In July, New York City’s mayor spent several weeks insisting he could have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested on an International Criminal Court warrant if he set foot in Manhattan for the U.N. General Assembly in September. He couldn’t. Washington isn’t a member of the ICC, and City Hall has no mechanism to enforce a warrant the United States itself doesn’t recognize. Zohran Mamdani eventually admitted as much — then posted a video anyway, calling Netanyahu a “war criminal” and declaring him “not welcome” in a city he has no legal power to keep him out of.

That was the theater. Power, as usual, moved somewhere quieter.