Mamdani releases racial equity plan, drawing immediate conservative backlash and DOJ scrutiny

NEW YORK, United States (MNTV) – Mayor Zohran Mamdani released New York City’s first-ever Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan Monday, fulfilling a campaign promise to deliver the report within his first 100 days in office, while immediately drawing pushback from conservatives and scrutiny from the Trump administration’s Justice Department.

The plan requires major city agencies to examine their work through a racial equity lens and identify and eliminate disparities across seven domains including housing, education, health, the economy and community safety. It features more than 200 agency-level goals, over 800 proposed strategies and roughly 600 performance indicators.

The report introduces a “True Cost of Living Measure” to assess affordability disparities and highlights significant gaps in median net worth, life expectancy and housing access between white and Black New Yorkers.

“We cannot tackle systemic racial inequity without confronting the affordability crisis head-on, and we cannot solve the cost-of-living crisis without dismantling systemic racial inequity,” Mamdani said.

The announcement drew immediate criticism.

DOJ Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon wrote on X: “Sounds fishy/illegal. Will review!” Conservative commentators accused the plan of constituting “racism against White people” and implementing “blatantly racist policies that reward and punish people based on their skin color.”

The plan carries a combined annual budget of $10.2 million for the Office of Racial Equity and Commission on Racial Equity — roughly a $3 million, or 42%, increase from the approximately $7.2 million allocated last year — a figure that drew criticism when Mamdani revealed it in February.