Free Republic

Democrat, democratic socialist, communist... however you want to slice it, New York is run by some of the most far-Left lunatics in the country. And they chose Tax Day to remind us of that once again.What are they doing now? New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced a new surcharge (read: tax) for anyone who owns residential property worth $5 million or more, but is not a resident of New York City. They're calling it the pied-à-terre tax:If you can afford a multi-million dollar second home in New York City, you can afford to join its residents in supporting the...

I would call this peak woke, but we will never reach peak woke because they will keep inventing new categories of victims to steal money and rights from you to give them. As with the ever-expanding number of letters in the Progress Pride list, the types of victims to be unearthed is endless. But this certainly is a new level: creating a program to give free sex change surgeries to transgender homeless illegal aliens. One hopes that they are, as seems likely, "of color" to add yet another category of oppressed people. Throw in "indigenous," or perhaps terrorist drug-dealing gang...

California’s gasoline market is entering a period of acute supply shortages directly attributable to prior refinery closures, and the long-term systemic decline in in-state crude oil production which have been further exacerbated by the ongoing war in the Middle East. For California, there is a clear trajectory toward increasing supply deficit conditions through April and a high probability of physical shortages by May accompanied by consumer price increases at the pump.

We told you that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani would be bad, and the democrat socialist has proven to be as terrible or perhaps even worse than we warned. He’s continued his antisemitic rhetoric and demeaning of police, wants to tax the wealthy out of existence (or at least, out of the state), and is striving to make DEI great again — just what nobody needs.On Sunday, he announced that the city’s first city-run grocery store will open in East Harlem, and it will cost $30 million to build and take over a year to complete.Trump could probably build...

He’s Zo-ing back on his word. Many of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s lofty campaign promises have already bit the dust 100 days in, as he makes a U-turn or scales them back almost beyond recognition. His improbable path from democratic socialist also-ran to victory in 2025’s election came in no small part from the sweeping, voter-pleasing pledges. While his marquee platforms of universal child care, fast and free buses and a rent freeze clearly captured voters’ imaginations, he made a slew of other promises that would quickly — and significantly — reshape New York City, including: City-owned grocery stores Mamdani’s early...

Illegal immigrants in California could soon have their lawyers paid for by taxpayers if a new bill proposed by Sacramento politicians goes through. Starting next year, California would begin to fund legal representation for all unauthorized adults to fight their deportations under new legislation set to clear its first hurdle on Tuesday. “Legal representation saves lives, protects civil liberties and keeps families together,” said bill author Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D). “This is a due process issue in California. People can lose their freedom, their family, their job and home through immigration proceedings.” Last year, Bonta helped pass a law that...

Los Angeles funded and enabled a massive population of drug addicts to set up tent camps and banned effective ways of killing vermin. Medieval diseases returned. What’s to blame? Global warming! The county health department’s report indicates that California also had the highest number of flea-borne typhus cases in the modern era at 277. Number 1 in the modern era. Or perhaps California is going medieval. Shannon Bennett, the chief of science and a microbiology curator at the California Academy of Sciences, said the disease has been around for centuries and is “as old as the plague.” “It’s always a...

Abigail Spanberger ran for governor of Virginia as a sane, middle-of-the-road Democrat, but once elected immediately went communist crazy. Among her rapidly developing acts of comradely solidarity is an “assault weapon” and magazine capacity ban. There is, of course, no such thing in firearm nomenclature as an “assault weapon.” There are military assault rifles, which fire intermediate cartridges and have select fire—automatic—capability, but such rifles are essentially banned by federal law. What Spanberger is targeting is America’s most popular rifle, the semiautomatic AR-15 and anything like it. The bill also bans magazines of greater than 15 round capacity, which encompasses...

A survivor and witness to the atrocities of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in Israel delivered a blistering broadside to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife after she “liked” a social media post claiming the rapes of Israelis during the terror rampage were a “mass hoax.” “My message to Mrs. Mamdani is simple: political narratives should never cloud your judgment when it comes to the facts of October 7th. Real people suffered, were raped and were killed,” Tali Biner told The Post Friday from a bomb shelter in Israel. “I was there.” Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji liked a February 2024 Instagram...

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — Lawmakers in Connecticut met Wednesday for a public hearing on a bill to ban Glock pistols because of how easy they are to convert from semi-automatic to fully automatic.The Hartford Police Department said it has seized dozens of Glocks that have been converted to fully automatic through the use of a relatively inexpensive modification known as a “switch.”

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is ditching his longtime residence in Seattle for Florida, just as Washington Democrats are nearing the finish line on a proposed "millionaires tax." Schultz, who served as board director of the coffee chain until 2023, said in a statement on social media that he and his wife are moving to Miami as part of the "retirement phase" of their lives. Schultz, who has lived in Seattle for more than four decades, purchased a $44 million penthouse in Surfside, Fla., according to reports, and will relocate his private family office to Miami. Schultz, who owns roughly...

Katelin Holloway and Ben Ramirez thought they had found their forever home when they purchased a spacious North Beach property for $4.75 million in 2021 — a four-story residence with five bedrooms, sweeping skyline views and room for their growing family. Instead, the couple is now facing the possibility that the house must be carved back into four separate apartments after city officials determined the building was improperly converted from a multi-unit property years before they bought it, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. SNIP According to city officials and tenant advocates, the building had previously been altered from a...

Gov. Hochul has spent much of her 4 ¹/₂ years in office facing a time bomb left by her predecessor: drastic, legally binding greenhouse gas reduction targets that the state has no practical means of meeting. The 2019 Climate Act requires New York to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about one-quarter from that year’s levels by 2030. The state has made little progress toward this goal, in part because officials shuttered New York’s largest nuclear power plant in 2021. The law remains on the books, and its defenders balk at revision. If Hochul can’t persuade them to change it, Albany’s...

The Colorado legislature is moving quickly to pass bills that would prevent people from making their own firearms without government permission. Two bills appear likely to become law. The two bills are expected to be signed by Governor Jared Polis. House Bill 1144 has passed the House 40 – 25 on a party-line vote and was introduced in the Senate yesterday. Senate Bill 43 passed the Senate 19-16, with four Democratic senators joining 12 Republican senators to vote against it. House Bill 1144 prohibits the manufacture of firearms by “3D printing”, except for people licensed by the government:Knowingly manufacturing or...

For a few years now, it has been blindingly obvious that New York had over-promised and over-committed on impossible “climate” goals that could not be achieved. In various posts I have referred to this as an approaching “cliff,” or perhaps as the “green energy wall.” It has been entertaining to ponder what the final disaster might look like. This week has had a lot of developments. Most interesting is the growing split among the governing Democrats between, on the one hand, those who see disaster coming and are looking for some kind of graceful exit and, on the other hand,...

If there is one lesson the 20th century should have taught us, it is that governments make poor grocers. The image of Boris Yeltsin standing in a Texas supermarket in 1989, stunned into silence by the abundance of a randomly selected American grocery store, remains one of the most powerful indictments of central planning ever recorded. Yet, in New York City, history is being ignored. After just a month, the mayor is already involved in a controversy surrounding his refusal to clear homeless encampments, with tragic results. Despite these early failures, the enthusiasm among young people and Democrats is still...

As gas prices continue climbing in California — already the highest in the nation — residents are increasingly venting their frustration at Gov. Gavin Newsom, accusing him and Sacramento of piling on policies and “taxing us to death.” The backlash centers on draft regulations tied to the state’s Cap-and-Invest program, overseen by the California Air Resources Board, which sets a statewide cap on greenhouse gas emissions and requires major polluters to purchase allowances for each ton of carbon they emit. Critics say tightening those caps — strongly backed by Newsom — could further drive up the cost of gasoline and...

Many Black, middle-class NYC property owners say they’d be among the biggest victims of the Democratic Socialists of America’s proposed tax hikes. Some told The Post the DSA’s Marxist measures — which include higher taxes for individuals making over $300,000, and taxing inheritances over $250,000 — would hurt New Yorkers like themselves who spent decades building up retirement accounts, paying off homes, and planning their estates to benefit their loved ones. “The reason you invest is to acquire wealth with the hopes of putting it towards your legacy, for your family — and this will greatly affect my family,” said...

Shocking surveillance video captured a brazen daylight stabbing in San Francisco’s Chinatown on Thursday — showing a hooded man casually walking up behind an apparent stranger before plunging a knife into his back.

Last night, San Francisco’s mayor, Daniel Lurie, was attacked by two men while being driven through the Tenderloin district. According to a report from an ABC News outlet, the confrontation arose after a group of people blocked the SUV that Lurie was being driven in; at one point Lurie himself exited the vehicle to engage the individuals on the street, but quickly scuttled back behind the safety of his security detail when the confrontation turned physical. Classic.AdvertisementClearly the men were bums, based on the handcuffed man’s appearance:San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie attacked while being driven through the Tenderloin. This post...