The Republican Scheme To Stop Mamdani

Monday, November 03, 2025

Tomorrow is Election Day in New York City, where the polls suggest Zohran Mamdani will win big. That may be the easy part for the 33-year-old Democrat. Republicans in New York and Washington, D.C., are plotting novel ways to prevent him from taking office—or even staying in the country. In a column today, Esquire's Charles P. Pierce looks at the shenanigans to come should Mamdani score his expected victory. You can read it below..

– Michael Sebastian, editor-in-chief

Plus:

Republicans Are Trying to Prevent Zohran Mamdani from Taking Office

Even if the New York mayoral candidate wins, he's going to have to fight off some wild accusations.

Our long national nightmare is nearly over. Zohran Mamdani is apparently on his way to one of the most predictable landslides in the history of organized democracy, if I am reading the tea leaves in Monday's edition of the The New York Times correctly.

Call me crazy, but I don't think all those voters, especially the young ones, are turning out because of Andrew Cuomo's flailing turn to pure nativism or because of the natural charisma of Curtis Sliwa. (I don't think enough has been made of the pathetic state of N.Y.C. Republicans as demonstrated by the fact that they couldn't do any better for a candidate than a recycled spotlight diver in a funny hat from the 19-freaking-70s.) However, getting elected appears to be the easiest problem Mamdani's going to face after Tuesday. The flying monkeys are approaching from a darkening sky.

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IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 Has the Most Haunting Monsters I've Ever Seen on TV

"The Thing in the Dark," the second episode of what is becoming the show to watch this fall, is another hour of harrowing adolescence and the ugliness of a time period so many believe to be America's greatest. The brilliance of Stephen King's IT was, and is, that adults cannot understand children, which renders the dark forces that torture them totally invisible to us. "The Thing in the Dark" marinates in this idea, as a sleepy town tries to move on from a grisly murder case by pinning it on a suspect that seems awfully too convenient for them. Maybe the true evil in Derry isn't an ancient clown demon after all. Meanwhile, something continues to haunt the children.

By Eric Francisco

The Mysterious, Enduring Appeal of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours

Almost fifty years after its release in 1977, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is somehow still one of the most popular albums in the world. Created in a cauldron of intraband romantic turmoil and fueled by voracious drug intake, this very week, it sits at Number 19 on Billboard's album chart. In 2023, Rumours was the most streamed album of the twentieth century on Spotify—more than any Beatles album, more than Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, more than Nirvana's Nevermind or Dr. Dre's The Chronic or anything else. In 2024, it was the year's biggest-selling rock album, old or new.

These numbers are being powered not by the Boomers and older Gen-Xers who grew up with the album in real time and made it the seventh-best-selling album in US history, but by younger generations. There is something in the music—or, maybe more precisely, in the experience of Rumours that separates it from the pack, even from the most elite. But does that allure revolve around the sound, the emotion, the mythology, or some combination of all its elements? Why does one album survive and even thrive when others—even those that felt much more influential at their peak—inevitably become dated?

To put it simply, why do kids like this old-ass album?

By Alan Light