Free Republic

Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke is vowing to fight the U.S. Army’s refusal to change streets named after Confederate generals at a New York base.

Bergdorf Goodman. Tiffany & Company. Louis Vuitton. Fifth Avenue in Manhattan is to shopping what Broadway is to theater, defined by the marquee names that for decades have occupied some of New York City’s most prized real estate. But lately, the avenue’s glittery window displays have been changing more quickly, as retailers have streamed in and out. Tourism has slowed while online shopping has sped up, making it harder for companies to justify the cavernous spaces and sky-high rents along the shopping strip.

<p>Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to push for a tax on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for improvements needed to address the crisis engulfing New York City’s subway, city officials said on Sunday, the latest salvo in the battle between Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over who bears responsibility for repairing the deteriorating transit system.</p>

Police in New York City expressed frustration about not being able to stop naked panhandlers from harassing the public because most of them are illegal aliens. Their status makes it difficult to enforce tickets because of Mayor de Blasio’s sanctuary city policies. The city established “Designated Activity Zones” (DAZ) in 2016 to provide a place for “costumed characters” a place to work for tips. Some of these panhandlers, called desnudas, are nude women wearing painted on costumes. Law enforcement officers frequently decline to ticket panhandling violations because most of them are illegal aliens, the Daily Mail reported. A proposal to...

Meet the des-RUDE-as! Costumed characters in Times Square are giving the finger to attempts to rein them in, refusing to stay in designated areas and continuing to curse in front of kiddies and threaten passers-by for dough. Modal Trigger Foul-mouthed desnudas, grabby Hulks and tourist-terrorizing gangs of Minnie Mice are still brazenly holding the Crossroads of the World hostage even amid a heavy presence of NYPD cops, who act oblivious to their disturbing antics.

President Trump gave an impassioned speech on Friday, vowing to "destroy the vile criminal cartel" MS-13 -- but some in the media lambasted him for talking tough about the brutal gang, and instead presented sympathetic coverage of the group known for carrying out gruesome murders. Trump's Friday speech on Long Island, where MS-13 gang members have wreaked havoc, highlighted his plan to crack down on gang violence and enforce immigration policies to prevent criminals from illegally entering the United States. "[MS-13 has] transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into blood-stained killing fields. They’re animals. We cannot tolerate as a...

Police leaders across the country moved quickly to distance themselves from – or to outright condemn – President Trump’s statements about “roughing up” people who’ve been arrested.

A number of news outlets have shared a recently uploaded YouTube video that reportedly a group of Brooklyn firefighters manually lifting a moving a small vehicle en route to an emergency.

snip ...114 people arrested during an 11-day operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in New York, the agency said Tuesday. snip ICE said the sweep, which ended Saturday, targeted fugitives and and people who have violated U.S. immigration laws, including those who re-entered the country after being deported. Of those arrested during the operation, 82 people had criminal histories, including prior convictions for sex crimes, drug offenses and fraud, while 15 others had pending criminal charges, including assault, larceny and sexual exploitation of a minor. snip

Did you see the $2 million dollar bathroom? That's what New York City government spent to build a "comfort station" in a park. I went to look at it. There were no gold-plated fixtures. It's just a little building with four toilets and four sinks. I asked park users, "What do you think that new bathroom cost?" A few said $70,000. One said $100,000. One said, "I could build it for $10,000." They were shocked when I told them what the city spent. No park bathroom needs to cost $2 million. An entire six-bedroom house nearby was for sale for...

My 3-year-old daughter is obsessed with Donald Trump. This is a problem if 1) you live in New York City, 2) you are liberal, 3) your friends are liberal, 4) your daughter attends a liberal school and 5) your relatives are affected by the Trump administration’s travel ban. Yassi, my daughter, attends the kind of school that made counseling available in the wake of the 2016 presidential elections. Parents stood together comforting one another on Nov. 9 in an act of collective mourning that I hadn’t seen since Sept. 11. This is probably exactly the type of school that the...

It seems like a rerun -– but maybe this time, people will have learned their lesson. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Chairman Joe Lhota aren’t getting along too well these days. Lhota, who ran on the Republican ticket for mayor four years ago and was unfortunately defeated by de Blasio, is now again challenging de Blasio on a new quality of life issue -- subway garbage, which has become such a problem that it caused a major subway track fire last week, resulting in many injuries and awful transit delays. (There...

New York Times reporter Greg Howard wrote a piece titled “Power Play”, accusing white women of racial discrimination for how they fail to acknowledge him as they pass on the street. Writer Greg Howard, of The New York Times, accused all white women of social rudeness towards him personally, as well as other black men, for not stepping aside as they cross each other on the street. Is it possible he’s over thinking it? Via the NY Times: Sometimes they’re buried in their phones. Other times, they’re in pairs and groups, and in conversation. But often, they’re looking ahead, through...

Joseph Rago, a 34-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, was found dead at his home on Thursday evening. Police officers discovered Mr. Rago’s body at his apartment in Manhattan at around 8 p.m. after a request to check on him, a spokeswoman for the New York Police Department said.

--SNIP-- DiNapoli found that as of December 2015, 160 tenants living in affordable units in New York City were making $100,000 or more, with eight making $250,000 or more. As he noted, once a tenant qualifies, they can’t be removed from this housing if their income goes up over time.

If we ever want to have viable public transportation in New York, it is essential that we get our elected and appointed officials onboard. Not just metaphorically onboard to adequately fund mass transit, but actually onboard the trains and buses that are the lifeblood of the city. Anyone who lives or works here knows the wretched state of New York’s mass transit. In April, there were 74,000 subway delays, up 164% from the average monthly delays in 2012. Talk to a New Yorker and you’ll get a recent subway or commuter rail horror story, or three.

NORTH Korea could nuke New York at any time with a “hell of a missile” more advanced than previously believed, an expert claims. Researchers believe the threat posed by Kim Jong-un has been underestimated – with the latest missile test soaring seven times higher than the International Space Station. North Korea hailed the controversial Hwasong-14 rocket launch a great success It means original predictions a nuke would strike as far Alaska are wrong – with the consequences far more devastating as a missile could smash into New York. North Korea announced the completion of its first ever successful intercontinental ballistic...

A New York University librarian recently felt compelled to pen a blog post bemoaning the “racial fatigue” she experiences “in the presence of white people” following an academic conference. April Hathcock said that she “hit her limit” after spending five days “being tone-policed and condescended to and ‘splained to” by "white men librarians" and "nice white ladies." A New York University librarian recently bemoaned the “racial fatigue” she experiences “in the presence of white people” following an academic conference. April Hathcock, a Scholarly Communications Librarian at NYU, recently attended the annual American Library Association [ALA] conference in Chicago, a trade...

The CEO of Apple-Metro Inc., a company that operates about 40 Applebee’s restaurants in the New York metropolitan area, said he’s been forced to cut at at least 1,000 servers in the past year as a result of New York’s recent minimum wage hike. “We have 1,000 less servers this time this year than we did this time last year,” Zane Tankel told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney on Monday. That amounts a two-thirds reduction of his total workforce, Tankel said. Tankel said the minimum wage increase has forced him to adopt a “concierge” type model of having servers help customers operate self-serve...

A few days after the infamous July 13, 1977, New York City blackout, I joined a group of pals setting out from Park Slope, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that hadn’t yet gentrified, for Williamsburg, home to Hasidim and Puerto Ricans in the decades before it, too, became a hipster hot spot. Headed for Jack’s Pastrami King, our favorite restaurant, we were in a jovial mood, though New York was reeling from two days of rioting and looting, which had destroyed 1,600 stores. The riots were another blow to a city still struggling to rebound from its near-bankruptcy of 1975. Jack’s Pastrami...