Authored by Thomas Harrington via The Brownstone Institute,

Imagine the following message in a public space:  Caution: Area of Frequent Attempts at Reputational Destruction by Females

I have never seen a sign bearing the above message in any public space, nor do I want to.

Similarly, I have never seen a sign near a heavily African American neighborhood that says, “Caution, entering an area in which your chances of being the victim of a violent crime are statistically proven to be much higher than in other places.” 

And again, I do not want to. 

My reasons for not wanting to ever read these things are, or should be, self-evident to any reasonably thoughtful person: it is never permissible in a society that purports to be democratic to have the state apparatus cast moral aspersions upon an entire subset of the culture on the basis of that subset’s immutable characteristics. 

And yet, in many municipalities in the US and Europe there is a trend toward posting signs in public transport that, in various levels of explicitness, point toward all men as being gropers and harassers in potencia. 

For example, on a recent ride on the transport system of the Catalan Government I was informed, via messages on the wall of the rail car, that public entity will have “Zero tolerance with male violence” in the public areas it administers.

As I write I can already hear the objections of some readers. “Are you saying groping and male harassment does not exist on public transportation?” “Or that you have no interest in stopping it?”

I am saying nothing of the sort. 

Of course, it exists and it should not be tolerated. 

The question is whether in the attempts to eradicate the problem it is morally and legally responsible to use public monies to single out 49% of the population as constituting a lurking threat to each and every member of the other 51% of the population, with all that such signaling produces in the realm of generating widespread social distrust within the population. 

“But Tom, are you suggesting that sexual violence, however defined is not predominantly male-on-female in nature?”

Of course, not. 

No more than I am denying—as I suggested with the deliberately provocative passages of this essay—that in today’s universities, with their ever more female-dominated administrations and HR departments, reputational destruction aimed at sidelining or destroying the professional trajectories of rivals for power and privilege within the system is an overwhelmingly female-on-male form of violence, or that one’s chances of being an object of violence are clearly statistically greater in predominantly black areas of the US than in predominantly white ones. 

But as I suggested earlier no one, quite rightly, would ever think of using public monies to alert others to the dangers they might face from these two genetically determined sub-categories of human beings in these circumstances. 

However, given the tomb-like silence on the matter in our public discussions, it seems most are just fine with having the government signal citizens with the genetic trait of being male as constituting a special threat to public comity. 

As I have often said, it is never a waste of time to try and intuit the goals and methods of the small class of fabulously rich people who seem obsessed with constantly increasing the enormous level of control they already exert over the lives of the great mass of the population. 

I also know that the fact that men have greater testosterone levels, and hence much greater tendency and ability to physically challenge the forces of order deployed to protect the elite-favoring status quo and their disposition toward muscular forms of rebellion is a constant matter of concern among the ultra-powerful.

And because these ultra-powerful people also understand that the course an open social conflict can take is always unpredictable, they will, whenever possible, seek to head off such clashes by preemptive means. As the saying goes, the best battle is the one you win without ever fighting. 

So, how might you gain a preemptive victory against increasing legions of often quite justly pissed-off males? 

Easy. Use the culture-planning tools at your disposal as a member of the ultra-elite to systematically denigrate the “toxic” nature of traditional male attributes. 

And there is no better way do this than to do this than to seize upon one of the more ugly manifestations of traditional male behavior—sexual violence—and use it as a cudgel to discredit male attributes in general, including positive ones like the setting of hard limits, physical bravery in the face of hardship and unjust governance, and the desire to protect valuable social norms and traditions against the erosive forces of planned or unplanned social entropy. 

And the benefits to the super-elites of implicitly characterizing all males as potential sexual predators in the eyes of young females and many others do not end there. 

For some time now, it has been clear to anyone who has taken the time to look, that our current super-elites have an enormous disdain toward the vast majority of the human beings with whom they share the planet, seeing them mostly as obstacles to the implementation of their plans for more “efficient” (read: more favorable to them) distribution of the world’s good and services. 

For example, Curtis Yarvin, a misanthrope whose high opinion of himself far outstrips the demonstrated fruits of his intelligence and his humanity, and who has perhaps for this reason achieved that status a of “big thinker” in Silicon Valley technocratic circles, has spoken openly about the coming “dire problem” of what to do with what he calls the “mindless mass,” which is to say the excess of useless human beings that will be produced by technologically-enabled economic efficiencies. 

His solution? To house and feed them but keep them enclosed in a virtual world, supported by high quality virtual reality where they can’t gum up the wonderful plans for the marshaling of the world’s resources generated by the small and far-seeing thinking class. 

But, of course, an even better approach than this one would be to ensure that most of these useless eaters never get born in the first place. 

And we have witnessed a number of them in recent years. 

One is to run campaigns designed to convince confused and/or mentally ill teenagers that mutilating their sex organs is a lasting solution to their current unhappiness. Another is to rhetorically elevate abortion from the status it has had in all virtually healthy cultures up until now—a regrettable but perhaps occasionally necessary evil—to that of an unmitigated cultural good. 

But perhaps the simplest one of all is to convince one or the other side of the male-female dynamic that their would-be partners in procreation generally cannot be trusted to safeguard their own well-being or that of their would-be children. 

Hence, the current effort on public transport and in other public spaces to cast doubt upon the ability of the men in those places to act in a civilized and dignity-supporting manner. 

And it is working. And if you don’t believe me, take the time to speak to the 16–35-year-old cohort of women in your life, especially if they attended a “prestigious” institute of higher learning. 

Just as sure as they “know” that in every generation previous to their own queer-beating was a widely accepted and widely enjoyed sport among most straight men, they are “sure” that a happy and respectful complementarity of function in relations between men and women rarely, if ever existed in the past, and that the reason for this was that most men simply could not control their inherent need to dominate women and prevent them from becoming happy and fully developed individuals. 

Is it any wonder that births are reaching historically low levels in most Western countries? 

Yes, economics has a good deal to do with this phenomenon. But blaming it all on that obviates the fact that people have tended to reproduce through thick and thin throughout history. 

Indeed, bringing new life to the world has often been seen and practiced precisely as a key means of fighting against difficulty and oppression for the simple reason—one that elitist materialists who want to play God like Curtis Yarvin would never understand—that every new life is a miracle that contains the promise, however faint it at times might seem, of our species becoming a little more creative, a little more humane, and yes, a little more free. 

During the Covid operation, the government, working in concert with its corporate and media allies, deployed a wide variety of culture-planning techniques designed to enhance its ability to control the behavior of the population. 

Among the more important if least commented upon of these was arrogating to itself the “right” to identify as morally defective and in need of punishing remediation those who happened to disagree with the then administration’s view of bodily sovereignty. This is what took place when the formaldehyde-drenched Joe Biden was told by his handlers to say that he was “losing patience” with the 100 million or so American citizens who refused to take medically useless and, in many cases, dangerous vaccines. 

This case of the US president calling out the supposed “enemy within” on a matter that—given the vaccines’ manifest inability to prevent infection or transmission—was purely a matter of personal bodily sovereignty, should have produced widespread protest and revulsion. 

But it did not. And the designers of the Covid experiment obviously took note of this non-reaction and reasoned if they could get away with it in that case, what was to prevent them from doing the same in regard to other groups, first among them being society’s stronger, more aggressive and thus more potentially authority-resisting male cohort? 

And so here we are, with government-financed signs in public places that subtly but clearly suggest that people born male should be viewed by women not as noble protectors or carriers of wisdom or the many other positive things they often are, but as lurking vectors of violence. 

Who wins with that message? It’s certainly not most men, nor for that matter most women. 

It does work, however, for those super-elites who for reasons related to their obsessive drive to control resources as well as the comportment of their fellow human beings would like to see more social atomization, weaker families and communities, and ultimately fewer useless eaters to contend with. 

While each of us are free to come up with and live by our own privately held theories regarding the actions taken by, or in the name of, Collective X or Collective Y, it is never right for the government to do so, especially when that collective is defined by its birth characteristics. 

And if and when they do engage in this practice, know that despite what they might say, they are not doing it because they care for you or want to protect you, but because they want to sow discord or foster suspicions about a group they see as potentially standing in the way of their quest for ever more power. 

The single biggest, and most historic development out of Lebanon in recent years was the Israeli assassination of longtime Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah on September 27, 2024, via massive bunker-busting airstrikes on his underground location in south Beirut.

Since then, Hezbollah’s leadership has been greatly degraded, also given the widescale pager explosion attacks. To fill the leadership vacuum, a co-founder of Hezbollah, and its first deputy secretary-general who had long assisted Nasrallah, Naim Qassem, stepped in as new Secretary-General.

But now, Israel is once again trying to accomplish a ‘decapitation strike’ – reportedly having targeted Qassem in at least two recent operations thus far.

Jerusalem Post writes Tuesday that “Israel has attempted to target Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem at least twice in recent weeks, Saudi outlet Al Hadath reported on Monday, citing an anonymous Israeli source.”

Georgia Power isn’t negotiating anymore. The Southern Company subsidiary is seizing dozens of homes and hundreds of easements across Coweta and Fayette counties to ram through a 35-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line that will feed at least four massive AI data centers. Project Wansley is just the latest flashpoint in a backlash that has been building for months.

At least 20 to 30 homes face outright demolition. Another 300-plus properties will get permanent easements for towers planted in backyards and next to pools.

But residents like Ansley Brown are fighting back. Her mother bought their family home in 2003 through a USDA rural development loan for single mothers. Now the utility wants the property for the corridor. Brown’s viral TikTok exposing the lowball offers (she says $70,000 to $100,000 below market) has racked up millions of views and drawn state lawmakers into the fight. 

Georgia Power says the line is essential.

The company is racing to add roughly 10 gigawatts of new generating capacity over the next five years, with executives openly stating that  about 80% of that power will go to data centers. Meanwhile, transmission has become the bottleneck, and utilities are turning to eminent domain to clear the path.

This isn’t happening in isolation. We’ve been pounding the table on data center resistance, from Northern Virginia counties rejecting new substations to Texas communities suing over water drawdowns and power rate spikes. The pattern is the same: hyperscale demand collides with local infrastructure limits, and the costs get socialized while the profits stay private.

Electricity prices are already feeling the pressure. Utilities across the Southeast and Midwest have warned of double-digit residential rate hikes tied directly to data center load growth. Georgia Power’s own filings show residential customers absorbing a growing share of the bill for transmission and generation built primarily for big tech. 

The same dynamic is playing out with Meta’s Georgia facilities, where local reporting has highlighted water quality complaints, including muddy runoff affecting nearby residents, alongside the power demands.

We’ve seen this movie before with pipelines and wind farms. The difference now is the sheer scale of the load and the speed at which it’s arriving. Data centers don’t just want power; they want it yesterday, and they’re willing to let utilities use the state’s hammer to get it. The pushback in Georgia is a warning shot as more communities draw the same line.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Supporters of bourgeois-conservative or libertarian politics have had little reason to celebrate over the past decades. One could also say that the interim balance sheet of the 21st century will go down in history as a complete failure for patriots, sovereigntists, and friends of liberty.

The sparks of hope remain largely confined to a few South American beacons. Alongside El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s eccentric libertarian Javier Milei, the conservative politician of German descent Antonio Kast recently achieved an impressive electoral victory in Chile.

Yet with Antonio Kast’s family history, the similarities between South America’s political revolution and the land of his forefathers – Germany -+already come to an end. It is hardly far-fetched to say that Berlin politics and the EU doctrine it dominates resemble the left-Islamist politics of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani far more than they resemble the chainsaw-wielding libertarianism of Javier Milei or the conservative momentum represented by Antonio Kast.

Kast has undoubtedly succeeded in overcoming the National Socialist ideology embraced by his father and establishing himself as a conservative-patriotic politician. In the culture war against the socialist camp, maintaining a clear distinction between patriots, sovereigntists, and libertarians on one side and the radical right on the other is indispensable. European conservatives repeatedly fail because the ideologically socialist political spectrum and its aligned media apparatus successfully blur the line between conservative-patriotic politics and outright extremism, thereby severely obstructing any conservative revival.

Kast must look upon the bizarre developments in the homeland of his ancestors with profound bewilderment.

How must this aggressive European eco-socialism appear from the perspective of a conservative South American? Perhaps as a reminder of the ugly collectivisms of the 20th century. Or perhaps South Americans perceive Europe’s political decadence as a recurring cycle of barbarism—a warning to finally overcome the socialism that held their continent down for generations.

That task may prove far more difficult than many assume. Germany’s politically and ideologically dominant EU increasingly follows an Orwellian script in frightening detail, constructing a bureaucratic surveillance state layer by layer. Pillars of bourgeois society such as the family, Christianity, private property, freedom of speech, individual mobility, and cultural life itself are all coming under mounting media and political pressure.

And at times, New York’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani appears almost like an American offshoot of this European ideological confusion. Socialist to the core, climate activist, and by no means a moderate representative of Islam, he embodies the convergence that Europe has already advanced through mass immigration and the transformation of the economy into a green command apparatus with quasi-military features: the arrival of a new socialism.

His first four months in office already read like the platform of Germany’s Left Party—with establishment approval attached: rent controls, free public transportation, universal childcare, and even the bizarre proposal of government-run grocery stores—a Yankee version of the Soviet consumer cooperative—is still on the table. Mamdani sells a world without consequences, a fantasyland in which everything is distorted into a fairy tale for those unwilling to perform or produce. Perhaps the immense wealth of New York’s upper classes has clouded his judgment, but this socialist nightmare financed through vote-buying consumes staggering amounts of money.

Mamdani is about to learn his first hard lesson. Wall Street firms, investment banks, and major funds are already preparing their escape routes. Whether Citadel, Apollo Global Management, or Wells Fargo, many are actively exploring new headquarters. Will Miami become the great beneficiary of New York’s self-destruction? The top tax rate is set to rise another 2 percent, inheritance tax exemptions are to be sharply reduced, and corporate taxes have already been raised by 4 percent. As noted before: it all feels remarkably European.

Mamdani, who himself possesses no meaningful private-sector experience, now blames precisely those still investing in New York for the city’s decline: freelancers, entrepreneurs, and investors who create jobs and carry actual social responsibility rather than hiding behind socialist platitudes. Politicians like Mamdani in New York—or figures such as Heidi Reichinnek and Lars Klingbeil in Germany—thrive politically because few people take them seriously until the damage is already done. The situation in New York appears increasingly chaotic. Are we witnessing the rise of socialism inside a city deliberately captured by America’s radical left?

The creeping “Cubanization” of the capital of world finance was made possible primarily through a politically engineered wave of immigration that accelerated during the years of the Barack Obama presidency and never subsided. The Muslim share of New York’s population has now reportedly risen to between 10 and 12 percent. America’s far-left Democrats intentionally transformed New York into a destination for mass migration in order to send a message to their political opponents: your capital remains trapped within our power structure once we secure a demographic majority aligned with us.

The left effectively imports new voting blocs. From the perspective of increasingly pressured destination countries, this is cynical, dehumanizing, and civilizationally destructive. Europe knows this dynamic well. The EU has successfully defended its policy of open borders against all criticism up to the present day. A return to the historically conservative politics of native populations is thereby rendered increasingly impossible over the long term.

Political actors such as Mamdani in New York or former President Barack Obama – but also European figures closer to home such as Friedrich Merz and Ursula von der Leyen – capitalize with almost diabolical precision on a deep societal weakness. Our fate is that demographically exhausted, secularized, uprooted, and materially complacent societies no longer possess the strength to rediscover a forward-looking spirit of growth and renewal. Europe, much like Japan, finds itself in demographic retreat. European societies struggle hopelessly to preserve social equilibrium through overstretched welfare states, while only the bureaucratic apparatus itself continues to expand. Socialists like Zohran Mamdani skillfully transform that apparatus into an expanding vehicle of power deployed against the remnants of bourgeois society. The Green Deal is the practical implementation of this abstract tendency – a massive extraction mechanism that in the United States was halted only through the intervention of President Donald Trump.

New York’s mayor may well rank among the most prominent representatives of globalism, which repeatedly emerges like a rotten fungus from the decaying soil of our age. What is unfolding in New York on a smaller yet symbolically charged scale has already developed in Europe on a grand scale through the Brussels-centered EU power complex. The coming months and years will reveal whether European nations still possess the strength to escape the socialist trap and confront the von der Leyens and Mamdanis of this world with a cultural and economic alternative resembling a European version of South America’s conservative and libertarian revival.

* * *

About the author:  Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Far-left Turkish-American millionaire and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker appears to have committed an operational-security mistake by publicly identifying American Marxist tech financier Neville Roy Singham, who has reportedly been living in China and has been linked by The New York Times to CCP-aligned propaganda networks, as a major financier of pro-Marxist revolutionary NGOs operating inside the U.S.

On Sunday, Piker discussed the U.S. Treasury’s “Requests for Information” subpoena related to his “humanitarian trip” to Cuba with pro-China CodePink cofounder Susan Medea Benjamin. That story was first published by Fox News’ lead NGO investigator, Asra Nomani, on Saturday.

Piker pointed out that the Treasury likely has a broader target, is “probably Singham” and “his operation,” naming PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, and “anything that he has ever financed.”

He then acknowledged that Roy Singham lives in China and has been “a funding vehicle” for political movements and activism in the U.S.

We’re sure Singham network comrades are absolutely furious with Piker because, as NGO investigator Stu Smith wrote on X, “Hasan didn’t refute the network. He mapped it.”

🚨 Hasan Names Singham, PSL, ANSWER, and Code Pink in One Breath

On stream today, Hasan Piker discussed the reported Treasury scrutiny and said the broader target is “probably Singham” and “his operation,” naming PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), ANSWER Coalition, Code… pic.twitter.com/0zpYhJbPV2

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) May 25, 2026

Piker’s disclosure of Singham on a livestream is significant because it appears to validate long-standing concerns from congressional, Treasury, and State Department investigators that the Singham-funded nonprofit network is not only engaged in charitable work but is also a far-left agitation network financed by Singham in China.

Timing here is also important because federal investigators have been observing and tracking nonprofit funding flows of NGOs, political activists, and foreign-linked networks used as front groups by hostile nations for statecraft operations to destabilize the US from within.

We’ve been early to the story of some nonprofits used as adversarial influence operations, as noted last year:

• Is There A “Cuba Connection” Behind The Radicalization Of America’s Nonprofit Left

More from Fox’s Nomani:

🚨This story is insane. Activist groups are meeting inside a union hall with representatives of foreign governments to receive direction on what to protest about and what legislation they want supported.

Why are we letting foreign governments do this? https://t.co/CrDAsWPinj

— 🇺🇸 Jason Curtis Anderson (@JCAndersonNYC) May 26, 2026

Piker claims the investigation into his Cuba trip is the government’s attempt to silence his free speech, but there’s a reason the mainstream press has not rushed to defend him as a free-speech martyr: it is well established that foreign influence operations can operate under the cover of humanitarian work. This is a dirty secret that governments around the world know all too well.

Russia has again warned Washington to evacuate embassy staff in Kiev as it prepares to launch “systematic strikes” against the Ukrainian capital, in apparent retribution for last week’s deadly Ukrainian drone attack on a college dorm in Starobelsk, in Russian-controlled Luhansk Oblast.

It is further and more broadly warning all foreign persons to exit the Ukrainian capital, which has already been getting pounded at various intervals, stretching back days. Russia’s foreign ministry slammed the college dorm attack, which killed and wounded dozens – the “last straw” and that the military will initiate “systematic strikes” on assorted targets across the Ukrainian capital from now on.

The statement condemned the Zelensky government, which “deliberately targets civilians and does not hesitate to murder children in cold blood” – and warned that serious escalation is imminent.

“This was the last straw. Under these circumstances, the Russian Armed Forces will be launching systematic strikes against the Ukrainian military-industrial complex in Kiev, including locations where UAVs are designed, manufactured, programmed, and prepared for use,” the ministry said.

The Russian military will no go after “decision-making centers and command posts” – the statement featured in state media continued.

In Kiev, city residents and bystanders must stay away from the “military and administrative infrastructure facilities of the Zelensky regime” – the statement additionally warned.

Most significantly, the Kremlin didn’t just stop at this general public announcement, but directly notified the US State Department and Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself:

Russia said on Tuesday its government has warned U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to evacuate diplomats and American citizens from Kyiv, as Moscow plots fresh strikes on the Ukrainian capital.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “officially informed” Washington that Russia would be launching “systematic and consistent strikes” against Ukrainian military facilities and what Moscow called “decision-making centers,” in a call with Rubio on Monday, according to the Russian government.  

…The call came after the Russian government issued a statement urging foreign citizens, diplomatic personnel, and international organizations to leave Kyiv, warning that it was preparing to target the capital, with a focus on facilities for designing, manufacturing, and programming drones.

At this moment, there’s been little or nothing in the way of any official White House condemnation of the imminent new attacks on the Ukrainian capital.

⚡️A Ukrainian surface-to-air missile system intercepts and destroys a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile over Kyiv this weekend. pic.twitter.com/5T1FmbIDeF

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) May 25, 2026

The fact that Lavrov so bluntly informed his American counterpart is somewhat unprecedented, even after over four years of war. Russia seems to be stating ahead of time that if there’s ‘collateral damage’ against foreign embassies or consulates, that it cannot be blamed. 

Mamdani Releases “Block by Block: The Housing Plan for A New Era”

NYC socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani released “Block by Block: The Housing Plan for a New Era,” which presents a sweeping, deeply troubling blueprint to tackle the metro area’s deepening housing crisis.

Mamdani told the crowd:

When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers. And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards. Stewards include community land trusts, nonprofits, or even the tenants themselves.

IT BEGINS…

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveils plan to “transfer ownership” from landlords to “the community” pic.twitter.com/uybGFPk5eD

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 26, 2026

X user Difficult Froyo outlined what he described as the obvious playbook by the socialist mayor:

Rent control so landlords cannot raise rent to properly maintain the property. NYC takes the property and gives it to his political friends that donate to him. This is all going to be a theft scheme.

Another X user asked:

“Insane. If this isn’t communism, I don’t know what is. Has America really reached the point of communism?”

Mamdani’s backdoor property-seizure strategy will likely spook lenders, insurers, and small landlords. That’s because it caps landlord income, allows residential buildings to become distressed, then uses the city’s enforcement to push properties into nonprofit, community land trust, or tenant ownership.

Via Inconigto… 

The carveout that Mamdani has to allow one-time rent hikes on certain vacant units already shows that Mamdani’s team understands that a rent freeze creates financial stress for some affordable-housing owners. 

Ahead Of Speech: Mamdani To Carve Out Struggling NYC Landlords From Rent Freeze Experiment

NYC socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to announce on Tuesday that certain distressed landlords will be excluded from his proposed rent freeze, offering relief to apartment owners squeezed by debt, rising insurance costs, utilities, and repair bills in the increasingly unaffordable metro area.

Mamdani is expected to make the announcement at Powerhouse Arts in Gowanus, Brooklyn, where he will unveil a plan that would allow eligible owners of apartments financed or regulated by city housing agencies to impose a one-time rent increase on vacant units, even if a broader rent freeze is enacted later this year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The 34-year-old socialist campaigned on the promise of free bus rides and government-run grocery stores, as well as freezing rents on the city’s nearly one million rent-regulated apartments throughout his four-year term, which would offer relief to about 2.4 million residents.

The exemption could apply to roughly 300,000 apartments, about one-third of the city’s rent-stabilized stock, though officials expect only hundreds of vacant units to use the rent-increase tool. The move reflects the political and financial pressure Mamdani faces after campaigning on a four-year rent freeze for roughly one million regulated apartments, a pledge that alarmed landlords already squeezed by debt, insurance, utilities, and repair costs.

This rent-freeze exemption will only apply to vacant apartments in the city that are already financed and regulated by the city’s housing agencies. Rent increases will be limited by the income caps set by the city. -WSJ

WSJ noted that City Hall has also created a new $5 million loan program to help landlords cover tenants’ overdue rent and avoid evictions.

The move comes just ahead of the nine-member Rent Guidelines Board, which is set to vote in June, supporting increases of 0% to 2% on one-year leases and 0% to 4% on two-year leases for rent-stabilized apartments.

The New York Times estimates the median rent-stabilized studio apartment goes for about $1,360 a month, and a two-bedroom rents for about $1,530. The median rent for a market-rate studio is north of $2,000, and for a two-bedroom it’s about $2,200.

Last year, the Rent Guidelines Board approved increases of 3% for one-year leases and 4.5% for two-year leases, despite the housing affordability crisis in the metro area.

Related: 

• Mamdani NYC Housing Plan Has Insiders Curious, Skeptical

These policies are part of Mamdani’s long-awaited housing plan, which also includes new efforts to build multi-family buildings and expand tenant protections. He has laid out a goal of building 200,000 new residences.

“When communities don’t build new housing, rents stay high, housing choice stays limited, and many New Yorkers are locked out of neighborhoods where their families can thrive,” Mamdani’s team wrote in a section of the new plan shared with POLITICO reporters ahead of the release.

Mamdani is trying to balance his pro-tenant rent-freeze campaign promise with the reality that parts of the city’s affordable housing network are in financial shambles.