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Zohran Mamdani gestures as he speaks during a watch party for his primary election to become the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor on June 25, 2025.

REUTERS

What We’re Watching: Far-left upstart wins NYC mayoral primary, NATO members to boost defense spending, Iran nuclear damage in doubt

Upstart wins mayoral primary in New York

In a stunning political upset with national implications, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year old Democratic Socialist, won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, defeating centrist former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. In heavily blue NYC, the Democratic primary winner usually wins the November general election. Mamdani, though, will face a strong backlash from Wall Street power brokers and centrists like current Mayor Eric Adams, who will likely challenge him as an Independent. National-level Dems are closely watching the race. As the party seeks a path back from the wilderness, it faces a widening internal rift between progressives and establishment-oriented centrists.

NATO summit agrees to massive defense spending increases

The 32-member alliance formally agreed to US President Donald Trump’s demand that they boost defense-spending targets from 2% to 5% of GDP, with the goal of achieving this by 2035. Some countries appear to be getting a headstart: Germany pledged a 70% increase in spending by 2029, the United Kingdom is buying jets that can drop nuclear weapons, while Poland wants to get close to the 5% target this year. However, the steep costs could increase pressure on European government budgets, which are renowned for upholding their end of the social contract.

How badly damaged is Iran’s nuclear program?

Four days after US President Donald Trump’s Midnight Hammer struck three key Iranian nuclear facilities, the effects are still unclear. A new US intel report says the mission set back Tehran’s atomic ambitions by only a few months – Trump disputes this. It’s also uncertain what Iran did with the uranium it has already enriched. The stakes are high: if Tehran can in fact revive its program in short order, the US-Israeli assault will be seen as a costly and risky failure.
Annie Gugliotta/GZERO Media

Opinion: The lanternfly law of American politics

You have probably heard the news. New Yorkers of all ages have become gleeful, merciless killers.

On the streets. In the subways. In the parks. Even in their own homes. The massacres here continue, with no end in sight.

But it’s not what you think.

The tens of thousands of nameless dead are in fact Spotted Lanternflies, nickel-sized insects with kimono-like layers of spotted gray, black, and fiery-red wings. “A sexy cicada,” as my colleague Riley Callanan aptly describes them.

And the trouble with the Lanternflies around here is simple: they’re out-of-towners.

Native to Asia, they’re believed to have hitched a ride to the US on a shipping container about a decade ago. The population exploded across the Northeast, along with concerns about their impact on forests and farms.The Lanternflies, it turns out, secrete a gooey honeydew that foments deadly fungi.

Experts began warning of billions of dollars in damage. And so local governments urged us all to kill them on sight.

People listened.

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The New York migrant crisis up close | GZERO Reports

The New York migrant crisis up close

Since 2022, New York City has absorbed more than 170,000 migrants, mostly sent on buses by Texas officials from the US-Mexico border. Many of them are asylum-seekers who hail from South American countries facing political and economic upheaval, like Venezuela and El Salvador. But increasingly, people from Asia, western Africa, and the Caribbean have been making the difficult journey to the US via the southern border as well.

Unlike other so-called “sanctuary cities,” New York has a legal mandate, known as a consent decree, that requires the city to provide shelter to anyone who asks for it. But the already under-funded, under-resourced system is struggling to deal with the influx of so many people. Adding to the chaos, in October, the city changed its policy to require everyone in the shelter system to reapply for a bed every 30-60 days. For asylum seekers already trying to navigate byzantine legal and healthcare systems, the instability can have devastating consequences.

That’s why grassroots organizers like Power Malu of Artists Athletes Activists, Adama Bah of Afrikana, and Ilze Thielmann of TeamTLC have been stepping up to fill a major gap in the city’s immigration system: greeting arrivals, pointing them towards resources, providing food and clothing. Most crucially, they're help people understand their rights and apply for asylum, so they can get work permits and find permanent housing.

Speaking from the front lines of this crisis, the organizers say the city isn't fully meeting the needs of the migrants coming here, despite spending $1.45 billion on migrant costs alone in 2023. "The illusion is that they're in these beautiful hotels and they're getting all of these services and it's not true," Malu says, "That's why you have organizations like ours that have stepped up and had to change from welcoming to now doing case management, social services, helping them with mental health therapy."

GZERO’s Alex Kliment spent time on the ground with newly-arrived asylum-seekers and the volunteers to better understand the reality on the ground, how this current crisis getting so much national attention is functioning day to day, and if the city could be doing more to help.

GZERO has reached out to City Hall for comment and will update with any response.

Learn more about the organizations mentioned in this report:

Catch this full episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on public television beginning this Friday, March 15. Check local listings.

“Everything is political” is personal: the NYC migrant crisis

“Do you know,” Jhon asked me, shivering slightly in the lengthening afternoon shadows of New York’s Penn Station, “do you know if we can stay here – in America?”

Jhon is a wiry 42-year-old construction worker who fled Ecuador a month ago with his wife and four children. The recent surge of narco-violence there had gotten so bad, he said, that the local school switched to virtual classes for the safety of the students and their parents.

Now, after a trying journey by foot, boat, bus, and train, he was standing in the middle of New York City, bewildered but hopeful.

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Tom Suozzi speaks at an election rally in Floral Park.

SOPA Images

Why New York’s special election is getting special attention

Long Islanders are heading to the polls on Tuesday to replace disgraced Republican Rep. George Santos.

The special election between Republican Mazi Pilip and Democrat Tom Suozzi is a test run for upcoming state and national elections. Both parties want to show they can win on issues like immigration and abortion in the battleground district.

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Ari Winkleman

Latino dreams, NY States of Mind

Hi there! Welcome back to our new daily feature, Midterm Matters, where we pick a couple of red-hot US midterm stories and separate the signal (what you need to know) from the noise (what everyone is yelling about). Enjoy and let us know what you think.

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Florida Skyrocketing COVID Rates Show Lessons Not Learned: Fmr. Surgeon General Murthy | GZERO World

Florida skyrocketing COVID rates show lessons not learned: former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy

In a new interview with Ian Bremmer for GZERO World, former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy discusses how Florida went from a relatively low number of cases to the epicenter for the outbreak. Dr. Murthy says many states where cases are currently climbing did not heed "the lessons that we learned from New York." In this portion of the interview, Murthy also discusses new therapies and treatments that are helping the most severely ill. The complete interview begins airing on public television stations across the US on Friday, July 24. Check local listings and visit gzeromedia.com for more.

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