If Mamdani Wants an Affordable NYC He Will Raze ACC to the Ground
Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani markets himself as a change agent. DOH and its kill pound will be a litmus test.
The Scoop New York is a website and newsletter covering the movement for a true no-kill New York State, from BUF to BK. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s November 14, 2025. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week, for the second time, The Scoop New York contacted the media ops team of Zohran Mamdani with questions, formulated with the help of the New York City mayor-elect’s now-constituency, seeking his commitment to major reforms needed yesterday at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene [sic] regarding its pack of dunderlings now consuming precious cubic footage over at the non-profit contractor presently known as Animal Care Centers of New York City.
Also this week, for the second time, the Mamdani camp ignored us. This does not bode well for more reasons than one.
There is little we’ve seen to suggest Mamdani is committed to DOH/ACC reform, and ample evidence that the candidate who marketed himself as a change agent to get elected has been corrupted by The Big Lie before taking the oath of office.
First, there was the Voters For Animal Rights endorsement. TSNY hasn’t yet gotten around to covering VFAR, and there isn’t enough time or space today to delve into its history, but trust: it is long and sordid.
For its Mamdani nod, VFAR produced a video that attempts to stitch “affordability” as a concept to the specific and dire needs of the city’s companion animal caretakers. Thing is, we’ve all been living the trickle-down fantasy since George Jefferson ruled the Upper East Side. Help “someday” is help denied. Can-kicking. Happy talk. Guano. And there is nothing in the VFAR endorsement that implies an imminent end to DOH/ACC carnage, because behind its humane-washed facade VFAR DGAF about the killings.
Suffice to say that, in addition to Mamdani, VFAR this year endorsed City Council Member Lynn “acC DOeS The bEST tHAt iT cAn” Schulman.
I think we’re done here.
Second, there’s this:
OMGGGGGGGGGG sooo cuuuttteeeee [bubbling hearts + smileys]!!!!!
On the real, friends: The noble intentions of participating New Yorkers notwithstanding, the city’s “dog mayor” routine is a propaganda device deployed by electeds to signify Friend Of The Animals status. For the uninitiated, “Friends Of The Animals” are not friends of the animals (see: Schulman, Lynn et al.), but New York politicians and bureaucrats who have collectively agreed to cosplay “normal human with morals” while IRL not only permitting the suffering and death dealt 24/7/365 at the kill pound they’re responsible for, but in some cases reveling in it (see: Schulman, Lynn). Because rather than govern it’s so much easier to misdirect with heart-tugging pablum like a contest for a fucking “dog mayor” — a dog who, regardless of title, would just as likely end up in a Long Island ash heap as any of the tens of thousands of adoptable cat and dog victims incinerated on behalf of those same hollow-core officials, elected and appointed.
Dog mayor : NYC :: “pardoned” turkey : Washington. It’s cruelty theater. Compassion and its implied opposite played for laughs.
“It’s a parr-dun, see, cuz they ain’t gon’ chop its head off withuh ‘lectric saw! Leastways not thatch’all know ‘bout! Git it?” [It’s OK, folks. He spoke exactly that way until he didn’t. — Ed.]
Unfortunately the propaganda is as effective as it is perverse. Not least in part because complicit media can be counted on to snap it up like it’s on clearance, absolving themselves of their oversight duty as well.
To enact his “affordability” agenda, Mamdani doesn’t have to care about animal cruelty. He just has to care about New Yorkers.
Is Mamdani aware of this? If not it’s by choice, as evidenced not only by the disregarded news outlet repeatedly tapping him on the shoulder but the fact that 90 and 100 are different numbers, and 90 and 59 are even more different than that. The figures are right there, if one cares to look.
Let’s assume Mamdani is just as interested in cutting off the DOH/ACC bloodshed supply as every mayor before him, i.e. not at all. To enact his “affordability” agenda, he doesn’t have to care about animal cruelty. He just has to care about New Yorkers. The New Yorkers who pay to do temp health commissioner Dr. Michelle Morse’s job for her, of course, but more so the untold number of everyday New Yorkers struggling to house and feed themselves and their companion animals.
NYC media are reporting on pet food insecurity, but as usual they’re doing it with one eye closed, tsk-tsking at unfortunate New Yorkers who must choose between eating or feeding their cats while taking care to point no fingers at the officials whose chronic malfeasance made it this way.
It isn’t just buying dog food or maintaining cat colonies out of pocket, but the widespread inability to comfortably afford veterinary care and pet-friendly housing. Like the data, the headlines are there for all to see. If they’re the least bit competent, Mamdani and/or his team are well aware. But if Mamdani has said word one about affordable pet ownership* (*the law’s term, not TSNY’s), it was upstaged handily by the mayor-elect’s very public interest in companion animals’ utility as political props.
It’s something Mamdani and Mayor Vegan appear to have in common. The One Thing They Agree On™️, you might say.
New Yorkers will know soon enough whether Mayor Affordability lives up to the handle, or if, like his forebears, he’s another opportunistic charlatan building his political career atop the bodies of countless exterminated cats and dogs, all the way back to when Rachel Green ruled the West Village.
Meantime, The Scoop New York will continue to query the mayor-elect — about his choice to lead his administration’s health department, in particular. As always, we will follow up in this space, reporting responses communicated by word or deed. Or lack thereof.
Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
Year-old puppy Aurora Mist [230952] — twice surrendered to ACC and featured in a recent Newsweek profile — was exterminated this week, along with 1-yo Saint [237603].
FOTA fight! Termed-out NYC Council Member Bob Holden forced a health committee vote on his bill to end the city’s medieval horse carriage industry, after Speaker Adrienne Adams refused to act on it. Shocker: Holden was the only member of (VFAR-endorsed!) Lynn Schulman’s health committee to vote in favor (“4 ‘no’ votes, 1 ‘yes’ vote and 2 abstentions”). Maybe waiting until the last minute to try convincing your fellow frauds to step up for once wasn’t the best strategy there, FOTA Holden.
Related: Transport Workers Union, shamelessly self-interested as it always is, is onto something with its lawsuit alleging NYCLASS isn’t really about, or isn’t just really about, protecting horses. (Full NYCLASS coverage is on the TSNY docket as well, though not soon enough.)
Speaking of food security, if only Kathy Hochul and Eric Adams and other New York electeds had some kind of warning this slow-motion train wreck would somehow eventually end badly …
Related: “Reason” (looooolllll) via Manhattan Institute (loooooooooollllllll): Helping the poors feed their pets won’t solve every problem on the planet, so let’s not. Thanks for stopping by, geniuses.
Related: Queens Gazette printed a bunch of goddamn lies in the form of a DOH/ACC/dog food company press release presented as news.
Related: A month after its story on how New Yorkers can’t afford to feed themselves and their pets, Gothamist wondered aloud why more New Yorkers don’t pay to license their dogs.
You don’t say: NYC CM Keith Powers’ bodega cat bill provides for free vaccinations and spay-neuter surgeries for cats registered in the proposed program. Should be good for a couple press releases at least.
Prediction: Bronx DA Darcel Clark lets this alleged oxygen-waster off with probation and a fine — if even — thanks in part to weak state cruelty laws and in part to DAs’ universal desire to prosecute as few cases as possible.
Happy Compromise Farm + Sanctuary in Tioga County is giving away food and vet care.
Finally: Implode the house and salt the earth — whatever. The story (ignored, natch) is what did they do with the cats?
This week on social media
Food recalls
U.S. FDA announced no new pet recalls this week.
Check here for info on prior FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on FDA advisories and outbreaks.
