Andrew Cuomo Ad Deceptively Edits Photo of Zohran Mamdani

A pro–Andrew Cuomo super PAC released a mailer this week that modified the image of Zohran Mamdani, the progressive front-runner in New York City’s mayoral race, to appear as if he has a darker, longer beard.

The altered image of Mamdani, a New York state representative, appeared next to text on a mailer claiming that Mamdani “rejects” the police and capitalism. It also claimed that Mamdani “rejects Israel,” on the basis that the Ugandan-born Democratic Socialist supports a nonviolent Palestinian-led movement known as BDS that advocates for economic sanctions against Israel.

The advert also advertised Mamdani as a candidate who “rejects Jewish rights,” claiming that he “refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.” It was developed by Fix The City Inc., whose largest donor is DoorDash, according to the New York City Campaign Finance Board and the group’s website.

Fix the City denied releasing the mailer.

“The mailer was proposed by a vendor; upon review it was immediately rejected for production and was subsequently corrected,” Liz Benjamin, a spokesperson for the group, told The New Republic. “We are disturbed that this was posted online without our consent.”

But the backlash was already underway.

“Andrew Cuomo is afraid he’ll lose, so his donors want you to fear me,” the assemblyman posted on X Thursday. “His SuperPAC just sent out a mailer that artificially lengthened and darkened my beard.

“This is blatant Islamophobia—the kind of racism that explains why MAGA billionaires support his campaign,” he added.

Mamdani’s connection to New York City’s Jewish community was challenged by a curveball during last week’s mayoral debate when he was asked, as a hypothetical mayor of New York City, if he would visit Israel.

“I believe you need not travel to Israel to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers,” Mamdani said. “That is what I’ll be doing as the mayor.”

Why Mamdani would be involved with sensitive foreign affairs as the local leader of New York is unclear, but the debate moderators did not appear privy to their own lack of rationale. Instead, they followed up by questioning Mamdani if he believed Israel had a right to exist.

“I believe Israel has a right to exist,” he said.

“As a Jewish state?” the moderator pressed.

“As a state with equal rights,” Mamdani replied.

Speaking with Fox 5’s Good Day New York in the wake of the debate, Mamdani clarified that he is “not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else.”

The gross visual attempt to sway the voters of New York appears especially desperate on the heels of Mamdani’s surging numbers: A survey published late Wednesday found that—for the first time—Mamdani had actually topped Cuomo’s campaign, beating the ex-governor by 35 percent to 31 percent. The survey was conducted by Public Policy Polling for Democrat Justin Brannan’s city comptroller campaign.

Cuomo’s continued presence in the race nearly defies logic. The former New York  governor was forced to resign from his leadership position in 2021 after he was deemed too corrupt for Albany. Four years on, several major political backers, including a lobby of New York City landlords, have forced Cuomo back into the limelight, surging him toward a political comeback to Gracie Mansion despite his lagging popularity.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump just admitted that his administration’s massive deportation efforts are causing chaos for farmers—but he doesn’t care.

In a post on Truth Social Thursday, Trump took a moment to respond to criticism that his crackdown on undocumented immigrants was hurting multiple industries, including farmers.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote.

“In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

Trump managed to actually acknowledge that he had created a massive problem but then moved to blame Joe Biden for letting in criminals, who apparently want jobs on farms. Then he promised to do something but didn’t deign to delve into specific “changes.”

All of this comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun sweeping raids in rural California, where an estimated 255,700 farmworkers are undocumented, following a series of ICE arrests last week that sparked massive protests in Los Angeles.

Trump’s promise to get criminals out of the country is a massive lie. As part of the Trump administration’s inhumane crackdown on immigration, ICE has readily arrested U.S. citizens, deported families, and endangered sick children, leaving hollow promises to target individuals with criminal records in the rearview.

The thousands of National Guardsmen President Trump sent to Los Angeles in an authoritarian power play are working for free.

More than a dozen guardsmen told Military.com that they remain unpaid, as they have yet to receive official activation orders. Receiving such orders would allow them to receive pay, Tricare health benefits, and Department of Veterans Affairs eligibility. Without them, the troops dispatched aren’t getting anything.

Trump’s abrupt deployment of the guardsmen, against the wishes of Los Angeles’s mayor and California’s governor, circumvented executive norms and has resulted in thousands of soldiers who aren’t sure if they’ll be compensated for the work they’re doing. Guardsmen have also complained about their living conditions, as many of them are sleeping on cots at a Naval Base on the edge of Los Angeles.

Forcing people to work for no pay is very on brand for the president. He owes the city of Albuquerque nearly half a million dollars in unpaid safety fees for a 2019 rally. He did a similar dash in cities across the country, racking up millions of dollars in unpaid fees. Some places, like Nassau County, gave up on trying to bill Trump entirely and just ate the $1 million he owed them. Similar instances occurred in Eerie, Pennsylvania; Tuscon, Arizona; and Green Bay and Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin. “He’s welcome here, but we need to have our bills paid. Any expenses incurred by us for him being here, or we don’t really want him here,” Prairie Du Chien Mayor Dave Hemmer said last year. “We are a smaller city and if we incurred expenses like that, we expect to be reimbursed. Or we’d say, ‘Don’t come.’” In his private life as a businessman, Trump frequently refused to pay contractors—hundreds have claimed he stiffed them for completed work as a private citizen.

Now the guardsmen are getting the same treatment.

The president was caught off guard by news that anti-ICE protests exist outside of Los Angeles.

Posing for photos with his wife, Melania Trump, on the Kennedy Center’s red carpet Wednesday evening, Donald Trump refused to believe that dissent against his anti-immigration agenda had spread to more than a dozen cities around the country.

“If this turns into another summer of unrest, what are you prepared to do, sir?” asked a Fox News reporter.

“About what?” Trump said.

“Well, the protests have spread now to 16 cities across the U.S.,” she added.

“That’s what you’re saying, and do I believe you? I don’t think so,” Trump said.

“Well, I got that from the Fox News brain room,” the reporter clarified.

But Trump wouldn’t address the national reaction. Instead, he was fixated on recalling how his administration had forcibly intervened in the Los Angeles protests—without the express authorization of the California or city government.

“What we have is a situation in Los Angeles that was caused by gross incompetence,” Trump said. “They didn’t have the police to handle it. The police were asking us to come in. They were very late, we had to go in to save a lot of ICE officers, as you know, who were holed up. They were holed up in a building.”

But the Los Angeles Police Department did not request Trump’s aid. On Tuesday, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell denied that he had asked the White House for help in handling the protests, telling CNN that the department was “nowhere near” calling on assistance from the National Guard.

So far, anti-ICE protests have taken root from coast to coast. By Tuesday, NBC News accounted for at least 25 protests in cities across the country, with gatherings in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, San Diego, Denver, Seattle, Las Vegas, Raleigh, Columbus, Oklahoma City, Washington, and others.

The mass mobilization against Trump’s agenda and his illegal decisions to send hundreds of Marines and thousands of National Guard members to Los Angeles’s doorstep echoes the civil unrest during the ex–reality TV star’s first administration, when an estimated 26 million Americans participated in the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. Those protests, which amounted to the largest protest movement in American history, were in direct reaction to police brutality against Black people following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daniel Prude, and countless others.

But the recent wave of protests have already transformed into a symbolic rejection of Trump’s authoritarian leanings. In an address to his state and to the nation, California Governor Gavin Newsom urged Americans to “stand up” to the White House’s aggressive and militaristic control, announcing that democracy is “under assault” under Trump’s leadership.

Senator Rand Paul was packing his picnic blanket in a huff, but Donald Trump says he’s more than welcome to join his colleagues at the White House’s party Thursday. So, who’s lying?

The Kentucky Republican told reporters Wednesday that despite his plans to take his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson to an annual White House picnic for members of Congress Thursday, he had found himself unwelcome from the festivities.

“I think I’m the first senator in the history of the United States to be uninvited to the White House picnic,” Paul said in a video posted to X by Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manriquez. “Every Democrat will be invited, every Republican will be invited, but I will be the only one disallowed to come on the grounds of the White House.”

Paul has been an outspoken critic against Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” and a strong opponent to raising the debt ceiling. He recently took Senator Lindsey Graham to task, arguing that the hawk only wanted to inflate the U.S. defense budget.

Now, he’s claimed his words have come at a cost.

“I just find this incredibly petty. I mean, I have been, I think nothing but polite to the president. I have been an intellectual opponent, a public policy opponent, and he has chosen now to invite me from the picnic,” Paul said.

“The level of immaturity is beyond words,” he said, adding that he’d been a critic of former presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Trump during his first term, but never been uninvited.

“They’ve decided they want to declare war on my family and exclude us from the White House, and I just think it’s incredibly petty,” Paul said.

But in a post on Truth Social Thursday just hours before the party, Trump claimed that Paul and his family were expected at the White House.

“Of course Senator Rand Paul and his beautiful wife and family are invited to the BIG White House Party tonight. He’s the toughest vote in the history of the U.S. Senate, but why wouldn’t he be?” Trump wrote. “Besides, it gives me more time to get his Vote on the Great, Big, Beautiful Bill, one of the greatest and most important pieces of legislation ever put before our Senators & Congressmen/women.”

It’s not clear whether Paul was bluffing, or whether Trump is pretending never to have rescinded the invite at all.

Paul said he wasn’t sure if the order had come from Trump himself or from staffers, who he alleged had been waging a paid influencer campaign against him. Paul even took a shot at White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect behind the president’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

“These are people that shouldn’t be working over there. You have people that are basically going around casually talking about getting rid of habeas corpus,” Paul said. “And the same people that are directing this campaign are the same people that casually would throw out parts of the Constitution and suspend habeas corpus.”

“So, I think what it tells is they don’t like hearing me say stuff like that, and so they want to quiet me down. And it hasn’t worked, and so they’re going to try to attack me. They’re going to try to destroy me in other ways. And then do petty little things like social occasions or whatever,” he added.

When asked if he was speaking about Miller, Paul shrugged, nodding. When asked whether he thought Miller had him uninvited, Paul said he didn’t know.

Paul told reporters he’d received no explanation for the decision. “We’re just not welcome,” he said.

This piece has been updated.

The website for Donald Trump’s green card alternative has arrived—and it doesn’t look like they spent a dime making it.

The site, which fields information for individuals interested in obtaining a $5 million “gold card,” is entirely black—save for an image of the card itself. Green cards have traditionally looked similar to drivers licenses, but if Trump’s mock-up is anything to go by, his gold card will feature his own face and his own signature on a piece of plastic that looks more like a credit card than a piece of government identification. At the top, the site says that it is “an official website of the United States government.”

Trump announced the site on Truth Social Wednesday, writing that “thousands have been calling and asking how they can sign up to ride a beautiful road in gaining access to the greatest country and market anywhere in the world. It’s called THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!”

For months, Trump and his team have pitched the “gold card” as a replacement for the EB-5 visa program, which gives foreign investors a pathway to permanent residency. But the market for the gold card would almost singularly consist of rich foreigners due to its enormous price tag: $5 million a pop.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed in March that, in just a few weeks after initially announcing the idea, the administration had already made $5 billion off the gold card.

“Yesterday I sold a thousand,” Lutnick told the All In podcast, claiming at the time that the program would launch a couple weeks from then and that Elon Musk was developing the software to handle applications for the pricy legal papers.

Lutnick explained that American billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson was the brains behind the visa replacement and had shared the details of the “gold card” with Trump over the phone. If there was an iota of truth to Lutnick’s claim, then that meant that people from around the world were willing to hand over $5 million for little more than a promise.

A new Quinippiac poll shows that a majority of Americans are opposed to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, confirming public aversion to a budget bill expected to add $2.4 trillion to the deficit, give a tax break to wealthy people and corporations, and slash critical Medicaid and food stamp programs. Almost half of all voters think Medicaid funding should be increased, not decreased.

Only 67 percent of Republicans are in favor of the bill, a by-product of the conflict between Trump and more conservative, deficit-hawk Republicans who are threatening to tank it.

Eighty-nine percent of Democrats oppose the bill, as well as 57 percent of independents.

The same poll found that majorities disapproved of Trump’s handling of a number of other issues as well, including immigration and deportations—only 43 percent approve of his handling of the former, once his strongest issue, and only 40 percent approve of his handling of the latter. Only 40 percent of voters think he’s doing a good job on the economy, another area he was recently dominant in. His worst issue by far, however, was his handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—where only 34 percent of voters think he’s doing a good job. That is hardly surprising, however, given that Trump had promised repeatedly on the campaign trail that he would end the war immediately upon retaking office. That obviously hasn’t happened; indeed, peace seems further away than ever.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent indicated that Donald Trump is again intending to move the goalposts for his global tariff policy.

The United States is fast approaching the end of the president’s 90-day pause on his sweeping global tariffs on July 9, but while testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday, Bessent said that “Liberation Day” Part 2 may not come to pass so soon.

“I would say, as I have repeatedly said, that there are 18 important trading partners. We are working toward deals on those. And it is highly likely that those countries that are negoti—or trading blocs, in the case of the EU—who are negotiating in good faith, we will roll the date forward to continue good-faith negotiations,” Bessent said.

“If someone is not negotiating, then we will not,” he added.

The Trump administration has not even vaguely approached its initial promise to crack 90 deals in 90 days, only announcing two unfinished deals, with the U.K. and China.

Crucially, Trump’s paltry set of terms with China isn’t even a deal. China referred to it as merely a “framework,” while Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said it was a “handshake for a framework” that both Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping need to approve.

Trump seems intent on running the country’s economic policy in 90-day increments, prolonging economic uncertainty that has roiled the markets and sent prices rising. But the president’s failure should hardly come as a surprise, as the stated purpose of his tariffs—not to ensure economic prosperity but to bring U.S. trading partners to their knees—defies all logic and reason.

With only two half-deals made, and a suddenly unclear horizon, it’s not clear how TACO Trump will ever reach the goal of 200 trade deals he’d claimed to have made in April. Especially considering that there aren’t even that many countries.

The Science Guy™ is sick and tired of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his vaccine conspiracy theories.

Months before Kennedy was appointed to run America’s public health policy, he was harassing generational science educator Bill Nye, trying to convince Nye that there was merit to his unfounded beliefs that vaccines are tied to autism, according to a Men’s Health profile of Nye published Tuesday.

The two had been connected years ago by way of a mutual friend, Ed Begley Jr., when Kennedy was still focused on championing environmental causes.

Nye showed the magazine “miles and miles” of texts from RFK Jr. in an old exchange that only ended when Nye put his foot down with the virulent conspiracist: “Okay, no more texts,” he told Kennedy. Those texts included links to conspiratorial articles focused on vaccines, but the missives weren’t effective at changing Nye’s mind. Instead, they only convinced him that Kennedy is “not suited for this job.”

“Just no self-awareness,” Nye said. “And if you read these articles he sent, they’re all this speculation about autism and just cause-and-effect, and mercury in vaccines, that maybe there’s a connection.

“I wrote him back and said, ‘Okay, I’ll read your book. I think you’ve confused causation with correlation. Your friend, Bill.’ And he sent this,” Nye said, showcasing droves of more messages. “So I wrote, ‘Okay, no more texts.’ And he started again! So I cut him off. He does not have good judgment,” Nye said.

But revisiting their correspondence got Nye fired up again, sparking a rant about Kennedy’s disastrous approach to handling a historic measles outbreak in Texas, which, since January, has amounted to 744 confirmed cases and 96 hospitalizations, according to the state health department.

“It was a religious sect that has historically low vaccination rates. And the argument from the other side is: They have rights not to get vaccinated. No, you don’t!” Nye told Men’s Health. “And unvaccinated people can, and usually do, spread a disease. And that’s why we have these rules, for public health! It’s not arbitrary. It’s not about your rights. It’s about my rights, people.”

And that fed into a diatribe about the excessive amount of misinformation that has spread about the safety and efficacy of the jab thanks to high-flying personalities like Kennedy.

“So furthermore, there’s a real subtle problem: There is a certain tiny fraction of people who get polio from the vaccine, but that is so rare. And it’s not true of measles,” Nye continued.

Should it need repeating: Vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. They are so effective they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases, from rabies to polio and smallpox, a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual. But people from prior generations—like Nye—aren’t so quick to forget the radical developments in America’s public health sector.

“I’m of a certain age: You got measles, you got chicken pox, you got what used to be called German measles, now it’s called rubella. And you would go through that. You’d be sick and out of school, and everybody understood that’s what you were doing for five days, and your parents had to stay home from work.

“And by inventing these vaccines, you don’t have to do that. So let’s look at it this way: Now the parents can go to work and pay taxes! There you go! Isn’t that good? They don’t miss a day of work; they’re more productive,” Nye said. “It’s just an amazing time.”

The American embassy in Baghdad is preparing to evacuate in a troubling sign for nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran, as well as greater regional unrest, according to Reuters.

Three U.S. and two Iraqi sources confirmed Wednesday that preparations for a departure were underway, but did not specify what security concerns had prompted the move.

It’s more than likely that the sudden withdrawal is related to Israel’s recent threat to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, despite ongoing nuclear talks between the United States and Iran.

Ahead of a sixth round of talks set to begin this week, Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh warned in a press briefing Wednesday that if the negotiations failed, and “conflict is imposed” on Iran that “all U.S. bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them in host countries.”

In an interview on the Pod Force One podcast released Wednesday, Donald Trump spoke about the talks, saying that he was “less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago.”

“Something happened to them, but I am much less confident of a deal being made,” he said.

The New York Times reported in April that Israel, which is not a participant in the ongoing nuclear talks, had made plans to Iranian nuclear sites that were waved off by Trump, who wanted to continue negotiating with Tehran. Still, Netanyahu has continued to push for military action against Iran, without assistance from the United States.

In a phone call Monday, Trump urged Netanyahu to stop talking about attacking Iran, and put an end to the leaks about his military’s plans, a source familiar with the conversation told CNN. Netanyahu told him that Iran wasn’t serious about the talks, and was simply using delaying tactics. He has some experience with that, after drawing out negotiations for a ceasefire deal in Gaza for months on end.

The exact details of the U.S. withdrawal from Baghdad are still unclear. An Iraqi foreign ministry official said that a “partial evacuation” had been confirmed due to “potential security concerns related to possible regional tensions.” A U.S. official told Reuters that the State Department was intending to execute the departure through “commercial means,” though the U.S. military was “standing by.”

In Bahrain, U.S. military dependents have been given the greenlight to temporarily evacuate due to escalating regional tensions, one U.S. official told Reuters.