In his speech as the newly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani affirmed that he was the one who would reinvent New York City and bring a new generation to the city, as well as a bold beginning to his tenure in office.

The person, the city’s first mayor, the first Muslim mayor, the first South Asian born, and the first born in Africa is the 34-year-old political star, democratic socialist, who, a year earlier, was a virtual unknown state assemblyman. He is also the one who is sworn in by the use of the Quran.

Mamdani told them that such a moment was not easily obtained, and that it was scarcely to be obtained that the people themselves, whose hands are on the levers of change, should be themselves.

He claimed that he was cautioned to be low in expectation when he was writing his remarks. “Such I will not do,” Mamdani said. “My sole intention in resetting expectations is small ones. Today, we shall be expansive and audacious in our government. We might not always win, but we will never be accused of being too cowardly to attempt it.”

Mamdani was not afraid of his socialist politics. “I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I shall rule as a democratic socialist. I shall not sacrifice my principles in fear of being denominated radical, he said with thundering applause of the assembled assembly.

He concluded by stating: The work is only just beginning.”

Mamdani rescinded any executive directives by Eric Adams issued post-26 September 2024 (when the indicted former mayor was later acquitted by the Trump administration), hours after the ceremony.

The reversed directives contain a measure last month that barred mayoral appointees and personnel from boycotting and disinvesting in Israel, and guarding the rights of New Yorkers to free exercise of faith without being harassed in places of worship.

According to the Mamdani office, the order was given to provide a clean slate to the new administration and re-issue executive orders that the new administration believes were the core of its provision of service, excellence, and value-based leadership.

Mamdani subsequently indicated that he would re-issue some of his orders, such as the Office to Combat Antisemitism that Adams developed in May of the previous year.

It followed a two-part ceremony mid-afternoon Thursday after Mamdani was sworn in at midnight in a former subway station, and was flanked by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and his wife, Rama Duwaji, a 28-year-old animator and illustrator.

Mamdani was presented on the steps of an icy winter day in January in the city hall by the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist ally and who is on the verge of running for the White House in 2028.

“We have made the daring instead of the doth. We have decided to benefit the many and not the spoils of the few, Ocasio-Cortez said in her speech. A new future now belongs to all of us. We have chosen a mayor who will be relentlessly devoted to making life not only possible but aspirational to working people. We have chosen that above the distractions of bigotry, above the barbarism of extreme inequality.”

Mamdani was subsequently officially sworn in by Vermont independent senator Bernie Sanders, another political ally who, in numerous ways, preconditioned the affordability agenda of Mamdani with his presidential nomination to the Democratic nomination in 2016.

That attempt, which many would say has been sabotaged by those allied with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the national political structure of the party, has now paid off, and with it, the hidden political agenda of affordable and economic rights.

Sanders claimed that Mamdani was assuming power “when we are experiencing excess amounts of hatred, too much divisiveness, and too much unfairness.” He demanded a government that serves everybody, not only the rich and the elite.

Sanders further contended that Mamdani had challenged the Democratic and Republican establishments, the president of the United States, and some incredibly wealthy oligarchs. “And you won them in the greatest political surprise in recent American history.”

Mamdani is now starting one of the most relentless political campaigns in the history of American politics as one of the most closely monitored politicians in the country, whose platform includes free childcare, free buses, a moratorium on the raising of rent on approximately 1m households, and a pilot city-run grocery store.

However, the cost of delivery of those services is estimated at $10bn, which might be difficult to get. Mamdani has promised to tax the richest citizens of New York and impose corporate taxes. However, since it would be a vassal city of the state government in Albany, he will require the legislative backing of Governor Kathy Hochul, who would be re-elected next year.

He is also going to be forced to contend with Donald Trump, who has branded the new mayor a communist and threatened to cut federal funds to the city. However, a cordial encounter of the outer-borough New Yorkers last month, in which they connected on the need to construct more housing in the city, came as a shock to many who were anticipating a political firework display.

“I wish Trump could do an excellent job, and I will assist him in doing an excellent job,” Trump said.

Mamdani also encounters the disapproval of a few Jewish New Yorkers, whom his attacks on the Israeli government and his apparent inability to categorically repudiate the phrase, from the river to the sea, alarmed, although Mamdani has said that he would never repeat the phrase.

The level of such sensitivities was evident when Mamdani assumed office, as his director of appointment, Cat da Costa, resigned after tweets were published that she had referred to Jewish people as money hungry and had termed a train in Far Rockaway, the Jew train.

The transition team of Mamdani referred to the mistake as an unacceptable oversight during the vetting process that is not up to the standards of this transition by the mayor-elect and the upcoming administration.

Mamdani has also tried to help tone down the tensions by convincing the city police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, to stay on her post rather than give the impression of losing a Jewish police chief on top of a continuity factor.

The state of New York mayors are usually based on their capability to offer minimum services like collecting garbage, ensuring that the city is not overrun by rats, repairing the potholes, and ensuring that the subways operate efficiently.

In his final speech as mayor on Wednesday, Adams boasted about his administration’s work on anti-crime, which he said led to record-low rates of homicides and shootings. In 2025, the city had 301 homicides, and this was 79 fewer than in 2024.

Adams claimed that in the last four years, the New York police department had removed 25,000 illicit weapons from the streets of the city, and drive-by shootings had decreased by 55 percent.

Mamdani and Duwaji will now forfeit their one-bedroom rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria, Queens, in order to move into the grand mansion of the mayor in Gracie Mansion, completed in 1799, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Adams had earlier in the month cautioned Mamdani not to walk past the mansion because it is haunted. “As long as you are doing right by the city, it is a nice ghost, you see,” he said. “Unless you get right by the city, he becomes a poltergeist.”