Do groceries and government go together? Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayoral candidate, thinks so. He wants to open publicly owned groceries across the city to provide low-cost food to underserved New Yorkers. 

Mamdani's idea is "less radical than critics portray," said CNN. City-owned grocery stores have popped up in small towns like Saint Paul, Kansas, and big cities like Atlanta. The plan is light on details so far, but Mamdani wants to open one store in each of the city's five boroughs.

'The system that feeds the world'
Public grocery stores can "provide crucial resources at lower prices" in places where fresh food is scarce, said Glenn Daigon at The Progressive. Such stores aim to "remove profit from the equation," said Erion Benjamin Malasi of the Economic Security Project. But grocers have "among the lowest margins of any business," said The Economist. That suggests public stores would sell food just a "smidge more cheaply than conventional grocers." 

Mamdani's proposal would "collapse our food supply, kill private industry" and drag New York "toward the bread lines of the old Soviet Union," grocery store magnate John Catsimatidis said at The Wall Street Journal. Better to offer tax incentives to help struggling grocers. Government-owned stores would elbow aside New York's bodegas, delis and supermarkets. Capitalism is not perfect, but it's the "only system that feeds the world."

New Yorkers 'pushed out' by prices
City-owned stores could be a "bold fix for food insecurity," said Food Tank. The "growing trend" of government stores is "helping us reimagine what type of food system we want," said Justin Myers, a sociology professor at Fresno State University. There are plenty of successful models for the public option, including "commissaries on military bases and state-owned liquor stores." 

Government groceries are just one of the items on Mamdani's "affordability agenda." "More and more working people are being pushed out" by high prices in the city, he said to NPR. 

Mamdani has proposed providing free child care, raising the minimum wage to $30 and raising taxes on New York corporations. That raises the question of whether his campaign promises "can become reality," said The New York Times. The grocery proposal is "certainly doable," said James Parrott, the city's former chief economist. But a broader backlash from business interests could "stymie his ambitious agenda," said the Times. 

The Dalai Lama will mark his 90th birthday this week by revealing the long-awaited plans for who will succeed him. The choice of a new spiritual leader for Tibetan Buddhists is a "matter of riveting interest," said Reuters, "not only for followers of his religion but also China, India and the U.S. for strategic reasons."

How is the Dalai Lama chosen?
Finding a new Dalai Lama means "recognizing the leader's reincarnated form," a process "shrouded in mysticism and little understood outside closed religious circles," said The Sunday Times. By Tibetan tradition, after a Dalai Lama's death, senior monks begin the search for the infant they believe to be his reincarnation. This process involves "dream interpretation, inference from omens and ancient rituals, and pilgrimages to sacred sites."

The problem is that this search "can take years," said The Diplomat, "often leaving a spiritual and leadership vacuum" for Tibetan Buddhists. So the 14th Dalai Lama is "rewriting the script." He has indicated that he may "emanate" to another person while still alive and that this person could be an adult and not necessarily a man. 

What role could China play?
China is "determined to shape the narrative around this succession, to prevent the erosion of its grip on Tibet," which it annexed in the 1950s, said Bloomberg. The Chinese Communist Party is expected to try to hijack the succession, as it did in 1995 when it put up its own candidate for Panchen Lama, the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama's choice, 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, was detained by Chinese officials and has not been seen since.

What about those in Tibet?
There are "significant risks for China, too," said The Economist. Despite denouncing the current Dalai Lama as a separatist "wolf in monk's robes," Beijing has tried to "revive back-channel talks" in recent years and persuade him to return to Tibet. "Without him, the Tibetan movement could fragment and embrace a more radical drive for complete independence." For Tibetans, the Dalai Lama's succession plan will "illuminate the real challenge ahead: how to preserve their identity after the man who embodies it is gone."