Mamdani UPSTAGES Trump before hosting him

Mayor Mamdani spent the weekend hosting more than 25 mayors and senior city leaders from across world for the 2026 Urban 20 Summit — Los Angeles, Rome, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Jakarta, and dozens more, representing 34 cities in total.

The agenda: addressing rising housing costs, the climate crisis, and migration — the exact problems national governments keep failing to solve, tackled instead by the people actually running the cities.

"New York City was built by people who came here from every corner of the world, so there is no better place for the world's mayors to meet," Mamdani said.

The host country rotates each year with whichever country holds the G20 presidency that year, and the U.S. has it in 2026, which is how New York and LA ended up co-chairing. 

But nobody made Mamdani turn it into a coalition against Trump's whole approach to cities — or, ”pushing his far-left agenda with global elites,” as the New York Post put it.

"At a time of division and retreat, our cities are choosing cooperation," Mamdani said, while the federal government keeps choosing the opposite.

Out of the summit came a clear message to national governments: stop leaving cities to clean up crises alone. The mayors' ask to the G20 was blunt — empower cities as full partners, with the funding and authority to match. Don't just leave them to deal with the fallout.

Later today, Trump will meet Mamdani at Gracie Mansion for round three to discuss "issues affecting New York City and New Yorkers," with deportation and infrastructure reportedly on the table.

Since returning to office, the Trump administration has deported more than 25,000 migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers to countries that are not their own — shadowy "third-country" deals struck with dozens of governments, many of them revealed to detainees only when a seat-back map flickered on mid-flight.

Human rights lawyers describe the program as a deliberate "show of force" — not enforcement, theater — designed to terrorize anyone who might consider entering the US without papers.

An Iranian woman ended up in the middle of Africa in a country she didn't know existed.

American taxpayers are footing the bill for all of it.

An ICE officer shot a man in the torso during a traffic stop on Austin's north side Sunday, leaving him in serious but stable condition — and Austin police had no idea it was happening until it was over.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis confirmed her department was not involved in the operation. Mayor Kirk Watson, a Democrat, called for city police to lead the investigation rather than letting ICE investigate itself — which, yes, should be the bare minimum.

About a hundred protesters gathered at the scene within hours. DHS didn't show up to the press conference and didn't respond to press requests.

This is the third ICE shooting since July. Rep. Greg Casar said it plainly: "For Austin to be safe, ICE should end its surge here."

ICE has been making more than 50,000 arrests a month — a record — and the body count is climbing with it.

The same enforcement apparatus brutalizing immigrant communities is now regularly catching journalists in its sweep.

Independent photographer John Abernathy was tackled by ICE agents while documenting protests in Minneapolis — a photo of him on the ground, pepper spray running down his face, went wide.

He is one of several media workers detained or deported during the administration's immigration crackdown. When the people documenting the crackdown become targets of the crackdown, the administration isn't just suppressing dissent — it's suppressing the record of suppressing dissent.

Yesterday, Trump posted to his failing social media platform that his planned 250-foot triumphal arch in Washington, D.C. — already a monument to his own ego — would now double as a "top grade military complex" capable of storing drones, ammunition, and sniper equipment, with customized sniper facilities on the roof and plaza.

He claimed the redesign came at the "strong request" of the U.S. military.

Critics are not buying it. No one could confirm making the strong request.

This is the same president who is privately melting down in the Oval Office because key figures in his administration aren't thanking him publicly enough. The arch makes more sense when you understand it's not for America — it's for him.

With primary season officially concluded, the picture for November's midterms is coming into focus: Democrats are leading in polls amid economic anxiety, an ongoing war with Iran, and Trump's deportation agenda.

The notable headline is that left-wing candidates notched primary victories that rattled the Democratic establishment — while Republicans doubled down on Trump despite his sinking approval ratings.

Both parties are managing candidate scandals. Only one side is dealing with beastiality.

Democrats go into the fall with a structural advantage in enthusiasm and a left flank that just proved it can win primaries. Republicans go in defending a president who is trying to cheat anyway he can and whose own advisers are leaking his Oval Office tantrums.

Bernie Sanders recently introduced legislation that would lower the federal overtime threshold from 40 hours to 32 hours per week — meaning employers would have to pay time-and-a-half for every hour worked past 32.

The bill is drawing serious engagement, including from critics who disagree with the mechanism but not the goal. That's a win: when the debate shifts from whether workers deserve a shorter workweek to how to get there, Sanders has already moved the Overton window.

Sanders is putting the four-day workweek on the legislative agenda — in a midterm year, with every House member on the ballot. Make them go on record.