Oct. 24 (UPI) — U.S. House Democratic Party leader Hakeem Jeffries on Friday endorsed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor, 11 days before the Nov. 4 election.
Jeffries hasn’t issued a public statement but his endorsement was confirmed in a statement to The New York Times, with sources telling USA Todayand Politico about the House minority leader’s plans.
Early voting begins Saturday.
Mamdani, who was born in India and raised in Uganda, is attempting to become the city’s first Muslim mayor.
Jeffries, who serves Brooklyn in New York, had held off endorsing Mamdani, who is a state assembly member serving Queens since 2020.
Mamdani has been endorsed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letita James.
Also, he has been backed by New York Reps. Jerry Nadler, Adriano Espaillat and Yvette Clarke. Two other House members, Ritchie Torres and Dan Goldman, have said they don’t plan to endorse in the election.
And New York Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs said he doesn’t plan to endorse him.
In the June 24 primary, Mamdani, 34, defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 67, and Mayor Eric Adams, 65. His opponents then chose to run as independents, but Adams dropped out on Sept. 28 and endorsed Cuomo on Thursday.
Mamdani is favored to defeat Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, 71, a Guardian Angels founder and radio show host. President Donald Trump has pressured Sliwa to drop out to give a better chance for Cuomo over Mamdani, whom he has labeled as a Communist.
Jeffries told The New York Times said they have had “areas of principled disagreement,” including Israel’s war in Gaza, but agreed on other matters, such as the desire to retain New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
“Zohran Mamdani has relentlessly focused on addressing the affordability crisis and explicitly committed to being a mayor for all New Yorkers, including those who do not support his candidacy,” Jeffries wrote.
“In that spirit, I support him and the entire citywide Democratic ticket in the general election.”
Jeffries first met with Mamdani in July in Brooklyn before the primary. They met again in August.
Jeffries had said he was focused on the federal government shutdown rather than the New York City race.
“Stay tuned,” he told reporters this week in Washington. “I have not refused to endorse. I have refused to articulate my position, and I will momentarily, at some point, in advance of early voting.”
Jeffries has questioned how Mamdani would implement his policies and combat antisemitism and gentrification.
“We’ve got to figure out moving forward how we turn proposals into actual plans so that he is successful if he becomes the next mayor, because we need the city to be successful,” Jeffries told CNN last month.
Jeffries noted that his district, which includes historically Black communities, has “been subjected to gentrification and housing displacement.”
Mamdani has sharply criticized Israel and the war in Gaza, which Mamdani describes as genocide.
During Wednesday’s debate, he said: “I look forward to being a mayor for every single person that calls the city home. All 8.5 million New Yorkers, and that includes Jewish New Yorkers who may have concerns or opposition to the positions that I’ve shared about Israel and Palestine.”
Hundreds of rabbis had signed a letter criticizing him.
And powerful real estate and finance industries have donated millions of dollars to political action committees opposing his candidacy.
WASHINGTON — A man whose convictions for storming the U.S. Capitol were erased by President Trump’s mass pardons has been arrested on a charge that he threatened to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Christopher P. Moynihan is accused of sending a text message on Friday noting that Jeffries, a New York Democrat, would be making a speech in New York City this week.
“I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” Moynihan wrote, according to a report by a state police investigator. Moynihan also wrote that Jeffries “must be eliminated” and texted, “I will kill him for the future,” the police report says.
Moynihan, of Clinton, N.Y., is charged with a felony count of making a terroristic threat. It was unclear if he had an attorney representing him in the case, and efforts to contact him and his parents by email and phone were unsuccessful.
Moynihan, 34, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for joining a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In January, he was among hundreds of convicted Capitol rioters who received a pardon from Trump on the Republican president’s first day back in the White House.
Jeffries thanked investigators “for their swift and decisive action to apprehend a dangerous individual who made a credible death threat against me with every intention to carry it out.”
“Unfortunately, our brave men and women in law enforcement are being forced to spend their time keeping our communities safe from these violent individuals who should never have been pardoned,” Jeffries said in a statement.
House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about the case during a news conference on Tuesday and said he did not know any details of the threat against Jeffries.
“We denounce violence from anybody, anytime. Those people should be arrested and tried,” said Johnson, a Louisiana Republican.
The New York State Police said they were notified of the threat by an FBI task force on Saturday. Moynihan was arraigned on Sunday in a local court in New York’s Dutchess County. He is due back in the Town of Clinton Court on Thursday.
Dutchess County Dist. Atty. Anthony Parisi said his office is reviewing the case “for legal and factual sufficiency.”
“Threats made against elected officials and members of the public will not be tolerated,” Parisi said in a statement on Tuesday.
On Jan. 6, Moynihan breached police barricades before entering the Capitol through the Rotunda door. He entered the Senate chamber, rifled through a notebook on a senator’s desk and joined other rioters in shouting and chanting at the Senate dais, prosecutors said.
“Moynihan did not leave the Senate Chamber until he was forced out by police,” they wrote.
In 2022, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper convicted Moynihan of a felony for obstructing the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress for certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Moynihan also pleaded guilty to five other riot-related counts.
Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.
Oct. 21 (UPI) — A Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump was again arrested following an alleged threat to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Christopher P. Moynihan, 34, was arrested over the weekend by New York State Police after he allegedly sent text messages on Friday to an unidentified associate in which he threatened the life of Jeffries, D-N.Y.
“Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” Moynihan was quoted in a legal complaint filed by prosecutors in Duchess County.
Jeffries, 55, gave remarks Monday in Manhattan at the Economic Club of New York.
On Sunday, Moynihan was charged with a class D felony of making a terroristic threat.
“Even if I am hated he must be eliminated. I will kill (Jeffries) for the future,” he wrote.
Moynihan was arraigned in Clinton, a Hudson Valley town some 50 miles east of Syracuse, and remanded to a Duchess County facility “in lieu of $10,000 cash bail, a $30,000 bond, or an $80,000 partially secured bond,” according to state police.
He pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges and declared guilty in August 2022 of obstructing an official government proceeding on Jan. 6, 2021 after Trump’s false declaration that he won the 2020 election.
Moynihan, said to be among the first to breach Capitol police barricades to enter the building, is one in a string of Trump-pardoned convicted criminals to later be re-arrested on newer charges.
According to court records, Moynihan has a long history of drug use and petty crimes.
In February 2022, Moynihan was sentenced 21 months in jail until pardoned by Trump along with nearly 1,600 Capitol rioters almost immediately after Trump reassumed office.
Moynihan’s investigation was initiated via the FBI part of a growing trend of threats against U.S. lawmakers.
Meanwhile, U.S. Capitol Police said last month the number of threat investigations this year rose past 14,000, which was higher than the total number of cases in 2024.
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) visited three Black churches in Los Angeles on Sunday morning to campaign for California’s redistricting effort, which could add five or six Democratic representatives to his ranks.
Amid a congressional deadlock over healthcare subsidies that has left the government shut down for more than two weeks, the minority leader returned to the Golden State to campaign for Proposition 50. The ballot measure would give his party more power against Republicans, who Jeffries said have refused to negotiate in the shutdown and otherwise.
“This is trouble all around us,” Jeffries told the congregation at First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles in West Adams — after poking fun at President Trump’s 2016 gaffe misspronouncing a book of the Bible. “Folks in the government who would rather shut the government down than give healthcare to everyday Americans. Wickedness in high places. And now they want to gerrymander the congressional maps all across the country to try to rig the midterm elections.”
The packed congregation — most wearing pink to support Breast Cancer Awareness Month — were receptive to his message.
“This is a way of trying to keep things equal,” said Kim Balogun, who was in Sunday’s crowd. “A level playing field.”
For many of its members, First AME is more than just a church. As the city’s oldest African American congregation, it has been at the forefront of the fight for civil rights since its founding in 1872.
“This is family,” said Toni Scott, a retired special-education teacher who has been with First AME for 52 years. “As one of the church’s previous ministers used to say, ‘This is a hospital. People are sick; we come to be healed,’” she said.
When news reached L.A. that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison, South African immigrants and anti-apartheid activists flocked to the church, anxiously awaiting the first sights of Mandela walking free. During the 1992 riots, First AME was a bastion of hope amid a sea of chaos.
“We thank you, God, for bringing us through dark times and chaotic times,” the Rev. Charolyn Jones said to the congregation on Sunday, “knowing that our church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was born out of protest.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, left, greets parishioners at First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles. “It’s an honor and a privilege to spend time worshiping at Black churches here with Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove to reinforce the message of the importance of voting yes on Proposition 50,” Jeffries said.
(Ethan Swope / For The Times)
For Jeffries, the first Black person to lead a major political party in Congress, the West Coast trip amid a congressional impasse was important.
“The African American churchgoing community has always been the foundation of the Black experience in the United States of America,” Jeffries said, who also visited the congregations of Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in South L.A. and Resurrection Church of Los Angeles in Carson. “It’s an honor and a privilege to spend time worshiping at Black churches here with Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove to reinforce the message of the importance of voting yes on Proposition 50.”
The state’s redistricting effort, Proposition 50, is part of a national fight over control of the U.S. House of Representatives, instigated by President Trump. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House, but in June, Trump began pushing Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional maps to yield five more likely GOP seats.
In response, Newsom proposed California temporarily depose of its independent redistricting commission, led by 14 citizens, to redraw the state’s maps and add five Democratic seats, effectively canceling out Texas’s move.
The Democratic-controlled state Legislature quickly produced redrawn maps and scheduled a Nov. 4 special election to put them up for a vote. Mail-in ballots are already in the hands of voters.
California Republicans, including former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, have slammed the initiative as a “big scam.” Schwarzenegger called Democrats hypocritical, arguing that while they call Trump a “threat to democracy,” they want to “tear up the Constitution of California” and “take the power away from the people and give it back to the politicians.”
Jeffries noted that California was letting its citizens ultimately decide — unlike some Republican-led states.
“We said from the very beginning that we want to find bipartisan common ground whenever possible, but unfortunately, Republicans, from the beginning of this presidency, have adopted a take-it-or-leave-it, go-at-it-alone strategy,” he said, which is part of why, he added, Proposition 50 is so important.
In the current shutdown, Democrats said they will not vote for a funding bill unless it extends tax credits in the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire for many Americans at the end of the year and reverses cuts to Medicaid that Republicans passed in July’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
If the ACA credits expire, premiums would on average more than double for Americans on the enhanced tax credit, one health policy research firm found. But Republicans point out they come with a price: The Congressional Budget Office estimates they would cost the government $350 billion over the next decade.
The bill, which is now law, will cut Medicaid spending by $793 billion, the CBO estimated, and lead to 7.8 million Americans losing their insurance.
On the government shutdown, Richard Balogun, a member of Sunday’s First AME congregation, thinks fighting for healthcare is a worthwhile cause.
“Isn’t it amazing that in England, Australia … you can have national healthcare? Maybe you don’t get treated within the first hour, but you get treated,” he said. In America, “you have to ask yourself sometimes, if I’m going to the emergency room, can I afford that thousands of dollars I’m going to have to pay? That should not be the case in this country.”
A government shutdown has consequences: 2.3 million civilian federal employees are going without pay — roughly 750,000 of whom are furloughed. When the employees are back-paid after the government reopens, that’ll correspond to roughly $400 million of taxpayer money spent every day of the shutdown to pay employees who were not working, the CBO estimates.
Beyond National Park closures and air travel delays, food programs for low-income families could run dry without a funding bill. The Women, Infants and Children Program (WIC) can see effects as soon as one week after a shutdown, the CEO of the National WIC Assn. said. Meanwhile, SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) could also run out of funding further down the line.
Republicans blame Democrats for shutting down the government over their healthcare concerns, but Jeffries pinned it on Republicans, who’ve refused to negotiate.
To Scott, the pink her congregation was wearing to support breast cancer survivors only emphasized the importance of access to healthcare. (Jeffries sported a pink tie.)
“More people need to know what’s going on, so just having him go from church to church, mostly in the Black neighborhoods — that’s where we have the most people: in our churches,” Scott said. “Some may hear the word, see something on fake news, but we know in the church you’re going to hear truth.”
