Free Republic

You can now get paid $30 an hour to shovel snow in New York City. New York City is urgently hiring emergency snow shovelers to help remove snow and ice from public areas, including bus stops, crosswalks, fire hydrants, and step streets.

One of the first tasks that a new Mayor has in New York City after taking office is to present a budget. Given that an annual New York City budget is well north of $100 billion, you would think that this is a serious undertaking. But our new Mayor is the 34-year-old play-acting college socialist Zohran Mamdani. How does he handle the task? Mamdani kicked the process of with a press conference at City Hall on January 28. Here is a transcript and video of his remarks. Excerpt: I want to speak directly to New Yorkers, who have for too...

S’no thank you. The Mamdani administration failed for hours to attract any emergency shovelers at one Queens garage Sunday — while planning to try to dig out New Yorkers with a fourth of the force the city used for its last mega-storm. Despite Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s widespread attempted promotion of the city’s public-fueled emergency shoveling program, a sign-up sheet at the Maspeth Sanitation garages was empty, city workers told The Post during a visit late Sunday morning. “I haven’t seen anybody sign up yet today. No, no one,” the employee said. There were also no signs of shovelers lining up...

The online registration states that to be accepted for the position, applicants must be at least 18, eligible to work in the US, and able to perform heavy physical labor. To register for an appointment, those interested must present two small photos of themselves, two original forms of ID, and a Social Security card. The starting pay to shovel snow with the city is $19.14 per hour, increasing to $28.71 per hour after the first 40 hours worked in a week.

Comrade Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City is a proud member of the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which claims that “in the United States,” and yeah, there should be a comma right there, but in the original, there isn’t, “voter suppression tactics have a disproportionate impact on the most marginalized communities, especially the African-American community.” Accordingly, the DSA calls for “Eliminating Voter ID Laws,” and endorsed Mamdani’s candidacy enthusiastically. Now, however, the favorite mayor of every Marxist lunatic this side of Bernie Sanders has discovered that there is something for which he very...

There's one utterly reliable thing about socialism: It fails, every time it's tried. It may fail on the national scale, like the Soviet Union, or it may fail on the municipal scale, like New York City is in the throes of doing right now. The "democratic socialist" mayor of the Big Apple, Zohran Mamdani, has never seen a commie policy he didn't like.One of those policies is freezing rents in the city. That's already producing predictable results: Landlords are selling out and leaving.When Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor of New York City, he made one promise unmistakably clear: he would...

Somehow, they didn't foresee this happening when the billionaires fled the fleecing. Most of New York City's public employee unions endorsed Zohran Mamdani for mayor -- UFT teachers union, AFSCME, SEIU Local 1199 -- a lot of the big important ones. So it must have come as a surprise them that Mamdani's first target to finance his huge $120 billion budget is likely to come not from billionaires, as he claimed would happen, but from a raid on their pension funds, which by the way, cannot flee. Oh, what irony. Instead of going after the millionaires when the billionaires fled,...

New York City’s new Democratic Socialist (communist) Mayor Zohran Mamdani is having trouble finding the means to fund his radical left-wing agenda so he is now going to an old favorite for Democrats – defunding the police. Apparently, Democrats have still not learned their painful lesson in this exercise in stupidity. To make matters worse, it has now been reported that Mamdani needs so much money because he is creating all kinds of new diversity positions in his cabinet, another lesson the left has not yet learned. Mamdani’s predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, proposed at the end of his term that...

With Mamdani as Mayor residents are reporting hearing the “Islamic Call to Prayer” on the streets of Manhattan. Five times a day! Amy Mek added: My lord, America – the conquest we’ve warned about is exploding now. The Adhan isn’t a “beautiful call to prayer”; it’s a militant declaration: “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is greater than your gods, laws, freedoms), “There is no god but Allah” (all other faiths are false). Blared 5× daily from loudspeakers – 5 AM wake-ups included – it’s forced submission on non-Muslims, pure civilizational jihad straight from the Muslim Brotherhood playbook. THIS IS NOT NORMAL –...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is looking to get the Big Apple on a tighter budget, and seems to see cuts to the New York Police Department (NYPD) as a way of getting the city back on track. Mamdani's predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, proposed at the end of his term that the city hire 5,000 more NYPD officers. However, upon entering office, Mamdani moved to cancel all orders signed by Adams following his Sept. 26, 2024, indictment. This included the proposed NYPD personnel increase. Under Adams' plan, the NYPD was set to add 300 officers in July 2026, growing...

Mayor Zohran Mamdani laid out two potential paths Tuesday to close what he says is a $5.4 billion dollar budget gap in New York City. In one, Albany would raise taxes on the richest New Yorkers. In the other, the City would raise property taxes for the first time since the late 2000s. The City could generate $3.7 billion by raising the property tax by 9.5%, Mamdani said. Gov. Kathy Hochul has repeatedly said she is not on board the mayor's first, and more preferred, option. If Albany does not agree to taxing the wealthiest New Yorkers, Mamdani says the...

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...

Follow live updates on New York City politics as Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a record $127 billion budget proposal Tuesday. The eye-popping amount — that one insider called “insanity” — is up around $11 billion from the current year. The socialist city leader’s plan includes a whopping 9.5% proposed property tax hike on New Yorkers, which he claims would be a “last resort” — while allocating another $1.2 billion for migrants. Mamdani, 34, unveiled his preliminary budget from the Blue Room at NYC City Hall this afternoon. Get the latest news, analysis and more from our local politics reporters with...

New Yorkers are embracing a free market. Hundreds of people lined up Thursday for a chance to shop at the city’s “first free grocery store” — launched by Polymarket as it and other prediction betting platforms face increased scrutiny from state regulators. The West Village shop — an apparent nod to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s government-run grocery store pitch — drew more than 400 New Yorkers, who lined up hours ahead of the 2 p.m. opening, eager to fill blue tote bags with no-cost produce, nonperishables and toiletries. “Times are hard. Things are very expensive, so this helps,” said Forest Hills...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made "fast and free buses" a defining promise of his administration, framing the proposal as both an affordability measure and a long-overdue fix for a bus system that advocates say has been neglected for decades. But his big swing seems poised to collide with the political realities of New York City. Supporters argue fare-free buses would reduce conflict, improve safety, and offer immediate relief to riders who depend on buses the most. Skeptics, including on-air pundits and transit organizations, warn the idea risks creating a major funding gap for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority...

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) tapped as his health czar the founder of a left-wing nonprofit that registered patients in mental hospitals to vote. Mamdani selected Alister Martin on Jan. 31 to lead the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Martin, a former emergency room doctor, launched Vot-ER in 2019, a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic. The group creates materials for doctors to register their patients to vote in clinical settings. One of its earlier partners, the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, is an inpatient clinic for people with psychotic disorders. Citing the "therapeutic" benefits of voting, the...

The last week has been kind to its newly-innaugurated democratic-socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. A massive blizzard left mountains of snow in the streets, more than a dozen homeless inhabitants froze to death, and rats are feasting on uncollected garbage piled up everywhere except right outside his Gracie Mansion residence. "I'm new to the job," the Mayor reminded everyone. "I know the burdens will get heavier, but right now I struggle to imagine how it could be better." Hmm, maybe haul away the garbage and snow plow the streets? Could that make things better?

Mayor Zohran Mamdani told state lawmakers on Wednesday that the only way out of the city’s $12 billion budget gap is to raise taxes on the wealthy. Hizzoner, during his first Tin Cup Day in Albany, formally called on the state Legislature to raise income taxes on people making more than $1 million by 2%. “I’m asking for a 2% raise in personal income taxes on the most affluent New Yorkers, someone earning $1 million a year. The top 1% of New York City can afford to contribute $20,000 more in taxes,” the young mayor said. “That 2% tax alone...

A total of 18 people have died as a result of a period of extreme cold weather in New York City, its mayor has said. Since late January, the city has endured a cold snap, including 13 days of temperatures of 0C (32F) or below – one of the longest stretches of sub-zero weather New York has seen in six decades. Over the weekend, another person "lost their life on the streets of our city," Zohran Mamdani said on Monday, adding that "each life lost is a tragedy, and we will continue to hold their families in our thoughts". While...

On June 8, 1967, the Israeli military machine-gunned, bombed and torpedoed the U.S.S. Liberty, an American vessel floating off the Sinai Peninsula, killing 34 service members. Those facts are not in dispute. But almost everything else about the attack is driving a wedge through the MAGA movement. On one side are prominent voices like the podcaster Ben Shapiro, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Rich Lowry, editor in chief of The National Review. They insist the attack on the Liberty was a tragic case of mistaken identity amid the chaos of the Six-Day War, a conclusion shared by a U.S....