Free Republic

Democratic mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and his comrades at the Democratic Socialists of America want to wipe out the enforcement of all misdemeanor offenses, The Post has learned. In its most recent platform, the group blasts policing and detention as “instruments of class war” designed to “guarantee the domination of the working class” — and demands an end what it calls “the criminalization of working-class survival.” “For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms...

33-year-old newlywed communist Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party’s nominee for New York City mayor in this fall’s election, struggled to bench press 135 pounds at a campaign stop in Brooklyn Saturday, needing help by a spotter, reported the New York Post. New York Post excerpt: Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani struggled to execute a single unassisted bench press rep while trying to impress a crowd at the annual Men’s Day open streets event in Brooklyn Saturday. Photos showed the 33-year-old Socialist, and Democratic Party nominee, was unable to lift a bar loaded with what was said to be 135-pounds off the...

Kansas City’s $50 million experiment with free bus fare is hitting the brakes — because the city can no longer afford it. Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s socialist proposals — including free buses in the five boroughs and Soviet-style, city-owned grocery stores — are now 0-2 when tried elsewhere, after Kansas City’s own venture with a government-run grocery abruptly closed earlier this month. The Midwest city used federal COVID-19 relief money in 2020 to become the first in the country to institute free buses. But local funding dried up, and riders and conductors slammed the buses as unreliable, filthy, rolling homeless...

At least we know he won’t be a strongman leader. Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani struggled to execute a single unassisted bench press rep while trying to impress a crowd at the annual Men’s Day open streets event in Brooklyn Saturday. Photos showed the 33-year-old Socialist, and Democratic Party nominee, was unable to lift a bar loaded with what was said to be 135-pounds off the rack without help — and his two reps required full assistance from a smiling, large-biceped Men’s Day celebrant, photos showed.After throwing in the towel, Mamdani stood up and gave all the credit to the spotter,...

Good for Mayor Eric Adams for suing the Campaign Finance Board over its outrageous, undemocratic bid to rig the mayoral race against him. Even if he doesn’t receive timely justice, he’s at least helping expose a system that needs drastic reform or even complete elimination. Hizzoner wants the board to fork over $5 million in matching funds he argues it has unfairly denied him. The board’s “conduct is unconstitutional and the height of arbitrary and capricious governmental action,” Adams’ filing states. “The agency must be held to account for its pernicious conduct.” Damn straight. The board first began withholding funds...

An infantilizing charlatan and quack—who owes a huge apology for attempting to pass himself off as African American. That’s what black leaders are calling Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani who, despite his airs of being “the great, brown hope,” continues to flounder with demographics his entire campaign is supposed to help. Insiders say black voters are not warming up to the Democratic socialist since roundly rejecting him in June’s primary. “He owes us an apology, for the community. How dare he?” Chantel Wright, a 59-year-old Harlem resident, bishop, and educator, told the Post in an impassioned interview. Wright was referring...

We may have the funniest scandal of the year. Winnie Greco, a “close advisor” to Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams, was “suspended from his re-election campaign on Wednesday after giving a journalist cash tucked inside a potato chip bag,” according to The New York Times. It gets better. The cash was allegedly tucked inside a red Chinese envelope and then hidden in an “opened bag of Herr’s Sour Cream & Onion ripple potato chips,” reports The City. The reporter, Katie Honan, thought “it was an offer of a light snack,” and “told Greco more than once she could...

Over the past few months, data shows that half of all courthouse arrests made in the U.S. took place in New York City.A controversial immigration enforcement strategy has prompted a lawsuit from New York City officials, backed by Mayor Eric Adams. The suit calls on the Trump administration to immediately end ICE arrests at courthouses. "No one should be afraid to send their children to school, go to a hospital when sick, call 911 when in danger, or go to a court hearing when called upon to do so," Adams said. According to recent data analysis from the city, over...

On Thursday morning, Time magazine released its latest cover dated September 8 with the lead story “The Meaning of Zohran Mamdani.” Predictably, the story by Mark Chiusano was as mind-numbingly stupid and weak-kneed as a profile of Barack Obama in the mid-2000s. Chiusano called him “very eloquent,” “fun,” and “more gifted than almost any of his peers,” and facing “adulation” plus “notoriety” in the face of “xenophobic death threats.” The fluff came out as thick as mud with Chiusano fawning right off the bat that “[i]t’s not easy to move around New York City as Zohran Mamdani anymore” and taking...

I LIVE in New York City. “Proud Democratic Socialist” Zohran Mamdani is likely to be my next mayor. I’m not happy about it. But I am outnumbered. Mamdani is popular. He won more primary votes than any other candidate in the city’s history. Minneapolis may also elect a socialist mayor. Why?! How deluded can voters be? In my new video, I explain why their socialist ideas are destructive. Mamdani mocks those of us who fear socialism. He says socialism just means that the state “provides whatever is necessary for its people to live a dignified life.” Sounds nice. But socialism...

If you thought New York politics couldn’t get more cynical, think again. An exposé from The New York Post has shone a harsh spotlight on one more act in the city’s ideological theater of the absurd—Jews for Zohran, a meticulously choreographed campaign crafted to launder the record of Zohran Mamdani, the self-styled Democratic Socialist assemblyman from Queens with a well-documented history of Israel-bashing. The group’s name sounds grassroots—almost quaint—like typical campaign affinity group fare. But its roots lie not in Astoria or the Bronx, and certainly not in Israel, but halfway around the globe in Shanghai, where pro-Beijing billionaire Neville...

The closely watched New York mayoral and governor’s races appear to be forming into shapes that will bring little comfort to centrist Democrats, with both elections happening in November. A new Siena Institute poll released on Tuesday shows New York City’s Democratic socialist mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, leading former New York governor Andrew Cuomo by 19 percentage points – while the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik is chipping away at incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul’s lead in a hypothetical contest for the New York governor’s mansion in 2026. Hochul’s lead over Stefanik, who was nominated to be US ambassador to the United...

The mayoral candidate’s support comes from a young, mostly white, often childless, likely temporary population insulated from the consequences of the urban decline they’re about to cause. There is a version of American liberalism that treats progress as a shared destiny, social improvement being the gradual and unstoppable realization of the popular hope for a better country and world. This was the rhetoric of the Obama era, a time when the arc of history was bending ever forward and when liberals saw their coming accomplishments as the just and natural fulfillment of past movements and ideas. Leaving aside Zohran Mamdani’s...

A not so rhetorical exercise that occasionally makes the rounds asks the reader to look at the 45 goals of the Communist Party that were read into the Congressional Record in 1963 and consider how many have actually been accomplished. “Not for nothing,” as they say, but a significant percentage of the items on that list are already in place. For the purposes of this essay, I would direct the reader to this little gem: 22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks...

Ben Rhodes points to Ugandan-born Democratic socialist as model for party's future directionBen Rhodes, a key former Obama administration official, believes the Democratic Party is "afraid of its own future" and needs to embrace the strategy of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who identifies as a Democratic socialist. Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, is perhaps best known for his advocacy of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. He has since emerged as a prominent figure in liberal media as a contributor to MSNBC and co-host of the "Pod Save The World" podcast. His...

Ruth Messinger, the trailblazing Jewish political leader who in 1997 became the first and only woman to win the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor, endorsed Zohran Mamdani on Monday. Her support came as the Democratic nominee launched his citywide “Five Boroughs Against Trump” tour in Manhattan, joined by Assemblyman Harvey Epstein and Rep. Jerry Nadler, co-chair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus, who had endorsed Mamdani after his primary victory.

Billionaire Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has responded to fellow Democrat and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's assertion that billionaires should not exist. “How much money you have doesn’t determine what your values are,” Pritzker said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “I’m a Democrat because I believe that we’ve got to stand up for our democracy and against the MAGA Republicans who are literally trying to take away people’s rights all across this country.” Advertisement Pritzker has an estimated net worth of $3.7 billion, according to Forbes, in part due to his family’s ownership...

'We can win the Democratic primary in 2028,' one convention delegate says. CHICAGO—The Democratic Socialists of America sent a clear message to Democrats during its biennial convention: We're in charge now. Zohran Mamdani's surprise win wasn't an anomaly, delegates said, but rather the start of the DSA's rise to power over the Democratic Party. Roughly 1,200 DSA members gathered over the weekend at McCormick Place, Chicago's convention center, to solidify the party's platform. Tickets for the three-day convention, attended by the Washington Free Beacon, cost $225 and required party membership. Attendees were also required to submit proof of a negative...

Gov. Kathy Hochul slighted mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani in a live TV interview Sunday — signaling she may not endorse him in the election even after he praised her “courage.” “We still have many differences,” Hochul said, keeping her distance from her fellow Democrat during a Fox News Sunday interview. “I don’t know how you whitewash that away.” Fox host Shannon Bream had read a statement from Mamdani effusively praising Hochul for sparring with President Trump and Republicans over redistricting fights that could dictate who controls Congress.

Mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo proposed “Zohran’s law” that would block privileged New Yorkers like his socialist rival Zohran Mamdani from living in rent-stabilized apartments. Mamdani, 33, who rakes in $142,000 a year as a state assemblyman and whose wealthy family includes his filmmaker mom and professor dad, has been living in a $2,300-a-month, one-bedroom pad in Astoria. “I’m calling the legislation ‘Zohran’s Law.’ This is obviously an abuse of the system,” Cuomo told The Post Sunday. “We’re not supposed to be providing rent-stabilized apartments to the children of millionaires.”