In a few short months, the United States will begin formal celebrations of its founding—a revolt against a British king who, the revolutionaries declared, had oppressed “large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation.” Today, a monarchical U.S. President targets the great cities of this beleaguered nation on the eve of its 250th birthday.
History reminds us that this country has seen its share of military occupations of the sort that have been ordered by President Donald Trump in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and that he is now threatening for Chicago, New York City, and, most recently, Memphis, Tennessee.
Nor is there anything new about the potential for residents of those cities, and the best of their local leaders and candidates, including New York’s Zohran Mamdani, to resist authoritarianism.
This country has a long record of municipal opposition to authoritarian power grabs by officials who seek to govern our affairs from afar. Look no further than the 1773 Boston Tea Party, where local activists on the ground—or, to be more precise, on the harbor waters—tossed 342 chests of tea over the sides of ships docked at the city’s Griffin’s Wharf. Protesting the United Kingdom’s Tea Act, which granted the British East India Company a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies, and which imposed arbitrary taxes; the patriots voiced an objection that would become a familiar American refrain: “No Taxation Without Representation.”
The “tea-party” protest movement spread from city to city along the eastern seaboard of what was then a possession of the most powerful empire on the planet. In Philadelphia, where “the sense of this town” had been expressed earlier in resolutions enacted by local electors, protesters refused to unload tea crates and sent the ship back to London. In Edenton, North Carolina, fifty-one women approved the “Edenton Resolves,” a local strategy to boycott British goods.
These bold local protests stirred a ferment that, within months, led to the formation of a national coalition of communities and colonies that came to be known as the Continental Association. With considerable success, the association promoted a “non-importation, non-consumption, non-exportation” agenda that stirred the wrath of King George III and his imperial court.
The rest, as they say, is history. A revolution, begun when patriots “from every Middlesex village and town” confronted advance units of what was then considered to be the most powerful military force in the world, upended colonial rule. Afterward, the founders of the American experiment established a system of checks and balances to guard against future usurpations of power by leaders with monarchical tendencies. A Bill of Rights was written to assure that citizens would be able to peacefully protest against their government, by assembling and petitioning for the redress of grievances. And many separations of power were outlined so that the federal government would never act according to the whims of one man, and so that communities far from Washington, D.C., could chart courses that were at variance with the lawless abuses of Presidents who might imagine themselves to be kings, and Congresses that might act as servants to an American crown.
Fast forward to June 2025, when millions of Americans gathered in cities, villages, and towns for more than 2,100 protests against the kingly excesses of President Trump and a robber-baron Republican Congress that is bent on taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Less than six months into his second term, Trump was already operating in a monarchical manner—launching assaults on federal agencies, slashing funding for necessary programs, initiating cruel and unusual raids on immigrant communities, and making threats to the sovereignty of states and cities that would in short order begin to materialize.
The “No Kings” protests—organized by the 50501 Movement, Indivisible, the No Kings organization, and groups such as MoveOn and the Working Families Party—drew inspiration from the oldest understandings of an American experiment that began with the rejection of King George III and of every ruler who crowned himself as, in the words of Thomas Paine, “the principle ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners, or pre-eminence in subtilty obtained him the title of chief among plunderers.”
On the same day, June 14, that Trump mounted a wildly monarchical display in Washington, D.C., with a self-aggrandizing military parade on his birthday, the No Kings movement announced: “We’re showing up everywhere [Trump] isn’t—to say no thrones, no crowns, no kings.”
Far from Washington, D.C., the No Kings organizers proclaimed that: “From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, we’re taking action to reject authoritarianism—and show the world what democracy really looks like.”
Just ten days after those protests drew an estimated five million Americans into the streets, another sort of No Kings protest played out in the nation’s largest city.
On June 24, Democratic primary voters shocked political pundits by nominating a mayoral candidate who was absolutely clear in his determination to make New York City a center of locally based but nationally significant opposition to a President who had made no secret of his disdain for the blue cities of urban America.
The newly minted nominee was outspoken regarding his intention to oppose not just Trump and Trumpism but also to challenge a Democratic Party that had failed to mount an effective, let alone bold, opposition to an increasingly dictatorial President. In his victory speech, he promised to make New York a city “where the mayor will use their power to reject Donald Trump’s fascism. To stop ICE agents from deporting our neighbors. And to govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party.”
There was something epic, something historic, and, yes, something patriotic in this candidacy. And it was worth exploring as a municipal counterpoint to the federal lurch toward authoritarianism. So it was that a colleague and I found ourselves sitting in mid-July with Mamdani, for a discussion that turned to the question of whether it might be possible to “Trump-proof” an American city.
Mamdani’s short answer was “yes.” But before we get to that, let’s put things in perspective. The question of whether cities can be “Trump-proofed,” and in a broader sense of whether they can meaningfully and effectively resist American fascism, is being wrestled with by mayors and mayoral candidates in cities across the country—including those, such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., that have already been occupied by presidential order.
But this is an especially personal matter for Mamdani, a thirty-three-year-old Ugandan-born immigrant who is Muslim, a democratic socialist, and a consistently outspoken critic of Trump.
Mamdani checks all of Trump’s boxes and, as such, had drawn the President’s wrath ever since his sweeping primary victory over a more compliant Democrat, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has frequently suggested that he could work with the immigrant-bashing, union-busting, Court-packing extremist who currently occupies the Oval Office—and who does not hesitate to voice his disdain for Democratic mayors. And for Democratic mayoral candidates, such as Mamdani.
“It’s finally happened, the Democrats have crossed the line. Zohran Mamdani, a 100% Communist Lunatic, has just won,” wrote Trump on Truth Social after the primary. A few days later, he announced that, “As President of the United States, I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York. Rest assured, I hold all the levers, and have all the cards. I’ll save New York City, and make it ‘Hot’ and ‘Great’ again, just like I did with the Good Ol’ USA!” Trump questioned Mamdani’s immigration status, suggested that he might have a “Mayor Mamdani” arrested, and declared, “He’s going to behave. He’ll behave. He better behave; otherwise, he’s going to have big problems.”
What sort of “big problems” became evident in August. It was then that Trump deployed National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., and effectively took control of its policing as part of an effort to present himself as an anti-crime champion—despite evidence that violent crime in Washington and other cities has been declining. The President’s earlier attempt to use National Guard forces to occupy parts of Los Angeles to thwart immigrant rights activism faces multiple legal challenges and the emboldened opposition of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. The D.C. intervention, however, took advantage of Washington’s unique status as a city that is not part of a state, lacks voting representation in Congress, is judged by federal courts, and is subject to the whims of rightwing federal officials when it comes to budgeting and many municipal policies.
But Trump is not satisfied with the occupation of Washington, D.C., where a weak mayor has disappointingly—though perhaps predictably, given the circumstances—complied with him. In August and early September, the power-hungry President signaled that he intended to target other cities—including Chicago, where Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson in late August signed an executive order in preparation for a potential immigration crackdown, detailing how city agencies will resist any Trump-ordered attempts to invade and occupy the community. Johnson declared, “We do not need nor want an unconstitutional and illegal military occupation of our city.”
Johnson was elected during Joe Biden’s presidency. Mamdani is running in another, much more daunting moment—a moment when it becomes necessary for serious candidates to talk of how municipalities will resist presidential authoritarianism.
With this reality in mind, Mamdani responds to the Trump-proofing question with a savvy outline of strategies. “There are a number of ways [to do it]: You raise revenue, such that you not only are able to protect the city against the worst of the federal [funding] cuts that are to come, but also that you are able to pursue an affirmative agenda at the same time,” he explains. “It is not enough to fight Trump’s vision in purely a defensive posture. We must also have our own vision that we are fighting for—and that we deliver on.”
“We can battle the White House—New York can do that—also by enforcing and strengthening our city’s existing sanctuary city policies,” he continues, turning the discussion to necessary initiatives—including sustaining and strengthening New York’s sanctuary city laws—to protect immigrants. “This is a contest, also, of values that concern the fabric of our city and our country. And when I was saying that too often it feels as if we [Democrats] are embarrassed, just think about these policies, which have been spoken of by [incumbent New York City Mayor] Eric Adams as if they are an attack on what makes us New Yorkers, when, in fact, they’ve been in existence for decades and have been defended prior to him by Republicans and Democrats alike.”
Mamdani also focuses on the inspirational value of establishing a dramatically different approach to governing from the one adopted by Trump and his allies in Washington, D.C., and the nation’s red states. From the start, his has been a “think big” campaign, which has talked about taking dramatic steps to make the city affordable for working-class New Yorkers—including a rent freeze for tenants in rent-stabilized apartments, construction of 200,000 new units of affordable housing, free buses and child care, and the establishment of city-owned grocery stores to fight high food costs.
“We can,” he explains, “fight by instilling hope in New Yorkers, who are living through despair in this moment—be it a despair over how expensive the city that they call home has become; or despair watching in anguish as their tax dollars are used to kill civilians in Gaza, [and] as was recently reported by NBC News, where the Israeli military killed ten children waiting in line for a health clinic, one of whom was a one-year-old child who had just spoken his first words. It is incumbent upon us, as Democrats, to fight back against that, and to also lift those same New Yorkers out of that despair with an affirmative vision.”
He concludes, “I am running to be the mayor of this city, and my focus will be on the welfare of New Yorkers across these five boroughs. I will lead with a vision of protecting these New Yorkers, and also ensuring that we do more than simply survive in this city—that there is also a language and a reality of aspiration in our city once again.”
Perhaps Mamdani will follow an example from this country’s history: Philadelphian Thomas Paine, who witnessed his hometown’s municipal resistance to King George and then penned a pamphlet that promised the whole of a new nation that, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”