New York’s incoming leftist mayor Zohran Mamdani will meet with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday, after an exchange of barbs that has seized national attention.Mamdani, a 34-year-old political insurgent who came from nowhere to win leadership of America’s biggest city, said Thursday he was “ready for whatever happens.”Sparks could fly when the self-declared Democratic Socialist comes face-to-face with the 79-year-old Republican. Trump brands Mamdani a “communist” and has suggested the Ugandan-born New Yorker should be deported.”It speaks volumes that (Friday) we have a communist coming to the White House,” Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.Both men are from the Queens area of New York City and both have a talent for political messaging, but with vastly different styles.Trump has threatened to make life difficult for the young political upstart.The Republican, whose presidency revolves around harsh anti-immigrant policies, has derided Mamdani’s South Asian name.More seriously for New York, Trump is threatening cuts to the city’s federal funding alongside national guard deployments like those to other Democratic cities once Mamdani, set to be the first Muslim mayor, takes office.- One million-plus votes -Mamdani was elected after a campaign focused on the often crippling expenses facing New Yorkers and promising innovative  — if untested — measures like rent freezes, free buses and experimental city-run grocery stores.Virtually unknown at the start of the campaign, he became the first mayoral candidate to surpass the one-million-vote mark in New York since 1969.But he has also been careful to placate centrists.He named incumbent police commissioner Jessica Tisch — seen as a safe pair of hands and reportedly popular with rank-and-file officers — as his pick to run the police department. He also named veteran bureaucrat Dean Fuleihan, 74, as his first deputy mayor.While campaigning, the leftist leader positioned himself as part of the anti-Trump resistance. Since then, Mamdani has struck a more conciliatory tone, stressing his desire to work with Trump on the cost of living.”It’s more critical than ever, given the national crisis of affordability, one that New Yorkers know very well…and the specific challenge many cities are facing in balancing public safety and steps taken by this administration,” Mamdani said in front of City Hall on Thursday.While noting that he and Trump had “many disagreements,” Mamdani said that he would “pursue all avenues and meetings that can make our city affordable.”He added that it was customary for a newly elected New York mayor to meet the US president.”Look for the outcome of that meeting to be something to the effect of, ‘I think I can work with (him) — but we will see how it goes and I’m hopeful — we both want the city to succeed’,” said Syracuse University politics professor Grant Reeher. – ‘Turn the volume up’ -Oval Office meetings with Trump can be perilous affairs, with the president using the impressive setting to ambush both US and foreign visitors, notably including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.Columbia University political analyst Lincoln Mitchell warned that Mamdani could walk into a Zelensky-like situation, where Trump watched his vice president, JD Vance, censure the wartime Ukrainian leader in front of the world’s media.”It certainly could — you could see Vance just picking at him,” he told AFP.During his acceptance speech on winning the mayor’s chair, Mamdani looked down the camera and said: “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you — turn the volume up!”The White House confirmed that Trump had been watching.

In Washington’s embassy district, years’ worth of wildly overgrown vegetation outside an empty building was finally pruned away in September as the flag of Syria was raised.The symbolic reopening of the compound after 11 years of closure serves as a reminder that a number of buildings in the area of Washington called Kalorama are in a state of sad abandon, thanks to the violent jolts of world diplomacy.Since the embassy of Afghanistan closed a few months after the Taliban returned to power in 2021, its mailbox outside has been filled with yellowing newspapers.And not far away, weeds grow in the parking lot of a mansion that used to house the Russian trade delegation in Washington. The State Department ordered it closed in reprisal for Russia’s alleged attempt to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.The Syrian Embassy was shut down by the US government in 2014 after three years of civil war. Now, in principle at least, it can reopen.The Trump administration announced this on November 10 after a White House visit by Syria’s new president Ahmed al-Sharaa, the formerly blacklisted jihadist who led the ouster of Assad in late 2024.- Angry neighbors -But the building is in such bad shape it could take years to get it up and running again, former Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi told AFP.Barabandi left his post in 2013 after it emerged that he had secretly made passports for people opposed to the Assad regime.He recalled that even back then, before he left, areas of the building had been partially condemned.”So, just imagine,” he said, of its state now.Down the street, the overgrown hedges outside the abandoned ambassador’s residence were sometimes trimmed by gardeners employed by wealthy neighbors irked by the unsightliness.A utility company notice of gas being cut off still hangs from the front door knob.A few buildings away, near a mansion owned by Barack and Michelle Obama, the embassy of Afghanistan stands.”So one day it was there. The next day it just was, it was gone,” said US postal worker Trina Thompson, who has done rounds in the neighborhood for 25 years.That was in March 2022 and then-deputy ambassador Abdul Hadi Nejrabi watched it all. It was he who handed the keys to the embassy back to the US government.Kabul had fallen to the Taliban seven months earlier and Hadi Nejrabi and his diplomatic colleagues represented a government that no longer existed.Soon their bank accounts were frozen and they were no longer paid.The embassy was still offering consular services to Afghan citizens but “we reached a point the State Department officially asked us to close the embassy and just hand over the keys,” Hadi Nejrabi told AFP.A team from the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions went to the embassy to oversee the closure.”We checked every room, and then we just came out and we locked the door and I just gave the key,” the former diplomat said.It is this State Department section which is responsible for the upkeep of other countries’ embassies.Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, states are supposed to respect and protect other countries’ embassies in cases where diplomatic relations are severed.- ‘Border on theft’ -The State Department lists 29 such buildings which it is supposed to be looking after: three associated with Afghanistan, six with Venezuela, and 11 with Iran — these three countries have no relations with the United States now. But the list also features three buildings for China and six Russian ones.The buildings now off limits to the Russians include consulates in San Francisco and Seattle and a massive compound in Maryland.They were closed in a spat of tit for tat reprisals after the 2016 election won by Donald Trump.The Russian Embassy told AFP these closures are illegal under the Vienna Convention and “border on theft.””While property rights of the Russian Federation for these six objects are recognized and have not been challenged by the US side, continuously denying access for Russian diplomats even to inspect the grounds and buildings is preposterous, cementing the bilateral relations’ ‘toxic legacy’ of previous years.”Elsewhere in Kalorama the embassy of Iran has stood empty since 1980, after the Islamic revolution that ousted the US-backed shah.The squat, blue-domed building used to host fancy receptions for the Washington diplomatic crowd. But unlike the Syrian embassy, it looks far from reopening as US-Iran tensions remain fierce.