Tipsheet

Mamdani Defends Shoveling ID Requirements As Few New Yorkers Sign Up to Dig NYC Out

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  February 23, 2026 8:00 AM

A couple of days ago, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani put out a call for emergency snow shovelers as the East Coast prepared to be slammed by another winter storm. There was one problem, of course: Newsom's administration said all those who wanted to shovel needed to provide two forms of ID, their Social Security cards, and two 1.5-inch pictures.

It exposed the Left's utter hypocrisy on voter ID, of course. We have been told repeatedly that we cannot demand voter ID for our elections because poor, Black, and women voters can't find the paperwork or the money to get a proper ID. Then, suddenly, New York City demanded three forms of ID, and let's be real here: the people who would have shown up to shovel snow weren't the wealthy Manhattanites. It would have been the working-class New Yorkers who needed some money.

Mamdani defended this requirement, citing federal law.

"This is all long-standing. This is a long-standing program and a long-standing requirement," Mamdani said. “Federal law requires that employers get authorization and documentation to pay people for their work. We are not allowed to just cut checks to individuals for their work. And these are the policies that we've had in place, but I understand that for many it's the first time that they've heard about it."

We're now in the era of Schrödinger's federal laws it seems, and federal law only applies when the Left wants it to.

A chart would be helpful.

But it seems all the justifiable uproar over the ID requirement was for naught, because not that many New Yorkers turned out, and one garage had no one show up.

Here's more:

S’no thank you. 

The Mamdani administration failed for hours to attract any emergency shovelers at one Queens garage Sunday — while planning to try to dig out New Yorkers with a fourth of the force the city used for its last mega-storm. 

Despite Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s widespread attempted promotion of the city’s public-fueled emergency shoveling program, a sign-up sheet at the Maspeth Sanitation garages was empty, city workers told The Post during a visit late Sunday morning.

“I haven’t seen anybody sign up yet today. No, no one,” the employee said.

There were also no signs of shovelers lining up for work at 299 South St. at a Sanitation garage on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Workers there declined comment to The Post.

Meanwhile, at another garage in Brooklyn’s East Williamsburg neighborhood, about 35 people had signed up to help cover the large neighborhood before the snow started falling, a worker said.