House resolution condemning socialism splits Democrats ahead of Zohran Mamdani’s Trump meeting

WASHINGTON — The House passed a resolution denouncing the “horrors of socialism” Friday, hours before democratic socialist New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was scheduled to meet President Trump at the White House.

The concurrent resolution, introduced by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), passed the lower chamber in a bipartisan, 285-98 vote.

All the “no” votes came from Democrats, two of whom — Janelle Bynum of Oregon and Deborah Ross of North Carolina — also voted “present.”

“Congress denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States,” the resolution stated. Salazar’s parents fled Cuba following the takeover of Communist dictator Fidel Castro.

“Madame Waters, for decades you traveled to Cuba dozens of times to visit Fidel Castro personally, whom you considered your friend,” Salazar said on the floor while debating the resolution with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who later voted “no.”

“Congresswoman Waters was in Havana and she saw the destruction of Biblical proportions that Castro caused on that island,” Salazar went on. “Madame Waters knew that thousands and thousands of Cubans were escaping on a raft, exposing their lives and their children to be eaten by the sharks.”

“She knew that Afro-Cubans were being beaten on the streets of Havana,” she added. “Madame Waters knew that the Cuban jails were full of political prisoners.”

“Object,” Waters responded. “I move to take her words down.” 

Salazar voluntarily withdrew her remarks from the congressional record.

Rep. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the son of incarcerated former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), whose parents fled Cuba years before Castro took power, was one of the Democrats who voted against the resolution.

“House Republicans are wasting valuable time pursuing a resolution about socialism instead of tackling the affordability crisis Americans are facing,” Menendez told The Post in a statement.

“Further, they have been absolutely silent as President Trump strips legal protections from those taking refuge here from the countries they mention in their resolution, most notably Venezuela. House Republicans are not a serious group and this resolution is indicative of that.”

Some members of Congress who endorsed Mamdani are proud socialists, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who also voted “no” on the resolution along with fellow members of the far-left “Squad.”

House Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was also a “no” vote, along with AOC’s fellow city lawmakers Yvette Clarke, Adriano Espaillat, and Dan Goldman.

The vote took place shortly after Mamdani touched down at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport ahead of the scheduled 3 p.m. sitdown with Trump.

The 34-year-old has expressed a desire to “speak plainly” to the Republican president about how to make New York City more affordable.

Trump previously threatened to cut the city’s federal funding if “my little Communist” was elected.

On Friday, however, the president told Fox News Radio’s “Brian Kilmeade Show” that he expected the meeting to be “quite civil.”

“I think we’ll get along fine,” Trump added.

“I have many disagreements with the president, and I believe that we should be relentless and pursue all avenues and all meetings that could make our city affordable for every single New Yorker,” Mamdani said at a City Hall Park news conference on Thursday.
 

Friday’s vote further underscores divisions within the Democratic Party that surfaced during the mayoral race, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) officially endorsing Mamdani — but voting in favor of the House GOP resolution.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) didn’t offer his endorsement to Mamdani, nor indicate which way he voted in the city’s election.

“Let me educate our colleagues on the other side of the aisle: socialism is communism-light,” Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said during floor debate Friday.”

Malliotakis noted that her mother had fled Cuba in 1959 to avoid “the very things that our new socialist mayor in New York City says he wants.

A socialist who says he wants to seize the means of production; he wants to abolish private property rights; he wants government-run supermarkets.

“But guess what, my friends? Those are policies straight out of the Communist playbook of Karl Marx,” she added. “So there is no difference between socialism and communism, and where these policies were tried, yes, they failed.”

Salazar, Malliotakis and other members also called out the more recent failures of socialism in Venezuela.

The resolution’s text cited how socialist regimes have historically “collapsed into communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships” — including those of Russia’s Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin, China’s Mao Zedong, Cuba’s Fidel Castro — “led to famine and mass murders.”

In North Korea, for example, the resolution noted that as many as 3.5 million people have starved under the rule of strongman Kim Jong Un; 10 million “were sent to the gulags in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”; and “between 15,000,000 and 55,000,000 people starved to death in the wake of famine and devastation caused by the Great Leap Forward in China.”

A companion resolution in the Senate was introduced by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.)

Both resolutions were submitted in early September, weeks before the New York City mayoral election, but after Mamdani had won the Democratic primary.