Celebrating Ramadan in the era of Zohran Mamdani, NYC’s first Muslim mayor

Today's newsletter is curated by James Ramsay

Weather: ☀️🍀 Mostly sunny, highs in the lower 40s and wind gusts up to 40 mph.

It's Tuesday in New York City, where about 1 in 10 residents — or roughly 769,000 New Yorkers — are Muslim.

Among them, for the first time, is the city's mayor.

And nearly every evening during this holy month of Ramadan, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has broken his fast at iftar dinners with various groups: delivery workers, police, firefighters, teachers, domestic violence survivors and mosque congregations across the city. 

Here's what Mamdani's political rise and his public practice of Islamic faith has meant for the city's Muslim community.

And here's what else is happening:

• Mamdani kicked off St. Patrick’s Day with a pre-dawn breakfast with Mary Robinson, a pro-Palestinian advocate and the first woman elected president of Ireland. Later, he'll march up Fifth Avenue for the parade.
• Mamdani’s pitch to President Donald Trump for a historic federal investment in a Sunnyside housing project won the admiration of a frequent White House adversary: former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
• Leqaa Kordia, who spent more than a year in ICE custody after she was arrested at a Columbia University protest over the war in Gaza, is returning to her family in New Jersey.
• New York Attorney General Letitia James is backing state legislation that would curtail retailers and grocers from setting prices using algorithms based on personal data.
• An SUV driver who allegedly struck and killed a 60-year-old actor in Midtown toward the end of last year is now facing charges, according to the NYPD.
• Nearly 2.2 million New Yorkers lived in poverty in 2024, a slight increase from the year before, according to new numbers released by the anti-poverty group Robin Hood.
• Police said a brazen group of thieves boosted five luxury cars from a Gowanus parking garage in an early morning heist on Sunday.
• The transit workers' union is suing the MTA, seeking to block a new policy that would allow subway token booths to be unstaffed if the assigned booth agent is out sick or on vacation.

• The city's sanitation department said it conducted several stakeouts to try to catch dog poop offenders and found it nearly impossible to catch people leaving crap on the sidewalk.
• More than a dozen people told the New York Times that Mayor Mamdani plays political hardball behind closed doors.
• New York City doctors are once again warning people not to take antibiotics for colds and sore throats because it only helps antibiotic-resistant bacteria flourish.
• Jack Schlossberg has publicly condemned the Ryan Murphy drama about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, but the popular show is drawing attention to his congressional campaign.
• SEE 'EM: The small buildings hanging on next to big buildings on the Upper West Side.
• "America now has more spas and gyms than stores selling actual stuff."
• The phone number 867-5309, of "Jenny" fame, now routes to a cancer support line.
• "East Village Cookbook," the crowd-sourced recipe collection created to raise money for a local soup kitchen, is a certified hit.