Mamdani: The start of Trump's end

THE shockwave did not come with a whisper. It landed like a subway train arriving too fast, brakes screaming, sparks flying off the rails.

- CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN

Mayor-elect: Zohran Mamdani

New York City has elected Democrat Zohran Mamdani as its 111th mayor, and with that victory, America has been handed its clearest signal yet: many are no longer willing to swallow Donald Trump’s second presidency and the slow-motion wreckage it continues to unleash.

Mamdani, 34, will be the city's first Muslim and first South Asian mayor. He did not simply win. He triumphed. He built a coalition that political consultants in Washington still insist doesn’t exist: young voters, immigrant workers, Black and Latino communities, and the weary middle who are tired of being told that their pain is the inevitable cost of someone else’s power.

He did it while dispatching a titan of New York’s political establishment, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, and the battery of super PACs (politicial action committees) stacked behind him like marble pillars of the old guard.