POLITICS: Trump’s feds can end-run Zohran Mamdani — and fight NYC crime

On Jan. 1, Zohran “nature is healing” Mamdani takes over at City Hall — and many New Yorkers remain anxious about what his mayoralty will mean for public safety.

Their well-founded worry stems from Mamdani’s troubling record of rank hostility toward the NYPD, toward the use of jails and prisons, and toward maintaining basic public order.

He’s compounded their concerns by staffing his transition team with people like police abolitionist Alex Vitale and convicted armed robber Mysonne Linen, who have also expressed extreme hostility toward the city’s criminal-justice system.

It’s left many New Yorkers asking, “What can be done?”

Enter Jay Clayton, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Clayton took a well-deserved victory lap last week after leading efforts to crack down on Manhattan open-air drug markets.

His efforts reveal how the federal government can marshal its considerable resources to block some of the damage Mamdani could do to New York’s public safety infrastructure.

Clayton recently told The Post about how his office is battling the worst types of street crime — drugs, guns and gangs.

That could help counter some of Mamdani’s dangerous campaign promises, like abolishing the city’s gang database and halting homeless-encampment sweeps.

Because federal authorities have concurrent jurisdiction over certain types of offenses — particularly drug trafficking, gun violations and organized-crime rings — they can pick up some of the slack in cities with intransigent leaders who can’t be trusted to enforce the law.

We’ve seen this movie before.

When Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez pushed diversion programs over jail for gun offenders in 2020, the US Attorney’s office for the Eastern District began prosecuting more of those gun cases itself.

The Eastern District of Pennsylvania did the same in response to the soft-on-crime policies of Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s local Soros DA.

And in Tennessee, President Donald Trump’s Memphis Safe Task Force has upped the ante on enforcement — making more than 4,000 arrests since its September launch — in the notoriously dangerous city whose DA, Steve Mullroy, has been roundly criticized by Republicans for his decarceral agenda.

When Mamdani takes office, federal law-enforcement authorities should have a plan for plugging the holes that the new mayor could poke in the city’s public safety landscape.

In doing so, they should prioritize prosecuting more gun and drug cases involving individual offenders — ideally with the help of NYPD intelligence-sharing, if Mamdani allows it.

The NYPD has a good idea of who the riskiest local offenders are, and flagging those cases for the feds could directly reduce crime by getting dangerous recidivists off the streets.

That’s because federal prosecutors don’t have to clear the absurd hurdles of New York state’s misguidedly reformed bail and discovery laws, meaning their cases are less likely to be thrown out and defendants are more likely to be held in pretrial detention.

To maximize their impact, federal authorities should also make gang-takedown prosecutions a top priority — especially if Mamdani follows through on his insane promise to abolish the city’s gang database.

Rigorous research demonstrates just how big the impact can be.

One study of gang-takedown prosecutions in the city found that “gun violence in and around public housing communities fell by approximately one third in the first year after a gang takedown” — a huge drop.

Much of Gotham’s most serious criminal violence has a nexus to the city’s gangs, which is why this strategy has been so effective here.

Of course, the federal government’s capacity to pick up the law-enforcement slack in New York is limited.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, therefore, should look for ways to augment Clayton’s efforts with the large, well-funded New York State Police force she has at her command.

Whether it’s deploying troopers to form a state Strategic Response Group or maintaining a state-level gang database, the governor should work to limit the damage Mamdani can do to the country’s largest and greatest city.

The fight against crime and disorder should by all rights be led by City Hall — but that ship has (temporarily, we hope) sailed.

The battle isn’t lost yet, though: Responsible leaders, in Albany and especially in Washington, DC, can do much to keep the city from descending into criminal chaos.

So, Mr. President: Will you give us a hand?

Rafael A. Mangual is the Nick Ohnell fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book “Criminal (In)Justice.“