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It’s one of the first pictures that comes to mind when thinking of the US president – signing an executive order.
Since returning to office, Donald Trump has dusted off 225 – already more than the total number he signed on the dotted line during the whole of his first stint in the Oval Office.
But it was another politician that used pen and paper to flex his new found executive wings this week, Zohran Mamdani.
New York’s newly elected mayor has wasted no time embracing his executive powers, albeit in a rather different fashion.
Away from his office, Mamdani used his inaugural week to sign orders alongside volunteers in the freezing cold of the Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn on Friday.
Among his first strokes of the pen were acts to reverse measures taken by his predecessor.
Mamdani’s dozen orders included a revocation of an act by Eric Adams to grant federal workers permission to use the city’s main jail on Riker Island as an office.
The measure was stifled by a court order but has now been formally rescinded.
Mamdani also pledged to create a new Office of Mass Engagement will also be created at City Hall to improve public participation in local politics and ’embed’ feedback into policy decision making.
The new unit will be led by Tascha Van Auken, one of the key figures in Mamdani’s campaign.
On Friday Mamdani elected to travel in for his second day in office by subway, shaking hands with commuters on the way.
On Thursday, Mamdani rolled back several steps taken by Adams to address antisemitism, including recognition of the IHRA definition of anti-Jewish hatred and an order banning city institutions from divesting from Israel.
Mamdani, who has already faced criticism from the Israeli government, has said that protecting Jewish New Yorkers is one of his areas of focus.
The Democratic politician was sworn in as the mayor of the Big Apple just after midnight on New Year’s Day.
Among other new policies adopted by the mayor include new rights for tenants in the city and a new push to develop more housing.
Promising a new era for New York, Mamdani pledged to ‘reset expectations’and to govern ‘without shame or insecurity’ in his inaugural speech.
He said: ‘A moment like this comes rarely. Seldom do we hold such an opportunity to transform and reinvent. Rarer still is it the people themselves whose hands are the ones upon the levers of change.’
The speech was also a bold indicator of the new left-leaning mayor’s priorities – working people and less looking to the private sector to fix the city’s issues.
‘These policies are not simply about the costs we make free, but the lives we fill with freedom. For too long in our city, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it. Our City Hall will change that’, he declared.
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