Working Class Hero

I guess we’re all working-class now: “I think if you have to work to pay your bills, I think that that is one definition of being a part of the working class,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told The New York Times in an interview published over the weekend.

“So someone making $250,000 a year is working class?” reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro pushed back. “I haven’t asked myself where it starts and stops,” answered Mamdani. “What I would say is those who are working to try and afford the basic dignities of life and aren’t able to do so, I think that that is also working class. Oftentimes we’re asked how we divide this country. I think there’s only one majority in this country—it’s the working class.”

I guess the upshot is that Mamdani himself—someone born to extremely wealthy parents—isn’t actually working-class, as he and his wife appear to have vast reserves of family money available to them (and, formerly, a rent-stabilized apartment that helped matters). But it’s rather telling that Mamdani just keeps trying to define well-off people as working-class. He’s tapping into a class-insecurity phenomenon that highly educated but relatively low-earning folks—essentially most of my neighbors in Brooklyn—feel: an idea that they’re sort of entitled to a better quality of life than they ended up with.

Flawed though his definition may be, he’s also doing something politically sneaky: He’s redefining who deserves resources from the state. The Democratic Party, with the help of Sen Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), prefers universal X to means-testing: universal childcare, Medicare for All, tuition-free college for everyone. Political support mounts when you give handouts to 73 percent of the population, as opposed to just 9 percent. And the state just grows bigger and bigger, with millionaires and billionaires footing the bill—as if their tolerance for being taxed and demeaned won’t ever diminish so much that they leave.

Three U.S. service members killed in Iran: This morning, the Pentagon released the names of service members who were recently killed in action. “1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii was killed in action on July 18, 2026, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, was killed in action on July 17, 2026, during an enemy attack on July 17, 2026, at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, Jordan,” reads the press release.

“Another service member was killed in northern Iraq during the disposal of a downed Iranian attack drone on Saturday, the Pentagon said,” reports The New York Times. “That individual’s identity has not been released. The fatalities raised to 17 the number of U.S. military personnel confirmed to have been killed in the war since the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.”

Scenes from New York: 

Is this abundance? https://t.co/xs100wqNeP pic.twitter.com/NIpYi0DZ9U

— Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) July 17, 2026

QUICK HITS

• “Troy Jackson is a near-lock to be Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee and officially replace scandal-plagued former nominee Graham Platner on November’s ballot. But he still has to escape the shadow of Platner’s meteoric campaign and disastrous collapse,” reports Politico. “Even as Jackson dominated the weekend’s county delegate conventions, showing organizing strength that will benefit his campaign through November, many Maine Democrats expressed frustrations with the makeshift nomination process triggered by Platner’s last-minute resignation and raised concerns about Jackson’s ability to carry the torch of the high-energy populist movement ignited by Platner.”
• “In an email last August to fellow Democratic operatives, [political strategist Daniel] Moraff described Platner as ‘a cross between a rugged JFK and Bernie Sanders’ and hailed him as ‘one of the most talented politicians of our time. Maybe any time,'” says another Politico piece. Insane.
• U.S. gas prices now exceed $4 per gallon. “Gas prices remained stubbornly high even as crude oil prices fell precipitously in June, dropping as low as $3.79 a gallon before trending back up in early July. That owed to a sharp decline in Russian refining capacity, low US imports and tight stockpiles of gasoline, at a time when demand remained relatively resilient during the peak summer driving season,” reports Bloomberg. “Now, with the scope of both US and Iranian strikes expanding, the risk of sustained disruptions to energy flows through the vital Strait of Hormuz appears to be rising. That’s sent the price of crude oil—which typically makes up over half of the price of gasoline—up by the most in a week since April.”
• Terrifying headline: “Like It or Not, Kamala Harris Is the Front-runner.” (The piece asks such incisive questions as “Can Harris avoid getting pulled too far to the left, as she was in 2020, to disastrous effect in 2024?” and “Can she put together a proper campaign team, something she was unable to really do in either of her runs for the White House?” If past performance is any indicator, sounds like a no.)