The many things Mamdani's win represents —

Reports of #MeToo’s demise just may have been greatly exaggerated.

Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory over Andrew Cuomo in New York’s Democratic primary for mayor represents many things, depending on who you ask. A repudiation of New York’s dominant political establishment. A model of a successful campaign strategy melding digital virality with the ground game and grassroots enthusiasm to match. A blueprint for progressives to build new political coalitions around an affordability-centered message as Democrats find their way out of the wilderness.

Cuomo’s defeat was also a source of relief and a win for the first two women, Lindsey Boylan and Charlotte Bennett, who came forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct. Cuomo, the 67-year-old three-term ex-governor of New York, resigned in 2021 after an investigation found he sexually harassed 11 women in office. Initially contrite, as he ran for mayor he denied the allegations, cast doubt on his accusers and portrayed himself as the victim of politically-motivated probes.

And for much of this year, as polls showed Cuomo in the lead and wealthy donors put millions toward supporting him, it seemed his approach might just work. President Donald Trump, another brash and hard-charging native New Yorker, was elected to a second term as president in November after being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and running a campaign on an ascendant, aggressive vision of masculinity. After he won, he appointed several people linked to sexual misconduct accusations to his Cabinet.

So at the beginning of this year, I wondered: Would Trump’s return to power kill the #MeToo movement that his first election in 2016 helped ignite? Experts, advocates and lawyers for sexual harassment and assault survivors I interviewed for this story in January said it marked an inflection point in a broader cultural and political backlash to the #MeToo movement. But they also reminded me that politics and culture are a pendulum.

And while it’s important not to read too much into any election result, Mamdani’s primary victory is a marker of how the pendulum can swing back.

Campaigns matter, and it didn’t help Cuomo’s case that he ran a lackluster, listless campaign built on an apparent belief that he was entitled to the office and that the whole exercise was beneath him — in stark contrast to the 33-year-old Mamdani’s upbeat, happy-warrior, underdog candidacy focused on making New York City more affordable.

Cuomo’s loss is also a reminder that nothing in politics is inevitable and that, especially when presented with a compelling alternative, voters do (sometimes) still find sexual misconduct allegations disqualifying.

The New York City mayor’s race isn’t over yet. Cuomo is signaling he plans to run in the general election in November as an independent, along with embattled incumbent Mayor Eric Adams. But the primary result is another reminder that even if you have all the name recognition, money and power in a city that runs on those forces, what goes up must always come down.

Grace Panetta
Political reporter

Trump’s plans to end birthright citizenship could move ahead after Supreme Court ruling

President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for the children of some immigrants could go into effect next month in at least some states, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened the power of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions.

For immigrant parents expecting babies, the ruling will unleash a frantic search for more information about whether the order applies to their prospective children. Legal groups opposing the executive order promised Friday to seek relief in the lower courts for as many children as possible.

While challenges to the executive order move through the courts, the administration will only be blocked from enforcing its order against a more narrow group of people potentially impacted. The Supreme Court ordered the lower courts to “expeditiously” reexamine which plaintiffs will be covered by more narrow injunctions.

Signed hours after he took office, the executive order was quickly blocked by multiple lower federal court judges, who held that the order likely violates the U.S. Constitution. For more than 150 years, the 14th Amendment has guaranteed birthright citizenship, stating that “all persons born” in the United States “are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the case — not on the executive order directly, but rather on the nationwide injunctions seeking to block it. The administration argued that these orders give too much power to a single judge at the expense of presidential power.  Its ruling did not address whether the executive order violated the Constitution, a question the court is likely to take up later.

In a 6-3 ruling led by Justice Amy Coney Barrett on a group of three cases, Trump v. CASA, Inc., Trump v. Washington and Trump v. New Jersey, a coalition of conservative justices, ruled that “federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch.” The ruling says that Trump’s executive order can’t go into effect sooner than July 27.