Free Republic

Days after the Pride flag was raised for the first time ever at Webster Town Hall, it was taken down. The move came as the result of a new flag policy passed Thursday by the Town Board in a 3-2 vote. Town Board member John Cahill introduced the policy, which established the United States flag and the New York state flag as the only ones allowed on flagpoles on town propert

New York bill replaces ‘mother’ with ‘gestating parent’ in state lawA memo accompanying the legislation says the change is needed to align with standards for family court cases involving same-sex parents and surrogate parents.The New York state legislature passed a bill that replaces the words “mother” and “father” with “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent” in child custody and parental laws.The gender-neutral terms, reminiscent of the dystopian fiction Brave New World, would be included in domestic and education law under the bill, according to the New York Post.“‘Paternity’ proceedings to determine a child’s biological father would meanwhile become ‘parentage’ cases,” the...

Some Black New Yorkers are demanding cash reparations from the government as state officials consider some form of compensation for slavery or other past racial injustices. “We need $800,000 for each foundation of Black Americans. That’s simple,” Aubrey Muhammud told Fox News Digital. “That’s — in New York — that’s about the cost of living that’ll get you a home or a small business or for you to recover from any financial duress.” The New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies held a public hearing last Saturday. The hearing followed up on when Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2023 signed...

Now that Republicans have narrow control of the House of Representatives, the GOP is investigating the Biden administration with gusto. Still, Republicans seem not to have noticed one major foreign policy scandal that's hiding in plain sight. As I recently reported , the rising scandal surrounding retired FBI senior official Charles McGonigal is perhaps the worst in the bureau’s history. Multiple sources have told me that McGonigal, while still serving with the FBI as head of counterintelligence in New York, shook down Balkan business people, most of them Albanian, in an audacious political corruption scheme worth many millions of dollars....

Two New York Democrats running in a hotly contested congressional primary pledged federal funding for “Drag Story Hour” — as records show city and state taxpayers have paid nearly $700,000 to boost the program. Incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman and his opponent, former city Comptroller Brad Lander, both told an LGBTQ Democratic club that they support dishing out federal money to subsidize the program, which invited drag queens into schools to read to young children. “Unfortunately, the Majority does not allow funding from Members of Congress to support LGBTQIA+ programming,” Goldman wrote in on a questionnaire from the Jim Owles LGBT...

When serial killer Rex Heuermann returns to court on June 17, eight families will finally receive justice. Heuermann, who has pleaded guilty to the murders of eight young women whose bodies were left on Gilgo Beach and elsewhere here in Suffolk County, is set to receive three life sentences without parole, followed by 100 years to life in prison.

A notorious trans-identifying serial killer has been convicted in the brutal 2022 slaying of 68-year-old Susan Leyden, whose dismembered headless torso was discovered in a shopping cart near her apartment in Brooklyn, New York City. Harvey "Marceline" Marcelin, 87, of New York, was found guilty by a Brooklyn Supreme Court jury on May 7 of first-degree murder, evidence tampering, and concealment of a human corpse. He faces a maximum life sentence without the possibility of parole, the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office said. The defendant had two prior murder convictions and was out on parole when he brutally murdered Leyden, making...

The ink isn’t even dry on New York City’s proposed pied-à-terre tax — and one Miami Beach tower is already counting the money. At the Perigon Miami Beach, a 72-unit oceanfront condominium in Mid-Beach designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas’s firm OMA, developers say they logged more than $70 million in sales from New York buyers in the 30 days after the building reached its full structural height in early March. The project, developed by Mast Capital, is priced from $12.55 million and expects to open in 2027. It is no coincidence, on April 15, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and...

Don’t break up because of that Mam! New York leaders are desperately trying to stop billionaire bigwigs from hightailing it out of the Big Apple with their cash, businesses and thousands of jobs — as fears mount that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s policies will accelerate the Empire State’s nation-leading loss of wealth. The splashy one-two punch of Citadel CEO Ken Griffin and Apollo Global Management honcho Marc Rowan pledging to expand outside New York City has been coupled with a silent wave of businesses “quiet quitting” the city over its hostile environment, insiders told The Post. The burgeoning biz bolt has...

Rudy Giuliani is hospitalized in critical condition, his spokesman said on Sunday. The spokesman, Ted Goodman, said in a statement the former New York City mayor is critical but stable. The statement does not say what happened. "Mayor Rudy Giuliani is currently in the hospital, where he remains in critical but stable condition," the statement said. "Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he's fighting with that same level of strength as we speak.

Working at a 24/7 bodega in the heart of Brooklyn, Tajuken Deli employees are prepared for almost anything – except having guns pointed at their heads by cops. That’s what seemed to be happening one early April morning last year, when four armed men dressed in police uniforms flashed their badges, yelling “NYPD” as they stormed the neighborhood shop. Surveillance video shows one worker being quickly knocked to the ground and zip-tied into submission before being dragged to the back of the store. Another worker and customer were also subdued as the masked thieves dressed as cops made off with...

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.

The state of New York would now like to require these sisters to assign patient rooms by gender identity rather than biological sex, grant access to opposite-sex bathrooms, use preferred pronouns, undergo state-mandated training in gender ideology, and post notices of compliance with the progressive vision of human nature — or risk fines, loss of their license, and up to one year in prison.

ALBANY – State lawmakers will blow past Wednesday’s deadline to pass Gov. Kathy Hochul’s $263 billion budget plan, as negotiations drag on over her push to delay green energy mandates and her bid to lower car insurance premiums. Democrats in the state Assembly and Senate passed a one-week stopgap measure Tuesday keeping the government funded through next week amid the largely-stalled discussions between Hochul and legislative leaders. “We’re still at the beginning of the middle, as it turns out,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) said, using a stale Albany adage to indicate the discussions have not moved much since...

For generations, the conventional wisdom went something like this: serious money lives in New York. The serious decisions about who gets capital, who gets to list on an exchange, who gets to participate in the grand machinery of American finance—all of it emanated from a few square miles of lower Manhattan, governed by institutions so entrenched they seemed geological. Wall-Street wasn’t just an address. It was a statement about where power lived and who held it. That era is ending. And the remarkable thing isn’t simply that it’s ending — it’s why it’s ending, and what that tells us about...

Newly released bodycam footage from the Fall 2025 ICE raid at Nutrition Bar Confectioners warehouse in Cato, NY is now public. Homeland Security investigators obtained employee records from the New York State Department of Labor showing that at least 134 of the 224 workers were using fraudulent Social Security numbers—including SSNs belonging to deceased individuals, according to the sworn affidavit. The question many are asking: how are illegal aliens obtaining and using Social Security numbers in the first place? We were told that they aren't and cannot obtain Social Security numbers. All the more reason to get the SAVE Act...

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...

Six people are in custody after two homemade explosive devices were tossed outside Gracie Mansion Saturday during competing anti- and pro-Muslim protests, causing a panic. Dozens of demonstrators and counter-protesters fled as smoke started to billow from a device which appeared to have a lit fuse and was wrapped in duct tape. There were no injuries and no explosion at roughly 12:30 p.m. standoff, police said. A second device was also seen, according to the NYPD. Those devices were glass jars wrapped in electrical tape containing bolts, screws, and nuts and featuring a hobby fuse “that could be lit,” according...

Protesters honoring Iran’s slain supreme leader in Manhattan chanted anti-US and anti-Israel slogans before violence broke out when a counter-protester tore down a poster of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, prompting a beating and police intervention. Protesters chanting “Death to America, death to Israel” gathered in New York City on Friday to honor slain Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, before the event descended into violence in Washington Square Park. The chants, delivered in Farsi, rang out during a small vigil organized in Manhattan following Khamenei’s death last week in an Israeli airstrike in Tehran. Participants set up a makeshift memorial...

Critics, including us, have been warning that New Yorkers’ energy costs are about to soar even higher, thanks to the state’s insane 2019 climate law. Now, a state agency itself is confirming those warnings — and has even put a price tag on the pain: a whopping $4,100 a year extra per household by 2031. That’s just for electricity, reports the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency; the bill for gas for home heating, as well as gasoline costs, are also set to shoot up. At the pump a gallon of gas is expected to go up an...