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Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City made an unannounced trip to Washington on Thursday to meet with President Trump, and suggested afterward that they had found common ground around building more housing in New York.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mamdani also said he had secured a promise that federal immigration agents would release a Columbia University undergraduate<\/a> they had arrested early Thursday morning.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has just informed me that she will be released imminently,\u201d Mr. Mamdani wrote on social media, referring to the student, Elmina Aghayeva, a senior from Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n The two men come from opposite ends of the political spectrum, but have managed to build a personal rapport, particularly around a shared interest in housing in their hometown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Trump first made his name in real estate in New York City. Mr. Mamdani ran for office on a platform of making the city more affordable, in part by building more housing.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a productive meeting with President Trump this afternoon,\u201d Mr. Mamdani wrote on X<\/a>, alongside of a photo of him standing next to a grinning Mr. Trump in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n In the photo, Mr. Trump is pictured holding two printouts of New York Daily News front pages, one real and one fake.<\/p>\n The printout he is holding in his left hand shows a real front page from 1975, with the infamous headline \u201cFord to City: Drop Dead,\u201d published after President Gerald Ford refused to bail out New York City, which was nearing bankruptcy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The fake front page, which Mr. Trump holds in his other hand, reads \u201cTrump to City: Let\u2019s Build.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In smaller type beneath that headline, the page reads \u201cBacks New Era of Housing.\u201d And in even smaller type, it reads \u201cTrump Delivers 12,000+ Homes; Most Since 1973.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Mamdani provided the printouts to Mr. Trump, a spokeswoman for City Hall said. She declined to elaborate further on any housing deal that had been reached.<\/p>\n Both Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Trump left the meeting off their public schedules. Mr. Mamdani evidently left the White House without addressing reporters there.<\/p>\n The New York Post first reported<\/a> that Mr. Mamdani was traveling to Washington, though it did not say why.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump and Mr. Mamdani have established an unexpectedly amicable relationship despite vast political differences, and have found common ground on issues pertaining to land use in New York.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n They first met in November<\/a>, after Mr. Mamdani won the mayoral election. Though the mayor is a democratic socialist and Mr. Trump is a hard-right Republican, they exhibited a surprising level of good feeling during the meeting.<\/p>\n At the time, Mr. Trump expressed optimism about Mr. Mamdani\u2019s coming mayoralty, and Mr. Mamdani voiced appreciation for the president\u2019s<\/a> willingness to discuss areas of overlapping concern.<\/p>\n During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he spoke often to Mr. Mamdani and described him as a \u201cnice guy,\u201d even if he embraced \u201cbad policy.\u201d<\/p>\n He also criticized New York City\u2019s use of volunteer emergency shovelers to help clean up after this week\u2019s snowstorm. The city asked the shovelers to provide two forms of identification, a federal requirement<\/a> that Republicans who support voter identification laws have nevertheless seized on as evidence of hypocrisy.<\/p>\n For his part, Mr. Mamdani has largely avoided directly criticizing Mr. Trump, who wields substantial control over federal funding streams that New York relies on. One deviation from that stance came in January, after the U.S. military\u2019s capture of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, which Mr. Mamdani described<\/a> as \u201can act of war and a violation of federal and international law.\u201d<\/p>\n