On August 24, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), reaffirmed his support for Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ bid to become the next speaker of the House.

He made the statement in response to a question from a reporter who cited an article in the previous day’s New York Times revealing that Jeffries had recently met privately with President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner. The Times account said the White House was well aware that the Democrats were likely to take control of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections and that Jeffries was in line to become the next speaker. According to the “newspaper of record,” the Trump administration was seeking “common ground” with the nominal opposition party.

“What do you think of Jeffries potentially being speaker in light of this?” the reporter asked. The mayor replied, “I continue to support Congressman Jeffries and his bid to become the leader.”

As the World Socialist Web Site explained in a statement posted on August 23, the Democrats, despite their anti-Trump rhetoric, are preparing to step up their collaboration with the fascist Trump administration should they gain control of the House, or even both Houses of Congress.

The WSWS wrote:

They would be happy to make a deal with Trump that involves more money and weapons for Ukraine. In return they will support full funding of the military and go along with the cuts in social spending already incorporated into the One Big Beautiful Bill and further cuts that will be “necessary” because of the deepening financial crisis reflected in the exploding federal debt, which has surpassed the $40 trillion mark.

The exchange on the Jeffries-Kushner meeting fully confirmed the WSWS statement’s assessment of the role of the DSA and Mamdani:

The Jeffries-Kushner meeting demonstrates the completely phony character of the claims by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left or even “taken over.” The DSA is seeking to provide a left cover for a corporate-controlled capitalist party, irrevocably committed to the defense of Wall Street and American imperialism…

The DSA leaders understand their role. That explains why New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the most prominent elected member of the DSA, blocked a primary challenge to Hakeem Jeffries in his Brooklyn-based congressional district. The man who is now in line to be House speaker, and who meets privately with Trump’s son-in-law, owes his unopposed renomination in part to the DSA’s leading elected official. This comports with Mamdani’s own meetings with Trump in the White House, his retention of billionaire heiress Jessica Tisch as police commissioner and his abandonment of left-wing gestures, such as free bus fares.

Jeffries is a right-wing war hawk, staunch Zionist, apologist for the Gaza genocide, and pillar of the Democratic Party establishment. In mid-July, he led the drive of the Democratic leadership in the House to defeat an amendment that would have cut off $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel. The American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has raised more than $1 million for Jeffries. In the first half of 2025, Jeffries’ joint fundraising committee received $250,000 from AIPAC’s political action committee.

Mamdani’s support for Jeffries shatters the claim of the DSA to be leading a rebellion against the Democratic Party establishment. As recently as June, Mamdani met privately with Jeffries to coordinate their policies. This exposes as well the organization’s pose as an irreconcilable opponent of Zionism and defender of the Palestinian people.

By working to channel behind the Democratic Party the growing popular opposition not only to Trump, but to the entire political and economic system of capitalism, the DSA functions as the “left” face of the Democrats’ complicity in Trump’s policies of war, dictatorship and social counterrevolution.

Jeffries’ meeting with Kushner, backed by Mamdani, takes place under conditions of a mounting crisis of the Trump administration. The criminal war on Iran has turned into a political and strategic debacle; the national debt has surpassed the $40 trillion mark and the Treasury Department’s attempt to lower bond rates has failed; Trump’s poll numbers are at record lows; strikes and working class opposition to the pro-corporate trade union bureaucracy continue to build, as does opposition to the pogrom against immigrants and the broader attack on democratic rights.

Mamdani’s latest endorsement of Jeffries comes amid increasing pressure from the Wall Street oligarchs who control New York and Mamdani’s increasingly open attacks on the city’s working class. On August 27, three days after his promotion of Jeffries, Mamdani announced the launching of a Business Advisory Council. The statement issued by the Office of the Mayor said the council, consisting of 15 wealthy corporate executives, would bring “New York’s business leaders to the table.” Mamdani declared that “The doors of City Hall are always open to New York’s business leaders.”

Meanwhile, Mamdani has filed a lawsuit to block City Council legislation that would give a $10,000 bonus to paraprofessional school aides. The miserable pay of these workers, who help students with significant educational needs, does not begin to cover basic living costs in one of the most expensive cities in the world. The one-time bonus, in itself wholly inadequate, would nevertheless provide a measure of relief.

Mamdani provocatively bases his opposition to the bonus on the claim that it is illegal because it violates New York state’s anti-strike Taylor Law. He hails this vicious piece of anti-labor legislation, used for six decades to suppress strikes and slash jobs and wages, as a boon to workers and lynchpin of “collective bargaining.”

When Trump revoked temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitian immigrants, the mayor promptly fired all Haitian city employees. Only weeks earlier, Mamdani had vowed to defend Haitian immigrant New Yorkers against deportation.

The mayor has been silent on a lawsuit against the city’s integration of public housing security cameras with the New York Police Department’s Domain Awareness System. This move means that residents of New York’s public housing, who include some of the city’s poorest workers, are under constant police surveillance, including by means of facial recognition software and the creation of individual profiles without warrants or court oversight.

These attacks follow a series of austerity measures, including a delay in a state-mandated reduction in school class sizes, demanded by the banks to close a multi-billion-dollar budget deficit.

Since Mamdani took office in January, a series of strikes have taken place in which the mayor has lined up with the employers and the union bureaucrats to isolate the strikers and impose sellout contracts. That includes the 41-day nurses’ strike, the longest nurses’ strike in New York City history, and the Long Island Rail Road strike, the first since 1994, which shut down the biggest commuter rail system in the country.

What is emerging in New York, the center of global capitalist finance, is an explosive conflict between the multi-million strong working class and the so-called “socialist” Democratic Party administration, headed by the most prominent representative of the pseudo-left DSA. This is a clash of irreconcilably hostile class interests. The DSA, from its anti-communist origins under the “State Department socialist” Michael Harrington, is and always has been a representative of privileged sections of the middle class. It seeks not the overthrow of capitalism, but rather a better deal with the capitalist oligarchs and a bigger share of the wealth extracted from the labor of the working class.

It is hostile to and petrified of the emergence of an independent movement of the working class, which is why it focuses its efforts on shoring up the trade union bureaucracy and keeping workers politically subordinated to the ruling class via the Democratic Party, an organ of the oligarchy.

Workers and young people coming into struggle must build their own organizations of struggle, completely independent of the union bureaucracy and the parties of big business. That means establishing rank-and-file committees, united internationally through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), and building the party that fights for the political independence of the working class and socialism—the Socialist Equality Party.