Free Republic

Here in New York, we continue to wait for the announcement of the annual budget that was due on April 1. Negotiations among the Governor and legislative leaders continue, with one big open issue being the potential extension of the “net zero” deadlines of the Climate Act. While many issues may remain open, one thing on which there appears to be agreement is what they are calling the “pied-à-terre” tax — a real estate tax surcharge on New York City apartments valued at $5 million and up that are owned by people who are not permanent residents of New York....

This year, so far, has been a robust one for Manhattan’s trophy-home market. Since the beginning of the year, 126 contracts have been signed for homes priced at $10 million and above, according to Olshan Realty’s Monday report. That’s well ahead of last year’s 90 trophy deals that were logged during the same period, and even ahead of the 117 that were signed in the same time frame in 2021, a record-breaking year for Manhattan’s luxury-home market that included 400 trophy-home contracts.

NEW YORK, NY — Former President Barack Obama and current New York City Mayor Zorhan Mamdani delighted preschool students this week by taking turns reading passages from the Communist Manifesto. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles," Obama recited to the kids. "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Right, kids?" The preschoolers looked on in admiration and slight confusion as the two politicians continued their reading, pausing only to make sure the kids were...

Thugs waving Palestinian flags blocked traffic, took over the street, lit a fire, and performed car stunts in the family-oriented neighborhood of Middle Village, Queens, NY, last night. This is Mamdani’s NYC. Queens, NY has one of the highest concentrations of Muslims in New York City.

New York sanctuary politicians are determined to release an illegal alien arsonist who killed multiple people in order to stick it to Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Mexican national Roman Amatitla randomly selected an NYC apartment building to set ablaze on March 16. He injured seven people and killed four, including a toddler. Now he faces eight counts of second-degree murder and first-degree arson, according to the New York Post. The local authorities ought to be handing the illegal alien over to ICE, but they refuse to do so. Democrats have become so fanatical in their opposition to federal...

After a little more than 100 days in office, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has a new catch phrase: "pothole politics." The new rallying cry is not just about the 102,000 potholes the city has filled since Mamdani took office, but also is meant to suggest that socialists can solve small problems at the street level, not just advocate for big revolutionary ideological change. So what do New Yorkers think of the approach? Some call it a smart strategy, while others view it as a distraction or a return to "broken windows" politics.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and first lady Rama Duwaji have been invited to the Met Gala — but won’t be attending, sources tell Page Six. New York City’s mayor is traditionally invited by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the lavish event every year, but we’re told that Mamdani, 34, won’t be joining Condé Nast’s Anna Wintour and her coterie of celeb guests on Monday, May 4. “He’s not coming,” said a source. “And it would be foolish if he did … can you imagine? It goes against everything he believes in.” Indeed, the event is being financially subsidized by Amazon...

The New York Post reports that New York City’s First Lady, Rama Duwaji, has publicly addressed for the first time a growing controversy over past social media activity that has drawn accusations of anti-Israel rhetoric and sympathy for extremist causes. In an interview with Hyperallergic, Duwaji, 28, expressed “deep shame" over comments she made as a teenager, saying that being young does not excuse the harm caused by her words. However, her response stopped short of addressing a number of more recent and more serious allegations, leading critics to view the apology as partial and evasive. Recent reports in American...

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...

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...

Soccer mega-fan Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an emergency order that will block events including some concerts and food festivals from city parkland during the FIFA World Cup. The city Parks Department adopted the rule at the request of the NYPD, denying new permits for special events on park property during the tournament, which runs from June 11 to July 19. The directive could block any events with 20 or more people that require the special permits which could even include birthday celebrations at the Big Apple’s 100 featured parks. NYC Parks said it adopted the rule denying or restricting “special...

We reported some time ago on New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to create a “Department of Community Safety.” This is the initiative that gets characterized misleadingly as simply a plan to replace cops with social workers. It is much more than that. It is much more frightening than that. It is the ultimate fulfillment of the leftist vision of abolishing the police and substituting for them a cadre of individuals who will be empowered to forge the new society Mamdani and his Marxist supporters envision. The first step in this effort has been the creation of something called...

Churches are discouraged from ringing church bells, but these people can take over a park to show they dominate. Zohran is with them, taking it over. You didn’t expect anything different, did you?There are close to one million Muslims in New York City. Are they here to become Americans? How many are not?Go to link to view 4 video posts to X dating from 6/26/2025 to 3/20/2026.

The weather might have been extreme this winter in Manhattan, but the snow didn’t stop deep-pocketed home buyers, according to a host of market reports released this week. In the first quarter, demand for homes across the New York City borough priced between $10 million and $20 million jumped, with transactions surging 47.4% compared to the same time last year, according to data from Compass. “Despite broader market slowdowns, the luxury market continued to outperform expectations,” the report, released Tuesday, said. Townhouses in particular had a strong start to the year, according to Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller...

Iranian authorities Thursday executed a teenager convicted over January protests after a fast-track trial rights groups labelled as "grossly unfair", as the country ramps up executions during the war with the US and Israel. Amir Hossein Hatami, 18, was sentenced to death in February along with six others by a Tehran revolutionary court and was hanged at dawn in the notorious Ghezel Hesar prison outside the capital, according to Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights. The Iranian judiciary's Mizan Online website said he acted "against national security" on behalf of Israel and the United States by breaking into "a military center...

As New York City's filthy commie mayor struggles to fill a $5.4 billion budget gap with a massive soak-the-rich-then-soak-them-some-more tax hike, trillion-dollar asset management fund Apollo Global Management says it will open a secondary headquarters in Florida or Texas. "Apollo expects most of its future hiring to be in the second hub rather than Manhattan," according to the New York Post, surprising literally no one."The reality is that you can’t propose budget after budget that vilifies employees and then be surprised when they decide to go somewhere else," Partnership for New York City CEO Steve Fulop told the paper."New York...

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...

Why They Lie About ‘Jewish Terrorists’. From the West Bank to New York City, anything to distract from the obvious and looming threat of Muslim violence. By Liel Leibovitz. March 29, 2026 Jewish extremist terrorism is out of control. “A man linked to pro-Israel terrorist group” was charged “in a plot to assassinate” pro-Hamas activist Nerdeen Kiswani, The New York Times reported on Friday. Mayor Zohran Mamdani was "outraged" by the news. In a post on X, Mamdani placed the alleged plot in context of “an alarming rise in threats and violence across the country targeting Palestinian human rights advocates.”...

This week, one of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents Trump sent to JFK Airport in New York City to assist the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) saved a one-year-old child from choking to death by using the Heimlich maneuver. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who had previously asserted that "the last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country potentially to brutalize or in some instances kill them," now cautions "against letting down our guard against these dangerous and undisciplined brutes. A lion may peacefully lie...

Back in November, just days after Zohran Mamdani won his election to become the next mayor of New York City, I wrote about the cost of all of his proposals from free child care to free buses. The free child care plan alone was estimated to cost $6 to $9 billion per year and that's just the cost to offer it in NYC, which is less than half of the population of the state.The problem with all of these plans is that Mamdani had no way to pay for any of this. At the core of his big spending socialist...