Trump and Zohran: Game Recognize Game
A paradigm shift, but no shock, at the White House
Welcome to a Friday night edition of Progress Report.
In the four hours that Zohran was in DC, he tamed Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene announced her resignation. What can’t this guy do?
Lots of news tonight, so let’s get to it.
Note: The far-right’s fascist takeover of this country is being aided by the media’s total capitulation to Trump’s extortion. It’s never been more critical to have a bold independent media willing to speak up against the powerful. That’s what I’m trying to do here at Progress Report.
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Two Queens boys
NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani did what he did best on Friday, charming New Yorkers from the outer boroughs who had previously soured on Democrats and moved to the right in recent elections.
Donald Trump hosted Mamdani in the Oval Office on Friday, first for a private meeting and then a little desk side Q&A session with the White House press. After the way Trump unloaded on Mamdani during and after the mayoral election, there was a broadly held expectation that the meeting would be tense or even abrasive, leading to genuine shock when the 79-year-old president spent much of the press availability showering the 34-year-old mayor-elect with praise.
Dig deeper, though, and the shocking fondness Trump displayed for Mamdani isn’t all that surprising.
Consider first what Trump said about Mamdani’s political agenda.
“He wants to see no crime. He wants to see housing being built. He wants to see rents coming down. All the things that I agree with,” Trump said of Mamdani. “We may disagree how we get there, the rent coming down, I think one of the things I really gleaned very much today, he’d like it see them come down, but building a lot of additional housing—that’s the ultimate way. He agrees with that and so do I. When you read the newspapers, you don’t see that.”
Trump is a real estate developer by trade, so suggesting that cities build more housing is always going to appeal to him. But Trump is also a populist, in the sense that he’s got a preternatural (and somewhat inexplicable) understanding of the stresses faced by regular working people, so his praise for Mamdani’s affordability agenda is no surprise, either.
Indeed, Trump has been trying to pivot to affordability since Republicans took an Election Day drubbing, so it makes sense that he tried to glom on to Mamdani’s public credibility on the price of groceries and utilities (something that Fox News is trying so hard to make happen). Whether or not he actually cares about working people, Trump’s political career depends on people maintaining that perception, and it has eroded rapidly this year.
Trump’s understanding of politics as perception and show business also helps explain some of the most shockingly warm moments of the public interaction.
When asked whether he agreed with close ally Rep. Elise Stefanik’s allegations that Mamdani is a “jihadist,” Trump dismissed the idea and chalked it up to campaign hyperbole. When a reporter asked Mamdani if he still thought of Trump as a fascist, the president interjected, patted the assemblyman on the arm and said that he didn’t really find being called a despot all that devastating. The president demands absolute loyalty and flattery from his minions — even if he refuses to honor the exchange — but in a sense, his magnamity here suggested that he saw Mamdani as someone in his league as a political personality and operator.
After Mamdani won the mayoral election, a few reports out of the White House indicated that Trump was impressed with Mamdani’s political skills. It was a “game respect game” type of acknowledgement, and that respect, to the extent that Trump respects anybody, was on display on Friday. Trump is obsessed with winning above all else, and he’s drawn to winners, which is why he’s spent his entire life chasing celebrities and flattering headlines. Of all the horrible insults he hurls at people, there’s none that he says with as much venom or disdain as “loser,” because to Donald Trump, that’s the worst fate in the world.
Also worth noting: Trump hates the Democratic establishment and the Manhattan real estate elite who would never let him into their circles, and Mamdani just utterly embarrassed all of them with his two massive election victories. Trump admires that and sees common cause in that very petty way.
This harmonious atmosphere wasn’t all Trump, either. Hardly. We don’t know what exactly was said during the private meeting, but we do know that Trump was so delighted that Mamdani complimented the FDR portrait on the White House wall that he both mentioned it during the presser and had the pair of them take a photo together in front of the painting. Trump is deeply insecure and desperate for approval for his aesthetic choices in the White House, traits that were surely not lost on the incoming mayor. Whereas tech barons, CEOs, and foreign governments have been pouring millions into Trump’s vanity projects and personal coffers, Mamdani likely got far more mileage out of a well-timed observation.
None of this is to say that Trump sees eye-to-eye on policy with the incoming mayor, nor is it to suggest that he’s suddenly had a moment of moral clarity. It’s more likely than not that Trump will have Stephen Miller in his ear by tomorrow, imploring him to send a surge of ICE thugs into Astoria (Mamdani’s district) as soon as he’s inaugurated, because the president is ultimately a stupid and cruel person.
But what’s without question is that today represented Mamdani’s arrival on the national scene as a force that can go toe-to-toe with the most powerful politicians. And once again, the party establishment should be grateful to him, because finagling an unlikely blessing from Trump means that the GOP’s plan to demonize Mamdani and attempt to make him an anchor on every Democratic candidate next year just hit major complications.
Housing dominates the debate
New Mexico: Lawmakers in Santa Fe voted to make the city the first place in the nation to tie its minimum wage to the rising cost of housing, setting what could be a new paradigm in the fight for economic justice.
Approved last week, the historic ordinance will raise the local minimum wage to $17.50 for city workers next year and bump everybody else up to that threshold in 2027. After that, the minimum wage will be based on the consumer price index, a more typical benchmark, as well as the increase in the fair market rent.
Housing prices have soared in Santa Fe in recent years, with the cost of rent shooting up nearly 30% since 2015. Rents have increased by double digits since the pandemic.
Massachusetts: After more than 30 years of unsuccessfully trying to repeal the state’s ban on rent control, some housing activists in the Bay State are abandoning the local control argument and pushing to enact a statewide cap on annual rent hikes.
A coalition called Housing for All is pursuing a ballot initiative that would limit rent increases on most housing units to 5% a year across the state. The idea is controversial, even among housing advocates and elected officials. Ultra-popular Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, an outspoken housing and rent control advocate, declined to throw her support behind the proposal when asked about it this week, reiterating her desire to see the statewide ban lifted.
“I wish that the ballot initiative had been just a pure, local option,” Wu told a local radio station. “Repeal the ban on cities taking action and let each city do what they need to do.”
Wu has tried to get the ban repealed so that Boston could implement its own rent stabilization policies on several occasions, but those efforts have died at the Statehouse. Housing for All advocates also say they back the legislation, suggesting that the initiative could also be used as leverage to get the repeal passed.
Organizers had until Wednesday to submit at least 74,574 valid petition signatures in order to qualify the initiative for the 2026 ballot, and say they collected around 124,000. The proposal would provide exemptions for owner-occupied buildings with up to four units, new units during their first ten years of availability, public housing, and short-term rentals.
Attorneys General Gone Wild
Montana: Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s edits to a proposed constitutional amendment on judicial elections were heavy-handed and misleading, the state’s high court ruled this week.
The ruling was a big win for Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts, a coalition seeking to preserve the state’s system of nonpartisan judicial election. Knudsen rewrote Constitutional Initiative 132 to state that judges would be banned from revealing their partisan leanings.
It seems like semantics, but Knudsen essentially wanted to suggest that every judge has a secret political affiliation that voters would be kept secret from voters. In a 5-2 decision, the court ruled that Knudsen’s edits “mislead voters and prevent them from casting an intelligent and informed ballot.”
The decision clears the way for activists to collect petition signatures in an attempt to qualify the amendment for the 2026 ballot.
Missouri: Meanwhile, in the Show Me State, both the state’s attorney general and secretary of state are pulling out all the stops to preserve the newly gerrymandered Congressional map passed at Donald Trump’s behest in September.
Earlier this week, the nonprofit coalition People Not Politicians Missouri filed a lawsuit over ballot language written by Secretary of State Denny Hoskins. The organization is collecting signatures for a veto referendum on the new map, which would likely give Republicans control of seven of the state’s eight Congressional districts. I wrote all about the campaign late last month.
Hoskins ballot summary reads as follows:
“Do the people of the state of Missouri approve the act of the General Assembly entitled “House Bill No. 1 (2025 Second Extraordinary Session),” which repeals Missouri’s existing gerrymandered congressional plan that protects incumbent politicians, and replaces it with new congressional boundaries that keep more cities and counties intact, are more compact, and better reflects statewide voting patterns?”
It’s factually inaccurate to call the current Congressional map a gerrymander, but blunt dishonesty about the term has a staple of Republican strategy. Last year, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose rewrote a proposed constitutional amendment intended to ban gerrymandering to say that it would actually require gerrymandered maps, fooling just enough voters that the initiative failed at the ballot box.
“It is quite telling that the Missouri SOS, whose job it is to provide voters with accurate information about what they are voting on, has instead sought to deceive and manipulate them with an inaccurate ballot title,” Richard von Glahn, Executive Director of People Not Politicians Missouri, wrote in a statement to Progress Report. This continues to show that politicians know their actions are unpopular with Missourians and are likely to be rejected for what they are - an unconstitutional power grab that silences Missouri voters. Voters should not and will not be misled.”
Missouri law provides a narrow timeframe to collect the signatures required to pause the new law and put it on the ballot, so People Not Politicians has activists out on the streets with clipboards as it battles the Secretary of State in the courtroom. While there have been legal battles over this process as well, canvassers are now facing an even bigger threat, courtesy of Missouri AG Catherine Hanaway and Stephen Miller:
There is zero proof that People Not Politicians has contracted undocumented immigrants and human trafficking victims to collect signatures, but that’s not the point. The claim can easily put a scare into prospective signers and volunteers alike, especially non-white residents of St. Louis and Kansas City.
Now we’re cooking
This went almost entirely under-the-radar this week, but it’s a big deal: Cook County, home to Chicago and the most populous in Illinois, became the first county to establish permanent funding for a guaranteed income program.
The county commission earmarked $7.5 million in its upcoming budget for FY 2026. It’s less than the $42 million that was spent on a pilot version of the program over the past two years, but that money came from the American Rescue Plan, which put a hard end date on the expenditure. Getting local funding locked in is a huge development, as it becomes part of the budget formula going forward.
Now, the county will be able to continue some version of a program that gave $500 no-strings-attached payments every month to 3,000 low-income families, creating a local template that can be expanded upon in more flush years.
It’s going to be a long four years in Virginia
Now that Democrats will have a strong trifecta in the Old Dominion, it’s only a matter of time before they finally repeal the state’s nasty, anti-union “right to work” law, right?
Right?
Alas, Democratic Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, freed from the burden of having to appeal to Democratic voters in a competitive primary, came out this spring against repealing the law, which has suppressed unionization rates everywhere it has been implemented. I tried to make some noise about it at the time, but the Virginia AFL-CIO was radio silent on the matter, which ended any chance of making Spanberger feel real pressure.
At least until now.
As I noted on election night, Democrats’ landslide victory in the Virginia House of Delegate gave the party the kind of margin that makes it possible to lose some votes from moderates and still pass a repeal of “right to work.” And so enter state Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy, a progressive this week introduced a repeal bill for when the legislature returns to Richmond in January.
Critically, the move was backed by the Democratic Majority Leader, who told the local ABC affiliate that “I look forward to making collective bargaining available to all state and local government employees and giving Virginia private sector workers better tools to allow them to earn a fair living.”
That brought resistance from Spanberger’s office, which maintained her opposition to helping workers while claiming otherwise.
“As she made clear on the campaign trail, she does not support repealing the current statute,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “As she prepares to take office, Governor-elect Spanberger will be focused on getting things done for Virginia workers, bringing new businesses to Virginia, and making sure parents can afford to live here in Virginia to take advantage of job opportunities.”
Responding to that rejection, Carroll Foy kept it measured, writing on social media that she recognized Spanberger’s position while not quite giving in.
“I understand that the governor-elect has stated where she stands when it comes to signing a repeal of Virginia’s so-called right to work statute,” Carroll Foy wrote. “I have filed this bill to make sure that we engage and move on all areas where we can lower costs for Virginia families and protect the rights and opportunities of Virginia workers.”
Spanberger’s resistance is not indicative of the rest of the party’s position. During the 2021 primary, various Democratic candidates — including Carroll Foy — declared their support for repealing “right to work.” Eventual nominee Terry McAuliffe, no lefty, even committed to signing a repeal if it reached his desk. I’ll be watching closely to see whether Virginia’s labor community, which has been galvanized by Trump’s assault on federal workers, decides to mount another effort on this one.
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This is the best analysis I have found so far.
Thank you!
I’m hoping that the Democratic trifecta in Virginia can deliver for the workers and get rid of that “right to work” shitshow. It’s always been a right to work for less imposed on our states and really bad for workers.