Free Republic

Pro-Palestinian radicals vandalized the constituency office of Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) in New York City early Tuesday, smashing windows, smearing the façade with red paint, and painting “Free Gaza” on the sidewalk outside. The attack occurred shortly after October 7, the anniversary of the Hamas terror attack in Israel. There had been anti-Israel protests in New York City all day, with some demonstrators celebrating terrorism as a form of “resistance.” The New York Post, which obtained surveillance video of the attack, reported Wednesday:

On Sunday night, just hours after a second attempt on President Donald Trump’s life, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the State of Florida will be conducting its own investigation. DeSantis posted on X, “The State of Florida will be conducting its own investigation regarding the attempted assassination at Trump International Golf Club.” “The people deserve the truth about the would-be assassin and how he was able to get within 500 yards of the former president and current GOP nominee.” The State of Florida will be conducting its own investigation regarding the attempted assassination at Trump International Golf Club. The...

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) condemned the Houthi terrorist organization of Yemen on Tuesday for raiding its office in the national capital, Sana’a, stealing critical documents, and taking employees hostage. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk demanded the freedom of his employees and uninterrupted access to Yemeni civilians in a statement on Tuesday revealing a previously unreported Houthi raid on U.N. officials on August 3. The Houthis, whose Iran-backed terrorist organization is formally known as “Ansarallah,” have for years brutalized human rights workers within their reach. More recently, in June, the Houthis...

An unknown male suspect burglarized former President Donald Trump’s campaign office in Ashburn, Virginia, on Sunday night, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said Monday. Republican offices are often attacked: The RNC headquarters in Washington, DC, was reportedly subject to a biological attack in May. Party headquarters in San Jose, California, was attacked in 2022, followed by an attack on the Seminole County, Florida, Republican Party headquarters. The suspect in Virginia, whom surveillance video showed to be carrying a backpack and wearing a black baseball cap, appeared to stuff items into the bag during the burglary. He remains on the run.

From furniture installers to plant whisperers, businesses are reeling from record-high office vacancy rates.Bay Area carpet and flooring company Conklin Bros. has existed in one form or another for nearly a century and a half, starting with a mule-drawn wagon and weathering the 1906 earthquake and a constant cycle of economic booms and busts. An employee for the past 35 years, JoAnn Edson, can’t remember business ever being as slow as it is now. “We’re struggling,” she said. “We’re just trying to stay open and stay afloat.” Before Covid, Conklin Bros. bustled with flooring orders for local offices, hotels and...

President Joe Biden spoke publicly for the first time since bowing out of the presidential race on Sunday, vowing to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris while remaining president despite calls for him to resign. It is unclear if Harris wants Biden’s help on the campaign trail. They both have similar average favorability and approval ratings in the mid-30s “I’m not going anywhere,” he told supporters on a Harris campaign call. “I’m going to be out there and campaign with her, with Kamala,” he continued, with a raspy voice. “I’m going to be working like hell, both as a sitting...

The thronged Bryant Park area will soon be even more thronged. Salesforce, the powerhouse software company that’s the largest tenant at 1095 Sixth Ave. at West 42nd Street, is poised to bring most of its employees back to their offices. An internal Salesforce memo advised staff that most employees must return to their desks by Oct. 1, according to online news site San Francisco Standard. The directive appeared to apply to Salesforce staff everywhere, not only in its San Francisco headquarters. The reported memo said, “Select employees in sales, workplace services, data center engineering and onsite support technicians under the...

The national office vacancy rate hit a record 19.8% in the first quarter of 2024, according to a preliminary report from Moody’s Analytics. And it could get worse, as companies continue to lease substantial space despite a decline in the in-office footprint. The 'urban doom loop' cycleWhile the shift to remote work in recent years offers plenty of flexibility to employees, some experts have concerns the decline in office building usage could spell a more sinister problem for big cities. “Everybody’s affected by this issue,” Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, told CNN. Van...

Homework clubThe pandemic turned the world upside down. People stockpiled toilet paper, did yoga over Zoom, baked banana bread, bought Pelotons, went crazy for online shopping, and anyone who was even thinking about buying a pool went and got one. Pretty much all of those trends have since returned to normal, but a major one has remained: working from home.According to new data published in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Time Use Survey for 2023, ~35% of all employed persons in the US spent the average working day doing at least some of their work from home — up from...

Imagine San Francisco 18 years from now. That’s more than four mayoral terms, at least one fashion cycle and nearly one Van Ness rapid bus lane project away. Generation Alpha—who will be adults—will likely be calling Gen Z “out of touch” by then. And—according to new long-term projections from real estate firm Avison Young—San Francisco won’t be left with a glut of empty office buildings anymore. On that front, the situation midway through 2024 is pretty grim. The city has the highest vacancy rate of any major market in the country—at more than 30%. Using previous recovery periods as a...

Paul Ryan, a Fox Corporation Board of Directors member, said Tuesday on FNC’s “Your World” that former President Donald Trump is “unfit for office.” Host Neil Cavuto asked, “Now, I know a lot of these folks who also shared your same concerns about Donald Trump that sort of said, all right, we’re rallying around Donald Trump. You said that would not be the case with you. You had said that he’s a populist and an authoritarian narcissist. That character is too important to me, and it’s a job that requires the kind of character he just doesn’t have. That’s pretty...

The owners of 64 New York City office buildings are eyeing a drastic transformation: turning their commercial properties into housing, according to fresh data from the Department of City Planning. In an interview with Gothamist, City Planning Director Dan Garodnick revealed that these owners or their reps have reached out to the city’s Office Conversion Accelerator Program to do so. This initiative aims to simplify the labyrinth of rules and building codes, assisting owners in repurposing their spaces. It’s a key part of Mayor Eric Adams’ bold plan to create 20,000 new apartments over the next decade, easing the Big...

CLAIM: President Joe Biden claimed during an interview with Yahoo Finance that inflation was nine percent when he took office in January 2021. VERDICT: FALSE. A report from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate was at 1.4 percent in January 2021, when Biden came into office.

The Biden administration is being ridiculed for hypocrisy as it touts 'energy savings' at federal buildings that are nearly empty of workers - and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm recently celebrated the Biden administration's efforts to reach net-zero emissions from federal buildings by establishing a rule outlawing the use of fossil fuels on-site. 'The Biden-Harris Administration is practicing what we preach,' Granholm said in a statement about the rule. 'Just as we are helping households and businesses across the nation save money by saving energy, we are doing the same in our own federal buildings.' But...

The Biden administration is being ridiculed for hypocrisy as it touts 'energy savings' at federal buildings that are nearly empty of workers - and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm recently celebrated the Biden administration's efforts to reach net-zero emissions from federal buildings by establishing a rule outlawing the use of fossil fuels on-site. 'The Biden-Harris Administration is practicing what we preach,' Granholm said in a statement about the rule. 'Just as we are helping households and businesses across the nation save money by saving energy, we are doing the same in our own federal buildings.' But...

During an interview with Univision that took place last Wednesday and aired on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said that he hopes his legacy is that he kept his word and did what he said he would do and that the reason he ran for office “was to help the life of ordinary people and reduce the prospect of war and — because of Vietnam.” Interviewer Enrique Acevedo asked, “Do you think a lot about legacy, because we’re talking about over 50 years of public service, and, regardless of the outcome, this might be your last political campaign, you’ve done a...

The mayor of the ultra-liberal, near-north Chicago suburb of Evanston wants to apply for a slice of a $20 million county grant to turn an abandoned office building in his city into a new migrant shelter in a bid to help take migrants off the hands of officials in Chicago. Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss (D) announced his intention to apply to Cook County’s recently created $100 million-dollar “disaster response and recovery” fund, of which $20 million is set aside for migrants, to help him rehab an empty office building near Church Street and Oak Avenue. Biss wants to turn the...

Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) had choice words for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Saturday comments, calling him a “maniac” who “needs” to be removed from office. The progressive Democrat initially discussed the Biden administration transferring 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs, 500 MK82 500-pound bombs and 25 F-35A fighter jets to Israel without notifying lawmakers, an arms package reported exclusively by the Washington Post on Friday.

More than two-thirds of managers report that they’re under immense pressure to squeeze more out of their workers, according to a recent Slack survey of 18,000 knowledge workers. Amid major concerns about stagnant or declining worker productivity in the post-COVID era, one would think government and corporate leaders might ask whether they themselves aren’t the ones doing something wrong. One thing many of them ignore to their own disadvantage is the extensive evidence that flexible hybrid work is more productive than forced in-office work for the same roles. For example, according to the annual report by the Office of Personnel...

Across the country, deals are starting to pick up, revealing just how far real estate prices have fallen. That’s spurring widespread concern about losses that can ripple across the global financial system — as underscored by the recent turmoil unleashed by New York Community Bancorp, Japan’s Aozora Bank and Germany’s Deutsche Pfandbriefbank as they took steps to brace for bad loans. In Manhattan, brokers have started to market debt backed by a Blackstone-owned office building at a roughly 50% discount. A prime office tower in Los Angeles sold in December for about 45% less than its purchase price a decade...