DAYS THE BUDGET IS LATE: 48
WOULD HAVE IF HE COULD HAVE: Mayor Zohran Mamdani intended to be featured in a video released over the weekend to mark the displacement of Palestinians linked to the founding of the State of Israel.
However, he decided not to appear in the video, which received criticism from local Jewish leaders, because he fell ill, as he explained this morning at a Bronx event.
“I planned to participate,” Mamdani told reporters. “But I got sick, and we didn’t want to create any issues for her.”
Mamdani was referring to Inea Bushnaq, who grew up in the British Mandate for Palestine and is featured in the video that was posted on the mayor’s official social media accounts late Friday.
In the four-minute video, Bushnaq, filmed at her New York City home, recounts fleeing her East Jerusalem home at age nine in 1948 during the “Nakba,” an Arabic term for “catastrophe,” referring to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians following Israel’s establishment. “The Zionists were coming into Jerusalem,” Bushnaq says in the video.
Local Jewish leaders, including a member of Mamdani’s transition team, expressed outrage, arguing the video offered an overly simplistic view of the region’s history.
According to The Forward’s Jacob Kornbluh, many Jews globally assert that Palestinian displacement was not solely due to Israeli forces. They highlight the role of neighboring Arab states, such as Egypt and Syria, which attacked the newly formed Jewish state following the Holocaust.
During his press conference, Mamdani was asked to address the criticism regarding the exclusion of essential context in his team’s video.
“I believe that recognizing one group’s suffering doesn’t prevent acknowledging another’s,” he said. “For New Yorkers like Inea and many others, their pain has often been overlooked, and their identity questioned. My message to all New Yorkers is this city is for you, and we will continue to celebrate everyone who calls it home.”
His remarks come as he prepares to host a Jewish American Heritage Month reception at Gracie Mansion tonight. The mayor’s release of the Nakba Day video prompted some Jewish leaders to boycott the event. Those boycotting include Mark Treyger, a former City Council member now leading the Jewish Community Relations Council, and Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the FDNY’s chief chaplain and executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis.
Assemblymember Sam Berger, a Democrat representing large Jewish communities in Queens, expressed displeasure with the video when asked this afternoon.
“The mayor has long twisted reality with his policies and budget, so it’s unsurprising he’s trying to distort history too,” he said in a statement to Playbook.
Mamdani’s decision to release the video on Nakba Day aligns with his history of supporting Palestinian rights and causes.
During his candidacy last year, Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, faced scrutiny for not initially condemning the phrase “globalize the intifada,” viewed by many as inciting violence against Jews. As mayor, he pledged to fight all forms of hate, including antisemitism, while accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza amid the conflict following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack.
Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, with which Mamdani is affiliated, praised the video, stating it aligns with the group’s “history of supporting Palestinian solidarity.”
“Highlighting the city’s historic struggles is part of the mayor’s duty, and I think he fulfilled that here,” Gordillo said. — Chris Sommerfeldt and Jason Beeferman
FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
BETH DAVIDSON VS. BETH DAVIDSON: Beth Davidson’s congressional campaign clearly states on her website that she supports term limits. However, her in-person answers might differ.
Davidson, running in the Democratic primary to challenge Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, lists in the “priorities” section of her campaign website that she aims to “enact term limits and stronger ethics rules to curb career politicians and corrupt insiders.”
Yet, at an earlier candidate forum in Ossining, when asked if she supported term limits for U.S. representatives and senators, Davidson replied, “I actually don’t.”
“Some districts have long-serving representatives. Some we’re finished with after two years. It should be up to voters,” Davidson explained.
When questioned about this inconsistency, Davidson’s campaign stated that her website’s language is aligned with her support for term limits in the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Beth has clear plans to tackle corruption in DC, including term limits for Supreme Court Justices, banning stock trades by Congress members, and overturning Citizens United to remove special interests and corporations from elections,” her campaign manager Ellen McCormick told Playbook.
Davidson was the only major candidate at the forum to oppose term limits for Congress members, with rivals Cait Conley and Effie Phillips-Staley in favor. — Jason Beeferman
FROM THE CAPITOL
TRAIN DREAMS: This morning, Gov. Kathy Hochul visited the Lower Manhattan state office building where Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Long Island Railroad negotiators and five striking unions are meeting. By mid-afternoon, no resolution for the LIRR strike had been reached.
In a video posted on social media, Hochul noted the morning commute was “smoother than expected” and emphasized her dedication to “protecting taxpayers and commuters from paying significantly more.”
Outside, picketers — one wearing a shirt with “Fuck You, Pay Me” — chanted, “New York is a union town, Janno Lieber shut it down.” Lieber leads the MTA.
Hochul’s stance seems more pro-MTA compared to Gov. Mario Cuomo’s during the 1994 LIRR strike, also an election year. Cuomo, whose son Hochul succeeded, quickly ended the strike by brokering a deal favoring the unions.
Hochul appears to distance herself politically while blaming President Donald Trump for the strike.
In 1994, The New York Times reported Cuomo was “intensely active in managing” the strike by canceling public events, such as a ticker-tape parade for the New York Rangers, and making continuous calls to top negotiators, Congress members, Long Island leaders, and aides at the bargaining table.
Hochul has not publicly mentioned Congress stepping in. Labor-friendly Democrats avoid this, as railroad unions remain upset with President Joe Biden’s intervention to prevent a 2022 freight rail strike. Last year, Congress was silent when a train engineers’ union strike halted New Jersey Transit trains.
Trump stated Sunday that he’d “never even heard about it” until a day after the LIRR strike began. (In September and again in January, he issued executive orders to create panels to investigate and report on the dispute — a typical rail labor dispute action.) Federal mediators summoned both sides to negotiations at the MTA headquarters on Sunday afternoon, lasting late into the night and resuming this morning.
Hochul contends that the Trump administration prematurely released unions from part of the mediation process last year, initiating a series of cooling-off periods that concluded Saturday when the strike began. The referenced process permits federal officials to keep unions indefinitely in mediation without striking as long as a settlement is reasonably possible. Some mediations lasted years.
This time, all five unions and the MTA participated in mediation sessions from March 2024 to July 2025 before being released in August. — Ry Rivard
FROM CITY HALL
FOOD DESERT: Mamdani’s initiative to open a city-owned grocery store next year in Hunts Point aims to boost access to healthy food in the bodega-heavy South Bronx, where diabetes and obesity rates surpass city averages.
Hundreds of bodegas occupy four South Bronx ZIP codes, comprising 35% of the area’s food establishments, as per a Health Department report last month. While most bodegas sell fresh produce, a third offer only onions and potatoes, with limited healthy meal and snack choices, the report noted.
For each supermarket in the South Bronx, there are four fast food outlets and six bodegas, the report indicated.
In Hunts Point, last year’s standard grocery basket — containing items like eggs, deli beef, tomatoes, lettuce, bread, potatoes, milk, and bananas — cost $39.20, but up to half of these staples were often unavailable, the report found.
“Ensuring every New Yorker can access fresh, affordable groceries in their neighborhood is crucial to our affordability agenda,” Mamdani stated Monday.
The Economic Development Corp. is preparing a request for proposals from private operators to manage the Hunts Point grocery store and an additional East Harlem store, announced in April and set to open by 2029. — Maya Kaufman
IN OTHER NEWS
— FRONT AND CENTER: Puerto Rico has become a central issue in the race to replace Rep. Nydia Velázquez, as rival progressive factions debate the district’s political future. (THE CITY)
— PRISON REFORM: Awaiting appointments from Hochul to reach a quorum, New York’s Committee on Correction cannot meet or vote, delaying jail reform implementations. (New York Focus)
— LUIGI TAKES A HIT: A Manhattan judge ruled that the gun and notebook seized from Luigi Mangione will be admissible at his upcoming murder trial, excluding items obtained during an initial warrantless search. (The New York Times)
Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.
