"On Wednesday, his Administration announced that, owing to air-traffic-controller shortages exacerbated by the shutdown, ten per cent of all flights at forty major airports around the country would be cancelled, causing travel mayhem in a high-stakes bid to force Democrats to end the impasse. I'm not quite sure about Trump's theory of the case: If Americans didn't blame the President already for the crisis, wouldn't they be much more likely to now? (And the data suggest that the electorate already does hold Republicans responsible.)"
"How long can it be until Trump has successfully picked one with New York's incoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani, the thirty-four-year-old Democratic Socialist whose unlikely ascension this year has been greeted with almost as much enthusiasm by national Republican strategists as by young progressives in Brooklyn? Mamdani's election-night victory speech suggested that he is more than willing to play the foil to Trump, even trolling the TV-obsessed President by telling him to "turn the volume up" so he could hear Mamdani's come-and-get-us-if-you-can words of defiance."
The government shutdown has become the longest in history, surpassing the thirty-five-day record. The Administration announced cancellations at forty major airports, citing air-traffic-controller shortages worsened by the shutdown, aiming to force Democrats to end the impasse. The cancellation strategy is intended to change the subject and signal that the President will not concede after election losses. Potential clashes with local officials are likely, exemplified by New York's incoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who publicly taunted the President and positioned himself as a willing foil. Democratic politicians have used defiant fundraising rhetoric in response.
Read at The New Yorker
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