Hours before the president is scheduled to address the country in honor of America’s 250th anniversary, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke to Americans from the desk of a commander in chief who played a pivotal role in the formation of the United States. Mamdani gave a speech from a desk used by George Washington during his time as president. The desk is housed at New York City Hall and was originally in Federal Hall, the nation’s first capitol building, in lower Manhattan. The mayor’s speech focused on NYC’s role in the history of the country and how it stands as a “symbolic gateway” for the rest of the nation. As Mamdani traced the experiences of a variety of groups — “Indigenous people, enslaved Africans, immigrants” and more — he had naturalized citizens surround him. Watch the address in the video player below. The address comes days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to limit birthright citizenship was in violation of the 14th Amendment. Mamdani cast America as a nation of contradictions “working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived.” “The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures, and it belongs to us all,” the mayor said. Mamdani, a Democrat, did not mention Trump by name, but parts of his speech appeared aimed at the president’s divisive rhetoric. “For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best,” Mamdani said in an apparent reference to an a common criticism from Trump. “Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them.” The mayor’s office told NBC News the day before the address that Mamdani would draw on his own family’s immigration to New York. “The speech presents America as an unfinished project whose greatest strength lies not in military or economic power, but in the belief that our greatest resource are everyday Americans who fight and organize to bring America closer to its promises of liberty, equality and democracy,” the mayor’s office said. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less