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Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world

Zohran Mamdani, the leftwing Democrat feared by Wall Street, is on course to win the party’s mayoral primary for New York City, sending shockwaves across US politics.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has called for higher taxes on the rich and assailed US support for Israel in Gaza, stunned Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York state, in the Democratic primary race on Tuesday.

His success will reverberate across Wall Street and among the billionaire donors, including hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who backed his rival. It will also intensify the debate among Democrats as they seek a convincing political strategy to take on Donald Trump.

“Tonight, we made history,” Mamdani told hundreds of jubilant supporters in Queens on Tuesday night. “I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City.

“When we no longer believe in our democracy, it only becomes easier for people like Donald Trump to convince us of his worth, for billionaires to convince us that they must always lead,” he said.

New York leans towards Democrats, and Mamdani’s victory gives the 33-year-old a major advantage in the election later this year to replace Eric Adams as the city’s mayor — one of the most powerful positions in US domestic politics.

Cuomo conceded defeat late on Tuesday in a contest that is widely seen as a referendum on the future of the party.

“Tonight was not our night, tonight. It was Assemblyman Mamdani’s night,” Cuomo told supporters at a post-election party, adding that he had called Mamdani to congratulate him.

Unofficial results on Tuesday night showed Mamdani with a seven-point lead over Cuomo, with more than 90 per cent of the vote counted.

The final result will depend on the tally in the city’s ranked-choice system, which allows people to pick up to five candidates in order of preference. The winner will be officially declared on July 1, at the earliest, after all other candidates’ votes have been reallocated.

Following Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election, the Democrats have been riven between a progressive wing exemplified by New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and moderates such as Pennsylvania US Senator John Fetterman, who has praised Trump.

Mamdani ran his campaign on a pledge to make life more affordable for New Yorkers, whose cost of living has soared since the Covid-19 pandemic. If elected, he says he will raise taxes on the rich to fund free buses and childcare, as well as city-owned grocery stores.

The progressive candidate tapped into a groundswell of support among younger voters — an electoral strategy that will be studied by Democrats nationally as they try to win back youthful voters who backed Trump in November.

“In the words of Nelson Mandela: it always seems impossible until it’s done,” Mamdani said on X following the result.

Ocasio-Cortez, who has tapped into a similar voter base, congratulated Mamdani on Tuesday night, saying in a social media post, “billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won.”

Cuomo, a fixture of New York state politics for more than four decades, was long seen as the frontrunner. But the centrist found himself fighting an increasingly serious challenge from the upstart Mamdani, who has a huge following on social media.

After resigning as governor four years ago amid accusations of sexual harassment, which he denies, Cuomo entered the mayoral race in March.

Cuomo committed to restoring the Democratic party’s appeal among working class voters, promising to hire more police officers, improve safety on the subway and remove red tape to build more affordable housing.

His campaign was built on the thesis that the Democratic party had been “hijacked”, and that it “doesn’t fight for working people anymore”.

Cuomo’s campaign enjoyed a big fundraising advantage over rivals in the final weeks of the race, buoyed by large contributions, including from former mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Combined, outside fundraising groups spent more than $20mn. Mamdani’s campaign relied on small contributions, with more than 21,000 donors, roughly 75 per cent of whom gave less than $100.

Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor, will run in the November general election as an independent. His approval rating stands at just 20 per cent after he was indicted last year on charges of bribery and fraud in a case that was later dismissed.

A U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly has confirmed early intelligence assessments by the Defense Intelligence Agency saying that the massive U.S. air campaign against three Iran nuclear sites on Saturday night did not “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear enrichment program as President Trump claimed but instead set it back “a few months.”

CNN first published news of the DIA assessment.

The official told NPR that military officials provided an early assessment of the intel to select senators — including Virginia’s Mark Warner, the leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. 

“I have a whole lot of questions for this administration,” Warner told All Things Considered. “What are the next steps? How do we make sure that there’s not Iran racing now to a dirty bomb? These are questions that we and frankly, the American people, deserve answers to.”

The full Senate was slated to get a classified briefing from the administration Tuesday afternoon, but it was cancelled and moved later in the week.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed the CNN report, saying on social media that it was “flat-out wrong,” and maintaining that a key nuclear facility had been destroyed. She said the leak was a “clear attempt to demean President Trump.”

The White House did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for further comment.

The assessment comes less than a day after a ceasefire declared by Trump between Israel and Iran went into effect, with both sides agreeing to end the fighting. Israel has said repeatedly that its goal in the war had been to stop Iran’s nuclear program, and prevent it from the ability to make a nuclear weapon — a goal long-shared by the U.S.

Speaking on Air Force One earlier Tuesday, Trump maintained that goal had been met.

“They’re not going to have enrichment and they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon,” he said, speaking about Iran. “And I’ll tell you, the last thing on their minds is nuclear weapons. They don’t even want to think about nuclear.”

But officials within Iran directly contradicted that.

In a statement on X in Farsi, Iran’s Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said that Iran would “completely disregard” Israel’s demands to stop enriching uranium, a key component to a nuclear weapon. He said Iran will continue to proceed in their own self interests.

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency Hamad Eslami also seemed to confirm that, telling a semi-official Iranian news agency that they were still assessing the damage from Saturday night’s attacks, but had prepared in advance. “Our plan is to not allow any interruption in the production and service process,” he said.

The U.S. used massive bunker-buster bombs on Saturday to target three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities, including one called Fordo, built deep inside a mountain.

Speaking at the White House after those strikes, Trump called the strikes a “spectacular military success.”

“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” he said.

But the U.S. official NPR spoke to said that the intelligence assessment concluded there had been “limited” damage to the critical infrastructure at the Fordo facility in particular.

Independent experts NPR talked to in the day after the U.S. strikes came to similar conclusions, after analyzing commercial satellite imagery, saying that Iran’s nuclear enterprise is far from destroyed.

“At the end of the day there are some really important things that haven’t been hit,” says Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, who tracks Iran’s nuclear facilities. “If this ends here, it’s a really incomplete strike.”

Experts have long warned that Iran’s nuclear ability doesn’t just lie in its facilities, but also in its deep knowledge – something much more difficult to attack.

“The simple fact is that Israel was never going to be able to eliminate Iran’s capacity to build nuclear weapons entirely if Iranians choose to do so,” says Kenneth Pollack, Vice President for policy at the Middle East Institute. “The knowledge is just too widespread within the Iranian system.”

NPR’s Tom Bowman contributed to this report from Washington, D.C. 

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Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world

Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte has praised Donald Trump for making Europe “pay in a BIG way” on increased defence spending, in a private message that the US president shared on his social media platform.

“Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world,” Rutte wrote ahead of a Nato summit that begins on Tuesday, referencing the US president’s demand that all allies commit to raising defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP.

“You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done,” he added, according to screenshots of his text message posted by Trump to Truth Social on Tuesday.

“It was not easy but we’ve got them all signed onto 5 per cent!” Rutte wrote. “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.”

Rutte also praised Trump’s “decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do”.

A Nato official confirmed the message’s authenticity.

The screenshots appeared on Truth Social as the US president flew to The Hague for a Nato summit that begins on Tuesday evening.

Trump had asked all members of the alliance to spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence over the next decade or risk losing the US security guarantees that have underpinned the continent’s security for decades.

While many European allies including Germany, France and the UK have committed to meet Trump’s new target, Spain has secured an opt-out, increasing the likelihood of a clash at the meeting.

On Tuesday, Rutte sought to reassure allies that as long as they drastically increase their defence spending, Trump would not withdraw US guarantees.

“There is total commitment by the US President . . . to Nato,” Rutte said ahead of the event. “However it comes with an expectation that we will deal with this . . . huge irritant that we are not spending enough.

“My message to my European colleagues is: stop worrying so much . . . Stop running around being worried about the US. They are with us,” he added.

To meet Trump’s demands, Rutte has drawn up a plan for allies to allocate 3.5 per cent of their GDP to core military spending and 1.5 per cent on areas such as cyber and infrastructure by 2035, to fill gaps in European capabilities.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that a massive defence spending plan presented to his cabinet on Tuesday showed that Europe’s largest nation was a “strong and reliable” partner.

“We’ve showed our allies we can be relied upon,” he told German MPs before departing for The Hague. “Germany is back on the international stage.”

Germany plans to boost military spending by more than two-thirds over the next four years, reaching 3.5 per cent of GDP in core military spending in 2029, faster than France and the UK.

But Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has refused to commit to the overall 5 per cent target and secured an opt-out by pledging to meet the Nato capabilities goal at what it estimates will be a lower cost.

Other capitals have also requested the same “flexibility” that Rutte has granted Madrid, increasing the risk for the summit to end in acrimony and triggering Trump’s ire over what he sees as European allies freeloading on American largesse.