Free Republic

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...

Despite claiming that officials in her administration don’t support defunding police, Gov. Kathy Hochul has tapped a second person who does to a key post — a failed New York City Council candidate who wants to slash the NYPD budget by $3 billion. On Friday, Hochul appointed Amit Bagga to be her deputy secretary for intergovernmental affairs. He lost the City Council primary in June for Queens’ District 26 seat despite support from Democratic socialist and defund proponent Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s political action committee. Bagga’s archived campaign website, which was taken down last week, says he wants to cut...

Mayor Bill de Blasio dismissed criticism that his $98.7 billion budget — the largest in the city’s history — is nearly the same as the spending plan for the entire state of Florida. “I don’t pray at the altar of the fiscal conservatives and the budget hawks and the pro-austerity forces that have led us astray so many times and didn’t want to ever invest in working people,” de Blasio said Friday on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show.” Lehrer had asked de Blasio about criticism from “fiscal conservatives and deficit hawks,” who’ve made the comparison even though “Florida is a...

Former Obama housing secretary Shaun Donovan says he’d be “the climate mayor,” but his multimillionaire dad, who’s funding his long-shot City Hall bid, is the opposite of an environmental steward. Michael Donovan — who has given $6.8 million through a super PAC, making him the single largest donor in the entire mayoral race — owns three homes, a gas-guzzling private jet, and once destroyed wetlands in front of his $18 million Bridgehampton estate. “If candidates are taking money from polluters, they are making a big mistake because people suffer,” said Maritza Silva-Farrell, head of the New York umbrella environmental group...

Mayor Bill de Blasio was excluded from participating in New York’s major Columbus Day event Monday, The Post has learned. The head of the Columbus Citizens Foundation confirmed that de Blasio was not invited to speak at this year’s alternative event to the Columbus Day parade that was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The foundation’s virtual “2020 Columbus Citizens Foundation Italian Heritage & Achievement Special” event was televised on WABC-TV from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday all but threatened President Trump’s safety if he returns to New York City in a rant responding to an exclusive story by The Post that Trump is looking to pull federal funds from “lawless” cities including New York. Cuomo called an emergency press briefing within a half-hour on Wednesday night to tear into Trump for the order, which cites New York’s rising murder rate and defunding of the NYPD. “He better have an army if he thinks he’s gonna walk down the street in New York. New Yorkers don’t want to have anything...

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea signaled Tuesday that he’s open to the department ending its role in school safety enforcement — less than a week after Mayor Bill de Blasio said cops should stay in schools. “I think everyone has to cut,” Shea told The Associated Press when asked about calls for belt-tightening, first necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, then exacerbated by a wave of police reform since the police-custody killing of George Floyd. “I think we’re going to be forced to do difficult things,” continued the top cop. “We certainly get that.” Among the tough cuts Shea told the AP he was willing to make was...

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that he’s “concerned” about the revelations that the city’s health commissioner ignored an NYPD request for 500,000 surgical masks amid the coronavirus crisis, telling a police official that she didn’t give “two rats’ asses about your cops” – and added it would be “inappropriate” to say. “I need to understand what happened here. I am concerned about it,” de Blasio said during his daily press briefing when he was asked about the callous comments made by Dr. Oxiris Barbot.

Mayor de Blasio intervened in the prosecution of an accused anti-Semitic attacker — leading to her lock-up in a psych ward — because she was generating negative publicity for his administration, The Post has learned. Brooklyn’s supervising judge was forced to hold an unscheduled hearing late on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve after City Hall contacted the state Office of Court Administration about Tiffany Harris, 30.

Mayor Bill de Blasio doesn’t “understand how on earth” a German porn star got deep inside sensitive areas of NYPD headquarters, he said Thursday, as an NYPD boss vowed to find answers. “I’ve only heard the beginning of this, and I don’t like what I hear,” fumed Hizzoner of Annina Ucatis’ private tour of the Lower Manhattan cop shop — first reported by The Post — where she was free to film inside the clandestine Real Time Crime Center, and even outside Commissioner James O’Neill’s office. “I don’t understand how on earth this could have happened,” continued de Blasio of...

Mayor Bill de Blasio finally got the viral hit he was hoping would rescue his on-life-support presidential campaign — but it wasn’t the breakout moment he’d imagined. “News of him dropping out has already garnered roughly 84,000 mentions in roughly four hours, surpassing his highest media moments while a candidate,” said Josh Ginsberg of the San Francisco-based media analytics firm Zignal Labs. Earlier this month de Blasio mused that, “People go from unheard of to totally famous in 72 hours in America now, so a candidate like me who’s not that well known yet, you ask me in 72 hours,...

Supporters of Donald Trump disrupted Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press conference in Trump Tower on Monday while he announced a potential $2 million in fines facing the president’s real estate company if it doesn’t comply with the city’s new “Green New Deal” building emissions standards — by 2030. “Worst mayor ever,” read one sign held by a protester as the mayor rode up and down an escalator. Other supporters loudly booed and whistled as de Blasio tried to shout over the din. “This is bull—t,” Juliet Germanotta, 37, told The Post as she displayed an “LGBT for Trump” banner behind...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s surging national profile has inspired a trio of Republican opponents from her home district — along with a multimillionaire mystery donor who could help close the gap in her foes’ long-shot race against her. Just three months after taking office, the Democratic socialist congresswoman’s challengers include an Egyptian American journalist, who has already tossed her hat in the ring, and an NYPD cop-turned-high-school-civics teacher and conservative talk-radio producer, both of whom are seriously exploring a run against her. And the fledgling challengers could get help from a wealthy New Yorker committed to backing an Ocasio-Cortez opponent, a GOP...

Mayor de Blasio is calling on the American Museum of Natural History to cancel an event where the guest of honor is far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. “I believe in the First Amendment,” the mayor said on WNYC radio on Friday but then added: “If you’re talking about a publicly supported institution and you’re talking about someone who’s doing something tangibly destructive, I’m uncomfortable with it.” De Blasio pointed to Bolsonaro’s plans to develop the Amazon, which he warned could endanger the planet, as well as his “overt racism” and “homophobia.” “This guy is a very dangerous human being,” the...

Mayor Bill de Blasio has taken the concept of a Nanny State to a whole new level — instructing New Yorkers about what they can and cannot flush down their toilets. “New York City: There are only FOUR things that should go in your toilet,” the mayor’s office tweeted from its official account Tuesday. NYC Mayor's Office ‏ Verified account @NYCMayorsOffice Follow Follow @NYCMayorsOffice More New York City: There are only FOUR things that should go in your toilet 🚽 💩 poop 💦 pee 🤢 puke 👋 toilet paper Everything else causes FATBERGS! What are Fatbergs? Well, you gotta click...

<p>She went in for a cheeseburger and fries and ended up McPummeled at a Manhattan fast-food joint owned by polo-playing scion Bruce Colley.</p> <p>Elizabeth Storelli says in a new lawsuit that workers at Colley’s McDonald’s at West 71st Street and Broadway failed to help her when she accidentally bumped into a woman in the crowded eatery and was severely beaten.</p>