New Yorkers prove there are limits to Trump’s power

One day after Trump made the chilling claim to the New York Times that the only limit to his power is his “own morality,” the people of New York heard otherwise. Their mayor told them that they were responsible for creating a first-in-the nation free universal childcare program—despite the president’s attempt to kill it.

The announcement was a lift to people in New York and across the country, who were in need of good news after a three-day period this week of dangerous and even deadly actions by the Trump administration.

Those include his increased chokehold on Venezuela’s oil industry; seizure of more oil tankers on the high seas, including a Russian ship grabbed by the U.S. Coast Guard, not off the coast of the U.S., but off the coast of Scotland; and an announcement by Trump that he is ready to launch land strikes on the territory of Mexico, allegedly to stop illegal drug trafficking.

In announcing the good news out of New York, Mamdani said that it was not him or Hochul who produced the childcare victory. Instead, he told them that it was the 90,000 people who went door to door to campaign for an end to cronyism and corruption in the city’s elections last year that were responsible.

“You did this, you won this victory,” he said as he made his announcement. Mamdani also took the opportunity to condemn what he called the unconstitutional and illegal actions of the Trump administration. He demanded accountability for the ICE agent who killed a mother of three children in Minneapolis this week, calling the action “murder.”

Vice President J.D. Vance went even further than his boss, who blamed the Minneapolis victim for her own death. He repeated what Trump said but added that the ICE agent who shot her cannot be prosecuted because he has “absolute immunity” since he carried out the killing in the course of his duties. There is, of course, no such thing as “absolute immunity.” Concepts like that are used by fascists to justify any acts carried out by their supporters.

Trump continued behaving as if enjoys unlimited power by saying, again, that Greenland had to be “taken” by the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others in his administration suggested that the semi-autonomous island could be “bought.”

White House officials apparently discussed sending every Greenlander a check for between $10,000 and $100,000 apiece to convince them to secede from Denmark. It’s another case of Republicans being able to find money for things like annexing other people’s land and giving huge tax breaks to billionaires but doing nothing to curb skyrocketing health care costs for Americans.

The Mamdani childcare announcement in New York, however, showed that amidst the fascist assertions of unlimited authority by the president, there are still avenues for people power.

It also takes on added importance because the initiation of the childcare program, to be phased in gradually, will happen during the 2026 midterm elections. It will stand as proof that electoral activity can bring about victories.

The tangible advances for working-class people made possible by the election results in New York—and the speed with which a key progressive campaign plank can be implanted—are important reminders that there is a path to curbing the “limitless” power Trump thinks he possesses.

As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the opinions reflected in this article are those of the author.

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