Free Republic

Fox News personality Jesse Watters questioned the "emotional maturity" of women and said, "I hope there's not a female president in my lifetime" during an episode of his show. The comments came following an exclusive interview with MS NOW in which Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi asserted that the American people have long been more prepared for a female president than Congress was for a female speaker, but that she didn’t believe that at 86 years old, it would happen in her lifetime. “Well, Nancy says there will not be a female president in her lifetime, and I say thank god,”...

ALBANY– Gov. Kathy Hochul is quietly negotiating a possible deal with one of New York’s top labor leaders to allow public workers from teachers to nurses hired after 2014 to retire at 55, sources said. The age is currently 62 for those hired in the past 14 years. The potential fat pork deal pact would involve more than a billion dollars in sweetening pensions for the unionized public employees. Legislative leaders are being kept in the wings of the talks – which could be wed into the state budget package and lead to taxpayers footing billions – with Hochul dealing...

Governor Kathy Hochul’s once-commanding lead over Republican Bruce Blakeman has eroded by half in three months, collapsing from 26 points in January to just 13 points, according to the latest Siena Research Institute poll. The result marked a 7-point tightening from February, as independents shifted toward Blakeman even as Hochul’s favorability and job approval ratings held steady. […] The state has not elected a Republican governor since 2002, but the Siena poll showed movement toward Blakeman for the second consecutive month, signaling potential vulnerability for Hochul if the trend persists into the budget season and broader campaign. …

A Brooklyn Council member, her sister — an aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul — and the husband of a Democratic state Assembly member are being investigated by federal prosecutors looking into whether they took bribes to help a migrant shelter provider that has received $200 million in city contracts, according to a report. Democratic Councilwoman Farah Louis and her sister, Debbie Louis, who served as Hochul’s assistant secretary of New York City intergovernmental affairs, were named in a search warrant obtained by the Associated Press seeking evidence for possible criminal violations. Edu Hermelyn, the husband of state Assembly Member and...

They’re running up the bill. Bronx residents in state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie’s district decried spiking utility bills Monday — as the state Legislature pushes back on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s cost-saving bid to delay New York’s controversial climate law mandates. The complaints come as lawmakers, led by Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, are poised to split with Hochul over her push to delay the climate law, as well as to reform car insurance — two major sticking points in state budget talks. “Anything that you pay less is better for everybody,” said Francisco Perez, 36, a Baychester resident...

Lefties turned out in droves for Sunday’s “Tax the Rich” rally featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders in The Bronx — but Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused to show face as he walks a tightrope with Gov. Hochul over taxes. At least 1,000 people filled Lehman College’s sprawling performing arts center, where Sanders (I-Vt.) spent nearly an hour pushing his own proposal targeting the wealthy. “A few years ago, it was estimated that Elon Musk, the wealthiest man alive, paid an effective tax rate of less than 3.3%, while the average truck driver in America paid an effective tax rate of 8.4%,” Bernie...

As New York approaches the Green Energy Cliff, developments are starting to come more quickly. When last I addressed the subject on March 6, there had just been “leaked” a three-page memo from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to the Governor’s office, revealing that implementation of what New York calls its “cap and invest” program — actually, an artificial scarcity program intentionally designed to drive prices up and impoverish the people — would cost every New York household thousands of dollars in increased energy costs. (I put the word “leaked” in quotes because most knowledgeable...

Gov. Hochul was fittingly ridiculed last week for urging wealthy New Yorkers who fled the state for Florida to return and bring their rich friends with them. “We need your money” was the gist of her plea. She has zero chance of success. The rich didn’t get rich by being so easily duped, but Hochul had to know that. So why did she decide to make a fool of herself? It’s not because she’s dumb, but because she thinks voters are — and that they have short memories. After all, this is the same Hochul who, during her 2022 campaign,...

Facts are a harsh mistress. And nobody seems more incapable of grasping facts than Democrats in general, and New York's Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul in particular. In her latest embarrassing slip-up, the climate law she supported, and the Empire States ever-more-onerous taxes are driving all the wealthy people, the people who start and run businesses and provide jobs, out of the state. Now, because of the green policies, utility rates are climbing, meaning that a big chunk of the rest of the residents of New York are looking to the exits as well. Now Governor Hochul wants to delay full...

Gov. Kathy Hochul is finally admitting that the “climate” law she’s long supported is toxic to New York’s economy and to “affordability” — but she only wants to delay the death sentence. We’ve warned for years that the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act is leading the state to disaster — and for no purpose except to honor the delusions of green extremists and further the political ambitions of first Gov. Andrew Cuomo and now Hochul. Neither one ever admitted the fundamental idiocy; even now, when she says “a climate policy that leaves working families behind is not a...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul became the latest blue-state leader to lament the flight of wealthy tax-paying residents to Republican-led tax havens like Florida, Alaska, Wyoming and Tennessee, calling millionaires who stayed in the Empire State to fund its massive social services net “patriotic.” With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declaring his jurisdiction a “free state” for transplants wishing to leave liberal policies and taxation behind, blue states like New York, Illinois and California are squeezing and at times pursuing natives who emigrate to financially greener pastures — while at the same time, some governors are blasting conservative voters as inauthentic...

Kathy Hochul has a big problem: she and Mamdani have big spending plans, but the tax base of New York is eroding because high-net-worth individuals are leaving the state for greener pastures. Her solution? Ask them to come back. Be patriotic. Take one for the team. No, really. This is how well Democrats understand economics. With the war raging in the Persian Gulf, it's easy to let a host of other stories fall to the wayside. But there are plenty of them still out there that deserve attention. I have a bunch of stuff about crime, immigration, elections (did you...

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...

On the eve of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first preliminary budget rollout, Gov. Kathy Hochul handed him what amounted to a $1.5 billion gift card, courtesy of state taxpayers. On Tuesday, the mayor thanked the governor for the promised new state aid — by handing her a ticking political bomb. Despite the added money, Mamdani said, the city faces a “historic” $5.4 billion budget gap — which can only be closed by proceeding along what the mayor characterized as two “paths.” Path one, he said, would be for the state to give the city authority to “raise [income] taxes on the...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a dangerous bill legalizing assisted suicide, a move pro-life advocates blasted as putting vulnerable residents at extreme risk of coercion, abandonment and premature death while undermining the sanctity of life. The amended Medical Aid in Dying Act, signed Friday, theoretically only allows mentally competent, terminally ill adults with six months or less to live to request life-ending medication from physicians. Religiously oriented home hospice providers can supposedly opt out while ensuring patients can kill themselves elsewhere, and violations are defined as professional misconduct under state education law. The law takes effect in six months...

At least three homeless New Yorkers were found dead in freezing temperatures Saturday morning after Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul rebuffed a federal assistance offer from the Trump administration. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reached out to New York ahead of the major winter storm sweeping the country. Hochul responded on X by demanding immigration enforcement changes as a condition for accepting help. “Secretary Noem offered assistance to New York ahead of the impending snowstorm,” Hochul wrote on X. “I shared that the fastest way to help is for ICE to back off so people feel safe accessing warming centers, shelters,...

Suddenly she’s Golda Meir. Lefty “Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – a strident anti-Israel critic – ripped a mob of pro-Palestine protestors who were caught on video chanting in support of Hamas terrorists while marching in Queens. “Hey so marching into a predominantly Jewish neighborhood and leading with a chant saying ‘we support Hamas’ is a disgusting and antisemitic thing to do,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X Friday. “Pretty basic!” The card-carrying Democratic Socialist of America member who reps parts of The Bronx and Queens was responded to a video posted on X showing protestors marching through Queens and chanting, “Say it...

The Hochul administration is being accused of covering up crimes in prisons by downgrading attacks committed by inmates against guards as “harassment” or “disruptive behavior” instead of assaults. A bombshell Dec. 31, 2025 memo issued by the state Corrections Department’s deputy commissioner Michael D’Amore lays out examples of what constitutes an assault and what’s considered the lower classification of harassment or disruptive behavior. “The Department has redefined the Unusual Incident (UI) category, and created harassment as a reportable UI,” D’Amore said in the memo sent to all prison superintendents and watch commanders. For example, an inmate who rips off the...

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different outcome. That also defines the current state of the Democratic Party, who keeps coming back to tested — and failed — policies in the hopes that no one will notice those policies don't work. But this time, it's even worse. After weeks of hearing about the massive fraud of every social program in Minnesota, including childcare programs, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has decided what her state needs is massive taxpayer-funded fraud, too. To that end, she's announced her support for...

She’s Kathy Kevorkian. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday she’ll sign a controversial doctor-assisted suicide bill – capping a years-long battle over making New York a state that allows terminally ill people to take their own lives. Many religious leaders and disability advocates quickly condemned Hochul’s decision to approve the Medical Aid in Dying Act, while the governor cast it as civil rights issue on par with gay marriage. “The right to spend their final days not hearing the droning hum of hospital machines but instead the laughter of their grandkids echoing in the next room. The right to tell their...