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Mamdani, setting a tone for “showing up”:

When another reporter asked City Hall about the glaring misstep, a Mamdani rep replied, “The mayor didn’t go but he tweeted about it”

Everyone Is Housed On Stolen Land

When a mayoralty starts out as a dorm room thought experiment, you can just make up new definitions of everything, including “mental capacity”:

A mumbling homeless woman was left out in deadly near-zero temperatures on a Manhattan sidewalk overnight — with first responders telling The Post they couldn’t help her under city guidelines.

The unidentified woman was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, slippers and two blankets as she clipped her nails, put lotion on her hands and talked to herself while hunkered down on East 34th Street across from NYU Langone Hospital as temperatures neared 0 degrees early Sunday.

She refused repeated offers for help from EMS workers and cops — who explained to The Post they had to leave the shivering vagrant in the extremely dangerous bone-chilling weather because she could answer basic questions — a factor that helps meet the threshold of Dem Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s controversial homeless policies.

“She knew the year, 2026,” a firefighter told The Post. “She knew where she was: New York, Manhattan. She knew who the president is. Since she has mental capacity, there is nothing we can do. We can’t force her to go inside. We can’t kidnap her.

An EMS worker at the scene added, “I don’t want to leave her out here.

“My hands are tied.”

This is all supposed to make some sort of sense but even Scott Stringer is struggling to understand it:

City Hall officials briefed council members over the weekend, but barely said anything about involuntarily removing people, a council source said.

The mayor’s office threw up their hands, saying they’re bound by the wholly unscientific “last resort” policy currently in place, in which someone can only be forced indoors if they are deemed a danger to themselves or others.

Over in Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott — whom Mamdani once praised for his crime-reduction efforts — late last month called the cold a life-and-death issue and ordered the police department to take people off the streets even if they were refusing services.

“That direction order came from me because we cannot allow folks to be out in this kind of weather,” Scott said.

A City Hall spokeswoman claimed the comparison to Baltimore didn’t work because of differing laws between New York and Maryland.

But former City Comptroller Scott Stringer said the Baltimore mayor’s approach makes sense given the urgency. He noted that the city’s removal policy was highly subjective, and that the mayor has extraordinary power over its interpretation or analysis.

“You bring ’em in, and you worry about the court case later,” he said.

“The question is: is it ideology or incompetence for the lack of action? Saving lives is the most important thing you can do as an elected official. The standard has to be in this extreme weather, ‘can they survive the night?’ And that’s what Baltimore is saying,” Stringer said.

“It’s just not a tough call when people can die in the night. I don’t understand why it’s so complicated.”

Speedrun 1975!

Can’t believe it’s only been a month! There is so much more to accomplish:

The No. 1 job of a mayor, above everything else, is to keep his or her city functioning.

Yet with people dying on the cold streets of New York and trash building up in parts of the city, New York is by no means functioning. Not even close.

The snow and frigid temps have tested Gotham’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani and, alas, he has not risen to the occasion. Rather, he’s left the city a mess.

Everest-size mountains of garbage have popped up. Unremoved snow, ice and road salt have damaged Con Edison electrical equipment, contributing to power outages.

Most horrifically, 16 people have died on the street — 13 from hypothermia.

Chalk that up to a perverse ideology on the homeless or simple mismanagement, but either way, it represents tragic, unforgivable failure.

Sorry, did that say 16? it’s actually 17 now:

“Today is the 13th day of this relentless cold,” Mamdani said. “As of this morning, 17 New Yorkers have passed away outside during this cold.”

There is nearly two months left in the winter season. In 2023, the latest year for which data are available, 29 New Yorkers died from the cold.

[. . .]

Mamdani has faced criticism for saying city workers would only force people indoors “as a last resort” during the cold spell. He has stressed that none of the dead were found in homeless encampments — which his administration has refused to clear.

Not to worry though because some essential services have been restored:

Employees of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Department of Health have created a “working group” that accuses Israel of committing genocide, The Post has learned.

The “Global Oppression and Public Health Working Group” held its first meeting Tuesday afternoon — the middle of the workday — with members gathering at the department’s headquarters in Long Island City, as well as remotely.

“We really developed in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” one presenter said near the beginning of the meeting, according to video obtained by The Post.

“And the working group aims to address the growing interests among the health department staff to learn about current and ongoing global oppression in its many forms and how it influences the advancement of health equity,” the presenter said.

The Department Of Homeless Turndown Service

Perhaps you’ve noticed new encampments since the beginning of the new year:

The homeless have a new perk thanks to Mayor Zohran Mamdani: turndown service.

City sanitation workers did everything this week but put mints on the greasy pillows atop makeshift beds in a booming shantytown below a Queens overpass.

Community leaders and residents complained that hobos were taking advantage of the socialist pol’s softer new guidelines for dealing with the homeless crisis and brazenly turning the public walkway into their own sprawling flophouse.

On Tuesday, New York’s Strongest carefully tidied up the disgusting digs along the Jamaica Avenue business district near 98th Street in Woodhaven — removing rickety chairs covered in filthy laundry, shopping carts and overstuffed bins and plenty of trash.

But they left behind two air mattresses, and the squatters’ clothing, blankets and other belongings neatly folded and placed nearby.

[. . .]

Cops initially responded to the scene before sanitation workers arrived at the request of [Councilwoman Joann] Ariola, the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association and other community leaders.

But the police officers found themselves powerless to do much thanks to Mamdani ending the NYPD’s previous practice of dealing with the homeless crisis by clearing out encampments, sources said.

Under the new guidelines, officers responding to 311 and 911 calls about homeless conditions are required to document each case with body-worn cameras and offer medical services if needed. But they can’t compel anyone to leave — even if it’s bitterly cold or other harsh weather conditions exist — unless directed by a supervisor in life-threatening situations, the sources added.

It’s part of Mamdani’s larger “more humane” plan for dealing with the Big Apple’s homeless crisis by shifting to a “housing-first approach” through his planned $1 billion Department of Community Safety, which will rely on outreach teams of civilian social workers rather than cops to connect the homeless with supportive or rental housing.

[. . .]

Mamdani’s soft solutions for dealing with homelessness are having repercussions in other parts of the Big Apple with residents reporting expanding encampments — and new one’s popping up.

“I think it’s pretty cool” that Mamdani stopped homeless encampment sweeps “because I’ve lost a lot, a lot of stuff,” cheered a homeless man among the eight now living below a West 18th Street sidewalk shed in posh Chelsea.

“All of us have, and it’s good that he’s not, doesn’t want to do that anymore.”

It Only Took 18 Hours And Perhaps As Many Drafts To Allow That “Some People Did Something”

Kathy Hochul and Letitia James didn’t take long to denounce protesters who chanted “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here” in front of a Queens synagogue. Even AOC wrote that “marching into a predominantly Jewish neighborhood and leading with a chant saying ‘we support Hamas’ is a disgusting and antisemitic thing to do. Pretty basic!”

And then there was the mayor:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani was facing an early test on a delicate matter. Protesters had gathered outside a synagogue in a heavily Jewish neighborhood of New York City and chanted in support of Hamas.

Video of the chants rocketed around social media, and by the time the protest ended at roughly 10 p.m., attention quickly turned to how he would respond. Yet for hours, Mr. Mamdani said nothing.

His first response came after an unrelated news conference shortly after noon the next day, when he was asked about the chants as he headed to his car. He briefly condemned the language; an official statement on the matter was distributed at 3:40 p.m. in response to The New York Times. At 6:23 p.m., he posted a more thorough statement on X.

The halting responses drew some criticism of Mr. Mamdani, whose political career has been driven in part by his passionate support of Palestine, for seeming reluctant to call out extremism and denounce Hamas.

But behind the scenes, a more revealing drama was unfolding. Mr. Mamdani’s team repeatedly debated the wording and fairness of the language, drafting and redrafting his response and sending it to leading Jewish figures for review.

[. . .]

It all began last Thursday on the evening of Jan. 8, when Mr. Mamdani’s liaison to Jewish New Yorkers, Josh Binderman, went to Queens to observe the protest, which had been organized to condemn an event by a real estate firm that promotes American investment in Israel and the occupied West Bank. Insults and slurs were hurled from protesters on each side.

Mr. Binderman quickly began crafting a statement on the mayor’s behalf. It was written and rewritten until he found language that he thought might pass muster with Jewish leaders and the mayor, according to detailed accounts from seven people involved in the matter.

He contacted at least one Jewish official the night of the protest and relayed the statement. The official expressed concern that it didn’t forcefully condemn Hamas. Mr. Binderman seemed to acquiesce, and that version of the statement was never released, according to one person familiar with the interaction.

Mr. Binderman wrote another statement that criticized the pro-Hamas chants, but also mentioned the Jewish Defense League, a Zionist group designated by the F.B.I. as a terrorist organization that is affiliated with the followers of Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn-born anti-Arab militant whose Kach party was outlawed in Israel for inciting racism. Online video of the protest showed some supporters carrying the group’s yellow flag.

Several Jewish leaders warned Mr. Binderman against drawing what they felt was an unfair equivalence, according to several people familiar with those exchanges. They believed the pro-Hamas chants were more widespread and pertinent than the presence of a Kahanist symbol.

A revised statement that forcefully condemned Hamas seemed to appease the Jewish leaders, several of the people said. But that version was also not released, and it was unclear why.

It was only after sundown on Friday, when observant Jews go offline for Shabbat, that Mr. Mamdani posted on social media a more direct public statement that referred to a terrorist organization, risking criticism from some far-left pro-Palestinian activists who valorize the group as legitimate armed resistance.

“As I said earlier today, chants in support of a terrorist organization have no place in our city,” Mr. Mamdani posted on X. “We will continue to ensure New Yorkers’ safety entering and exiting houses of worship as well as the constitutional right to protest.”

[. . .]

By the time Mr. Binderman negotiated the final draft of the statement and asked his Orthodox Jewish contacts to post it on social media, the sun had set on Friday evening.

The leaders Mr. Mamdani had sought to soothe had gone offline for Shabbat. They would be unreachable for a full day and would most likely not see the mayor’s statement until Saturday night.