Free Republic

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...

The US Supreme Court on Monday approved an emergency appeal from a Republican congresswoman in New York who asked the justices to block a state court ruling that ordered her Staten Island-based district to be redrawn ahead of the midterm election. The high court’s three liberal justices dissented from the decision. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis and state GOP election officials had urged the Supreme Court to allow New York’s current map to be used, an outcome that will benefit Republicans in the midterm amid a flurry of mid-decade redistricting in other parts of the country.

An upstate New York high school teacher was allegedly sidelined after she agreed to advise a Turning Point USA chapter on campus. Jennifer Fasulo, a Spanish teacher at Charles W. Baker High School in Baldwinsville, a Syracuse suburb, was placed on a paid leave of absence on Jan. 30, just weeks after she offered to help students establish a Club America, the high school division of the Charlie Kirk co-founded conservative group, her supporters say. “The district can confirm that a staff member has been placed on paid administrative leave while a matter is under review. We are following established...

Let's see how things are going in the communist utopia of New York, a month after Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor. Nearly two weeks after a massive winter storm hit the Big Apple, mountains of garbage line the still snow-covered streets (but not around Gracie Mansion, of course), and at least a dozen homeless people have frozen to death after Mamdani refused to force them into warming shelters despite the bitter cold. There were also blackouts, which is great when it's freezing outside.Oh, and the number of antisemitic incidents in the city has skyrocketed, and Mamdani...

It’s the blue state blues. Democratic strongholds New York and California will lose a combined six congressional seats after 2030 to the booming Sun Belt, according to an analysis of census figures released Tuesday. The Redistricting Network projected that New York state will lose two more seats in the House of Representatives in the next decade because of stagnant population growth, which critics say is more evidence of an Empire State in decline. And Americans are no longer California dreamin’ after decades of population growth — with the Golden State projected to lose four seats, the analysis said. By contrast,...

Two years ago, Zakia Khan and her son Ahsan Ijaz hosted an NYPD promotion ceremony for the first Pakistani inspector in the New York City police department. After an Imam recited a prayer and everyone, including NYPD personnel, rose and put their hands on their hearts for the Pakistani national anthem, hailing Pakistan as the ‘citadel of Islam’ in the “shadow of Allah.” Last year, Khan pleaded guilty to a $68 million Medicaid fraud scheme involving her adult day care centers, which had been the sponsors of the NYPD event, and earlier this year more members of the Muslim fraud...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's push to stop the bankruptcy sale of more than 5,000 rent-subsidized apartments in the city has been blocked, temporarily, by the federal courts. Mamdani, who was sworn into office last week, directed the city’s Law Department shortly after taking over City Hall to intervene in the bankruptcy proceedings of more than 90 buildings with apartments all owned by Pinnacle, a real estate group. The Mamdani administration says the company owes the city $12.7 million in unpaid fines for housing code violations. The company declared bankruptcy in May after defaulting on more than $560 million...

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Friday from cutting off more than $10 billion in social services and child care funding to five Democrat-led states over fraud concerns. New York District Judge Arun Subramanian, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, issued the 14-day temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit filed by state attorneys general in California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York – the states targeted by the Trump admin’s funding freeze. “This relief is preliminary in nature and is designed to protect the status quo while plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction is...

Taking advantage of a generous New York state program to aid his ailing mother, Ballal Hossain signed up a dozen family members to work as her caregivers. Over six years, they were paid $348,000 to look after the elderly woman at a Manhattan apartment. Except the mom was in Bangladesh the entire time. Incredibly, Hossain got away with the fraud by having his brother pose as their sick mother for whenever inspectors showed up, before finally being caught. He was later sentenced for grand larceny, according to prosecutors. It’s just one egregious example of a welfare program — called the...

The Hochul administration is being accused of covering up crimes in prisons by downgrading attacks committed by inmates against guards as “harassment” or “disruptive behavior” instead of assaults. A bombshell Dec. 31, 2025 memo issued by the state Corrections Department’s deputy commissioner Michael D’Amore lays out examples of what constitutes an assault and what’s considered the lower classification of harassment or disruptive behavior. “The Department has redefined the Unusual Incident (UI) category, and created harassment as a reportable UI,” D’Amore said in the memo sent to all prison superintendents and watch commanders. For example, an inmate who rips off the...

This “block party” was a bust. Scores of Zohran Mamdani fans who braved freezing temperatures to celebrate the new mayor as he was publicly sworn into office Thursday were left disappointed by the bash the socialist pol had promised. Around 10,000 supporters stood outside City Hall during the event — billed as an “Inauguration for a New Era Block Party” by Mamdani’s staff — crammed into several barricaded pens without access to bathrooms or any food concession stands. “It’s definitely not a block party,” said Danny Mahabir, 30, an Astoria resident who told The Post he’d been expecting a mix...

New legislation would require schools to teach students about the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. According to the New York State Senate, the legislation will amend the Education Law to include instruction about the Jan. 6 insurrection as part of the state’s required courses regarding patriotism, citizenship, civic education and values, shared history of diversity, religious tolerance and human rights issues. The legislation, proposed by John C. Liu from New York’s 16th Senate District, is currently in the Senate’s Education Committee. If passed and signed into law, the amendment would take effect in July.

The U.S. Supreme Court has revived a lawsuit filed by a group of Amish parents against a New York state law that removes a religious exemption to school immunizations. In an orders list released Monday, the Supreme Court vacated a lower court ruling against the parents and other plaintiffs in the case of Joseph Miller et al. v. James McDonald et al. The case was sent back to the lower court for consideration in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor, a Supreme Court decision from June in which the high court ruled 6-3 that parents can opt their children out of...

(The Center Square) – The New York City Council has struck down Mayor Eric Adams' attempt to rein in a city-funded housing voucher program, saying it could cause rents to spike for thousands of low-income residents. More than 60,000 families rely on the CityFHEPS program to help pay their rent. Participants are required to pay 30% of their income toward it. Adams wanted to raise that to 40%, arguing the city needs to contain the program's costs, which rose to more than $1.25 billion last year. In November, Adams vetoed the council's bill rejecting the increase, saying it "would undermine...

A former longtime Drug Enforcement Administration agent who rose to help oversee the agency’s financial operations has been charged with agreeing to launder millions of dollars in narcotics proceeds for a Mexican drug cartel, according to an indictment unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court in the Manhattan borough of New York City. The former agent, Paul Campo, worked for the DEA for about 25 years, the indictment said, first as a special agent in New York and eventually rising to become a high-level official — the deputy chief of the Office of Financial Operations. He retired in January 2016 and...