Mamdani Demotes NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch
Mayor's first day in office was more interesting than you’ve been told
Media coverage of Zohran Mamdani’s first day in office glossed over his early exercise of mayoral power.
My favorite example of the shallowness of the coverage is CNN’s bombshell revelation that Mamdani was “distributing hot chocolate” at city hall, an image that trivializes him and the moment. The second-to-last sentence made passing reference to “the first action of his administration, signing a set of executive orders focused on housing.”
Curious about what exactly those orders are? Tough luck, the multi-billion dollar cable outlet’s story doesn’t say.
Though I’m a few billion short in resources, I was somehow able to track down Mamdani’s executive orders, and immediately realized there’s a lot more there than just “a set of executive orders focused on housing.” The flurry of orders is itself unusual for a New York Mayor: they traditionally spend their first day on symbolic pomp and circumstance, hobnobbing with the big wigs and the billionaires.
Though we are constantly told that Mamdani is on a steep learning curve, within hours of taking office, he signed the following executive orders:
“Prior Executive Orders” (1 page): Revokes all orders issued by the previous administration after Sept. 26, 2024 — including the one that got most of the media attention, walking back the previous mayor’s pledge of allegiance to Israel.
“Mayor’s Office Structure and Operations” (23 pages): Establishes the cabinet and specialized offices for Economic Justice and Pro Bono legal aid.
“Revitalizing the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants” (3 pages): Establishes an office to coordinate tenant rights and improve housing quality.
“Leveraging City-Owned Land to Accelerate Housing” (3 pages): Establishes a task force to identify city-owned sites for 25,000 new housing units.
“Improving Process to Accelerate Affordable Housing” (3 pages): Creates a task force to streamline permitting and expedite housing production.
Pretty substantive first day for a politician whom the major media has spent months writing off as inexperienced, unserious, and ideological.
Hidden within the executive order on the structure of the Mayor’s office is a significant though subtle shift in the hierarchy of the NYPD. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the symbol of national security astride a city that is undeniably the golden target of international terrorism, has been quietly downgraded (another development that the media seems to have missed). Contrary to long-time practice the Commissioner will no longer report directly to Mamdani but to a deputy mayor.
A source intimately familiar with City Hall politics and practice tells me that one of the impacts of this downgrade is a literal change of Mamdani’s day-to-day as mayor. For anyone who has ever covered City Hall or followed the Mayor’s day, the source says, the Mayor sits down one-on-one with the Police Commissioner first thing every morning, emulating the president’s meeting with his national security advisor and receiving the morning intelligence briefing.
Another source, an NYPD officer I asked about the significance of the decision, told me: “If he [Mamdani] does nothing it’s meaningless; but in theory Zohran and the first deputy mayor can now put added pressure on Tisch.”
Is it an intentional slight? Or is it just an acknowledgement that Mamdani has his own priorities? We’ll have to wait and see. (Regardless, I’m sure the NYPD-planted articles will come out shortly about how Mamdani imperiled the city.)
Rejecting the staid, “reasonable” and the do-nothing process of old government, Mamdani seems to believe in action and is wasting no time in implementing his agenda. He emphasized throughout his inaugural address that bold policy would be a priority of his administration, vowing to “govern expansively and audaciously.”
His inaugural address’s most interesting theme to me was its unabashed scorn for political fear of failure. And readers of this newsletter know that the Temple of Fear is national security, which always seems to bat first in our society thanks to its masterful threat mongering.
“We may not always succeed,” Mamdani said. “But never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.”
We’ll see if the media decides to take notice of the actual policies of the most powerful mayor in the country, and his willingness to wield that power.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
Mamdani will be watched like a hawk to get things with which to denounce him.
It falls to him to set a new standard for what a mayor should do. I think he will easily put the lie to the old line about how one has to have political experience to hold this or that office. What's most important is motivation. If one wants to do the right thing for the people, there are countless experienced people to figure out how to get it done for him and I bet there is more than one hack who feels some exhilaration for the first time.
He's off to a good start. I look forward to seeing more of his likeable smiling face and I love hot chocolate.
Would CNN be capable of reporting "Here's exactly how Mamdani is changing the city bureaucracy (with a listicle of five executive orders)", or would they immediately discard it as boring minutae?
I find this sort of stuff more fascinating than "the mayor distributes hot chocolate". Political figure does feel-good thing is like "dog bites man"; not exactly novel behavior. "Mamdani's [fabulous | fiendish] plan to change the city" sound more fun. But many journalists don't seem to see it that way.