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Hard Numbers: Japan’s PM organizes 3 a.m. meeting, Exam day for South Korea’s students, US government shutdown ends, & More
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi answers a question at the Upper House's budget committee session at the National Diet in Tokyo, Japan, on November 12, 2025.
3: Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has taken her country’s difficult work culture to a new level, organizing a meeting last Friday at 3 o’clock – in the morning. Takaichi herself has a reputation as a workaholic, though it was still a surprise to see her leaving her residence just after 3 a.m. to convene a meeting that lasted three hours.
550,000: South Korea will come to a standstill today as 550,000 students, the most in seven years, will sit down to take the country’s infamously-long college entrance exam. For most students, the exam – which could determine their education and future job prospects – will last roughly eight hours. Blind students receive extra time, though, meaning they can spend up to 13 hours in the exam room. If you’re anything like us, that thought provokes cold chills.
43: The longest-ever US government shutdown is over after 43 days, after US President Donald Trump signed a continuing resolution last night that will fund the government until Jan. 30. Earlier on Wednesday evening, the House passed the bill, with six centrist Democrats crossing the aisle to vote for it – two Republicans voted against.
5: Trump became the fifth leader to announce that he won’t travel to South Africa next week for the G20 summit, joining Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, and Argentine President Javier Milei. US Vice President JD Vance will go in Trump’s stead.
10: France today mourns the 10th anniversary of the Bataclan attacks, when Islamic State-linked militants killed 132 people in a series of coordinated attacks in and around Paris. The country remains wary of threats from jihadist militants – the interior minister said authorities have foiled six terrorist plots this year.
“They are the world’s best salespeople,” Hurewitz told GZERO. Spies master the hardest pitch imaginable: convincing someone to commit treason. And the skills they use—empathy, curiosity, and what he calls “the art of elicitation”—are just as valuable in boardrooms and negotiating tables today.
However, those abilities are also experiencing a societal recession as political polarization grows, and screens and devices threaten to erode the “soft skills” spies, and the rest of us, can use to get what we want.
Watch Hurewitz’s interview with GZERO’s Tony Maciulis for more on what world leaders can learn from spies, what he thinks of President Donald Trump's skills as a salesman, and how artificial intelligence is impacting the traditional world of espionage.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI, Rama Duwaji, MIRA NAIR, MAMOOD MAMDANI during an election night event at The Brooklyn Paramount Theater in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.
Last Tuesday, a self-identified democratic socialist who ran on making New York affordable for the 99% won the city’s mayoral race in a landslide, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo. And the reactions have been predictably hysterical.
Some critics are claiming that Mamdani will impose Sharia law and turn New York into Venezuela. Business leaders and billionaires are warning about a mass exodus. The Washington Post editorial board sees "class warfare" on the horizon. And President Trump, never one to waste an opportunity for confrontation, is threatening to cut federal funding to the city.
Everyone needs to take a breath. Yes, a 34-year-old Muslim who's never managed anything bigger than a state assembly office with five staffers just won the most powerful mayoral job in America on a platform of free buses, rent freezes, universal childcare, and soaking the rich. But most of that isn’t going to happen. Why? Because the mayor of New York City, for all the pomp and circumstance of the office, has remarkably little unilateral power to do... well, almost anything.
Let’s start with the most basic and binding constraint on Mamdani: money. The city is legally required to run a balanced expense budget each year, meaning that every dollar the mayor wants to spend on new programs has to come from somewhere else – either budget cuts elsewhere or new revenue.
Mamdani has proposed increasing the top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5% and levying an additional 2% tax on incomes over $1 million to fund his ambitious agenda. But – and this is key – the mayor of New York can’t raise income or business taxes on his own. The power of the purse belongs exclusively to the state legislature in Albany and requires Governor Kathy Hochul's signature.
And Hochul – a centrist Democrat who was Andrew Cuomo's lieutenant governor – has already ruled out tax hikes. "I'm not raising taxes at a time where affordability is the big issue," she stated flatly. Not surprising given that New York already has a combined top marginal income tax rate of 51.776 percent – the highest in the nation. Mamdani could raise property taxes with City Council approval, but that wouldn't solve his problem – property taxes don't discriminate by income, hit middle-class homeowners and co-op owners who've already seen taxes skyrocket, get passed through to renters, and wouldn't raise nearly enough to fund his agenda anyway.
What does this mean for free buses? Mamdani made this a centerpiece of his campaign, but it’d cost the Metropolitan Transportation Authority $630 million annually in lost fares, and the mayor doesn't control the MTA – the governor does. To make buses free, he would need to get either the City Council to approve funding replacement or the state to pony up the money.
What about universal childcare? The mayor could operationally run such a program, but funding it would cost $5 billion annually – requiring either massive budget cuts elsewhere or tax increases he can't authorize and Albany and Hochul won’t. A $30 minimum wage by 2030? Can't do it without the state legislature. Building 200,000 affordable housing units? That would require borrowing $70 billion, $30 billion more than the city's debt limit – and Albany’s approval is needed for that, too. Are you starting to see a pattern?
Even the rent freeze – probably Mamdani’s most viable promise – would face challenges. Yes, the mayor appoints the Rent Guidelines Board, and there’s precedent for political appointees freezing rents. But the RGB is supposed to follow economic indicators or risk lawsuits, and it doesn't always do what the mayor wants. Crucially, even if Mamdani gets his freeze, it’d only cover about one million rent-stabilized apartments – not market-rate units, condos, co-ops, or the thousands of newer "affordable" units governed by federal and state regulations.
What can Mamdani do? He can make buses faster through dedicated bus lanes and Department of Transportation enforcement. He can open city-run grocery stores through the Economic Development Corporation, which already operates retail food operations, for relatively little money. He can reorganize the NYPD to create an Office of Community Safety, even if a full department would need City Council approval. And he can use new charter amendments passed in November—which reduce City Council and community board veto power over housing—to accelerate private development, even if he can't fund the government-built affordable housing he promised. Not nothing, but not exactly a socialist revolution.
The good news is that Mamdani’s tenure doesn’t need to be revolutionary to be successful. Fiorello La Guardia had it right when he said, “There is no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage.” There isn't a socialist way either. What most New Yorkers will care about when they go back to the polls in four years is whether their mayor kept the subways running, the trash collected, the schools functioning, and the streets safe. That’s what the job is largely about, and why the mayor’s real power isn't passing laws or raising taxes but appointing hundreds of commissioners and department heads and managing the 300,000-person workforce that runs city services. Here's where a truly radical mayor could do real damage: hiring incompetent ideologues and cronies to run the NYPD, the Department of Education, sanitation, emergency management, and so on.
Given Mamdani’s lack of an administrative track record, the jury is still out on whether he will govern as an ideologue or a pragmatist. But the early signs are encouraging. His transition team is heavy on people with actual records of accomplishment. He’s talking to experienced hands like Maria Torres-Springer, who's served multiple mayors and knows how to get things done at City Hall. He’s expressed a desire to keep Jessica Tisch as police commissioner, a widely respected technocrat whom business leaders and moderates trust. And in his victory speech on Tuesday night, Mamdani quoted his defeated opponent’s dad Mario Cuomo about campaigning in poetry but governing in prose, signaling that he understands the job ahead will take more than just slogans.
The real risk isn't that Mamdani will turn New York into a socialist hellhole, but that he won't be able to accomplish much of anything at all. This isn't some low-tax, low-spending jurisdiction where a progressive can open the spigots and transform society. New York already has some of the highest taxes and spending in the country. But the problems that actually make the city so unaffordable – entrenched public unions with ironclad contracts, overregulation, a bloated bureaucracy – have no easy fixes and are mostly beyond any mayor's control.
We've been here before. When progressive Bill de Blasio won the mayoralty in 2013 on a very similar “soak the rich” campaign, the same people predicted an apocalypse. Crime would explode, the tax base would flee to Florida, and the city would enter a death spiral. De Blasio made many mistakes during his eight years at Grace Mansion, but none of that (save for crime going up during the pandemic, not just here but everywhere) came to pass. New York remained New York: dirty, noisy, expensive, still the greatest city in the world.
I don’t know if Mamdani will be a good mayor. But people who've been predicting the death of New York for forty years still haven't learned that betting against the city is a sucker's game. We’ve survived far worse than an inexperienced progressive mayor with big ideas and limited power. And if you look past all the pearl-clutching, Mamdani’s victory reveals something far more interesting about where American politics is headed.
Mamdani ran a left-wing populist campaign focused almost entirely on one thing: affordability. He didn't win on identity politics or progressive social policy or democracy or Trump's corruption. He won by speaking to New Yorkers’ economic anxiety while mostly avoiding the more polarizing cultural issues that alienate moderate voters and tear the Democratic Party apart.
And here's the thing: economic anxiety resonates far beyond New York. Yes, the city's electorate is younger, wealthier, more educated, and less white than the rest of the country. These people are particularly concerned that they and their children won't have the opportunities their parents had – whether because of inflation, housing costs, student debt, AI displacement, or disillusionment with capitalism. But voters everywhere are angry at a system that feels rigged for the rich and powerful, less meritocratic capitalism than kleptocracy. That grievance is not exclusive to liberal urbanites.
Just as Trump won by convincing Americans that democracy was broken and he alone could fix it, expect to see a wave of left-wing economic populism that mirrors right-wing Trumpism but comes from a completely different place. Neither the current Democratic establishment nor Trump himself – who's abandoned "drain the swamp" for pay-to-play corruption – is positioned to capitalize on this energy.
It won't be Mamdani either. His Israel-Palestine and identity-politics positions don't play nationally like they do in deep-blue New York (frankly, neither do his demographics). But his economic playbook will. The candidates who can speak most credibly to economic anxiety and promise to disrupt a captured system – without the culture-war baggage – will have an edge in 2026 and 2028.
He notes that a handful of Democrats joined Republicans to reopen the government, prompting “immediate criticism from every corner of the Democratic Party,” despite recent electoral momentum. As Ian puts it, Democrats “just lack coordination as a party,” even when they’re winning.
While the shutdown may be ending, Ian cautions that political vulnerability persists on both sides, especially as affordability becomes a key concern for voters.
What We’re Watching: Modi tested in India elections, Iraq election promises little, Cambodia-Thailand truce on the rocks
An Indian security personnel stands guard as women voters queue to cast their ballots at a polling station during the Budgam Assembly constituency bypoll in Budgam district, Jammu and Kashmir, on November 11, 2025.
Local election test for India’s prime minister
The state of Bihar, population 174 million, is holding local legislative elections seen as a test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP party, which is currently in power there. Local parties aligned with the opposition Congress party are posing a stiff challenge in an election focused on poverty alleviation (Bihar is India’s poorest state) and competing welfare schemes for female voters, who are now an important bloc. But with Modi under broader economic pressure from US tariffs and Russian oil sanctions, a loss in Bihar would be a bad omen. Adding to his woes, authorities are still seeking those responsible for a terrorist attack that killed 13 outside the historic Red Fort in Delhi yesterday.
Iraq’s election pits Washington against Tehran
Iraqis head to the polls today to vote for the country’s 329-member parliament, largely disillusioned over what they see as an election that will just be used to figure out how to divide the Middle East country’s oil reserves. That’s not the top concern for Iraqis: endemic corruption, inadequate services, and high unemployment are also leaving voters frustrated. The next Parliament will also have to contend with a delicate foreign policy balance: they must placate dozens of armed groups that have Iranian ties, while the US pressures them to dismantle these groups. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s party is forecast to win the most seats but fall short of a majority.
Cambodia and Thailand suspend Trump-brokered peace deal
On Monday, Thailand suspended peace talks with Cambodia after two soldiers were killed by a landmine in disputed border territory. The two countries had been planning to start negotiations to release prisoners of war tomorrow, but that has now been called off. Cambodia denies laying new landmines – saying they are the remnants of three decades of war in the region. The two-week old Donald Trump-brokered peace agreement now hangs in the balance. The US president initiated the ceasefire by threatening to stop tariff negotiations if the conflict continued – will he intervene again to get it back on track?
US President Donald Trump welcomes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House for bilateral discussions about trade and security on February 13, 2025.
After months of tensions between the world’s richest country and the world’s most populous one, it appears that the United States and India are on the verge of making a trade deal.
“We’re going to be bringing the tariffs down,” US President Donald Trump said during a swearing-in ceremony for the newly-minted US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor, while noting that India’s purchases of Russian oil have decreased. He didn’t give a timeframe, but added that the two sides were “pretty close” to a deal.
The inevitable question will be how much Trump lowers the tariff. The US president slapped a 25% levy on India in late July, in part because of Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil. When India refused to tell their companies to stop buying Russian crude, the tariff doubled to 50%.
“India’s oil purchases from Russia are on the downward trend,” Ashok Malik, partner and chair of The Asia Group’s India practice, told GZERO. “This creates a pathway for the removal of the 25% ‘oil tariff’ on India and, coinciding with Ambassador Sergio Gor’s arrival, steps towards the trade agreement.”
How did we even get here? Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were two peas in a pod during the former’s first term in office. The two leaders believed in espousing strength and in a foreign policy that prioritized bilateral relationships over multilateral agreements. They both viewed radical Islam and China with skepticism. When they held a giant rally together in Houston in 2019 – labeled, “Howdy, Modi” – the pair held hands.
“India was central in terms of our Asian strategy… It was incredibly simpatico between the two leaders,” Matthew Bartlett, who served in the US State Department during Trump’s first term, told GZERO. “Now there’s a new, rather difficult dynamic – maybe dysfunction – to it, and you would hope that we would be able to put this back on track in short time.”
When Trump returned to office earlier this year, it appeared that the two would start where they left off. Modi visited the White House in February, and the two leaders exchanged effusive messages.
But the good times didn’t last. Six months ago, when India and Pakistan announced a ceasefire following a brief flare-up in Jammu and Kashmir, Islamabad credited the Trump administration for helping to foster the peace, whereas India said the White House wasn’t involved. The issue was exacerbated when Trump told Modi over the phone that he was proud of the role he played in fostering peace – the Indian leader rejected his counterpart’s account.
Then in July, the tariff war began. Months later, even as the US has struck deals with the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and its greatest rival China, it still hadn’t reached any sort of truce with India. Washington’s 50% levy on India is now larger than the 47% effective rate on China.
“The entire dialogue between India and the US reached a boiling point where it was just very tense in terms of relations,” said Bartlett. “I think even Modi dodged Trump on his last trip.”
Further, Trump announced last week that he would exempt Hungary from Russian oil sanctions. No such luxuries were afforded to India, the second-highest purchaser of Russian oil.
The duties have taken a toll: Indian goods exports to the US, its largest foreign market, are down 40% over the last few months. Smartphones and pharmaceuticals were hit especially hard – exports of the former plunged by 58% from May to June. In September, the country’s trade deficit reached its highest level in 13 months.
Then the season changed. Tensions started to ease during the fall, as Modi and Trump shared kind words on social media following a September phone call. Then India started to comply with the new sanctions on Russian crude – they won’t even come into place until Nov. 21. A deal now appears imminent.
While conversations are moving in the right direction again, Malik says the relationship isn’t yet back to the heady days of that famous Houston rally.
“Does this resolve all problems and clean up all the bad blood from the past few months? Likely not,” said Malik. “But that’s fodder for a considered assessment on another day.”
In this Quick Take, Ian Bremmer breaks down the changing dynamics of the Russia-Ukraine war, where Europe is taking the lead in military support while the US adjusts its approach.
“This has gone from a war that the United States was providing most of the direct support to Ukraine to one where the Europeans are clearly taking the leadership role, and this is much more of an existential issue for them,” says Ian.
Meanwhile, the US has eased targeting restrictions, expanded intelligence sharing, and placed new oil sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies adding pressure even if it won’t shift the battlefield immediately.
But peace remains distant. Ukraine has signaled willingness for a ceasefire; Russia has not. “They’re demanding more territory and Ukrainian disarmament,” Ian warns. He says to expect incremental Russian gains, rising casualties, and the ongoing risk of the conflict spilling into NATO countries.