When New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani told a packed audience in Brooklyn last weekend that they must prepare for the “inevitability” of Trump deploying National Guard soldiers to their streets, he brought to the surface a threat that elected officials, activists, and civil rights groups have worried about for months.
Responding to a question at the “Fighting Oligarchy” town hall with Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mamdani said understanding the attack was coming was paramount and that fighting it would require using every possible tool, including coordination between the mayor, attorney general, and governor, similar to the coordination in Los Angeles.
“We cannot try to convince ourselves that if something is illegal, Donald Trump will not do it,” Mamdani said.
Troops will roll out on a date related to Mamdani’s election, several people have told the Prospect in recent weeks. Asked earlier this summer when Trump would launch an L.A.-style attack on the city, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander told the Prospect: “January 1, Mayor Mamdani’s first day in office.”
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But others put the date sooner: most disturbingly, on or around Election Day itself. They noted Trump’s obsession with Mamdani, and said he could try to scare people away from voting for him by deploying troops near polling stations. They added that this week’s Supreme Court ruling allowing federal agents to racially profile people for questioning and detention adds further concern that Trump could use soldiers and agents to discourage people from going to the polls at all.
“There is an actual, real risk,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, adding that Trump has threatened before to interfere with New York City’s elections. This time, she said, the risk is “heightened.”
Numerous regulations forbid federal interference with elections. It’s a crime for any federal official to send armed agents or troops to polling places, for example, as it is for military officers or members to hinder the right to vote by force, intimidation, or threats, civil rights organizers said. But, as Mamdani cautioned, that won’t necessarily stop Trump from doing it, Weiser said, so legal groups around the city are prepared for the possibility.
“What we need to do is to be vigilant but mobilize and push back if it happens, immediately,” Weiser said, adding that courts, election officials, law enforcement, and members of the public will all need to object to any election interference. “If something happens on Election Day at a polling station, there will be immediate litigation.”
TRUMP HAS BEEN AGITATING AGAINST MAMDANI ever since he won the crowded primary in June, taking 56.39 percent of votes compared to the second-highest candidate, disgraced former governor and sex pest Andrew Cuomo, who drew 43.61 percent. Also in the running were Lander and six others.
Since then, Trump has repeatedly targeted Mamdani, calling him a “communist lunatic” from whom he will have to “save New York City, and make it ‘Hot’ and ‘Great’ again.” He’s talked with Cuomo on the phone about Mamdani, conferred with lawmakers, businessmen, and pollsters, and otherwise rummaged around for how to influence the local election, despite his deeply negative personal standing in the city of his birth.
In response, Mamdani wrote on social media that if Trump “is serious about intervening in the mayoral race, he should come to New York City and debate me directly.” The White House did not respond to an email asking whether Trump would do so.
New York should reject interference now, because doing so may stop Trump from attempting it in the first place.
In November, Mamdani will again face Cuomo, who is running as an independent, as well as incumbent Eric Adams, who insisted he is staying in the race despite numerous scandals and reports that Trump is considering him for a federal job, possibly at the Department of Housing and Urban Development or as the ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The Republican nominee is activist Curtis Sliwa, who founded the nonprofit crime-fighting group Guardian Angels and also fosters cats.
With two months to go, poll after poll shows Mamdani with a wide lead in the fractured field. On Wednesday, a new Quinnipiac University poll showed him with 45 percent of likely voters compared with 23 percent for Cuomo. Sliwa and Adams drew 15 and 12 percent, respectively. An Emerson College poll released the same day said voters who are “very likely” to vote picked Mamdani over Cuomo, 46 percent to 27 percent, with a wider spread for younger voters.
Civil rights advocates recommended that voters ready themselves for any possible interference now by making a voting plan, including casting a mail-in ballot, taking advantage of early voting, which runs from October 25 to November 2, or going with at least one other person on Election Day, November 4.
“It’s a lot easier to confront intimidation and harassment with strength in numbers,” said Perry Grossman, the New York Civil Liberties Union’s director of voting rights litigation. If voters come across behavior from agents or soldiers that looks suspect, they should record what’s happening, Grossman said, and tell civil rights organizations what happened, including the Election Protection Network or the state attorney general’s Election Day hotline.
Advocates also said it’s important to understand that as a sanctuary city, New York police and city officials are not allowed to assist federal officers to enforce civil immigration law, and that there are NYPD officers at every polling place who cannot engage in federal immigration enforcement. While it’s absurd for federal agents and troops to claim that they’re at a polling place because they’re looking for undocumented immigrants—that’s the last place undocumented people would be, civil rights attorneys said—they could still say so as cover to terrorize Latino American citizens.
Weiser said that city officials also have an obligation to reassure voters that they will protect the right to vote. She added that making a plan for what to do if troops show up on Election Day is just one part of planning for the next two months. Another is to make clear now that such an event is anti-American, unacceptable, and that residents all over the state won’t tolerate it.
City and state officials told the Prospect that they rejected the need for National Guard soldiers. A spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul, who deployed 750 members of the National Guard to the New York City subway system last year, said that crime is down across the city and state and that the federal government evocation of military power undermined state-level work.
New York Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, meanwhile, told the Prospect via email that deploying the National Guard to cities after cutting health, housing, and food for Americans via the GOP mega spending bill “is a call to action for people of conscience.” He said the city rejected an illegal military occupation. “We don’t want or need Donald Trump’s security inspired by North Korea,” Williams said.
New York should reject interference now, because doing so may stop Trump from attempting it in the first place, Weiser said, something that has thus far held in Illinois, where Gov. JB Pritzker’s rejection of federal support has kept Trump from a deployment.
“The earlier that is made clear, the better off we’ll be,” Weiser said. “And I think there is still time to do that.”
Grossman added that U.S. citizens enjoy multiple protections against unlawful search and seizure by federal agents and should understand that harassment against them at the polls is unconstitutional and illegal. He called on voters to show up confidently and defiantly to exercise their right to vote: “Protect that right down to the ground.”
The Mamdani campaign did not respond to a request for comment.