New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch issued a pointed warning against blurring the distinction between 9/11 terrorists and first responders Wednesday, while Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood beside her, comments some observers interpreted as a veiled rebuke of the mayor.
Tisch delivered the remarks during the unveiling of a new 9/11 Memorial Wall at One Police Plaza honoring more than 469 NYPD members who have died from illnesses connected to their service following the terrorist attacks.
&#8220;Preserving that history also means preserving its moral clarity,&#8221; Tisch said. &#8220;The men who attacked this city were terrorists. The men and women who ran into the towers to save innocent lives were heroes. Twenty-five years cannot be allowed to blur that distinction and shame on those who do.&#8221;
Many who watched her speak on Wednesday immediately assumed that she was speaking to the mayor, even if indirectly.
&#8220;Jessica Tisch said this with Zohran Mamdani sitting beside her. Public officials must show &#8216;moral clarity&#8217; about 9/11 and never blur the distinction between heroes and terrorists. &#8216;Shame on those who do.&#8217; She didn’t say his name. She didn’t have to,&#8221; former financial exec Sam Antar <a href="https://x.com/SamAntar/status/2097739368622342489">posted</a>.
While the police commissioner did not mention anyone by name, Tisch&#8217;s remarks come just a few days after Mamdani signed official orders designating September 11 as a Day of Remembrance and addressing security concerns ahead of the 25th anniversary events.
After signing the orders, Mamdani gifted the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mamdani-marks-9-11-with-slap-in-the-face-move-tied-to-al-qaeda-terrorist">ceremonial pen</a> to his chief counsel, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mamdani-names-al-qaeda-defense-attorney-as-new-york-citys-chief-counsel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ramzi Kassem</a> — who has been directly linked to al-Qaeda terrorists — but because Tisch was standing between them at the time, he first gave the pen to her and asked her to &#8220;pass it&#8221; to Kassem. Witnesses noted that Tisch made an abrupt exit from the room after that.
Critics were quick to suggest that Mamdani had not done that by accident — that he knew the optics of such a move and did not care.
&#8220;This childish, calculated display of passive aggression was missed by no one, and will not be forgotten by Tisch or by NYC’s millions of 9/11 survivors,&#8221; Fox Business anchor <a href="https://x.com/DavidAsmanfox/status/2096445982997102742">David Asman</a> said.
Matthew Hennessey wrote in a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/mamdanis-pen-is-a-message-of-contempt-a0a3e9b0?st=TBKE8V">Wall Street Journal</a> op-ed, &#8220;Everyone deserves a lawyer. But by deliberately handing his ceremonial pen to this man, Mr. Mamdani mocked the loss his city suffered on 9/11. And he forced Ms. Tisch to participate in that mockery. He might as well have turned to the cameras and winked.&#8221;
&nbsp;

Mayor Mamdani Joins NYPD Commissioner Tisch At Unveiling Of New 9/11 Memorial Wall At One Police Plaza

NYC Police Commish Appears To Shade Mamdani In Pointed 9/11 Comments

NYC Police Commish Shades Mamdani In 9/11 Comments

jessica tisch

nypd

politics

ramzi kassem

september 11 attacks

zohran mamdani

First, a few questions: Are you a single white woman in America in 2026? Is the only correct take on Lindsay Clancy the one you have adopted after scouring TikTok like the world’s greatest true-crime detective? Do you own one or more items of “Hot Girls For Zohran” flair?
Then this message is for you: This pumpkin spice season, don’t miss out on the must-have accessory of the season — your new jihad-adjacent boyfriend. He’s intense, he’s problematic, and his opinions on 9/11 are sure to anger all the relatives you hate the most over the holidays.
Kathy Hochul showed the way when she rocked that hijab in exchange for a group of very important Muslim men having to suffer the rare experience of listening to a woman talk. It’s a natural progression – you go from hashtagging for Gaza to embracing this inventive new idea called socialism to realizing that sure, Luigi murdered a guy, but have you noticed he’s hot?
The speediest path to Karen-izing Islam in the West is personalizing the narrative, and you have the power to do it. And trust me, the internal satisfaction of this accessory boyfriend will be immense. It comes when you post your orchard-infused Uggs-resurgence Instagram story about taking him apple picking for the first time. (For the record, you’ll be doing all the picking). It comes when you tell your mother no, it’s not that you don’t like Leinenkugel’s anymore; it’s just that it’s haram. It comes when your uncle storms out of Thanksgiving muttering about Ann Coulter (who?) and turning the Middle East into a “sheet of glass,” whatever that means. Probably something racist. Come on. It’s twenty-five years after 9/11, and it’s time people just grow up and let it go.
The best part about this move isn’t just that you’re trendsetting; it’s the emotional rush of getting ahead of where everything is going and gaining the moral authority to pass judgment on all of it. Let the weirdo right-wingers eat each other on X arguing about the cost of burritos and welfare for tradwives and the Latin Mass. You’re staking out ground that will infuse the next iteration of America’s human resources departments as part of a new protected class. And what’s the personal cost for you? Some hijab-prompted dermatitis? Big deal, your hair was shedding from the SSRIs anyway.
Some of your best friends will judge you, but that’s how you know this is so right. Someone posted a beautiful quote you saw the other day – it was from a French author; you haven’t read the book, but it’s a good summary: “the summit of human happiness resides in the most absolute submission.” Don’t you have the right to be happy? They’re just jealous they don’t have a man who believes in anything beyond prediction markets and Patagonia.
So this decorative gourd season, don’t just run things back with all the tired old tropes you embraced the past few years. Head up to a rally in Michigan. Be the first in your friend group to get that new must-have accessory. Sure, sometimes he can seem a little bossy. But what’s the worst that can happen?

image_d16c8dd0

The Hottest Pumpkin Spice Accessory Is Your New Jihadi Boyfriend

dating and relationships

islam

kathy hochul

opinion

This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.
***
Published in 1996, Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” predicted that, with the end of the Cold War, global conflict would center on the divide between Islamic and Western civilizations. Thirty years later, however, and a quarter-century after 9/11, the principal fault line runs through Islam itself, separating two ideological worlds.
Within Western diaspora communities, Islam has become intertwined with Third-Worldism and postcolonial theory, both of which see Western imperialism as the great evil of the modern era. Meantime, much of the Middle East and Asia has turned toward pragmatism, normalization, and acceptance of Western predominance as a geopolitical reality. The gap between these rival outlooks now exceeds the divide between Islam and the West that Huntington anticipated when his book first appeared.
<a href="https://manhattan.institute/subscribe?utm_source=DailyWire&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=reihan">Click here for more Manhattan Institute content.</a>
After 9/11, American strategy focused on political Islam. Al-Qaeda and its eventual Islamic State offshoot, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Islamic Republic differed sharply in theology and tactics but shared a revolutionary ambition to overturn the Western-led order. Today, that Islamist challenge has fragmented. Al-Qaeda has splintered, the Islamic State has lost its caliphate, Egypt has outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Gulf monarchies increasingly treat Islamist movements as threats.
Iran remains the principal revolutionary holdout. The Islamic Republic defines itself through opposition to the United States and Israel while sustaining a regional network of armed proxies. Yet the foundations of that project have weakened. Hezbollah has suffered major battlefield losses, Iranian influence in Syria has contracted, nationwide protests in 2019 and 2022 exposed deep domestic disillusionment, and the ideals of the 1979 Iranian Revolution command little enthusiasm among younger generations. Tehran still exports its revolutionary ideology, but its influence across the broader Middle East continues to wane.
Much of the Middle East has chosen a different course. The Abraham Accords institutionalized security cooperation and trade with Israel. Morocco expanded ties with Jerusalem to strengthen diplomacy, defense, and economic growth. The United Arab Emirates built partnerships spanning artificial intelligence, aviation, finance, and defense. Saudi Arabia evaluates normalization through the lens of security guarantees, advanced technology, its Vision 2030 modernization program, and regional stability. Across the region, partnerships are judged less by ideology than by the capabilities they deliver.
This transformation reflects a broader shift in how Arab and Muslim states understand statecraft. Scientific discovery, industrialization, and institutional innovation have long rewarded societies that adopt the world’s most advanced technologies, regardless of their origin. Middle Eastern governments have embraced the same logic after experiencing the costs of resisting Western innovations — most notably, the Ottoman Empire’s centuries-long restriction on printing in Arabic script until 1727, which left the region lagging in the spread of knowledge long after Europe had surged ahead.
That historical stagnation gave rise to a century of Arab intellectual discourse centered on the crisis of modernity: the painful question of why Islamic societies had fallen behind the West. Thinkers such as Shakib Arslan, in works like “Our Decline: Its Causes and Remedies,” diagnosed cultural isolation and technological backwardness as the root of the problem and urged selective emulation of Western advances. Leading-edge technologies have become strategic assets because they determine military capability, economic competitiveness, and geopolitical influence. Leaders once legitimized through anti-Western resistance now measure success through modernization.  
Western intellectual life has followed a different trajectory. Universities interpret the Middle East through postcolonial theory, with Edward Said’s “Orientalism” becoming one of the field’s canonical texts. Within that framework, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict serves as the paradigmatic story of settler colonialism and resistance. After October 7, these ideas spread beyond academia into campus protests, divestment campaigns, professional associations, philanthropic organizations, and elections. Palestine became the organizing symbol for broader critiques of American influence, capitalism, and the liberal international order. Muslim identity merged with narratives of dispossession and resistance.
The consequences extend well beyond the campus. Anti-Israel activism once largely confined to Islamist organizations now operates comfortably within progressive politics. Zohran Mamdani’s appointment of Ramzi Kassem — who represented Ahmed al-Darbi after his conviction for the al-Qaeda-linked MV Limburg bombing — as New York City’s chief counsel illustrates that institutional migration. University encampments, municipal resolutions invoking “from the river to the sea,” and coalitions organized around decolonization reflect the same evolution. Revolutionary Islam now finds expression through postcolonial theory rather than religious doctrine. Iranian-aligned clerical networks in places such as Dearborn, Michigan, frame public life around opposition to American influence and solidarity with Tehran.
The same rift has hardened in Europe, where diaspora activism contrasts with the pragmatism of Middle Eastern governments. Universities and progressive institutions have embraced postcolonialism, entrenching narratives of permanent resistance and contributing to a sharp rise in antisemitism, particularly on British campuses, where incidents increased more than fourfold after October 7. Gulf states view these environments as incubators of radicalization. The UAE, for example, removed British universities from its state scholarship program — even though nearly 9,000 Emirati students had studied in the U.K. in recent years — while still funding study in Israel.
These trajectories suggest sustained confrontation. The version of Islam that has emerged within Western universities, activist groups, and progressive politics clashes with both the Western societies in which it operates and the Middle Eastern governments now abandoning revolutionary politics.
Three forces drive this collision. First, the opposing sides draw political legitimacy from different sources. Much diaspora activism is rooted in historical grievance, anticolonial struggle, and opposition to Western influence, producing an anti-system worldview in which cooperation with the U.S.-led order can itself signify submission or betrayal. Pragmatic Middle Eastern governments increasingly see cooperation with the United States and Israel as a means to strengthen security, attract investment, acquire technology, and accelerate economic growth. This divide now plays out across Western democracies, where boycotts, campus protests, municipal resolutions, and electoral campaigns target both Arab governments pursuing these partnerships and the Western institutions that support them.
Second, priorities have diverged between governments in the Middle East and North Africa and some of their diasporas in the West. Regional governments increasingly prioritize investment, technology, military strength, and economic growth. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for example, are investing heavily in AI and data centers. Meantime, several pro-Palestinian movements in the West have expanded their campaigns from opposition to Israeli technology contracts to opposition to the data centers and cloud infrastructure supporting them. The divide increasingly places diaspora activism at odds with the economic and technological priorities of regional governments and complicates relations with the United States.
Third, Western institutions amplify the diaspora vision far beyond its demographic weight. Universities, philanthropic foundations, professional associations, media organizations, and segments of electoral politics have absorbed postcolonial ideas that recast Middle Eastern affairs through the lens of decolonization and racial justice. By contrast, Gulf restrictions on Islamist financing and expanding cooperation with Israel reflect a deliberate effort to contain the same ideological currents sweeping across Western public life. The United States and Europe thus face pressure from two directions: an ideological movement extending its institutional reach at home; and regional allies that regard that same movement as a direct threat.
Huntington was right that culture would matter after the Cold War, but he misidentified the principal fault line. Political evolution within civilizations matters more than the boundaries between them.
The United States will continue to confront Islamism in the twenty-first century. But the principal challenge will not come from Huntington’s civilizational Islam, but instead from the version the West has itself helped cultivate: a diaspora Islam molded by Third-Worldism, postcolonial grievance, and a politics of permanent resistance.
***
This is republished with permission from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. The original can be found <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/islam-middle-east-iran-israel-west">here</a>.
<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/person/zineb-riboua">Zineb Riboua</a> is a research fellow with Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East.

George Washington University students put keffiyeh on the George Washington monument

How The West Absorbed The Middle East’s Revolutionary Past

abraham accords

iran

islamism

middle east

postcolonialism

Austria began implementing a new ban on headscarves for young girls at schools as lawmakers grapple with the growing influence of Islam in the country. 
The ban, which prohibits girls 14 years old and younger from wearing headscarves at schools, went into effect on Monday as school started. Supporters of the proposal have <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyz74xn8q8o">argued</a> that the intent is to establish a &#8220;clear commitment to gender equality.” Claudia Bauer, a top Austrian official and member of the conservative People&#8217;s Party, described the headscarf as &#8220;a sign of oppression and a means of controlling girls from the earliest childhood.”
While about just 8% of Austria’s population is Muslim, data indicates that around 35% of students at primary schools in Vienna, the country’s most populous city, are Muslim. 
The law passed last year after a similar effort was struck down by a court in 2020. The new law was made more broad. When violations occur, school officials must meet with the girl and her legal guardians. Repeated violations could lead to a $929 fine and notification of child protective services, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4djk0jj4xo">according</a> to the BBC. 
Yannick Shetty, a supporter of the ban and member of the liberal Neos party, said the proposal is &#8220;not a measure against a religion. It is a measure to protect the freedom of girls in this country.&#8221;
Others, like Ricarda Berger, a spokeswoman for the Freedom Party of Austria, want the ban to be extended. 
&#8220;There needs to be a general ban on headscarves in schools; political Islam has no place here,” she said. 
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a radical pro-Islam group based in Washington, D.C., claimed Austria’s law was “fascist.” 
“This fascist legislation is a step backward from religious rights in Europe and a transparently bigoted attack on the Austrian Muslim community. This also sets a dangerous precedent for religious minorities across Europe,” the group said. “We stand in solidarity with Austrian Muslims as they pursue legal challenges to this unjust and discriminatory policy.”
The debate over the growing presence of Islam has also raged across the United States in recent months, with the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York and the selection of Abdul El-Sayed as the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan. 
Last week, New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-yorks-governor-wears-hijab-for-muslim-men-just-ahead-of-9-11-anniversary">faced criticism</a> for wearing a hijab during a speech at an Islamic center as the nation prepares to remember the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. 
While New York officials increasingly cater to Islam, Texas officials <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/red-state-history-classes-could-soon-teach-the-radical-islam-behind-9-11?author=Jacob+Wheeler&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Red+State+History+Classes+Could+Soon+Teach+The+Radical+Islam+Behind+9%2F11">moved</a> last week to require students to “identify the significance of September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks motivated by radical Islam.” 
Students would also learn about the violent history surrounding Islam’s rise, including “Prophet Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves,” according to the document. Many of the Quran&#8217;s texts encourage violence against non-Muslims including commands to “kill the polytheists wherever you find them&#8221; and to target people who adhere to the Bible.

Rear view of woman wearing hijab sitting in classroom

Schools Ban Headscarves For Girls As Islam’s Bloody Teachings Spread

austria

council on american islamic relations

headscarf ban

world

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday he intends to attend Friday&#8217;s 25th-anniversary 9/11 remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero, brushing aside public objections from former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Gov. George Pataki, both of whom have urged him to stay home.
Speaking ahead of Brooklyn&#8217;s West Indian American Day Parade, which already saw <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/three-stabbed-before-violence-plagued-brooklyn-caribbean-parade">three stabbings as of Monday morning</a>, Mamdani <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4omoNoNgftE">told reporters</a> he would use the week to spotlight &#8220;the families whose loved ones were stolen from them&#8221; and the first responders who died trying to save others. He would become the first Muslim mayor to attend the city&#8217;s official ceremony.
Giuliani, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd4jnvBunVs">appearing</a> on Newsmax over the weekend, said he would be personally offended if Mamdani showed up, and accused the mayor of doubting that the attacks constituted terrorism. Pataki has <a href="https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2026/09/pataki-says-mamdani-should-skip-911-memorial/415819/">separately said</a> Mamdani should either disavow &#8220;extremist views against America&#8221; in his political orbit or skip the ceremony out of deference to victims&#8217; families.
The backlash has been fueled in large part by Mamdani&#8217;s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, who previously served as a defense lawyer for Ahmed al-Darbi, an al Qaeda operative held at Guantanamo Bay whose brother-in-law helped hijack the plane that struck the Pentagon. Kassem was present Friday when Mamdani signed executive orders establishing an annual &#8220;Citywide Day of Remembrance and Service&#8221; and video of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mamdani-marks-9-11-with-slap-in-the-face-move-tied-to-al-qaeda-terrorist">Mamdani passing a ceremonial signing pen to Kassem</a> afterward drew condemnation from city officials including New York City Council Member Vicki Paladino, who said Kassem &#8220;doesn&#8217;t even belong in this country, much less in our government,&#8221; <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/09/05/us-news/mamdani-gives-symbolic-9-11-pen-to-former-al-qaeda-lawyer-aide/">according</a> to the New York Post.
The Kassem controversy is only the latest example of Mamdani&#8217;s association with figures tied to Islamist extremism. The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mamdani-poses-with-america-hating-imam-who-defended-terrorists">previously documented</a> Mamdani&#8217;s visit to a Brooklyn mosque led by Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator named in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case who has called America &#8220;filthy&#8221; and praised martyrdom in &#8220;jihad.&#8221; Mamdani hailed Wahhaj at the time as &#8220;one of the nation&#8217;s foremost Muslim leaders.&#8221;
Vice President JD Vance is expected to attend Friday&#8217;s ceremony; President Donald Trump will not. Security officials plan to install fencing and checkpoints around the World Trade Center site later this week ahead of the anniversary.

NYC Mayor Mamdani joins Eid al-Adha prayers in Bronx

Mamdani To Attend 9/11 Ceremony Despite Awkward Ties To Terrorist Sympathizers

george pataki

rudy giuliani

Former Governor George Pataki (R-NY) revealed that he is suffering from lung disease related to the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks.
Just days before the United States marked the 25th anniversary of those deadly attacks, Pataki told <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/09/06/us-news/former-ny-gov-george-pataki-reveals-he-has-9-11-related-illness-days-before-25th-anniversary/">The New York Post</a> that he was diagnosed approximately five years ago with restrictive airway disease as a result of the time he spent breathing in toxic dust at Ground Zero.
&#8220;I just look at it as I’m one of the lucky ones,&#8221; he told the outlet. &#8220;You know, 25 years later, I feel great. I have this minor residual impact from that time. But compared to so many others, I consider myself very lucky.&#8221;
&#8220;The people who were with me at Ground Zero over and over for months after those attacks, many of them have serious illnesses, far more serious than anything I might be experiencing,&#8221; he added, comparing himself to many others who have been diagnosed with graver illnesses and even cancers as a result of prolonged exposure.
Pataki, who served as the state&#8217;s last Republican governor between 1995 and 2006, is just one of many who have felt the lasting impact of toxic dust exposure at the site where the Twin Towers collapsed in 2001.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, also a Republican, revealed a similar condition when he was hospitalized months earlier with pneumonia. At the time, his spokesperson explained that the restrictive airway disease — that impacted so many who had spent time at Ground Zero — made even routine illnesses like influenza and the common cold far more dangerous.
The former governor also joined a number of others who have called for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — a self-described Democratic socialist — to keep his distance from the 9/11 25th anniversary ceremonies and memorials. Pataki cited Mamdani&#8217;s own previous comments — as well as associations with radical Muslims and antisemitic political figures — and suggested that he would not be well-received unless he made a sharp turn.
&#8220;If he says he will have nothing to do with Hasan Piker, and if he says he will condemn the statement, ‘globalize the intifada,’ then I would have no problem with him being here,&#8221; he explained.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mamdani-marks-9-11-with-slap-in-the-face-move-tied-to-al-qaeda-terrorist">Mamdani</a> appears to be headed in the opposite direction, however. After declaring that he still intended to attend the memorials, he raised eyebrows in a Friday signing ceremony. After signing declarations officially recognizing 9/11 as a Day of Remembrance and addressing security in the event of a future terror attack, the mayor handed the ceremonial pen to a city official with direct ties to terrorists linked to the 9/11 attacks.

Republican Mayoral Candidate Curtis Sliwa Holds His Election Night Party In New York City

New York’s Last Republican Governor Has 9/11-Related Illness

New York's Last Republican Governor Has 9/11-Related Illness

new york city

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an order on Friday marking the city&#8217;s official recognition of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks — and then handed the symbolic pen to a city official linked to the terrorists who carried them out.
The self-described Democratic socialist signed two companion orders in that session — one marking September 11 as an official Day of Remembrance and another regarding security protocols in the case of future terrorist actions — and then quietly passed the pen.
Handing it first to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, he asked, &#8220;Can you pass this?&#8221;
Tisch dutifully passed the pen to Mamdani&#8217;s chief counsel, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mamdani-names-al-qaeda-defense-attorney-as-new-york-citys-chief-counsel">Ramzi Kassem</a>, before exiting the room.
Critics argued that Mamdani&#8217;s move was not an accident.
&#8220;It was calculated,” retired detective and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice Michael Alcazar told <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/09/05/us-news/mamdani-gives-symbolic-9-11-pen-to-former-al-qaeda-lawyer-aide/?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=nypost">The New York Post</a>.
“It happened during a ceremony meant to be about the victims, and no one else. 9/11 families didn’t come to City Hall to watch Mamdani spotlight someone whose work intersects with the very ideology that took their loved ones. Commissioner Jessica Tisch was reduced to a prop rather than acknowledging her role as the leader of the NYPD,&#8221; he added.
Council Member Joann Ariola (R-Queens) said Mamdani&#8217;s choice had been &#8220;breathtakingly tone-deaf and disrespectful,&#8221; adding, &#8220;It shows exactly where his loyalties truly lie &#8230; The families who lost loved ones on 9/11 have every right to be outraged. On the 25th anniversary, City Hall should be honoring their sacrifice with dignity, not forcing those families to endure yet another insult.&#8221;
&#8220;This is despicable. @NYCMayor is a disgrace to those who lost loved ones on 9/11. His actions are beyond “tone deaf”, they’re morally bankrupt,&#8221; Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) posted.
The overall <a href="https://x.com/RantyAmyCurtis/status/2096360410827853929">assessment</a> was simple: Mamdani&#8217;s choice wasn&#8217;t &#8220;tone deaf,&#8221; it was &#8220;intentional.&#8221;
Mamdani raised eyebrows when he first appointed Kassem to serve in his administration, largely because of the attorney&#8217;s links to several Islamic terrorists.
Kassem <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-sends-saudi-detainee-linked-911-home-guantanamo-rcna19078">represented</a> Mohammad Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani, who allegedly attempted to assist in the 9/11 hijacking and was held in detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for two decades. Teaching law at City University of New York at the time, he had been working with students over the course of a decade to get him returned to Saudi Arabia. They succeeded in doing so in 2022.
He also represented al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Darbi in court. Al-Darbi pleaded guilty in 2014 in connection with a plot to bomb the French oil tanker MV Limburg off the coast of Yemen.
He pleaded guilty in 2014 in connection with a plot to bomb the French oil tanker MV Limburg off the coast of Yemen, and was sentenced in 2017. In 2018, President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration transferred him to the custody of Saudi Arabia.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to the media to demand the

Mamdani Marks 9/11 With Slap In The Face Move Tied To Al-Qaeda Terrorist

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani&#8217;s administration ran a secret, potentially illegal propaganda pipeline to its online influencer army — a violation the city&#8217;s top lawyer seemed to acknowledge Friday, <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/09/04/us-news/nyc-broke-record-keeping-rules-with-mamdanis-secret-influencer-signal-chat-mayors-top-attorney-seemingly-admits/">according</a> to the New York Post.
Chief Counsel Ramzi Kassem said City Hall took &#8220;corrective actions&#8221; after learning the encrypted Signal chat was set to auto-delete messages — but only after a reporter flagged the issue, not because anyone at City Hall caught it first. Kassem said Signal use requires prior approval, and for that app specifically, staff must disable the disappearing-messages feature to stay compliant with records rules.
The chat, called &#8220;NYC Creators Announcements,&#8221; traces back to Creators4Zohran, a volunteer network that boosted Mamdani&#8217;s 2025 mayoral campaign online. The group now includes more than 200 creators, according to a Columbia Journalism Review/Tow Center <a href="https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/mayor-mamdanis-friendly-influencers-and-the-funding-of-public-messaging-in-new-york-city.php">study</a>, ranging from micro-influencers with 5,000 followers to accounts with millions. It is steered by Emilia Rowland, the mayor&#8217;s director of new media and cultural communications, who sends daily updates, video clips and talking points that creators can repost. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/nyregion/mamdani-influencers-emilia-rowland.html">reported</a> that at least one channel Rowland ran was configured to erase her own messages after they were sent, a setting City Hall changed only after the paper began asking questions.
The city does not pay creators to belong to the group or to post about City Hall, according to the outlet. But some have collected $5,000 to $20,000 per campaign from private marketing an advertising firms holding city contracts — a subcontracting arrangement that keeps their names off the procurement notices available to the public.
Critics say the setup runs afoul of New York&#8217;s <a href="https://opengovernment.ny.gov/freedom-information-law">Freedom of Information Law</a>, which requires officials to preserve records of public business. Criminal attorney Cory Morris, who litigates public-records cases, called the arrangement &#8220;not innocuous,&#8221; arguing that Signal&#8217;s disappearing-message feature suggests staff wanted to keep communications out of public view. City Councilman Phil Wong is now drafting legislation to regulate how city government engages influencers, telling the Post the episode is &#8220;one of the biggest scandals&#8221; to hit Mamdani&#8217;s administration — and that officials calling it a &#8220;faux scandal&#8221; only compounds the problem.
Mamdani defended the outreach campaign Wednesday, saying his administration &#8220;will always strive to fully comply with all legal requirements, including those that relate to the preservation of city records,&#8221; and that any slip-up would be corrected immediately.
John Kaehny, who runs the good-government group Reinvent Albany, told the Post he saw sloppiness rather than anything sinister, faulting City Hall for a lack of professionalism, standards and training. He added a warning: if the administration keeps using Signal and similar apps, the story stops being about inexperience — and &#8220;it&#8217;s not going to be an excuse that &#8216;we&#8217;re new&#8217; for very much longer.&#8221;

New Yorkers Compete In Mamdani Look-Alike Contest

Mamdani’s Attorney Seemingly Admits To Illegal Propaganda Op — Possibly Funded By Taxpayers

freedom of information law

government transparency

signal

Democrats have a new talking point for the 2026 midterms, and it&#8217;s a doozy: the party wants you to believe the whole 2020-era meltdown (defund the police, kente-cloth photo ops, hyperfixation on gender and sex) was just a weird, isolated fever it caught during lockdown and has since fully recovered from. <a href="https://www.deseret.com/politics/2026/08/12/aoc-says-woke-1-was-crazy/">Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez kicked off the branding exercise on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;This Week&#8221;</a>, borrowing a line from a New York City councilman: &#8220;Woke 1 was crazy.&#8221; Within days, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/mamdani-shrugs-off-aocswoke-1-comments-critic-says-progressives-cant-absolved-radical-past">New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was echoing the same line at a press conference</a>, insisting &#8220;what you believe can change&#8221; while distancing himself from his own defund-the-police past. It&#8217;s not one congresswoman having a candid moment. It&#8217;s a coordinated cycle-wide message: Woke 1 is dead, don&#8217;t worry about it, just yell about Israel and “Medicare for All.”
Here&#8217;s the problem with the sales pitch: nobody bothered to tell the rest of the party that Woke 1 was supposed to have left the building.
Start with the DNC&#8217;s own leadership circus this year. David Hogg — the Parkland-shooting-survivor-turned-professional-activist the party spent years grooming as the &#8220;future&#8221; — got elected DNC vice chair back in February. Then Oklahoma Democratic operative Kalyn Free filed a complaint arguing the election process <a href="https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/stolen-election-dnc-to-review-vice-chair-david-hoggs-election-victory-amid-race-and-gender-discrimination-allegations/">&#8220;discriminated against three women of color candidates&#8221;</a> by allowing two men to sweep both vice-chair slots. The DNC&#8217;s Credentials Committee agreed, voided the results, and forced a do-over — and Hogg, reading the room, quietly declined to run again. The most prominent young progressive in the party got bumped from his own leadership seat for being insufficiently diverse on the one axis that actually mattered to the people running the process: being white and male. That&#8217;s not a 2020 relic. That happened this year, inside the DNC&#8217;s own headquarters, to the party&#8217;s handpicked golden boy — using the exact same racial-and-gender-box-checking logic Democrats now want to pretend was a temporary lockdown hallucination.
Then there&#8217;s the WNBA, an entire professional sports league that spent the better part of this year unable to answer the single easiest question in sports: what is a woman? After Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham had the audacity to say that biological men shouldn&#8217;t compete against women, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/outkick-sports/wnba-fight-males-womens-sports-exposes-left-keeps-answering-question-nobody-asked">the league&#8217;s response was weeks of statements about &#8220;hate, abuse, and demonization&#8221;</a> and a major meeting on women… just to come back empty-headed and empty-skulled. When two former NBA players declared for the draft specifically to force the issue, the league quietly ruled them ineligible without ever rewriting a rulebook that still just says &#8220;only players who are women are eligible.&#8221; The reason the WNBA can&#8217;t answer the question isn&#8217;t confusion: <a href="https://townhall.com/news/mattvespa/2026/08/28/the-wnbas-stance-on-transgender-players-just-got-messier-n2682055">the league already let a female player transition to male mid-career and publicly celebrated it at the time</a>. Defining &#8220;woman&#8221; now would mean admitting the gender ideology it embraced circa 2020 already broke its own rules. That&#8217;s not a relic of the past. That&#8217;s a live mess this month, in the exact institutions that never got the memo Woke 1 supposedly ended.
When the Supreme Court&#8217;s Louisiana v. Callais decision gutted the race-based redistricting regime that had propped up dozens of &#8220;safe&#8221; congressional seats, Democratic leadership didn&#8217;t respond like a party that had grown past racial sorting. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went on national television and accused the Court&#8217;s majority of <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2026/08/17/while-trying-to-avoid-court-packing-question-jeffries-all-but-admits-he-supports-it/">&#8220;unleashing Jim Crow-like tactics&#8221;</a> and doing &#8220;the bidding of extreme MAGA Republicans,&#8221; then <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/supreme-court/4563840/jeffries-threatens-judicial-reform-post-voting-rights-ruling/">declared &#8220;everything should be on the table,&#8221; including &#8220;massive judicial reform&#8221;</a>, to get race-based maps reinstated. Strip away the theater and what he&#8217;s demanding is the restoration of a system explicitly built to sort American voters by skin color. By Ballotpedia&#8217;s own count, <a href="https://spectator.org/the-democrats-may-not-survive-callais-ruling/">148 House seats nationwide — more than half of the entire Democratic caucus — currently exist in their present shape because race, not geography, dictated the lines</a>. The sitting House Minority Leader isn&#8217;t nostalgic for Woke 1&#8217;s racial framework. He&#8217;s actively campaigning to keep it running in 2026.
Woke 1 didn&#8217;t die somewhere between the lockdown and the vaccine rollout, and it isn&#8217;t a cringe-inducing vocabulary word the party has wisely retired. It&#8217;s alive in the DNC&#8217;s own leadership fights, alive in the WNBA locker room, and alive every time the House Minority Leader demands the law keep treating Black voters and white voters as different species who need different maps. Democrats aren&#8217;t running away from Woke 1 this cycle; they&#8217;re just hoping you&#8217;ll laugh along with the branding long enough not to notice they never actually left.
***
The Daily Signal is listed for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect any institutional position for The Daily Signal or its Board of Directors. 
Tony Kinnett is the senior national correspondent for The Daily Signal and host of its flagship nationally syndicated radio/TV show and podcast, &#8220;The Tony Kinnett Cast.&#8221; Follow him on X @TheTonus.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Woke 1 Never Left Because It Is The Left

alexandria ocasio-cortez

democratic national committee

hakeem jeffries

woke ideology

From Billie Eilish at the Grammy Awards to Code Pink activists in the Halls of Congress, “ICE OUT NOW” has been the slogan du jour for lefties parroting the party talking point for the last year and a half since Donald Trump took office and decided to actually enforce the laws of our land passed by Congress. The Left has treated that chant like a moral commandment.
Never mind the fact that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) law enforcement is simply enforcing the rule of law. What’s richer is that the reason ICE is surging in these jurisdictions in the first place is because of Democrats’ “sanctuary” policies.
Take a look at New York, where the Trump administration has just surged immigration enforcement officers under Operation Rotten Apple. The Department of Homeland Security says that in the past month alone it has arrested 2,100 illegal aliens with criminal records in Gotham — ranging from killers and child predators to kidnappers and narcotics smugglers.
So where were New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul?
Busy creating the problem. Their policies are the very reason ICE has needed a large presence in New York at all.
In states like Florida, you’ll find a smaller presence of ICE law enforcement. Why? Because most jurisdictions in Florida not only cooperate with ICE, but they will honor detainers. That means if a local cop picks someone up who is here illegally, they call ICE, and they can coordinate transfer after the alien has served their time. That means fewer criminals on the loose and less need for a federal surge of ICE officers.
New York politicians did the opposite. One of Zohran Mamdani’s first acts as mayor was to sign an executive order reinforcing sanctuary policies and choking off any New York City law enforcement from working with ICE to apprehend and keep illegal aliens in custody. Mr. Mamdani went a step further by signing a law that banned ICE from operating at any of New York’s 19 correctional facilities. Then he wondered why federal agents showed up in force.
How absurd.
A reasonable person would assume New York’s leaders would be thrilled that over 2,000 criminals were removed from their communities, right?
Not this mayor. Yesterday, Mamdani accused ICE of “terrorizing immigrants” and “criminalizing the very act of being an immigrant.”
That only works if you hide the rap sheets. He is hoping we will collectively forget these people also broke our nation’s immigration laws.
He also said that if someone committed serious crimes, the city “would be in contact with the federal administration” about it. He must not have bothered to look at the criminal records of those arrested and taken off his streets.
Among the criminals ICE arrested as part of Operation Rotten Apple is Bogdan Detrovich Gren, a Ukrainian national in the U.S. illegally with convictions for murder, kidnapping, abduction resulting in death, among other crimes.
Also taken into custody were Palvinder Singh, an illegal migrant from India who was convicted of rape in Germany, and Carlos Mendez-Acosta, a Venezuelan migrant convicted of rape, according to the feds.
Andreas Bernal Chiquito is an illegal migrant from Colombia who has past arrests for sexual conduct against a child and injuring a child under age 17.
The Department of Homeland Security says the call from New York officials about those with “serious crimes” never came.
What Hochul and Mamdani did do was take $7.25 million in taxpayer dollars and announce they would pay the legal expenses for unaccompanied minors.
And that’s the tell. They will stage the press conference. They will pay the lawyers. They will chant “ICE out now” as if immigration enforcement is not as old as our country itself. What they will not do is honor a detainer, hold a convicted rapist in jail, or admit that sanctuary policy put those men back on the street.
Elections have consequences. Nowhere is that clearer than immigration. Democrat politicians spent years daring Washington to enforce the law. Trump did. Now they want the law enforcement gone — and the criminals left behind.
If Mamdani and Hochul want fewer ICE officers in New York, there is a simple solution: stop releasing the criminals ICE is trying to remove.
***
Tricia McLaughlin served as the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. Follow her on X: @TriciaOhio

Federal Agents Patrol In Halls Of New York Immigration Court

Tricia McLaughlin: Democrats Chant ‘ICE Out’ While They Let Criminals In

immigration enforcement

sanctuary city policy

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) quietly conducted raids across New York dubbed &#8220;Operation Rotten Apple&#8221; that yielded the arrests of more than 2,100 illegal immigrant criminals.
Among those arrested were murderers, kidnappers, rapists, robbers, burglars, child predators, drug traffickers, and other violent criminals released onto the streets by sanctuary authorities, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced during a press conference on Tuesday. The raids took place between July 27 and August 29 and targeted more than 13,000 criminal illegal immigrants who were released from local jails despite having ICE detainers lodged against them.
&#8220;Operation Rotten Apple was an operation we decided to take on because you have a very liberal slash socialist mayor here in New York City that instead of working with law enforcement tries to cut NYPD&#8217;s budget by $22 million and refuses to work with federal law enforcement. You have a governor that refuses to work with us,&#8221; Mullin said.
&#8220;These are your rapists, your murderers, your child predators, these are gangbangers, these are terrorists. 13,000 individuals that the state of New York had locked up and we said &#8216;Hey, they&#8217;re in this country illegally,&#8217; &#8230; We targeted those 13,000. That&#8217;s where we got those 2,100 and we&#8217;re not done, we&#8217;re still moving forward,&#8221; Mullin said.
During Tuesday&#8217;s announcement, Mullin took swipes at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for adopting the sanctuary policies that forced ICE to take to the streets.
&#8220;These individuals should&#8217;ve never been on our streets, but while the radical left sanctuary states protect illegals, underneath Trump&#8217;s administration and the Department of Homeland Security, ICE officers &#8230; are out there every day protecting Americans. Let&#8217;s not forget earlier this summer when the mayor of New York City, the socialist Mamdani, said he believes that ICE raids are cruel, inhumane, and they do nothing to serve to protect the interests of the public safety,&#8221; Mullin said.
&#8220;You want to tell me that these individuals here that was arrested off your streets mayor, that&#8217;s in the interest of public safety,&#8221; Mullin said, adding that Mamdani is &#8220;extremely out of touch&#8221; when it comes to public safety and the wants of the American people.
He went on to criticize Hochul for recently <a href="https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/keeping-new-yorkers-safe-governor-hochul-announces-local-cops-local-crimes-provision-banning" target="_blank" rel="noopener">banning</a> local police from entering into agreements to work with ICE.
&#8220;Recently, your liberal governor of the great state of New York &#8230; got behind a podium that read &#8216;Keeping New Yorkers Safe.&#8217; At the same time, she&#8217;s announcing that she&#8217;s ending 287g agreements and banned individuals in New York from working with us,&#8221; Mullin said.
Mullin listed several of the criminal illegal immigrants ICE nabbed during the operation, which included an Indian man wanted in Germany for rape who was released into the country during the Biden administration. ICE also arrested a Ukrainian murderer, a Colombian national arrested for sexually assaulting a child, and a Dominican heroin trafficker.
Ken Genalo, field office director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in New York City, called the operation &#8220;deliberate,&#8221; &#8220;precise,&#8221; and &#8220;effective.&#8221;
&#8220;These are not the people New York&#8217;s sanctuary policies should be protecting from federal immigration enforcement,&#8221; Genalo said.
The officers who took part in the raids faced harassment from outside agitators as they worked to arrest the illegal immigrant targets, Genalo said, adding that his agents remain undeterred.
&#8220;While our officers were removing public safety threats from the New York streets, they were also being harassed, threatened, targeted, and terrorized,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And when elected officials excuse, minimize, or even celebrate the behavior as they did in this case, they place a target on the back of the officers who are doing their jobs. ICE officers will not be intimidated by political rhetoric, sanctuary policies, or street-level threats.&#8221;

Untitled design – 2026-09-01T094635.096

‘Operation Rotten Apple’: ICE Nabs Hundreds Of Illegals Released By Sanctuary New York

immigration

sanctuary city

This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.
***
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has admitted something that’s been obvious for years: there is no chance that New York City can close the Rikers Island jail one year from today, the timeline imposed by the city council in 2019. Dana Kaplan, the city’s “Rikers czar,” <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/rikers-island-2027-deadline-close/6519303">acknowledged</a> in late June that “we are not on track to meet” that cutoff.
But while Mamdani’s officials and city councilors have both <a href="https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/triad/politics/2026/04/23/jails-plan-mamdani">conceded</a> that “2027 is just not going to happen,” the closure law remains on the books. Presumably, we’ll see legislative action to extend the deadline, but no one has said when, or what new date will be suggested. Certainly, it will have to be after the completion of the replacement jails to be erected in four of the five boroughs. These are presently <a href="https://correctionalnews.com/2026/04/27/new-brooklyn-borough-based-jail-tops-out-as-new-york-city-advances-plan-to-close-rikers">expected</a> to remain under construction until at least 2032.
<a href="https://manhattan.institute/subscribe?utm_source=DailyWire&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=reihan">Click here for more Manhattan Institute content.</a> 
The city’s comprehensive failure to meet its own schedule offers an opportunity for a reevaluation. Even if it can build the new jails on a revised timeline, New York still will not have enough jail beds to house dangerous offenders and flight risks pretrial. For years, questions about the practicality of shuttering Rikers have been dismissed as racist and retrograde. But now’s a good time to ask: What’s the plan, Mr. Mayor?
It’s worth <a href="https://manhattan.institute/article/is-3300-enough-why-the-borough-based-jails-are-too-small-to-keep-nyc-safe">recalling</a> how New York got here. For a period of time in the 2010s, closing Rikers was <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/dont-close-rikers-fix-it">the fixation</a> of New York City and State’s progressive elite. The death of Kalief Browder, who committed suicide several years after his three-year ordeal on Rikers Island, became dispositive proof that the jail was beyond saving. An independent city commission chartered in 2016 to examine the question reached the preordained conclusion that “Rikers Island must be closed.”
Then-mayor Bill de Blasio, an eager criminal-justice “reformer,” embraced the cause. De Blasio and his administration pushed to replace Rikers with five jails in the boroughs themselves, with capacity to hold 5,000 offenders. That eventually became four jails — one each in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx — holding 3,300 detainees. As I’ve <a href="https://manhattan.institute/article/is-3300-enough-why-the-borough-based-jails-are-too-small-to-keep-nyc-safe">documented</a>, that switch appears to have been driven more by political expediency than any realistic assessment of how many people New York City needed to detain.
The de Blasio-era closure plan — replacing Rikers with the four borough jails by August 31, 2027 — rested on two assumptions: that the borough jails could be built within eight years, and that the city’s average daily jail population could be reduced to 3,300. Neither assumption has proved realistic.
The jails themselves are both late and over budget. The Brooklyn facility is <a href="https://www.nyc.gov/site/ddc/about/press-releases/2026/pr-042326-Brooklyn-BBJ-Facility.page">projected</a> to be completed in 2029; the Bronx and Queens facilities in 2031; and the Manhattan site in 2032. City Hall <a href="https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2026/03/where-does-each-borough-based-jail-project-stand/412468">says</a> that the total cost of the four facilities is likely to be $13.7 billion — nearly 60% more than what the city estimated in 2019. Eric Adams’s administration, which was far less sympathetic to closure than is Mamdani’s, <a href="https://brooklyneagle.com/270419/rikers-replacement-plan-delayed-and-over-budget">put</a> the price tag at $16 billion. The construction effort faces staunch opposition from community groups that <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/08/24/us-news/chinatown-leaders-fire-warning-shot-at-mamdani-to-try-to-sink-nyc-hi-rise-jail-plan">say</a> that they don’t want “jailscrapers” in their backyards.
If and when the borough jails are built, they will not be adequate to detain the city’s pretrial detention population. As of this writing, over 6,500 individuals are currently <a href="https://x.com/canrikersclose">detained</a> in the Rikers complex. That includes over 3,600 charged with murder, a sex offense, or another violent felony. If Rikers did close in a year, where would all these people go?
The Rikers closure commission <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b6de4731aef1de914f43628/t/60f5c1af1a4e121640f8564f/1626718640158/Roadmap_for_Reducing_Jail_NYC.pdf.">proposed</a> a series of reforms that, it promised, would bring the daily population below the magic line. But since it issued that proposal in 2021, Rikers’s average daily population instead <a href="https://nyc-jail-population-tracker.datacollaborativeforjustice.org/">steadily climbed</a>. That’s even with the implementation of policies, like <a href="https://manhattan.institute/article/is-less-always-more-the-unintended-consequences-of-new-york-states-parole-reform">parole reform</a>, that were expected to reduce it. John Jay College’s Data Collaborative for Justice — a pro-closure group — <a href="https://nyc-jail-population-tracker.datacollaborativeforjustice.org/">projects</a> that the daily population will be unchanged in a year absent “policy reforms.” It’s not clear what reforms, though, will cut Rikers’s population in half.
Advocates of closure have sometimes blamed Covid-19 for the delays in construction and the surge in daily population. There might have been merit to these arguments in the dark days of 2020 or 2021. But it’s implausible to blame the long-gone pandemic today.
Rather, the sources of the city’s problems are more pedestrian. In public-sector works, delay and budget overruns are the rule, not the exception. And it was never reasonable to expect that an average daily jail population of 3,300 — a lower figure, the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/nyregion/rikers-island-closing-vote.html">noted</a> in 2019, than the city had seen in nearly a century — was attainable. This was so especially because the city and state had already dramatically <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/08/21/opinion/criminal-justice-reform-is-a-bust-hidden-data-told-the-truth-all-along">curtailed</a> pretrial detention, and because crime was almost certain to rise at some point from its historic lows in 2019.
All of this was predictable. Indeed, many saner voices predicted it. But Rikers’s closure was first and foremost a moral crusade aimed at achieving racial and social justice. The practicalities of providing jails that are safe for both their residents and the public were always an inconvenience to be wished away.
Mayor Mamdani — a <a href="https://www.piratewires.com/p/globalize-the-inmate-fada-how-zohran-could-let-thousands-of-prisoners-walk-free">committed decarceralist</a> who once endorsed outright prison abolition — still wants Rikers to close. That’s his prerogative. And there’s certainly no reason that pretrial detainees need to be held on Rikers — it is conceptually possible, even if not necessarily plausible, to build replacements in the boroughs. (I <a href="https://manhattan.institute/article/is-3300-enough-why-the-borough-based-jails-are-too-small-to-keep-nyc-safe">outlined</a> a way to do so several years ago.)
But the plan, such as it was, measurably did not accomplish that goal. The city’s first attempt to shutter Rikers is late, over budget, and inadequate to the needs of a functional jail system. Mamdani seems committed to trying again. So the question must be asked, again and again, for the next year: Mr. Mayor, what’s the plan?
***
This is republished with permission from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. The original can be found <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/rikers-island-jail-close?skip=1">here</a>.
<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/person/charles-fain-lehman">Charles Fain Lehman</a> is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and senior editor of City Journal.

Menu