Oops: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s theories are running into yet another awkward reality — families don’t seem to want all the new pre-K slots he’s offering, despite City Hall’s sales efforts.
He got Gov. Kathy Hochul to shower $73 million in new state cash on his pilot 2-K program, but total pre-K applications only rose 0.3% (172 applications) this year, with 3-K ones dropping by 590, or 1.4%.
Part of the drop is a decline in pre-K-age kids, as ever more young families flee Gotham for areas with better schools and lower living costs.
Overall, only half of families eligible for a free 3-K slot applied both last year and this, so the city’s outreach campaign to boost enrollment had zero impact.
Mamdani has plenty of excuses for this, including (again) blaming his predecessor, but plainly many parents justdon’t want what he’s offering, even when it’s free.
And of course it costs the taxpayers roughly twice what private programs charge.
Spending more to offer an inferior product or service is the classic hallmark of socialist “largesse,” a rule that even social media magic can’t change.
The draft, obtained Thursday by CNN, also faulted Team Biden for not conducting advanced polling on Harris prior to the 46th president abandoning his re-election bid that July and failing to push back effectively on the narrative that she was an ineffective “border czar.”
“The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives, and the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch,” the report read, while arguing that Harris’ immigration portfolio had been “poorly framed by Republicans.”
“The White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch,” according to a draft of the DNC’s “autopsy” of Donald Trump’s 2024 victory.Ron Sachs – CNP for NY Post
“It was not the official title, but it was the one that the media propagated and the White House failed to contradict or correct,” the report added.
In another striking section, the autopsy concluded: “The GOP’s victory in 2024 largely came down to its ability to learn more from President [Barack] Obama’s victory [in 2008] than Democrats did.
“The GOP’s campaign was powered by data, amplified by social media, and enabled by ardent supporters at every level.”
The DNC andChairman Ken Martinhad come under intense pressure to publicly release the report, with even Harris urging its disclosure.
In a statement Thursday, Martin said the party opted to release the autopsy after learning that CNN planned to run an in-depth piece on it.
“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards,” the DNC chairman said. “I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it.
Former Vice President Harris makes remarks accepting her party’s nomination on day 4 of the 2024 DNC at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, on Thursday, August 22, 2024.Ron Sachs – CNP for NY Post
“But transparency is paramount. So, today I am releasing the report as I received it — in its entirety, unedited and unabridged — with annotations for claims that couldn’t be verified.”
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon cautioned Mayor Zohran Mamdani about hishard-left vision for the Big Apple, warning the millennial mayor that he can relentlessly preach morality and ideology — but if the city keeps struggling, he’s failing to do his job.
“I don’t care what he says. What does he do? I will judge that … because you can talk about morality and ideology all you want, but if things don’t get better, you didn’t do a good job,” the Wall Street titan told Bloomberg TV Thursday.
“And my view, and I’m talking about him now, I have seen mayors who make statements, and they make it worse and worse and worse, you know, and they don’t know, they can’t get into details of why is affordable housing not there anymore? Why does this not work?
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon cautioned Mayor Zohran Mamdani about his lefty policies for NYC.Bloomberg via Getty Images
“And so, you know, hopefully he’ll learn. I want him to do a good job.”
Dimon’s biting comments came after he and other top business leaders met with Mamdani, who has pushed a slate of tax hikes targeting the wealthy and businesses since taking office in January.
The 34-year-old Democratic socialist — who campaigned on a tax-the-rich agenda — has proposed jacking up corporate taxes,socking millionaires with a new 2% income tax hike, and slapping a luxury levy on second homes worth over $5 million across Gotham.
The 70-year-old savvy businessman warned that only time will tell whether Hizzoner’s ambitious lefty politics drive away the people and companies New York needs to survive and grow.
“Every city has to compete, and they have to compete at every level — arts, science, schools. That is what it is, I’m not inventing that,” Dimon, a Queens native, insisted.
“He can be an ideologue, but he has to compete too, and we’ll see. Will he learn that he’s got to make the city a place where people want to grow and build and live and have families and work?” he added, pointing to global powerhouses like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Nashville, Tenn.
“And people vote with their feet.”
During the interview, Dimon threw his support behind Jeff Bezos’ view that lower earners shouldn’t be hit with income taxes.
Jeff Bezos called for changes to the US tax system, which he said sees the top 1% already pay 40% of all taxes while the bottom half contributes 3%CNBC Television
“I saw Jeff Bezos, who I love, swashbuckling,” Dimon raved.
“I don’t think the lower people making under a certain amount [should be] paying taxes at all, you know, I would agree with that.”
NY Gov. Kathy Hochul and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani at a press conference on May 19, 2026.Stephen Yang for NY Post
The April 15 video stunt sparked backlash from business owners and city leaders when Hizzoner called out the Citadel head by name and used his record-setting $238 million Midtown penthouse as a backdrop to tout a new pied-Ã -terre tax.
“I think he realized he made a mistake in naming Ken, and vilifying a name and a person,” Dimon said.
“It’s probably why he’s seeing a bunch of us now. He’d like to maybe have a better relationship with the business community.”
Private credit managers are increasingly turning to the once-unthinkable: Trading in and out of loans to dump troubled assets and hunt for bargains amid the industry’s first stress test after years of breakneck growth.
A number of business development companies are looking to trim software exposure as concern mounts over AI-driven disruption, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Others are moving in the opposite direction, building positions in discounted loans that rarely traded hands in the past.
The Trump administration plans to delay compliance with Biden-era EPA regulations targeting hydrofluorocarbons later today. These regulations apply to refrigerants used in air conditioners, refrigerators, supermarket cooling systems, refrigerated trucks, cold storage, and some industrial applications.
Bloomberg reports that the EPA's 2023 Technology Transitions Rule, enacted under the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, will be rolled back, with an estimated cost savings of more than $2.4 billion.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the Biden-era rules imposed costly and unrealistic requirements that exceeded the law.
Americans were right to be frustrated with the Biden-era refrigerant rules. They didn't protect human health or the environment and instead piled on costly, unattainable restrictions beyond what the law requires," Zeldin told the outlet in a statement.
Zeldin added, "Today, the Trump EPA is fulfilling President Trump's promise to lower costs and is fixing every problem we can under the authority Congress gave us."
President Trump and Zeldin are set to announce the rollback of Biden-era EPA regulations at a White House event later today. Zeldin's team is also preparing to propose additional rollbacks on hydrofluorocarbon regulations for refrigerated transport.
C-SPAN says Trump and Zeldin are set to announce the Oval Office at 11:00 ET.
The move here fits within Trump's broader deregulation agenda, which has focused on rolling back Biden-era environmental rules and lowering compliance costs for businesses to induce an economic boom.
Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has adopted an Osama bin Laden template to survive by staying out of public view, Fox News reported, citing a counterterrorism analyst.
“For the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, the United States has done to Tehran what it spent two decades doing to al-Qaeda and ISIS,” Omar Mohammed told Fox News Digital.
“The US has driven its leader into the same kind of operational invisibility that bin Laden lived in for 10 years in Abbottabad,” he said.
Mohammed said both men “responded the same way: by ceasing to exist publicly,” adding that bin Laden stopped releasing dated videos around 2007 and relied on audio messages carried by hand.
“Bin Laden stayed hidden for the rest of his life because the moment he surfaced was the moment he died. Mojtaba Khamenei won’t emerge,” he said.
Russia said on Thursday that only Iran should decide the fate of its uranium reserves and that any diplomatic process should take Iranian interests into account.
