Free Republic

A 26-year-old man charged with vandalizing a historic New York City synagogue on Friday, just days after the Pittsburgh massacre, has been identified as a former campaign worker for Barack Obama who was profiled by the New York Times in 2017. The Times described James Polite as a young man who “spent much of his childhood in foster care,” and performed canvassing work for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. After a chance meeting, he got a job that year as an intern for Christine Quinn, a former speaker of New York City’s city council who was also a former mayoral candidate....

A political event hosted by “Broad City” star Ilana Glazer at a historic Brooklyn synagogue was canceled Thursday when a vandal scrawled “Kill all Jews” inside. The NYPD said “anti-Semitic messages” were discovered on the stairwell of Union Temple in Brooklyn Heights around 8 p.m. Thursday. At about 8:30, Glazer came out of the venue to tell the crowds that the 8 p.m. event, in which she was scheduled to interview journalist Amy Goodman and New York state Senate candidates Andrew Gounardes and Jim Gaughran, was canceled because of the graffiti. “She didn’t feel comfortable ushering 200 people into the...

The controversy over a campaign staffer to Republican state Sen. Martin Golden inviting an alt-right leader to speak at a GOP club continued to escalate as a Bay Ridge social justice organization demonstrated in front of the lawmaker’s campaign headquarters and supporters staunchly defended him. The group Bay Ridge for Social Justice held a protest rally outside Golden’s campaign office at 7615 Third Ave. on Oct. 21 to demand that the senator fire Ian Reilly.

At a packed town hall meeting in Brooklyn Thursday evening to discuss options for saving a crumbling section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, city officials from the Department of Transportation came up against some not-unexpected pushback against a proposal that would involve closing the Brooklyn Heights promenade for six years. This was the first public meeting since the city unveiled two separate proposals for the project last week. The meeting opened with a presentation of both options—each projected to cost between $3 billion and $4 billion—while Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner, braced herself for the inevitable backlash. “I understand a...

You could see the protesters gathering outside the Hex on Brett Kavanaugh from the edge of an industrial block in Brooklyn. They could be heard from even farther down the street. The mainly Christian-identifying crowd condemned the group of antifa witches who made headlines this week for planning to conjure misfortune onto the new supreme court justice. The hex was hosted by Catland, an occult shop that sells spiritual literature, healing crystals, tarot cards, burnable incense, and other occult accoutrements.

A 62-year-old Jewish man claims his attacker repeatedly shouted 'Allah' as he beat him in the middle of the road in Brooklyn, New York Sunday morning. Lipa Schwartz was on his way to synagogue when livery driver Farrukh Afzal, 37, battered him until another Hasidic man came to the rescue. 'All of a sudden 'boom!' I tried to protect myself, run away. I fell. He come again on me,' Schwartz told ABC7 Eyewitness News.

BROOKLYN — A Brooklyn woman is under fire after calling 911 on a young child, claiming he had groped her inside a Brooklyn deli. The incident has sparked a firestorm on social media because the woman is white and the young child is black. It all happened Wednesday at the Sahara Deli Market on Albemarle Road in Flatbush. The woman identified as Teresa Klein was being rung up at the front counter when the child walked by. According to Klein, the boy “grabbed my ass,” prompting her to call 911. Video of the exchange outside the deli when Klein confronted...

ALBANY — With Democrats targeting veteran Sen. Martin Golden’s Brooklyn seat, the Senate GOP this past weekend offered to put volunteers who came to help the incumbent from outside the district up in hotels. An email obtained by the Daily News sent from the personal account of Michael Ostrander, the special assistant to Senate secretary Francis Patience, urged people to volunteer to do door-knocking in the district this past Saturday. “The opposition is coming after him hard so we’ll need a good turnout for the Senator,” Ostrander wrote. “Please let your volunteers know of this opportunity and the importance of...

Prosecutors are asking a judge to slap disgraced former Brooklyn Assemblywoman Pamela Harris with more than three years in prison at her upcoming sentencing. Harris admitted earlier this year that she stole nearly $25,000 from FEMA in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, claiming the natural disaster had left her home in shambles. The ex-pol also admitted she’d told family members to lie to FBI agents during their investigation into whether or not she’d defrauded the government.

Mayor de Blasio and new Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza on Thursday approved a controversial plan to scrap admissions standards in one of the city’s top districts as part of their crusade to diversify student bodies. Effective immediately, the 11 middle schools in Brooklyn’s District 15 — which spans Park Slope into Sunset Park — must ditch education-based entrance criteria for a weighted lottery system that reserves roughly half of their seats for kids who are low income, homeless or learning English.

Brooklyn’s District 15 isn’t just barring middle schools from selecting students based on their grades — the area’s lone performing-arts middle school is now forbidden from holding auditions. Entry into New Voices School of Academic & Creative Arts in Sunset Park will now be determined solely by lottery — with no pirouettes or piano-playing required.

A purported member of the MS-13 gang broke into the bedroom of a sleeping 11-year-old Brooklyn girl and raped her in her bed, cops said Saturday as the suspect was taken into custody. The horrific crime happened at 11:30 p.m. Wednes­day in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, officials said.

In a searing speech from the pulpit of a black church, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told a Brooklyn congregation on Sunday that Donald Trump is a “slick salesman” who fooled many people in this country, but the Democrat said the Republican president hasn’t fooled New Yorkers. Cuomo spoke at Brooklyn’s First Baptist Church of Crown Heights after a week of criticism for saying America “was never that great” during a bill signing. New York Republicans have demanded he apologize, and Trump tweeted that Cuomo was having a “total meltdown.” The governor seemed to counter what many observers considered a...

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — New Yorkers who call 911 on law-abiding people of color are committing hate crimes and should be prosecuted, according to a state senator who was recently reported to police for campaigning in his own district. State Senator Jesse Hamilton, who represents Brownsville, Crown Heights and Flatbush, proposed new legislation a week after a self-described Trump fan called police to report him for speaking to constituents in public. It would criminalize 911 calls against people of color without evidence of malice. "That's gonna be a hate crime," Hamilton said. "This pattern of calling the police on black...

Training camp for child terrorists has chilling connection to top Democratic Party operative. Siraj Ibn Wahhaj Jr., 40, of Clayton County, Georgia, was arrested along with his two sisters and two other adults last Friday in New Mexico on charges of felony child abuse ... But there is more to this story that is not appearing in the nightly news accounts we've all been following. Nobody is talking about Wahhaj's well-connected father, Siraj Wahhaj Sr., a radical Brooklyn imam who is the spiritual adviser to Democratic Socialist and Bernie Sanders supporter Linda Sarsour. The elder Wahhaj also has ties to...

An 18-year-old Brooklyn woman returning with her sister from a trip to Jamaica has been identified as the mother of the premature newborn found dead inside an airplane toilet at LaGuardia Airport, officials said Wednesday. The teen, who checked in to Kings County Hospital after giving birth, claimed she never knew she was pregnant when she rushed into the bathroom of an American Airlines plane after it landed at the Queens airport about 10:45 p.m. Monday. “She pulled the baby out and put it in the toilet and covered it with paper,” a law enforcement source said. The woman told...

TAOS – The mother of a disabled boy whose disappearance led to a law enforcement raid at a remote, ramshackle compound north of Taos last week told police in Georgia that the boy’s father wanted to perform an exorcism on the child. According to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in Taos, the woman said Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 39, one of five adults now charged after the Friday raid, believed “the child is possessed by the devil” and that he intended to deny the boy his medication. ... the whereabouts of Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, 4, who was allegedly abducted by Siraj Ibn...

Police in New York City are looking for an African American man who they say attacked a man on a city bus just because the victim was white. The attack reportedly occurred on Monday, July 30, at about 10 AM in Brooklyn, Fox 5 New York reported. Police say that a 29-year-old white man was riding the bus on Fulton Street when a black man approached him, yelled racial epithets, and punched him in the face causing swelling and pain. The attacker quickly jumped off the bus at Fulton and Bond Street, witnesses said. CCTV surveillance video released by the...

At the same time that localities across the country are in the process of erasing monuments to Confederates and slave-owners, New York City is preparing to honor a black man who ordered the murder of every white man, woman, and child under his control, resulting in 3,000 to 5,000 race homicides. Seth Barron reports at City Journal: In New York City, street co-namings – in which a thoroughfare takes on an additional, ceremonial name in honor of a distinguished figure – rarely generate much fuss, and their approval is typically pro forma.  But yesterday, a city council committee voted to co-name...

The search for a missing University of Iowa student entered its eighth day on July 26, with investigators examining technology, including her FitBit, while continuing a ground search around the area where she was last seen. Mollie Tibbetts, 20, vanished from Brooklyn, Iowa, where she was dog-sitting at her boyfriend’s brother’s house. She was last seen jogging on the evening of Wednesday, July 18, and sent messages from her phone to her boyfriend and mother later that night. She was reported missing after she didn’t show up for work at a daycamp on July 19. Authorities have said they are...