"Affordability is everything," said Transport Workers Union leader John Samuelsen, who has praised Mamdani's transit plans. "If the establishment Democrats embraced economic security like Zohran did, they wouldn't be seeing the losses they have."
Labor leaders have long called on the Democratic Party to do more to speak to voters' economic precarity in a way that resonates with people who feel cast aside by the political system.
"There are a lot of working-class voters who could tip one way or the other," said Steve Rosenthal, a longtime labor strategist and former political director at the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest union federation. "They understand the deck is stacked against them, and they can buy into the Trump arguments — but Democratic candidates can also tap into that."
"The lesson from Donald Trump's second win was that Democrats need to focus on bread-and-butter issues, rebrand as economic populists and embrace a new generation of leadership," he said. "Zohran represented exactly that. You can't call for that, and then just want Chuck Schumer in a 30-year-old's package."
Unions See Template For Dems in Mamdani's Economic Message - POLITICO
The Trump administration has codified its efforts to strip some Americans of their US citizenship in a recently published justice department memo that directs attorneys to prioritize denaturalization for naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes.
At the center of the move are the estimated 25 million US citizens who immigrated to the country after being born abroad, according to data from 2023 – and it lists 10 different priority categories for denaturalization.
The memo claims such efforts will focus on those who are involved "in the commission of war crimes, extrajudicial killings, or other serious human rights abuses … [and] naturalized criminals, gang members, or, indeed, any individuals convicted of crimes who pose an ongoing threat to the US".
