The House passed a resolution on Friday morning that denounces the “horrors of socialism,” mere hours before New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, is scheduled to visit the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump.
The resolution, which “denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States,” passed 285-98. No Republican lawmaker voted against the measure, and 86 Democrats joined Republicans to approve it.
The vote in the House came the same day as the highly anticipated meeting between Mamdani and Trump, who have publicly sparred for months. Many Republicans have railed against Mamdani’s victory in the general election earlier this month, pointing to his ascension as evidence for their claims that the Democratic Party is becoming radicalized.
“It speaks volumes that tomorrow, we have a communist coming to the White House because that’s who the Democrat Party elected as the mayor of the largest city in the country,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the White House press briefing on Thursday.
Trump himself has also falsely labeled Mamdani a communist and levied repeated attacks against him, calling him “a 100% Communist lunatic,” threatening to arrest him if he pushes back on immigration enforcement agents, and suggesting ahead of the general election that he would withhold some federal funds from New York City if Mamdani won the race.
Mamdani has made his own opposition to Trump clear, vowing during his campaign that he would be “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare” and would use his power to “stop masked ICE agents from deporting our neighbors.”
“If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power,” Mamdani said in his victory speech on election night. “So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.”
The two politicians, however, indicated this week that they are open to having a discussion. Trump told reporters on Sunday that he wants “to see everything work out well for New York,” and Mamdani said on Thursday that while he has “many disagreements with the President,” he plans to “make it clear” to Trump that he “will work with him on any agenda that benefits New Yorkers.” But “If an agenda hurts New Yorkers,” he said, “I will also be the first to say so.”
