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Hello! You’re reading the Surge, a weekly list of the most important players in what McKinsey & Company has told us to call “the politics space.” (The recommendation cost $2 million dollars.) I’m Ben Mathis-Lilley, filling in for a few months for Jim Newell, and boy, was it hot out this week or what? I spent a lot of time, personally, putting little sticky weatherstripping bands around air conditioners. “Frost King,” now there’s a brand name that hits it right on the head. Hope whoever came up with that one got a nice bonus and a vacation somewhere warm (but not too warm, ha ha!). Oh, and speaking of summer stuff—the Surge will be off next weekend, for the Fourth.
Anyway, it was a pretty eventful week! Republicans got a great excuse to abandon some bad ideas, a political dynasty was dumped in the East River, and Pete Hegseth got mad about mountains. But first—and with the full knowledge and awareness that we are not the first to say it—you don’t mess with the Zohran.
Zohran Mamdani
The streets have their say.
Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state legislator, is the presumed winner of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. Back in January, he was polling at around 2 percent in a race whose initial front-runner, Andrew Cuomo, had vastly more name recognition and money than any other candidate. Mamdani still trailed Cuomo by 8 points in an average of the last polls conducted before Election Day on Tuesday—but when Wednesday morning dawned, he was leading the former state governor by 7 percent and Cuomo had conceded. (The mayoral primary uses “ranked choice” ballots whose official tallies won’t be finished until next week.) How did he get this done as a self-described democratic socialist, critic of overpolicing, and supporter of Palestinian causes in a city that, reputation for leftism aside, has spent most of the last 30 years electing staunchly pro-Israel “law and order” mayors? Basically, by walking around the city for months on end talking to people (and making charming videos of himself talking to people) about the high cost of living and what he would do about it. Crazy stuff! Sometimes, hard work and common sense pay off.
Amy Coney Barrett
The Constitution has entered its “adherence optional” era.
Friday was the final day of the Supreme Court’s session, and with the sense of dramatic timing and flair that scholarly jurists are known for, they saved the worst for last. The headliner was a 6–3 ruling, written by Amy Coney Barrett, declaring that judges are overstepping their authority when they issue nationwide injunctions, even if it’s to stop a policy that violates the Constitution. Since Trump took office, numerous lower court judges have blocked his actions with such injunctions—including three who put a stop on his executive order decreeing that citizenship may not be issued to newborns whose parents are not legal U.S. residents. (The consensus for the past 120-odd years has been that the 14th Amendment says anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen.) The Trump administration appealed those rulings, and presented them to the Supreme Court as a chance not to weigh in on the constitutionality of his executive order itself, but to decide whether nationwide injunctions themselves are unlawfully rude and nasty. Guess what they decided? What a fortunate coincidence for the GOP that these six justices, appointed by Republican presidents, discovered that injunctions are illegal during this particular term, rather than the prior one in which a number of liberal policies were blocked by nationwide orders issued by conservative federal judges! And, one person who’s definitely stoked that courts have lost their biggest tool to restrain the executive is Donald Trump.
Pete Hegseth
The most successful one in history?
After much hemming and hawing, Donald Trump ordered a bombing raid against three underground Iranian nuclear research sites last Saturday. The bombs hit their targets, and Iran’s “retaliation” was essentially a symbolic gesture that did not inflict any casualties. But the question of whether the mission was a success hinges on how much of Iran’s nuclear equipment and uranium were actually destroyed. At first, a leaked preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency speculated that the country’s nuclear program had only been set back by “months.” This was followed, later in the week, by analysis that suggested the damage may have been much more significant—but in the interim, Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth absolutely lost their minds about the suggestion that the operation had been anything but an “unbelievable victory.” The president said journalists were “scum” for writing about the DIA assessment—i.e., reporting on the government’s own evaluation of how it did—while Hegseth, befitting his background as a Fox News himbo hype man, gave a press conference in which he called the bombing “the most complex and successful military operation in history.” Step aside, evacuation of Dunkirk: Compared to dropping bombs on three targets in a country with no air defenses to speak of, you are garbage. But yeah, saying these kinds of ludicrous things is now the most important job requirement for being in the Cabinet.
Andrew Cuomo
At long last, have you no shame? (He doesn’t.)
While Zohran Mamdani deserves credit for defeating Andrew Cuomo, someone else who deserves a lot of credit for it is, well, a certain Mr. Cuomo. Having resigned the governorship in disgrace after a state report found he’d sexually harassed 11 women (he denies wrongdoing), Cuomo saw an opening to run for mayor of New York, once #MeToo had died down. He campaigned on the premise that the city (which he does not seem to live in) is a disaster of crime and disorder which needs to be flooded with police. Never mind that crime is going down in New York, and its current mayor is himself a conservative Democrat who has already raised policing levels. There’s always money in the banana stand of fearmongering 30-second TV ads about the subway—or so Mario Jr. thought. With confidence in this plan, bolstered by a wave of donations and endorsements from establishment figures and entities who figured his restoration was inevitable, Cuomo basically didn’t bother to do much other campaigning at all. And while he may still try to run in the general election as an independent to appeal to high earners who are concerned about Mamdani’s position on eating the rich, he faces very long odds in doing so.
Elizabeth MacDonough
She’s back—and ready to kill again.
Every four years, according to prophecy, a woman named Elizabeth “Danger” MacDonough will make the Surge. Why? Because Elizabeth “The Midnight Strangler” MacDonough is the Senate’s “parliamentarian.” That means she is responsible for issuing rulings on whether certain types of legislation can be included in the budget bills that the chamber allows itself to pass via 51-vote majorities rather than the 60-vote “filibuster-proof” majorities required for other bills. And every four years, typically, a new presidential regime and its congressional allies try to cram a bunch of stuff that they want to do (but couldn’t get 60 votes for) into the budget. That’s when MacDonough comes down from the highlands, holding an armful of knives, and starts a-cuttin’. This week, the provisions in Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” that she ruled ineligible include a major cut to Medicaid funding that would have affected rural hospitals, as well as an effort to sell off millions of acres of public lands, including those in national forests. Senate Majority Leader John Thune quickly said that he would respect MacDonough’s rulings (certainly not a given for them!). This could have something to do with the fact that even before she issued them, a fair number of Republicans themselves were gently suggesting to their colleagues that shutting down rural hospitals while selling off the national forests might be best described as “political suicide.” Thanks for stopping by the news cycle, Elizabeth MacDonough, and we look forward to hearing from you in 2029 to get your thoughts about whether budget reconciliation is the appropriate venue for President AOC’s imposition of transgender sharia law.
Gavin Newsom
I guess this is how it works now.
Over yonder in California, the Marines and National Guard are still hanging out waiting for (who else?) federal judges to decide whether their deployment is legal or not. In the meantime, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is passing the time by filing (what else?) a federal lawsuit accusing Fox News host Jesse Watters of defaming him. Amid protests against ICE raids in Los Angeles, Trump said in the Oval Office on June 10 that he’d talked to Newsom “a day ago,” i.e., June 9, when they had in fact not spoken since 1 a.m. Eastern on June 7. Watters, though, said on the air that Newsom was the one lying when he said he hadn’t spoken to Trump on June 9. In a letter to Fox, Newsom’s lawyers said he will dismiss the suit if he is given an on-air apology. Meanwhile, the president of the University of Virginia is resigning in order to resolve a federal “investigation” into whether the school had illegally promoted diversity, while Harvard, which is in a similar position, has itself sued the feds. Our point is, given that every conflict in the United States is now resolved via standoffs in which dueling federal lawsuits are used as leverage, Surge readers should look into getting a lawyer.
Mark Carney
Look what you did!
It had been a while since the U.S. threatened to impose huge tariffs on one of its allies via a semi-coherent social media post, hadn’t it? That was kind of more of a spring trend. Well, it’s back: Late Friday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social site that, because of a “digital services” tax that Canada is about to start collecting from tech companies, he’s decided to end trade negotiations with the country and will shortly be announcing a unilateral tariff (or another unilateral tariff, we suppose) on Canadian goods. It was, depending on how you count things, the sixth time he’s changed his position on a matter of U.S.–Canada trade policy since February. Earlier this week, in fact, the Wall Street Journal reported that the digital services tax was not expected to be the subject of negotiation between the countries until next year. As of press time, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had not commented on the matter; we hope that he eventually says he is sorry for what he did to so suddenly upset Mr. Trump (assuming he ever learns what that was).