Free Republic

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced plans to open the city’s first government-run supermarket in East Harlem next year, a move critics warn could cost taxpayers millions and undercut nearby private grocers. Mamdani vowed during an address celebrating his first 100 days in office Sunday that the city will have five government-run grocery stores by the end of his first term on Jan. 1, 2030, falling in line with promises made during his campaign. "I was elected as a Democratic socialist, and I will govern as a Democratic socialist," Mamdani said. But Daniel Di Martino, a Venezuelan-born fellow at...

The Trump administration will celebrate the groundbreaking of a controversial new natural gas pipeline in New York City on Tuesday — with the project set to run off the coast of the city to boost the region’s energy supply. President Trump strongly backs the Northeast Supply Enhancement pipeline and used his influence to persuade Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to approve the permits allowing the project to proceed, despite fierce opposition from anti-fossil fuel environmentalists. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Environmental Protection Secretary Lee Zeldin will attend the event at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, hosted by Williams...

A maniac slashed three elderly people with a machete in an unprovoked attack and was fatally shot by cops at Grand Central Terminal Saturday morning — causing mayhem that sent commuters fleeing the iconic station, police and witnesses said. An 85-year-old man and a 65-year-old man were slashed in their heads on the 4, 5, 6 subway platform at at 9:50 a.m., police said. A 70-year-old woman was also slashed, but it wasn’t clear where on her body, cops said. Two NYPD detectives confronted the 44-year-old and told him to drop the machete. He ignored their commands and was shot...

Another workshop called “The Belonging Lab: A Hands-On Design Studio for Story, Structure and Courageous Dialogue” describes itself as inviting “participants to dig into African indigenous knowledge systems long ignored or undervalued, remembering how communities sustained wisdom, governance, healing and education outside of books and beyond educational colonial structures.”

He’s Zo-ing back on his word. Many of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s lofty campaign promises have already bit the dust 100 days in, as he makes a U-turn or scales them back almost beyond recognition. His improbable path from democratic socialist also-ran to victory in 2025’s election came in no small part from the sweeping, voter-pleasing pledges. While his marquee platforms of universal child care, fast and free buses and a rent freeze clearly captured voters’ imaginations, he made a slew of other promises that would quickly — and significantly — reshape New York City, including: City-owned grocery stores Mamdani’s early...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released his "Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan" on Monday, which quickly prompted pushback from conservatives online and skepticism from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, with one top official saying she will "review" the move. Mamdani’s office explained in a press release that the preliminary report, which the mayor had promised to release within 100 days in office, shows racial disparities in areas like housing, education, and income, and the new plan aims to "establish a new framework for how New York City measures affordability, understands inequity and plans for a more equitable future." "The...

The two terror suspects accused of trying to bomb a protest outside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's residence last month, in what authorities have described as an ISIS-inspired attack, were indicted on Tuesday, according to federal prosecutors. Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, and Emir Balat, 18, are accused of throwing live explosive devices into a protest outside Mamdani's Gracie Mansion residence on March 7, after driving from Pennsylvania. The bombs failed to detonate and nobody was injured. Both were charged with eight counts: conspiracy to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization, provision and attempted provision of material...

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...

Instead of taxing the rich, Mayor Zohran Mamdani could fill nearly half of NYC’s projected $5.4 billion budget gap by simply collecting unpaid taxes and fines from deadbeats. As of Feb. 28, the city was sitting on $1.1 billion in uncollected property taxes, according to the city Comptroller’s Office. And it has also been unable to collect another $1.3 billion in Environmental Control Board fines usually issued for construction, zoning, and safety code violations, the Finance Department said. In all, the uncollected taxes and fines total an astounding $2.4 billion. That’s 44% of the amount Mamdani claims he needs to...

Lefty TikToker tries to bait ICE agents at JFK airport — see their flawless reaction A doctor who is a lefty TikToker tried to rile up Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at JFK Airport with some obnoxious insults — but they wouldn’t bite. Dr. Jennifer Lincoln, an OB-GYN doctor and who has more than 2.8 million followers on the social media app, approached the ICE officers in vests in the Queens airport terminal and initially appeared to be thanking them before pulling out the rug and berating them, a video she posted Thursday shows. “Excuse me,” she says to the...

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to tax his way out of the Big Apple’s self-imposed fiscal crisis is facing a fresh and little-discussed threat, according to well-placed financiers – and it’s coming from artificial intelligence. As I reported earlier this week, investors lately have begun to shun city debt – either selling it in the secondary market or balking at buying its newly issued bonds – over concerns that Mamdani’s numbers aren’t adding up. The worry is that his $127 billion budget still faces a $5.4 billion deficit and that his solutions – like raising taxes on anyone who works –...

A Brooklyn Council member, her sister — an aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul — and the husband of a Democratic state Assembly member are being investigated by federal prosecutors looking into whether they took bribes to help a migrant shelter provider that has received $200 million in city contracts, according to a report. Democratic Councilwoman Farah Louis and her sister, Debbie Louis, who served as Hochul’s assistant secretary of New York City intergovernmental affairs, were named in a search warrant obtained by the Associated Press seeking evidence for possible criminal violations. Edu Hermelyn, the husband of state Assembly Member and...

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...

As Gov. Kathy Hochul looks to rework New York's climate goals, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's climate chief says the city's own environmental benchmarks are critical to improving affordability in the five boroughs. Hochul is asking lawmakers to push the timeline set forth in the state’s climate law, which called for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40%, from 2030 to 2040. The governor has said her actions are motivated by affordability, and that implementing the law under the existing terms would be onerously expensive for New Yorkers. In contrast, New York City is moving ahead without political delays. Chief Climate Officer Louise...

An 83-year-old veteran who was allegedly shoved onto subway tracks in New York City by an illegal immigrant with a long criminal history has died from his injuries, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday. Richard Williams, a retired Air Force pilot, died March 17 after he and another man were allegedly pushed onto the tracks at the Lexington Avenue-63rd Station days earlier. The alleged attacker, Honduran national Bairon Posada-Hernandez, 34, was arrested March 10 and faces a murder charge. John Pena, 30, the other man allegedly pushed onto the tracks, helped pull Williams back onto the platform moments before...

Critics say she’s not the brightest bulb! A state lawmaker has a dim-witted plan that would force the Empire State Building and nearly all of New York City to go dark after 11 p.m. — but detractors say the plan would let criminals run wild under the cloak of night. The “Dark Skies Protection Act,” sponsored by Manhattan Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, would require Big Apple businesses and residents to hit the off switch between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. to save energy, help migratory birds and avoid “light pollution,” according to the proposed bill. The goal is to “preserve and...

The “extraordinarily low” six-month sentence handed to a trans illegal immigrant who admitted to sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in Manhattan sparked outrage Wednesday from a victims’ rights group and left even former prosecutors in shock. Legal eagles were baffled by the slap-on-the-wrist plea deal the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office struck with Nicol Alexandra Contreras-Suarez, a 31-year-old transgender woman from Colombia, in the vicious 2025 assault of a 14-year-old boy in East Harlem. “I didn’t know you could get six months on this,” said Seth Zuckerman, a former prosecutor in the Brooklyn DA’s Office and current criminal defense lawyer. “It’s...

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...

Comptroller Mark Levine said Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to draw down $1.2 billion in reserves to balance the budget could make things even worse for taxpayers when it’s time to cook up next year’s spending plan. “You do not want to be draining the reserves when the economy is otherwise good,” Levine said Sunday on CBS 2 New York’s “The Point with Marcia Kramer.” Raiding $1.2 billion next year and $2.6 billion over the next two years as the Mamdani administration plans would leave the city flatfooted if the economy goes south. “It’s going to leave us more vulnerable next...

Deadbeat drivers left nearly $350 million in tolls unpaid in 2025 — more than double the annual total from three years earlier, a new MTA analysis estimated. The staggering figure comes after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority adopted a “cashless” system — with officials now looking turning for the state to pass legislation that would take extreme measures in some cases, like allow the agency to put liens on the property or bank accounts of scofflaws. “Preliminary data for 2025 indicate that upward trend has continued, and interventions adopted in 2024 have not gone far enough to mitigate impacts of persistent...