The last chapter of this book is also the newest story on this site. In November 2025, New York City elected Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as its mayor. Within weeks, Mamdani confirmed that he had met President Donald Trump, a man who had been sharply critical of him during the campaign, and said he was prepared to work with anyone if it would benefit New Yorkers. The meeting drew attention because the two men come from very different ends of American politics. A face-to-face meeting between them was always going to be watched closely, both for its tone and for what it might mean for the relationship between City Hall and the White House.
What matters most, Mamdani suggests, is delivery. Running New York, with its housing, its transport, its schools, and its services, depends in part on cooperation with the federal government, whatever the politics. His message is that he will take that cooperation wherever he can find it, and that he will judge every relationship by a single test: whether it helps the people of New York. This chapter closes the book on that note of open possibility, because the story it tells has no ending yet.
Who Zohran Mamdani Is
Mamdani was, by the standards of New York politics, an unlikely mayor. Born in Uganda in 1991, he moved to New York City with his family as a child and grew up in Queens. He worked as a housing counselor and community organizer before winning a seat in the New York State Assembly in 2020, representing Astoria in Queens. In the Assembly, he built a reputation as a democratic socialist in the tradition of Bernie Sanders, arguing that the city’s wealth should be used to lower the cost of living for ordinary New Yorkers. Few outside his district knew his name when he entered the mayoral race.
His rise was rapid. In the Democratic primary in June 2025, he defeated former governor Andrew Cuomo, a result that surprised political observers across the country. The general election in November confirmed the upset: Mamdani won the mayoralty of the largest city in the United States, on a platform that promised to freeze rents, make buses free, open city-run grocery stores, and expand free childcare. His victory made him the most prominent elected democratic socialist in the country, and it turned New York into the test case for the ideas this book has followed through nine parts.
What He Ran On
The program Mamdani ran on was concrete and local. Its centerpiece was a rent freeze for the city’s rent-stabilized apartments, the homes of about a million New Yorkers, where rents are set by a city board. He promised to use his power over those appointments to hold rents steady. Alongside it, he promised free buses, arguing that public transit should be treated as a public good rather than a fare to be collected. He promised city-run grocery stores in neighborhoods where private stores were scarce and prices were high. And he promised free childcare, so that working parents could afford to live and work in the city.
Those promises are, in their own way, an answer to the question this book has asked from its first chapter. The socialist programs of the twentieth century were imposed from above, by revolutionary governments that seized power and abolished opposition. Mamdani’s program, by contrast, was put to voters in a free election, and it will be carried out, if it is carried out, within the limits of American democracy: by a mayor who must work with a city council, a state government, and a federal government, all of which can check him. That difference is the reason his supporters say his socialism is democratic, and it is the reason his critics say the test is only beginning.
The Meeting with President Trump
That test began with a meeting. During the campaign, Trump had been sharply critical of Mamdani, denouncing him as a dangerous radical and warning that a socialist mayor would damage the city and the country. Mamdani had campaigned as an outspoken critic of the president. The two men seemed to have little in common beyond their prominence. When the video in this chapter was recorded, Mamdani confirmed that the meeting had taken place, and he described his approach in his own words: he would work with anyone, including the president, if it served New Yorkers.
The meeting matters for two reasons. The first is practical. New York City depends on federal funding for housing, transportation, and disaster relief, and a mayor who cannot work with the White House will find it harder to deliver on his promises. The second is symbolic. A democratic socialist mayor sitting down with a president who campaigned against him is a picture of American politics as it actually works: opponents who must still govern together. The video captures that moment, and it is the reason this chapter, rather than any other in the book, ends with a meeting instead of a verdict.
What the Video Contributes
The video itself is short, and it is worth describing plainly. Mamdani speaks directly to the camera, confirms the meeting, and explains his view that the interests of the city’s residents come ahead of political differences. There is no dramatic revelation, and that is the point. The clip is not a confession or a confrontation, but a statement of approach: a new mayor saying that he will judge every relationship, including the most difficult one in American politics, by whether it helps the people he was elected to serve. His supporters hear a mayor putting his city first; his critics hear a candidate discovering, in office, that governing requires compromise with the very institutions he campaigned against.
The Book’s Open Ending
That is where this book ends: not with a conclusion, but with a question. The experiment the rest of the book judged in Moscow, Havana, and Caracas now begins its American test in the country’s largest city, and nobody yet knows the result. New York is not the Soviet Union, and a mayor is not a dictator. Mamdani was elected in a free election, he governs under a constitution, and his program will succeed or fail in the open, where voters can judge it. Those are differences that matter, and they are the reason his supporters insist that this time will be different.
Yet the questions from earlier chapters remain. Can a government freeze rents without reducing the supply of housing? Can it make buses free and groceries cheap without raising taxes or cutting services elsewhere? Can a mayor who promises so much deliver it while working with a president, a governor, and a council who do not share his views? This book has spent eight parts arguing that socialist promises have a poor record of keeping themselves. It closes by giving the newest version of those promises a fair hearing, in the city where they will be tested. The rest of the story belongs to New Yorkers, and to the years ahead.