Zohran Mamdani's historic mayoral victory on November 4 created a political earthquake both inside and outside New York City. With bold policies aimed at challenging the status quo in the U.S., a once obscure, long-shot democratic socialist candidate has become a celebrated new star of the Democratic Party - a party whose leaders continue to remain reluctant to endorse him.
President Donald Trump is trying to deploy National Guard members to cities across the United States in what he says is an attempt to combat "the war from within." Some Republican mayors and governors have embraced the deployments. But the effort is facing blowback in the courts, and the pushback from Democratic officials is strong. California has sued over the deployment of troops to Los Angeles.
The ability to retaliate against Donald Trump's power grabs and other outrages is a rare pleasure for Democrats, which is why Gavin Newsom's counter-gerrymandering effort in California is so wildly popular among Democrats. If Democrats can't stop Trump's egregious policies in Congress (and they really can't) and the U.S. Supreme Court is either enabling him or slow-walking efforts to rein him in (which it clearly is), then they need different arenas in which to contest his authoritarian ways.
I don't like that. There could be emergency situations [when you need] to go over the speed limit - a domestic violence situation, someone's coming after you, or whatever it may be.