Mayor Zohran Mamdani at a press conference in Flushing, Queens, on March 16, 2026.
Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Monday, March 16, marked the 75th day of Zohran Mamdani’s term as mayor. amNewYork is following Mamdani around his first 100 days in office. We are closely tracking his progress on fulfilling campaign promises, appointing key leaders to government posts, and managing the city’s finances. Here’s a summary of what the mayor did.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed Monday that he will march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade alongside Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch on Tuesday, brushing aside questions about any tension surrounding the appearance.
Speaking at a press conference in Flushing, Queens, Mamdani said he would attend the annual Gracie Mansion breakfast, go to Mass and then march in the parade with Tisch.
“There’s nothing to iron out,” he said. “This was one of the easiest decisions I’ve had to make as the mayor.”
Hizzoner added that he was looking forward to seeing Archbishop Ronald Hicks again. The parade appearance comes after weeks of scrutiny over Mamdani’s relationship with both Tisch and the city’s Catholic hierarchy.
Last month, Mamdani skipped Hicks’ installation Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, despite having been invited to the event that sitting mayors have notably always attended in recent history, according to the Archdiocese of New York.
Four days later, Mamdani and Hicks met at an NYPD event and later spoke by phone, EWTN reported.
His public appearance with Tisch also carries political weight. Their relationship has drawn repeated attention in recent weeks, including after Mamdani’s more casual description of the Washington Square Park snowball incident clashed with Tisch’s harder line. The episode created a “frosty dispute” between the mayor and his own police department after Mamdani described it as “a snowball fight that got out of hand,” while Tisch called it “disgraceful” and “criminal.”
However, the two stood recently side-by-side following the attempted terrorist attack outside Gracie Mansion.
The St. Patrick’s Day Parade is one of the city’s most visible annual civic rituals, and Mamdani’s plans to attend come as he is already being measured through the lens of New York’s parade politics.
Gothamist reported earlier this month that, after telling voters he would skip many parades, Mamdani had begun confronting the familiar mayoral calculus over which community events he would attend and which absences would carry a political cost.
Jewish community: Mamdani outlines goals of meeting with Orthodox leaders
The mayor also said Monday that his meeting later that day with Orthodox Jewish leaders was “set up weeks ago,” seeking to cast the sit-down as routine outreach rather than a response to a fresh round of scrutiny over his handling of antisemitism-related controversies.
Speaking at the same press conference, Mamdani said the meeting was part of a campaign commitment to meet with Orthodox leaders across the city.
“It is a meeting I’m looking forward to,” he said, adding that the conversation would cover “a wide variety of issues, including childcare, housing, whatever is of concern.”
The comments came after Mamdani spent part of last week defending his wife, first lady Rama Duwaji, following reports that she had illustrated an essay by Palestinian American author Susan Abulhawa, whose past social media posts had drawn accusations of antisemitism.
Speaking Friday in Brooklyn, Mamdani called the rhetoric in those posts “unacceptable” and “reprehensible,” but said Duwaji had been commissioned by a third party as a freelance illustrator, had never met Abulhawa, and had not seen the posts in question.
Abulhawa later accused Mamdani of caving to pro-Israel critics instead of standing by his wife and by Palestinian voices.
“You succumbed to forces that seek to pick away at you, at your talented, beautiful wife, and at your work, clawing harder with each apology or concession you make. If you are not careful, they will siphon your soul before you even realize it,” she said in a video posted to X.
Other Palestinian American activists argued he was trying to appease pro-Israel critics rather than defend Palestinian voices. The founder of the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, Nerdeen Kiswani, said, “he knows he’ll anger us. He just believes that when the time comes, we’ll vote for him anyway.”
“And if he’s right, every politician watching this will learn the same lesson: you can backtrack on Palestine, throw your own principles out the window, and the movement will still fall in line,” Kiswan posted.
At the same time, the New York Post reported that Mamdani was preparing to meet a selected group of Orthodox Jewish leaders in a brief session on Monday evening, a session some critics dismissed as a “photo op,” in part because major Jewish advocacy organizations were not expected to take part.
On Monday, Mamdani did not directly engage those criticisms. Instead, he emphasized that the meeting had been arranged in advance and framed it as part of the mayor’s normal outreach.