Free Republic

Firefighters and medics will take their first “Trans 101” course on Tuesday, learning the correct way to interact with transgender people — and even getting a lesson in what LGTBQI actually stands for, a city official said. The two-hour sensitivity training was launched in March by the city Commission for Human Rights after Mayor de Blasio signed an executive order allowing people to use any public bathroom or locker room they identified with, regardless of their sexual anatomy.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is facing at least a half-dozen federal, state, and local investigations into his fundraising, accompanied by ugly headlines and the lowest approval ratings of his tenure. Last week’s arrest of Norman Seabrook, the powerful head of the city's corrections officers’ union, on federal corruption charges in a case involving a de Blasio fundraiser, only crystallized what more and more New York Democrats are starting to believe: With next year’s election looming on the horizon, the progressive mayor is becoming vulnerable to a primary challenge. While a few prominent local politicians are toying with the idea, it’s...

Former Attorney General Eric Holder has come out against proposals in Chicago and New Jersey to require fingerprint background checks of drivers for ride-hailing platforms such as Uber and Lyft. Why would President Obama's onetime top lawman come out against regulation that is supposed to protect the riding public? Credit the intersection of two forces. First, Holder's tony corporate law firm, Covington & Burling, represents Uber. Also, as Holder sees it, requiring drivers to submit fingerprints may "have a discriminatory impact on communities of color." I was surprised to read about Holder's opposition, as I have trouble seeing Holder as...

We learned this week that Hizzonor Bill de Blasio has yet another plan to entrench the city in “transgender” warfare and make sure that business owners are made to toe the line on political correctness. Under this latest scheme, any business which greets someone using a pronoun not matching the gender (or lack thereof) the customer “identifies” as could face a stiff fine in court.

Garbage bags could help bring down the Blasio administration. Of many revelations about City Hall’s pay-to-play culture, the case of how New York came to buy a certain brand of trash bags caught the prosecutors' attention . Joseph Dussich, tried for nearly a decade to get the city to buy his Mint-X bags, which he says deter rats and squirrels. But he got the brush-off until he contributed $100,000 to Campaign for One New York, a slush fund de Blasio created. Presto, Dussich got a meeting with the mayor, a trial contract for $15,000, and then a deal worth nearly...

As Bob Dylan told us long ago, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” These days, a foul wind blows from City Hall. With subpoenas issued, investigations spreading and at least one federal grand jury at work, the question isn’t whether Bill de Blasio’s administration has a corruption problem. The questions are how big is the problem, how many agencies are tainted and how high up the pecking order does it go? […] The two biggest and most recent scandals involve lucrative gifts and cash given to current and former top officers in the NYPD,...

n this case, however, the Google search on the slogan or hashtag allows the Propaganda Man to verify for himself that Al Sharpton did indeed tell his listeners, "I don't believe in marching! I believe in offing the pigs! Well, they got pigs out here! You ain't offed one of them!" and "I'll off the man. Well, off him! Plenty of crackers walking around here tonight!" The Propaganda Man can also verify independently that Hillary Clinton has made at least two appearances at Sharpton's National Action Network, where she praised Sharpton and essentially solicited his support for her candidacy. This...

ALBANY — The head investigator for the state Board of Elections probed the 2014 fundraising efforts by Mayor de Blasio and his team on behalf of the Senate Democrats and found enough “willful and flagrant” violations to warrant a criminal referral to the Manhattan DA’s office. The Daily News obtained a bombshell memo state Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Officer Risa Sugarman sent to the board’s four commissioners on Jan. 4 recommending the referral. “I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place,” Sugarman wrote. “The violations discovered by this investigation can...

ALBANY — The head investigator for the state Board of Elections probed the 2014 fundraising efforts by Mayor de Blasio and his team on behalf of the Senate Democrats and found enough “willful and flagrant” violations to warrant a criminal referral to the Manhattan DA’s office. The Daily News obtained a bombshell memo state Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Officer Risa Sugarman sent to the board’s four commissioners on Jan. 4 recommending the referral. “I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place,” Sugarman wrote. “The violations discovered by this investigation can...

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday that he will impose mandates on the commercial real estate sector to achieve dramatic greenhouse gas emissions among the city's building stock — by far the city's biggest contributor to global warming. In an announcement tied to Earth Day, the mayor's office said the requirements, along with city programs and incentives, would help kickstart the mayor's goal of cutting building emissions dramatically over the next 35 years. The mandates are a significant development for the city's real estate world. When de Blasio announced a plan two years ago to cut building emissions, he threatened...

New York State appears ready to throw as many as 200,000 people out of work by imposing a $15 an hour minimum wage statewide. The New York Post reports: Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan is close to a “Faustian pact’’ with Democratic Gov. Cuomo to raise the state’s minimum wage to a national high of $15 an hour — boosting union power and possibly costing New York hundreds of thousands of jobs. A source close to Flanagan said the deal would involve Cuomo agreeing to do “little if anything’’ to help Senate Democrats, now just one vote shy of...

Let’s say computers come for most of our jobs. This may not seem likely at the moment; computer scientists and economists offer wildly varying ideas for how deeply automation will affect future employment. But for the sake of argument, imagine that within two or three decades we’ll have morphed into the Robotic States of America.

Mayor de Blasio rips Donald Trump, calls him a 'racist' promoting 'proto-fascism' Mayor de Blasio took a big swing at Donald Trump Saturday — calling out the huckster as a “racist” promoting “proto-fascism.” De Blasio ripped into the Republican front-runner after a string of rallies devolved into bloody spectacles, with supporters and protesters clashing over Trump’s provocative rhetoric.

Fire, brimstone and... tacky high-end luxury properties? The New York Daily News fired a new salvo in its ongoing war of words with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, calling the real estate magnate "ANTI CHRIST" on its front page. An image of Trump was also doctored to surround him with flames and to give him devilishly red and scaly skin.

It's the nagging fear many have about our government: what would happen if martial law was declared? New York City just found out, at least temporarily. Eleven states as well as Washington D.C. declared states of emergency in the wake of the massive record-breaking snowstorm which blanketed the East. But New York City went a step further. Governor Andrew Cuomo declared martial law in New York City by ordering all people to stay inside under police enforcement. He issued an absolute travel ban for anything that is not an emergency vehicle. The New York Police Department put out a blunt...

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio loped into a Brooklyn homeless shelter one day late last month, eager to demonstrate his command over a mushrooming homeless crisis that had already forced out two of his top advisers. Folding his 6-foot-5 frame in half, the Democratic mayor crouched down to hand out gifts to children, praised his team for “extraordinary work” and then faced a pack of reporters, one of whom asked why it took “so long” to make homelessness “a top priority.” “It’s been a priority from the beginning,” de Blasio insisted before adding, “No administration has cracked the...

NEW YORK, Jan 7 (Reuters) - New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio has submitted a resolution to the city's police pension fund, urging it to consider exiting investments in companies that manufacture assault weapons for civilians, the mayor's office said on Thursday.

Raising the bar for other cities throughout the country, New York City announced "strong" and "bold" protections for transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. The new legal guidance, issued Dec. 21 by the New York City Commission on Human Rights, came as part of an expansion of the city's 2002 Human Rights Law, which protects against discrimination in a range of categories. The updated policy specifically protects transgender and gender non-conforming individuals from discrimination in areas of employment, public accommodation, and housing.

Cuomo’s homelessness order deepened the chill between him and Mayor de Blasio Sunday, with the mayor’s office charging Cuomo lacks the power to impose the mandate. "We support the intent of the Executive Order, but to forcibly remove all homeless individuals in freezing weather, as the Governor has ordered, will require him to pass state law," de Blasio spokeswoman Karen Hinton said as Cuomo inked the order requiring people to go to shelters when temperatures are below 32 degrees. "This Executive Order adds no legal or financial resources to New York City's programs to assist the homeless, and merely requires...

New York real-estate developer Donald Trump has dominated the Republican nomination campaign for months -- but his strongest support doesn't come from any of the organized blocs in the Republican party. He polls well among conservative and evangelical voters, to be sure, running competitively against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) with these voters. He draws considerable support, also, from self-identified "liberal"or "moderate" Republicans. In fact, in the latest Quinnipiac poll, his biggest polling margin against his GOP rivals was among moderate and liberal Republicans. But his strongest support comes from Republicans who used to be Democrats, according to new polling analysis...