What’s Hot: With Food Costs Soaring, Mamdani Proposes City-Owned Grocery Network
This past Tuesday, Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to launch a city-run grocery system drew both celebration and scorn from across New York City’s fractious political spectrum.
Under Mamdani’s vision, the city would create a network of municipally-owned grocery stores to address what he describes as a crisis of food affordability, driven by record inflation, market consolidation, and decades of policy neglect.
Mamdani’s grassroots supporters hail the plan as a practical and moral step toward ensuring every New Yorker can put food on the table. Grocery industry figures (most prominently Gristedes owner John Catsimatidis) warn that it will undercut private grocers and drive small operations out of business. At least one opponent from the Libertarian publication “Reason” has drawn comparisons to state regulations around liquor stores, deducing that the costs will actually be higher.
Mamdani’s decisive victory in the Democratic mayoral primary suggests broad public interest. According to surveys from the Climate and Community Institute, 85 percent of New Yorkers would support a city-operated grocery system. Some models for publicly owned grocery stores already exist, in addition to the military’s existing commissary network, which serves as a functional, large-scale example of publicly managed food retail that keeps prices low and products reliably stocked.
Read More: Why New Yorkers Voted for Public Grocery Stores, Explained
Watchdog: Trump Reinstates Farm Raids After 4-Day Reprieve
President Trump’s abrupt reversal of a brief pause on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workplace raids has been transmitted back to the agency after only four days, marking a chaotic chapter in the administration’s deportation agenda. Top Republican allies in agriculture had cheered Trump’s initial stand-down, which intended to shield farms, hotels, and restaurants from workforce destabilization. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had warned of severe disruptions to the food supply if ICE pursued large-scale raids against farm and packinghouse workers. The president reversed course under pressure from hardline immigration advisers, ordering agents to resume operations in those sectors.
The original pause was designed to protect essential food and hospitality employers from the disruption of mass deportations, as both industries rely on undocumented labor to staff their operations. The American Immigration Council estimates that undocumented immigrants account for more than 4.6 percent of the U.S. workforce–more than seven million workers, heavily concentrated in agriculture and hospitality. But critics inside the White House, led by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, denounced the reprieve as a betrayal of Trump’s pledge to launch what he has called the “single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” Miller’s allies argue that no industry should be spared from stepped-up immigration enforcement.
The president’s whiplash decision comes after internal clashes between economic advisors and immigration hawks, exposing dysfunction within a policy team already divided over competing priorities.
Advocates for farmworkers, including the United Farm Workers union, responded that the temporary pause had never been consistently enforced, citing arrests in California and the continued presence of Border Patrol agents in farm communities.
Read More: Inside Trump’s Farm Raid Tensions & Trump Officials Reverse Guidance Exempting Farms, Hotels from Immigration Raids
Quote of the Month:
“We need to engage the people who are going to be actually growing the food.”
– Erwan Monier, co-director of the Climate Adaptation Research Center at the University of California Davis, in conversation with Grist
