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Hundreds of New York City firefighters took sick leave on Friday instead of complying with Mayor Bill de Blasio's deadline for all city workers to be vaccinated or be placed on unpaid leave - causing some firehouses to shut their doors because of staff shortages. 'The excessive sick leave ... because of their anger at the vaccine mandate for all city employees is unacceptable,' said FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro, who oversees a department where more than a quarter of its workers have not had one COVID vaccine shot. Nigro said their decision to take sick leave could 'endanger the lives'...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) on Thursday said he is “not having second thoughts” about mandating vaccines for first responders and other city workers ahead of Friday’s 5 p.m. deadline. He predicted many will get vaccinated anyway “once they really realize that they’re not going to get paid.” When asked about the likelihood of shortages of city workers Monday — from sanitation workers to first responders — the Democrat mayor made it clear he has no regrets.

Mayor Bill de Blasio paid tribute to Colin Powell, who died Monday from COVID-19 complications, saying the Harlem-born first black secretary of state exemplified the best of the Big Apple and made New Yorkers “very proud.” “General Powell served this nation with just tremendous distinction,” he said Monday morning during his daily press briefing, held remotely in City Hall. De Blasio noted Powell’s “absolute classic New York City story” of being born to Jamaican immigrants, growing up in Harlem and The Bronx and graduating from Morris High School before attending City College of New York. “Just an absolute great example...

As his two terms as New York's mayor approach their end, and long after his presidential campaign ended with a whimper, Bill de Blasio has chimed in with one last act of destruction: a proposal to end the public schools' entry-by-exam gifted and talented program for first graders. De Blasio's gripe is that selection by tests results in a student body that is, as New York Times reporter Eliza Shapiro slyly put it, "widely criticized for exacerbating segregation." Of course what de Blasio, Shapiro and the anonymous critics she repeatedly references are complaining about is not actually segregation, which means...

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has just three months left in office, is quietly banishing a statue of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson from City Hall’s council chambers — where it has resided for the past 187 years, The Post has learned. The city’s Public Design Commission — comprised of mayoral appointees — has listed “the long term loan” of the 1833 bronze cast of the Declaration of Independence author to the New-York Historical Society on its “consent” agenda for Monday. The consent designation means the historic statue’s removal is not scheduled for public debate. The 11-member design commission will vote...

Parents whose kids excel in school need to be on guard. Leftist school administrators across the country -- not just in New York City -- are banning gifted programs in elementary and middle school and Advanced Placement courses in high school. Typically, without any notice to parents, an eight grader's accelerated science class or a fifth grader's fast-track math class is merged into the regular classroom. Top students lose out. They need accelerated programs every bit as much as children with learning challenges need special education. It's discrimination. The left is seizing on a newly published study of Ohio students...

What is the greatest threat to educating children today? Is it COVID-19, or ignorance? I'm going for number two. There is growing evidence to back me up. In August, Oregon Governor Kate Brown privately signed a bill ending a requirement that high school students prove they are proficient in writing, reading, and math before graduating. The law lasts for three years. The pandemic was blamed for students falling behind, but the real motive was revealed by the governor's spokesman, Charles Boyle, who said existing standards failed students who don't test well and that new standards would aid the state's "Black,...

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio was accused in 2019 of improperly ordering his NYPD security detail to shuttle his son to Yale, a charge he denied

The fact that 24-year-old Jonathan Isaac can speak more cogently about COVID and freedom of conscience than the entire corporate press is an astonishing development.One of the most remarkable twists in the pandemic is that a handful of NBA players have emerged as the most cogent and principled defenders of liberty, common sense, and basic civic decency in America.It’s a bit unexpected. In recent years, the NBA has most often landed in the political news cycle thanks to LeBron James’ disgusting habit of bowing and scraping before the Chinese Communist Party, or Steve Kerr’s refusal to breathe a word about...

Federal agents raided the offices Tuesday of a New York City police union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, and the Long Island home of its bombastic leader, who has clashed with city officials over his incendiary tweets and hard-line tactics. FBI spokesperson Martin Feely said agents were “carrying out a law enforcement action in connection with an ongoing investigation.” Along with the union’s Manhattan headquarters, agents also searched union president Ed Mullins’ home in Port Washington, Long Island, Feely said. Messages seeking comment were left with Mullins and the union. Mullins, who is also a police sergeant, is in the middle...

Yikes, the recent reports of Bill de Blasio as one “Warren Wilhelm Jr.” were news to me (even as news of his name change was first reported several years ago). Such was the birth name bestowed by his mother, whose maiden name was Maria de Blasio, and his father, Warren Wilhelm Sr., who tragically killed himself when Bill was 18 years old. The parents had bitterly divorced long before that, and the young Warren had steadily pulled away from his father as he was raised by his mother and her Italian family. He identified with them and eventually took...

The low rate of vaccination compliance by New York’s finest has lame duck Mayor Bill de Blasio threatening to withhold pay checks from the police and other city workers. Under the mayor’s mandate, all city workers must be vaccinated or be tested weekly for the disease. That order goes into effect on Monday,with an estimated 340,000 city workers under its guidelines. “If someone, again, does not follow that mandate, that’s true, eventually, they’re not going to be paid, obviously,” de Blasio said in a press conference on Thursday. The mayor has long had a contentious relationship with NY police, who...

The city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) said today it will begin work this weekend along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE), in an effort to extend the life of the triple-cantilever roadway that runs underneath the Brooklyn Promenade. Crews will begin work Friday evening, but the real impact on traffic will be felt Monday, when DOT plans to reduce the number of lanes on the portion of the expressway from Atlantic Avenue to the Brooklyn Bridge from three to two in both directions. The agency warned drivers to expect construction-induced traffic jams, and suggested they take public transit instead. Trucks and...

Some New York City restaurants will defy Mayor Bill de Blasio's (D.) order to ban unvaccinated people from entering businesses. De Blasio's mandate, which officially takes effect next week but will start being enforced Sept. 13, requires anyone who enters an indoor business in New York City to show proof of vaccination. The proof can come in the form of either the city's "Key to NYC Pass," the state's "Excelsior Pass," or a vaccination card. But Pasticceria Rocco in Brooklyn won't be requiring any passes from its customers, manager Mary Josephine Generoso told CBS New York. The award-winning Italian pastry...

The AOH is calling upon NYC Mayor de Blasio to "publicly condemn the increasing acts of violence against the Catholic Church in New York City."A statement issued on August 11 by James Russell, the Catholic Action Chairman of the AOH, reads: "The New York State Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) calls upon both Mayor de Blasio to publicly condemn the increasing acts of violence against the Catholic Church in New York City as exemplified by the vandalism this past weekend at Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary Church in The Bronx. Clothes were put in front of the statue of...

New York City is mandating proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter certain indoor businesses--including all indoor restaurants, entertainment venues and gyms, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday. "It's time to people to see vaccination as necessary to living a good and full and healthy life," de Blasio said during his daily press briefing. "This is crucial, because we know that this will encourage a lot more vaccination." The program, which de Blasio dubbed the "Key to NYC Pass," makes New York the first major city to create such a mandate...

Tuesday was the six-month anniversary of the January 6 riot that Democrats are treating like Pearl Harbor Day. They would prefer that the nation focus on that and forget the fact that the country’s blue cities were on fire for pretty much the entire summer of 2020 and the people they supported had the matches. The rush was on by Democrats to support total anarchy and treat law enforcement as the enemy. Few were quicker to jump on that bandwagon than NYC's Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mayor Bill was more than eager to hang out with Black Lives Matter agitators...

New York City's notoriously incompetent election officials have not finished tabulating the votes in the June 22 Democratic primary, with its novel ranked choice voting system. But the first choices of voters -- minus some 124,000 absentees -- nevertheless reveal some important things about the differences between different segments of the Democratic coalition in America's largest city. These initial results were a clear repudiation of the term-limited left-wing Mayor Bill de Blasio. Coming in first was Brooklyn borough president and former New York Police Department cop Eric Adams with 31.7%, well ahead of top de Blasio aide Maya Wiley, with...

Last week, the Commack School District on Long Island wanted to do the sane thing and make masks optional for children. The move is long overdue. The state COVID positivity rate is under 1 percent, and deaths and hospitalizations have dropped precipitously. So why are kids, who should have never been masked in the first place, still forced to cover their faces? Why are kindergartners masked at recess outdoors, even after national virus guru Anthony Fauci said “the risk outdoors is very low”? In New York, it turns out it’s because Gov. Cuomo says so. Cuomo has been a disaster...

Today, a seven foot-tall ignoramus stuffed his mouth full of greasy hamburger and french fries and began a comedic monologue while shooting saliva-soaked food shrapnel around the room. Even the sign language guy looked disgusted. “Just think of this when you think of vaccination,” Mayor de Blasio gasped, fighting to breathe as his entire skull was now occupied by food. We felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly anti vaxxers. Keep this moron away from important stuff, please. And then there is John Kerry. Kerry is not...