Free Republic

A central detail in James Talarico's political origin story has been questioned in the New York Times just days out from the midterm elections as he battles to become the first Democratic Texas senator since 1993. Talarico, a former educator who currently serves as a Texas State representative, launched his original bid for office after spending two years in a San Antonio classroom as a Teach For America fellow from 2011 to 2013, when he was in his early 20s. In his initial campaign, Talarico claimed that he taught as many as 45 students at a time and that classroom...

They want to seize the means of party production. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign guru admitted the DSA’s ultimate goal is to “take over” the Democratic Party — by running lefty darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for president. Andrew Epstein, 38, recently told a Belgian newspaper that the Democratic Socialists of America want to build on victories from over the last year, such as Mamdani’s election and comrades Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez soon-to-be joining AOC in Congress. “I think we want to take over the Democratic Party,” he told Dutch-language outlet De Tijd, according to a translation...

Mayor Zohran Mamdani tried to replace the black female head of the city’s Commission on Racial Equity after she publicly criticized him for removing any mention of DEI from its “racial equity plan” released earlier this year. Hizzoner sent a letter to the City Council this week asking lawmakers to sign off on replacing Linda Tigani with Christopher Alexander, the executive director of New York’s NAACP. The request, which was first reported by The New York Times, was quickly met with fierce backlash from the council and others in the black community who argued that removing Tigani appeared retaliatory and...

New York City's socialist experiment is going great. So great, in fact, that the city's comptroller, Mark Levine, is sounding the alarm after 30,000 private-sector jobs left the city in just two months. Levine calls the trend "concerning."Here's more:Private-sector employment dropped by 23,000 in September after losing 7,400 jobs in August — with gigs in finance and tourism leading the private sector in declines, according to a new report by City Comptroller Mark Levine’s office.“Despite a relatively strong tourism season, Leisure & Hospitality employment fell 7,700 in September alone and is down 17,000 jobs over the past year,” Levine wrote,...

Democrats are brazenly promising to throw the door wide open to fraud if they win back control of Congress this November – yet the media has virtually ignored it. Earlier this month, House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries unveiled a “first 100 days” agenda that his party plans to implement come January to deliver on “affordability.” A central part of that agenda is reversing what Democrats call the Trump administration’s “Medicaid cuts” passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) last year. The New York Times has uncritically parroted this framing, describing the plan as a “shock-and-awe legislative sprint...

WASHINGTON — New York City’s elected Democratic district attorneys are bending over backwards to keep illegal immigrants in the US, instructing prosecutors to downgrade charges to those considered “a non-deportable offense,” according to a stunning House Judiciary Committee report shared with The Post. The GOP-led panel found that Bronx DA Darcel Clark trains her subordinates “to conceal facts from the record of conviction” and “pursue alternative charges” that would keep non-citizens free to roam in America. Not even cases involving child sex crimes are off-limits — with Clark’s office asking assistant DAs in a 2019 guide to “immigration-conscious plea bargaining”...

U.S. President Donald Trump declared Representative Ilhan Omar’s seat “conceded” by Democrats over federal court filings referring to her as Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a name Omar has denied is hers. Prosecutors referred to the Democrat running for reelection in Minnesota as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar” in a federal court filing submitted Wednesday that was obtained by Newsweek. Omar pushed back the next day, saying in a post on X: “Whenever the news turns bad, this creep reaches for one name: mine. So let’s make it crystal clear. My name has always been Ilhan Omar.” On...

Yeshiva University takes its name from a Jewish study hall, where dissenting views and passionate disagreements are encouraged. However, YU’s institutionalization of DEI—a profoundly rigid, intolerant ideology—flies in the face of what a yeshiva is. YU professes to be “rooted in Jewish thought and tradition” and committed to “timeless values.” This makes sense—Jewish tradition has lasted for thousands of years and was arguably instrumental in the founding of the United States. DEI, on the other hand, is anything but timeless; it has Marxist roots, and no Marxist society has ever prospered. Alas, YU’s curricula reveals its commitment to timeless values...

BRONX, N.Y. – Republican New York gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman is courting disaffected Democrats as he seeks to unseat Gov. Kathy Hochul, betting that frustration over affordability, crime and the party's leftward shift could help him make inroads with traditionally Democratic voters. "They're not Democrats. They're socialists and communists," former Democratic Bronx Assemblyman Stephen Kaufman told Fox News Digital. "They're just not Democrats, they're not moderates." Kaufman delivered the blistering criticism while rallying alongside Blakeman at the Crosstown Diner in the Bronx, where several voters expressed similar frustrations with Democratic leadership and said they were backing the Republican candidate. "Every...

Who edits this stuff? A rant from the New York Times editorial board compares the Trump administration to some of history’s worst dictatorships:The revocation of a political opponent’s citizenship has long been a tool of authoritarian repression.The Soviet Union stripped Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the dissident author, of his citizenship in 1974 and deported him to West Germany. Czechoslovakia revoked the citizenship of Milan Kundera, another celebrated author, in 1979. East Germany and Romania, under Communist rule, took similar steps against critics, as did Chile under Augusto Pinochet, Greece under its military dictatorship, Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini. More recently,...

A genius New York teen was denied the opportunity to graduate high school early and earn his diploma to attend his dream college due to his age — despite being a full-time community college student. Michael Sweeney, a 14-year-old homeschooler, is on the verge of applying to Arizona State University to study mechanical engineering, but his dreams were dashed when Bethlehem Central School District denied his request to enter his senior year, the Times Union reported. The teen, who turns 15 in December, tried multiple times to get approval to graduate early but school officials claimed his homeschool plan didn’t...

That’s rich. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s re-election campaign has spent big bucks on posh hotels — shelling out nearly $50,000 on upscale stays in the past seven months — as the democratic socialist darling rallies against the wealthy, The Post has learned. The New York Democrat’s campaign forked over $47,000 on 45 hotel charges across the country since April, including a $5,044 bill at The Memphian — a bougie boutique hotel in Memphis, with spa services and an extravagant, animal-themed rooftop bar, filings show. The campaign also racked up bills for $1,599 and $2,694 bill at the 4-star The Candler Hotel...

Horse-drawn carriages will be banned in New York City after the City Council approved a new bill Thursday that will end a Central Park tradition that’s endured for more than 150 years. The ban passed in a veto-proof 40-7 vote, with two council members abstaining – despite a last-minute attempt to amend the proposal and push the ban back in 2030. The ban will take hold on June 1, 2028 and outlaw horse-drawn carriages across all five boroughs. That means about 200 carriage drivers will see their livelihoods – and entire industry – vanish from the city without a trace...

An internal document from the group that organized Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander’s trip to the West Bank describes Israel as "genocidal[SIC]" and engaged in "ethnic cleansing[SIC]" and says the trip’s goal is to build support for "international intervention" against Israel. The document, labeled "INTERNAL DOCUMENT: DO NOT SHARE OR CIRCULATE," is a set of talking points from Protect the Harvest, which recruits foreigners to help make Israel look bad as part of its smear campaign. Lander did his part, posting to social media that he had been "detained" by the Israel Defense Forces. Lander is the Democratic nominee for...

Hizzoner, meanwhile, regularly appears in numerous cleverly crafted TikTok videos per day — prompting insiders to lament about where his priorities lie. “The mayor and his team are obsessed with becoming a content farm, often delaying or can-kicking boring governmental meetings so the mayor and his staff can hold pitch sessions for social media videos,” one source who often works with City Hall told The Post. He had “one” job. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has signed just one bill into law in 10 months since taking office — leaving critics to wonder if the millennial mayor is more interested in social...

A motorist was killed in a drive-by shooting on the George Washington Bridge in Manhattan Tuesday night, according to cops and sources. The driver was found shot in the head on the westbound upper level of the crossing around 7 p.m. after officers responded to reports of a crash, the Port Authority Police Department and sources said. He was rushed to Englewood Hospital in New Jersey and pronounced dead, according to law enforcement sources. The suspect fled and remained on the loose late Tuesday. Investigators are pouring over security camera footage for clues into the slaying. Nobody else was injured...

New York plans to drop part of its statewide ban on Native American imagery for school sports logos. The Department of Education said Monday it will recommend that the Board of Regents, which adopted the 2023 mandate and issued a June 2025 deadline for rebranding, saying districts that didn't comply could lose state aid, now leave those decisions to local school districts. "Legal challenges brought by Long Island school boards against the Board of Regents' regulation addressing Indigenous mascots have been unsuccessful. Most recently, a federal appeals court dismissed Wantagh's challenge, finding that the district could not pursue its claims...

Labor unions are all about two things: money and control. The problem is that they go about achieving their aims through coercive means, often political, sometimes violence. In New York, for example, the union bigwigs have contrived to get their allies in the legislature to enact a bill designed to keep workers from learning about their right to opt out of paying dues to public-sector unions under the Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision. I discussed that bit of skullduggery here. In Vermont, the same political alliance has placed on the ballot a proposed amendment to the state constitution,...

Left-wing Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is being slammed over a resurfaced Columbia University research paper he authored with a “racist and eugenics outcome” that concluded Arab women should only breed with their own kind for optimal health outcomes. El-Sayed — who has repeatedly called himself a physician though he never completed his medical school residency — warned in the 2011 paper published in the “Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health” of the hazards of “interethnic mating” — which he insisted increased the risk of children being born premature.

Hakeem Jeffries was asked POINT-BLANK if a Democrat-controlled House would BRING BACK the illegal aliens Trump already deported to third countries (like Africa): Reporter: “Will the Congress under your leadership bring back the [illegal aliens] deported to third countries?” Jeffries NODS YES repeatedly 👀 and says: “We do.” Then drops this bombshell: “Trump’s mass deportation machine does NOT get a DIME.” Translation? Hand Democrats the gavel in November and they’ll DEFUND ICE, halt deportations, and try to REVERSE the ones already done — flying people BACK into America on YOUR dime while families struggle with groceries, rent, and crime. This...