New York's mayor was set to notch his first meeting with a foreign head of state this week, until the Trump administration allegedly moved to shut it down. The Washington Post reports that Zohran Mamdani had planned a sit-down and public event with Colombia's leftist president, Gustavo Petro, in New York on the sidelines of UN meetings, according to people familiar with the talks. The focus, at least on paper: democracy in the Americas. The subtext, per the Post: a high-profile photo op linking two rising figures on the global left. El Pais notes the importance of that messaging for Petro, as it "would show progressive voters that his movement also has ties with figures of international stature."
Instead, Colombian officials abruptly canceled after US and Colombian diplomats met in Bogota. Two people briefed on that meeting tell the Post that State Department officials signaled that Petro risked being detained if he went ahead with seeing Mamdani. One such official tells the Post that the event would've breached visa limits imposed on Petro after he urged US soldiers last year to ignore President Trump's orders and griped about US support for Israel over its war in Gaza. "A visa is a privilege, not a right," the State Department official says.
The New York Times notes that although Petro and Trump's rapport seemed to improve earlier this year after a cordial Oval Office meeting, "Mr. Petro has recently reverted to making fiery speeches against the US president." Analysts called the latest move unusually aggressive against a democratically elected leader and warned it could chill future UN visits by critics of the administration, even as it opens a new front in Trump's whiplash relationship with Mamdani. The White House hasn't said if the president was directly involved in trying to interfere with the Mamdani-Petro meeting.
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