Mayor Zohran Mamdani was grilled by reporters during a press conference Friday afternoon after his surprise White House meeting with President Donald Trump. Mamdani opened up about asking the president to intervene on behalf of Columbia University student Ellie Aghayeva hours after she was taken into custody on campus by ICE.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m grateful that shortly after our meeting, the president called me to inform me that Elmina would be imminently released, and indeed she was,\u201d Mamdani said.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani shared details Friday about his Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump
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Mamdani called the conversation “productive”
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The mayor said the meeting was a continuation of his November conversation with Trump<\/p>\n
Mamdani says he also asked the president to drop immigration cases against four other members of the Columbia community, including Mahmoud Khalil, and he once again shared with the president \u201cmy concerns as part of my longstanding belief that ice raids are not only cruel, they also do nothing to advance the cause of public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mayor called the conversation with the commander-in-chief \u201cproductive\u201d and a follow-up to their first meeting in November, where the two discussed affordable housing.<\/p>\n
Mamdani showed up to his latest meeting with a mock newspaper headline and a proposal for Sunnyside, Queens.<\/p>\n
\u201cI proposed working together to build more than 12,000 new homes in our city, which would be the single largest housing development New York City has seen since 1973. The president was interested in the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also Friday, the mayor was pressed about the decision by the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s Office to not pursue assault charges against the 27-year-old arrested after snowballs were thrown at officers in Washington Square Park.<\/p>\n
Mamdani said while he believes officers should be treated with respect, \u201cwhat I\u2019ve said in regard to the snowball fight is that it\u2019s a snowball fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
During an NYPD promotion ceremony, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch re-affirmed her support for New York\u2019s finest, saying, \u201cAs you\u2019ve seen recently, I certainly will not tolerate any attacks on my cops. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani was grilled by reporters during a press conference Friday afternoon after his surprise White House…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[109,25,3407,9,24,55,54,12,56,108,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-148071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-ayana-harry","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}