New York City’s openly Marxist mayor just handed Republicans the most useful gift of the summer.
His own official said the quiet part out loud, and now the whole country is watching him try to walk it back.
And Elon Musk was left speechless after Zohran Mamdani got caught in one jaw-dropping double standard that has the SAVE Act debate exploding all over again.
What Mamdani’s Own Official Actually Said
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a dues-paying member of the openly Marxist Democratic Socialists of America, has been pushing a plan to spend $70 million in taxpayer money to build five government-run grocery stores — one in each of New York City’s five boroughs — promising a 30% discount on essential items like eggs, milk, chicken, and fresh produce.
The first location is slated to open in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx in late 2027, in a former juvenile detention center. The city has allocated the $70 million in capital funds for the project, with the Harlem location alone reportedly costing $30 million to build, according to the New York Times.
At a press conference in late July, a reporter asked a perfectly reasonable question: how does the city plan to stop people from buying up discounted goods in bulk and reselling them for a profit?
Mamdani punted to Jeanny Pak, the interim president and CEO of the NYC Economic Development Corporation. And Pak’s answer is what set the whole thing off.
“We are looking to make sure that we target New Yorkers, whether it be a sort of library card-esque thing, and also we manage who’s buying and that it is focused on everyday New Yorkers,” Pak said.
That clip went viral almost immediately. Because Mamdani and his fellow travelers in the DSA have spent years denouncing voter ID requirements as racist, discriminatory, and a throwback to Jim Crow. The DSA’s own official platform calls the SAVE America Act — President Donald Trump’s commonsense election integrity legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote — “an escalating campaign to reverse the gains of the Civil Rights Movement.”
And now here was a top Mamdani official floating an ID-style card to manage who gets to shop at a taxpayer-funded grocery store.
Trump, Musk, and Half of Washington Piled On
Elon Musk was among the first to notice. “Oh, the irony is too much,” he posted on X.
US Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) went further. “It’s not just ironic, it’s hypocritical!” Scott wrote. “Mamdani’s going to require an ID check for his grocery stores, but thinks it’s racist to require one for federal elections?!? We HAVE to pass the SAVE America Act to end this corruption!”
US Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) kept it short and brutal: “ID to vote: Jim Crow! ID to buy groceries: Democratic Socialism!”
Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports put it in plain English. “So you need a valid ID to shop at Mamdani’s government grocery stores to make sure the system isn’t taken advantage of,” Portnoy wrote. “But the same people who love this idea will also scream racism if you say you need a valid ID to vote so the system doesn’t get taken advantage of. Hypocrites man… Either you should be for no ID for both or ID for both. But if you are split then you are prob a fraud.”
President Trump weighed in during an Oval Office exchange, and his response was exactly what you’d expect. “I wish they’d have an ID to access the voting booth,” Trump said. “You know, they don’t want to access the voting booth with any identification. We want voter ID, and we want proof of citizenship!”
Trump also reminded reporters that this wasn’t the first time Mamdani’s administration had quietly embraced identification requirements. The city’s emergency snow-shoveling program earlier this year reportedly required participants to provide two original forms of ID and a Social Security number to register.
The Walkback and Why It Doesn’t Really Change Anything
By that evening, Mamdani appeared on *The Joy Reid Show* and tried to laugh the whole thing off. “We’re talking about a city-run grocery store which, by the way, you do not need an ID to shop at, no matter what you’ve heard in the news of today,” he said.
His press secretary Joe Calvello posted on X: “Insane that this even needs to be said, but to be absolutely clear: NYC Grocery stores will be open to everyone.”
Spokesperson Dora Pekec added that any card associated with the stores would simply be “a voluntary savings card like they have at any typical supermarket.”
And spokesperson Cassio Mendoza told multiple outlets: “Comparisons to voter ID laws or the SAVE Act simply do not apply. This is not an identification system, nor is it a mechanism to verify who someone is, where they live, or how much they earn. It is a practical inventory management tool to ensure affordable groceries remain available for the people who need them instead of being cleared off shelves for resale.”
Fine. Take them at their word. But that explanation raises a different problem entirely.
If there’s no residency check, no income verification, and no ID required — then Mamdani’s taxpayer-funded grocery stores will be open to tourists, non-New Yorkers, and anyone else who happens to walk through the door. The $70 million New York City taxpayers are spending to build these stores will subsidize discounts for literally anyone who shows up. That’s not a targeted relief program. That’s a government-run store that competes directly against private bodegas and family-owned grocers, pays no rent, pays no property taxes, and answers to no market discipline whatsoever.
The stores are exempt from the basic financial pressures that every privately owned grocery store in the city faces. And if they lose money — which government-run retail operations historically do — New York taxpayers eat the loss.
This is the DSA’s openly Marxist platform in action. The DSA’s own national platform calls for government ownership of major corporations and the “seizure of the means of production.” Starting with grocery stores is a fairly literal interpretation of that goal.
But the voter ID piece is the part that stings the most politically. Because Mamdani’s team didn’t just quietly manage a bureaucratic question about inventory control. Pak’s statement was a live admission that identification requirements make sense when you’re trying to prevent a taxpayer-funded program from being exploited. That’s the entire argument Republicans have been making about elections for years.
The SAVE America Act — which Trump has been pushing the Senate to pass, including by calling on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to use every available procedural tool to get it done — would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID on Election Day. According to a Fox News poll released recently, 77% of registered voters support requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Even 66% of voters who identify as DSA Democrats supported it, according to the poll’s crosstab data — a remarkable number given that the DSA’s own national organization calls the bill a “voter suppression” scheme.
The Republican National Committee’s election integrity account posted the Pak clip alongside a simple message: “Pass the SAVE America Act.”
And Trump War Room put it even more directly: “You need ID for Mamdani’s grocery stores but not to vote in elections.”
Mamdani can claim the stores won’t technically require ID. But his own official said out loud that the city needs a system to manage who’s buying and to keep the program “focused on everyday New Yorkers.” That’s an acknowledgment that open access to a taxpayer-subsidized benefit creates obvious fraud and abuse problems. The same logic applies to elections. The same logic has always applied to elections. Democrats just refuse to say so.
The SAVE Act deserves to pass. Election integrity is a commonsense protection that the overwhelming majority of Americans — across party lines — already support. Mamdani’s team inadvertently made the case better than Republicans could have on their own.
Sources: Mediaite, Forbes, Fox News, The Blaze, Washington Examiner, Daily Wire, PJ Media, One America News, DSA official platform statement, Fox News poll crosstab data (August 2026)