What happened last week?
Discount prices confirmed at city-run groceries — Mayor Mamdani shared more details on the plan for his cornerstone affordability pledge: municipal grocery stores. All fresh produce, meat, seafood, and ~20 categories of pantry staples will be sold for 30% less than the city average. Retail prices will be reviewed monthly to maintain savings level. The first store is set to open next year in Hunts Point.
$104 million now back in deliveristas’ pockets — After the apps buried the tip button (costing NYC workers half a billion dollars) the City forced tipping back onto the checkout screen in January. Result: tips have doubled, putting $104M back in workers’ pockets so far, on pace for $184M by the end of the year (~$2,287 per worker). And demand didn’t drop: orders are at a record 3.3 million a week.
New sheriff in town — Edwin Raymond, an NYPD lieutenant who sued his own department over illegal arrest quotas, was sworn in as NYC Sheriff. He replaces Anthony Miranda, fired by Mayor Mamdani in May after investigators found $100K+ in unexplained cash at Sheriff’s HQ (You may recall Miranda from Mamdani Bulletin’s Where are they now? video of the Adams administration).
New platform tracks affordable housing — The city launched the LIFT Tracker, a live map of sites slated to deliver affordable housing for New Yorkers. A useful tool for following the Mamdani administration’s progress toward its pledge of building 200,000 affordable homes over the next decade.
Smear of the Week
Holding politicians to account matters — including criticizing the Mamdani administration when it fails to deliver. This section is for when critics abandon that job and reach for deception instead.
The smear: “Mamdani shuns Jewish New Yorkers from important judicial advisory committee” (NYPost — with similar stories in the New York Times, NBC, and others)
The reality: Half of committee members are chosen by the Mayor, and half are recommended by the state's top judges and law school deans. Among the latter, only one Jewish attorney was recommended: retired Justice John Leventhal, who served on the legal team of child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Mayor Mamdani said: "We thought it best to avoid any association between the committee that would be appointing judges and the Epstein world."
Independent stories
Interview: 200 Days of Mayor Mamdani — Veteran columnist Charles M. Blow sits down with the Mayor at City Hall for a wide-ranging interview on issues important to Black New Yorkers, including gentrification, reparations, and the need for a "Black agenda." Blow describes Mamdani as “characteristically charming, but also deftly evasive, sidestepping the more challenging questions.”
Trump and Mamdani Are Running Polar Opposite Bureaucracies — Conor Lynch contrasts two approaches to bureaucracy: while the federal administration weaponizes red tape to push millions off Medicaid and SNAP benefits, the Mamdani administration is doing the opposite - cutting administrative barriers to improve services and reclaim efficiency from the right, without privatization.
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