Overview

• The campaign memo calls for reducing class assessment percentages citywide to lower taxes in outer-borough areas like Jamaica and Brownsville while raising rates on high-value Brooklyn brownstones.
• Conservative and Democratic figures criticized the explicit racial framing, with Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and activist Douglass Mackey labeling it anti-white and Brianna Wu warning it could damage the party’s national image.
• Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the plan would violate federal constitutional and statutory norms, leading the Justice Department to consider a discrimination probe.
• Mamdani, who secured the Democratic mayoral nomination on June 25, would be New York City’s first openly socialist mayoral nominee, intensifying scrutiny of his reform agenda ahead of November.
• Advocates note that decades-old assessment caps have created longstanding disparities in the city’s property tax system but argue that equitable reform should avoid explicit racial criteria.