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Kathy Hochul and Zohran Mamdani are showing what ‘pro-family’ means | Arwa Mahdawi

What a real pro-family agenda looks like

I think we all need a little cheering up, don’t you? So allow me to interrupt the steady stream of violent authoritarianism and state-sponsored murder in your feed with some good news. New York City, which already provides free preschool for three- and four-year-olds, is a step closer to providing free universal childcare for two-year-olds. On Thursday, Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a plan for the free childcare program, which they said will start by focusing on “high-need areas” and then gradually expand to cover the city. The mayor said he expected about 2,000 children to be covered by the program this fall.

There are still a lot of questions about how the universal childcare program will be funded long-term and how exactly it will be rolled out. Nevertheless, even though it’s still in a very early stage, there’s a lot to celebrate here.

First, there’s the fact that, not even two weeks into his role as mayor, Mamdani seems to be doing all he can to fulfil his bold campaign promises and affordability agenda. Most importantly, he’s shown he can work with the state governor, who has made it quite clear she is not his biggest fan, to get things done.

“To those who think that the promises of a campaign cannot survive once confronted with the realities of government, today is your answer,” Mamdani said at the event on Thursday.

I hope that pro-natalists and representatives of the so-called “party of family values” are paying attention here. Sorry to state the bleeding obvious, but if you want people to have more kids, then this is how you do it. You don’t do it by making condoms more expensive (hello, China) or by removing access to safe and legal abortions (hello, USA) or by saying grandparents, not daycares, should be watching little kids (hello, JD Vance). Rather, you make it more affordable for people to have children. If you want to be a party of family values, you do that by actually helping young children thrive – not by separating migrant families.

I also hope that Democratic politicians are paying attention. Turns out that you can, in fact, aim high! You can, in fact, get things done! You don’t need to tell Republicans this, by the way. They are very good at having bold (albeit dystopian) ambitions and getting things done. Donald Trump just told the New York Times that the only limits on his power are his “own morality” and his “own mind”. I’m not condoning this, obviously! Still, nobody could accuse the Trump administration of not thinking big.

Meanwhile the Democrats continually think small. They need to raise a few billion from you every election cycle so they can hire some highly paid consultants to create taskforces and policy papers and PowerPoint decks, which all conclude, regrettably, that nothing good can ever happen. Abandon your childish idealism because they, the “moderates” and the adults in the room, have decided that a better world just isn’t realistic. Still, make sure you vote blue no matter who (unless it’s a democratic socialist), because the other people are worse.

“In writing this address, I have been told that this is the occasion to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage the people of New York to ask for little and expect even less,” Mamdani said in his inaugural address. “I will do no such thing. The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations. We may not always succeed. But never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.”

Amen to that. We should all expect more from our politicians – who routinely seem to forget that they work for us, not a select few billionaires. Things seem hopeless at the moment, but we must continue to have the courage to try to fight for a better world.

And now, after that moment of radical optimism, back to our regularly scheduled programming of doom and gloom.

Stephen Miller continues to be a creepy little weirdo

The White House deputy chief of staff is probably the most influential, and most dangerous, man in the Trump administration. The far-right deportation enthusiast was the chief architect of the family separation and Muslim ban policies during Trump 1.0. Now he seems to be encouraging the administration to conquer the world with force. Along with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, Miller was a key part of Trump deciding to kidnap the Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday. “But we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” Expect more shows of force and power from this wannabe strongman. His wife, the podcaster Katie Miller, is already fantasizing about invading Greenland.

Wyoming supreme court strikes down near-total abortion bans

The justices ruled that two bans, which included the nation’s first exclusive ban on abortion pills, violated a 2012 state constitutional amendment. You should click on this story to read more because it’s a heartwarming case of the system actually working as intended. And also because it includes a photo of a male protester with a sign saying “Pregnancy begins with a penis. Regulate that.” All power to you, sir!

Protests erupt after killing of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent

While Americans protest, the Trump administration continues to victim-blame and lie about what happened.

UK campaigner’s 60-year unfinished battle for abortion rights

Diane Munday helped campaign for the 1967 Abortion Act. Now aged 94, she’s still calling for wider reproductive rights. You’re never too old to fight for a better world.

The civil war in Sudan passes 1,000 days

Twelve million people have been displaced, with 33.7 million people in need of humanitarian support, according to the International Rescue Committee. It’s the largest humanitarian crisis ever recorded and it has reportedly been facilitated by the United Arab Emirates, a close US ally, though the UAE denies it.

Israel continues to kill Palestinians daily during the Gaza ‘ceasefire’

“At least 425 Palestinians have been killed and over 1,200 wounded over the past three months of the ‘ceasefire’ – a rate of nearly five Palestinians killed every day,” Drop Site News reports. The fact the media persists in causing the horror show in Gaza a “ceasefire” shows how little Palestinian lives matter. Do you think it would be called a ceasefire if nearly five Israelis were being killed daily?

Ashley Tisdale French ignited some ‘toxic mom group’ drama

For reasons I can’t quite comprehend, the actor wrote an essay in the Cut in which she slagged off some of her former friends. “Mom groups can turn toxic. Not because the moms themselves are toxic people, but because the dynamic shifts into an ugly place with mean-girl behavior,” Tisdale French wrote. Now everyone is trying to figure out which of her famous friends she’s talking about.

Hacker dressed as Pink Power Ranger takes down white supremacist websites

The hacker, known as Martha Root, deleted the servers of three websites run by white nationalists while live onstage at the annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. I’ve got some ideas of who you can target next, Martha!

The week in pawtriarchy

Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum has a new exhibition exploring how medieval illustrators in Europe, Asia and the Islamic world celebrated cats in their manuscripts and art. It’s called Paws on Parchment and a litter of six-week-old foster kittens were given an exclusive sneak peek by the mew-seum. Let’s hope they had a purr-fect day.