New Yorkers struggling to afford food in the country’s biggest city — and often exorbitantly expensive financial capital — may finally get a break if the incoming socialist mayor’s daring new plan succeeds.Some 1.4 million residents in the Big Apple are food insecure, meaning they’re unable to regularly access affordable, healthy food. One in three use food banks.Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won a stunning victory, in part on his promise to open affordable city-run supermarkets.The 34-year-old vows the stores will focus “on keeping prices low, not making a profit.”It’s a novel idea in a city more associated with Wall Street wealth.The stores would be exempt from rent and taxes, with savings passed to shoppers, while centralized warehousing and distribution would aim to reduce overheads.But Mamdani’s experimental plan to open five pilot stores on unused city land, as well as free buses and subsidized childcare, is still only small-scale — and not universally welcome.Nevin Cohen, an associate professor at CUNY’s Urban Food Policy Institute, said Mamdani’s plan remains “pretty vague” on basic points like location or even type of store.President Donald Trump, who hosted Mamdani for a surprisingly cordial visit at the White House earlier this month, has led many right-wingers branding the incoming mayor a “communist.”And private supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis, a Trump ally, is campaigning against Mamdani’s city groceries, asking “how do you compete against that?”- Affordability crisis -No one disputes the need for cheaper and better food.More than 40 percent of people in the poorest of New York’s five boroughs, the Bronx, eat neither fruits nor vegetables in an average week.Some 1.8 million New Yorkers are already dependent on federal food subsidies, a program briefly frozen during a row in Congress over government spending this month.Even Trump agreed with Mamdani at their meeting that “getting housing built and food and prices” should be priorities.”The new word is affordability. Another word is just groceries,” Trump said. New York has an existing city program to lure supermarkets to underserved areas called FRESH. It uses tax and planning incentives to entice developers and private store operators.At one outpost of the FRESH program in East New York, a deprived Brooklyn neighborhood, a Fine Fare supermarket opened under a new apartment building in 2023.Laura Smith, the NYC Department of City Planning’s deputy executive director, told AFP that FRESH helps “encourage more fresh food supermarkets across the city in areas where residents have a harder time reaching full line grocery stores.”In return for permission to build extra apartments, the developers of the store and 40 others were obliged to allocate space for a supermarket. Thirty-five more are in the pipeline. –  National solution?  -Mamdani is cool on the FRESH project, saying on his website that instead of “spending millions of dollars to subsidize private grocery store operators we should redirect public money to a real ‘public option.'”But Fine Fare is a hit locally.”I like it because it’s close by to where I live and they gave everything you need,” said retiree Ivette Bravo, 63shopping for the holidays.The scheme, started under mayor Mike Bloomberg in 2009, has survived two other mayors and is fixed in city law.The FRESH program had been “modestly successful” as it “helps people not have to travel further,” said Cohen, the policy expert.If Mamdani’s project is successful, it will add another option.But everything being done adds up to a drop in the bucket for a city with some 1,000 supermarkets in total.In the end, solving food insecurity isn’t something New York can do alone, whatever the innovations, Cohen said.”That actually requires national-level policy.”

US President Donald Trump announced Thursday the death of one of two National Guard soldiers shot near the White House, as his government said it would respond by reviewing the permanent residency status of immigrants from 19 countries, including Afghanistan.The FBI meanwhile launched an international terrorism investigation as new details emerged about the alleged gunman, a 29-year-old Afghan national who had served with US troops in Afghanistan.The shooting on Wednesday, which officials described as an “ambush-style” attack, brings together three politically explosive issues: Trump’s controversial use of the military at home, immigration, and the legacy of the US war in Afghanistan.”I want to express the anguish and the horror of our entire nation at the terrorist attack yesterday in our nation’s capital,” Trump said in a Thanksgiving video call with US troops. He called the suspect a “savage monster” before announcing that Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old West Virginia National Guard member deployed in Washington as part of Trump’s crackdown on crime, had died from her injuries.Trump linked the shooting and his decision to send hundreds of National Guard troops to the city. “If they weren’t effective, you probably wouldn’t have had this done,” he said, adding: “Maybe this man was upset because he couldn’t practice crime.”Joseph Edlow, Trump’s director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), said Thursday that he had ordered a “full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.”His agency later pointed to a list of 19 countries — including Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran and Myanmar — facing US travel restrictions under a previous order from Trump in June.The Trump administration had earlier ordered an immediate halt to the processing of immigration applications from Afghanistan.- Gunned down in ‘brazen’ attack -The other soldier injured in Wednesday’s attack, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, was “fighting for his life” Thursday, Trump said. The suspected shooter was also in a serious condition. The US attorney for Washington DC, Jeanine Pirro, said the suspected assailant — identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal — had been living in the western state of Washington and had driven across the country to the nation’s capital.In what she called a “brazen and targeted” attack, Pirro said the gunman opened fire with a .357 Smith and Wesson revolver on a group of guardsmen on patrol just a few blocks from the White House.The suspect was charged with three counts of assault with intent to kill — charges that Pirro said would immediately be upgraded to first-degree murder if any of the guardsmen died.Officials said they still had no clear understanding of the motive behind the shooting.- Afghan legacy -CIA director John Ratcliffe said the suspect had been part of a CIA-backed “partner force” fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, and had been brought to the United States as part of a program to evacuate Afghans who had worked with the agency.The heads of the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security and other senior Trump appointees all insisted that Lakanwal had been granted unvetted access to the United States because of lax asylum policies in the wake of the chaotic final US withdrawal from Afghanistan under former president Joe Biden.But AfghanEvac, a group that helped resettle Afghans in the United States after the military withdrawal, said they undergo “some of the most extensive security vetting” of any migrants.The group noted Lakanwal had been granted asylum in April 2025, under the Trump administration, and would be eligible to request permanent residency a year later.”This individual’s isolated and violent act should not be used as an excuse to define or diminish an entire community,” said its president, Shawn VanDiver.In the wake of Wednesday’s shooting, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced 500 more troops would deploy to Washington, bringing the total to 2,500. Trump has deployed troops to several cities, all run by Democrats, including Washington, Los Angeles and Memphis. The move has prompted multiple lawsuits and allegations of authoritarian overreach by the White House.