrations: former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, nonprofit president Grace Bonilla, and budget expert Melanie Hartzog. Elana Leopold, Mamdani’s campaign adviser and a staffer to former Mayor Bill de Blasio, will lead the team of women leaders as executive director.

Khan is famous for her antitrust expertise, beginning with her work at the New America Foundation and continuing through her time at Yale Law School. When President Biden nominated her as FTC commissioner and later as FTC chair in 2021, she was the youngest nominee ever.   

As FTC chair, Khan was willing to take on major corporations such as Amazon and Microsoft to combat monopolies, earning praise from Democrats as well as Republicans, including JD Vance and Steve Bannon. Khan’s action against Ticketmaster drew bipartisan support for a Justice Department lawsuit against the company in May last year.

Mamdani’s inclusion of Khan for his transition suggests that he’s willing to take on powerful corporate interests as mayor as part of his agenda to make the city more affordable. The question is how much he’ll be able to do from New York City Hall.  

Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs were met with overwhelming skepticism from the Supreme Court Wednesday, as conservative justices joined their liberal colleagues in  expressing serious concerns over the legality of the president’s actions.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch appeared entirely unconvinced by the government’s defense of Trump’s tariffs while sharply questioning U.S. Solicitor General John D. Sauer, the president’s former personal lawyer. 

Barrett asked Sauer how Trump could possibly impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, which allows the president to regulate commerce in case of a national emergency but doesn’t actually include the word “tariff.” 

Barrett, whom Trump nominated to the high court, also pressed Sauer for a single other example of Congress conferring its tariff authority to the president—but the government’s lawyer couldn’t summon an actual response. 

Gorsuch asserted that Congress would never wrest its tariff power back from the executive, suggesting that the Trump administration’s interpretation of the IEEPA was “a one-way ratchet towards the gradual accretion of power to the executive branch.” He also pressed Sauer on what constituted an emergency under the IEEPA, and even got the president’s lawyer to agree that climate change would be a suitable excuse for invoking the rule. 

Roberts took a turn grilling Sauer too, implying that Trump’s tariffs had overstepped Congress’s authority because the “vehicle is imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been the core power of Congress.”

“So, to have the president’s foreign affairs power trump that basic power for Congress, seems to me to kind of at least neutralize between the two powers, the executive power and the legislative power,” Roberts continued. 

One expert noted to CNN that Sauer repeatedly used the word “tariff” as a verb, in order to avoid using the word “tax.”

Roberts also noted that IEEPA had never been used to impose tariffs. “It does seem like that’s major authority and the basis for the claim, seems to be a misfit,” he said. 

Democrats have argued for months about how to win young men back into their coalition. New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani won them over by a massive margin Tuesday night. 

Early exit polls from NBC had Mamdani winning 18- to 29-year-old men in New York City by a staggering 40 points, easily eclipsing opponent Andrew Cuomo. 

Fellow Democratic electees also made inroads with young men, but not by nearly as much. Abigail Spanberger won about six in 10 young men in Virginia, according to the AP voter poll,  and Mikie Sherrill won just over half of young men in New Jersey. 

While Mamdani has the advantage of a much bluer electorate—and of course, being a man—his democratic socialist message is markedly more progressive than that of Sherrill or Spanberger. It should come as no surprise that a group that doesn’t expect to ever own a home or pay off their student loans was attracted to a message centered around affordability in the most expensive city in the country. 

Democratic congressional leadership has been lukewarm on Mamdani, at best, but they would be foolish to ignore that Mamdani and his policies resonated deeply with young men. And while they’re quick to point out that what works in New York City won’t work everywhere in the United States, the very issue Mamdani highlighted is a problem everywhere in the U.S. Young men—and most of the city—didn’t respond positively to Mamdani because he made empty platitudes about going back to “kitchen table issues.” They responded so positively because Mamdani presented real, progressive solutions to the most pervasive issue in their lives.