New York City recently fired nearly 1,500 municipal workers who failed to comply with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, officials said Monday.
City officials said 1,430 workers were fired Friday and that the number represents less than 1% of the city’s 370,000-person workforce. The number was also far smaller than what they had predicted.
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State University of New York at Fredonia Professor Stephen Kershnar has been relieved of his on-campus duties and “will not have contact with students” pending an investigation by the school, according to the popular Twitter page LibsofTikTok.
On Feb. 1, LibsofTikTok posted video footage of the Kershnar claiming that there is a moral justification for having sex with children as young as one-year-old, comparing it to “willing” participation in kickball.
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The controversial new District Attorney for Manhattan, New York City has ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking harsh sentences against murderers and terrorists, including life sentences without the possibility of parole.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D-N.Y.) issued a memo on January 3rd prohibiting his staff from pursuing sentences such as life in prison, and even went so far as to suggest that they never pursue sentences any harsher than 20 years behind bars.
“My commitment to making incarceration a matter of last resort is immutable,” Bragg said in the memo. “In exceptionally serious cases such as homicides where lengthy periods of incarceration are justified, ADAs shall consider the use of restorative justice as a mitigating factor in determining the length of the sentence, only when victims or their loved ones consent.”
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Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo started 2022 much like he ended 2021, with an apparent legal victory.
A lawyer for the disgraced ex-leader of the state said Monday that the Manhattan district attorney’s office ended its investigation into the Cuomo administration’s nursing home policies during the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis without pressing any charges.
“I was told that after a thorough investigation – as we have said all along – there was no evidence to suggest any laws were broken,” Elkan Abramowitz, former outside counsel for the executive chamber, said in a statement posted by Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi on Twitter.
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Democrats four years ago rode a blue wave to governors’ mansions across the country, flipping Republican-held seats in the Midwest, Northeast and West alike.
Now, however, many of those governors face Republican challengers amid a political environment that looks potentially promising for the GOP, meaning that contentious races may lie ahead in some of the nation’s most pivotal battleground states. Republicans have already had two strong showings in states that lean Democratic, flipping the governor’s seat in Virginia and coming surprisingly close in New Jersey, a state that voted for President Joe Biden by 16 points in 2020.
Governors in less competitive states are also facing primary challengers from the left and right, making for multiple bitter, closely-followed primaries between candidates from different wings of the same party.
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Over half of the states in the U.S. will institute a minimum wage increase in 2022, according to a report.
A total of 26 states will raise the minimum wage in 2022, with 22 of the states starting the pay hikes on Jan. 1, accordingto payroll experts at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.
“These minimum wage increases indicate moves toward ensuring a living wage for people across the country,” Deirdre Kennedy, senior payroll analyst at Wolters Kluwer, said in the report. “In addition to previously approved incremental increases, the change in presidential administration earlier this year and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic have also contributed to these changes.”
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Former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will not face any charges over alleged inappropriate conduct investigated by the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, according to an announcement Tuesday.
The decision came after a “thorough” investigation into allegations made by two women against Cuomo, according to the announcement. Both women accused the former governor of kissing them without their consent.
“Our investigation found credible evidence to conclude that the alleged conduct in both instances described above did occur,” the announcement said.
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Buzzfeed’s holiday party appears to have become a super-spreader event, despite a company-wide vaccine mandate that required partygoers to present their vaccination cards in order to get into the event.
Three BuzzFeed staffers were reportedly infected with COVID-19 following the company’s Christmas party in Manhattan last week, and about six others are awaiting test results after becoming ill.
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On Thursday, a lawsuit was filed against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D-N.Y.) over the state’s “public nuisance law,” which allows private citizens to sue gun stores and gun manufacturers if their weapons are used in an unrelated crime, CNN reports.
The law, signed into law in July, is the first of its kind in the nation, making gun stores and manufacturers liable in any civil suits that may result from firearms being used to commit crimes, even if the distributors had no role in the crime itself. It was deliberately signed as an attempt to circumvent the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a federal law which specifically granted immunity to arms manufacturers and distributors in such cases.
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My elementary and high school teachers never did a good job of explaining American federalism. They left me and, I suspect, many of my fellow students confused. Perhaps they were a little confused themselves: If the federal government’s laws are supreme and can overrule state’s laws, why not just have all laws uniformly adopted at the federal level?
The federal government was not, of course, intended to be what it has become: the daily manager of every citizen’s life. The founders envisioned a federal government that remained in the background, available when it was necessary to get all the states fighting together to win a war, present to help explain a unified foreign policy, and above all to guarantee that goods and people could flow freely from one state to another with no impediment. (That last point is the reason for the interstate commerce clause.) Any national government more aggressive than that would never have been adopted by the liberty-minded states that had just won the Revolutionary War, and even that proved a hard sell: Two years and the addition of a Bill of Rights were required before a sufficient number of states were willing to ratify.
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Amid ongoing calls for increased student-employee compensation, student protests at Columbia University Wednesday resulted in “physical harassment against faculty” and staff, according to an email obtained by Campus Reform.
Provost Mary C. Boyce sent the following message Thursday:
“Yesterday’s Morningside campus protest by the Student Workers of Columbia-UAW included instances of physical harassment against faculty, students, and staff. These individuals were attempting to go to work, pursue their studies, or enter or exit their dormitories, and several incurred injuries when they sought to enter campus. No matter our differences at the bargaining table, violence has no place in this process, and we denounce these actions in the strongest possible terms.”
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On Monday, an explosive report by the New York State Assembly revealed that former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) himself made direct edits to the initial report on how many senior citizens died of the Chinese coronavirus in New York nursing homes, as the Daily Caller reports.
The report from the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee is the culmination of an eight-month impeachment investigation against the disgraced former governor. The report says that Cuomo directed the New York Department of Health (DOH) to reduce the total number of fatalities by thousands so as to push back on criticism of Cuomo’s decision in March of 2020 to force COVID-positive patients into nursing homes, which infected and killed thousands of other senior citizens.
The original draft of the report prepared by DOH officials showed over 10,000 total nursing home deaths, but upon Cuomo’s insistence, it was reduced to about 6,500.
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New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday officially launched a bid for governor against Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.
James’ announcement comes just two months after the resignation of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo due to multiple claims of sexual harassment. As attorney general, James oversaw the five-month investigation into the claims, which the inquiry found to be credible.
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The FBI will investigate threats and intimidation against school board members, administrators, teachers, and staff, United States Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Oct. 4. In so doing, Garland claimed federal jurisdiction over local law enforcement, in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution.
This power grab by the AG supposedly came as a response to a letter from the National School Boards Association (NSBA), a leftist advocacy group with vast influence over the nation’s school boards. To gain some insight into how this ukase or edict is playing out, I attended a school board meeting in the charming village of Greenwich (“It’s Greeen-wich, not Gren-itch”) in northern New York state.
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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday that all New York City municipal workers would be required to have a COVID-19 vaccination.
All municipal employees, including police and firefighters, will have until Oct. 29 to receive their first shot or risk losing their jobs, according to de Blasio. City employees will receive an additional $500 in their paychecks after receiving their first dose.
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Eric Adams, the likely next mayor of New York City, said Friday he would keep and expand the city’s gifted program which current Democratic Mayor Bill De Blasio planned to eliminate.
“[De Blasio] can’t get rid of it until next year. There’s nothing to put back in place,” Adams told a CNN host when asked if he would reinstate the city’s gifted program.
Adams said New York needs to expand accelerated learning by testing children throughout their educational experience. Under the current system, children are tested for the gifted program at four years old, before they have entered the school system.
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An a significant blow to one of the nation’s strictest vaccine mandates, a federal judge ruled that healthcare workers in New York can apply for religious exemptions from the statewide mandate, according to CNN.
The ruling was made on Tuesday by U.S. District Court Judge David Hurd, with Hurd declaring that the New York State Department of Health is “barred from interfering in any way with the granting of religious exemptions from Covid-19 vaccination going forward, or with the operation of exemptions already granted.”
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In the past year, Congress has rushed more than $204 billion in federal emergency funds to states to support K-12 schools.
But 23 states had fewer incoming students this fall. This declining enrollment is likely in part due to pandemic-related trends but is also a symptom of changing birth rates and families geographically relocating.
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Bank Street Graduate School of Education recently touted its new “affinity groups” for White students and “students of color.”
The New York City-based college announced the groups in a September 23 blog post, telling prospective students that “becoming part of an ongoing conversation about race and ourselves as racial beings is one way to engage in this necessary aspect of the work we need to do.”
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Rochester parents and community members who refuse to wear masks during school board meetings will be banned from district property for one year.
Rochester Public Schools Board Chair Jean Marvin announced the new policy during a Sept. 21 meeting.
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Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang will soon be announcing the launch of his very own political party, after he has officially left the Democratic Party, the New York Post reports.
The former entrepreneur is set to announce his new party alongside the release of his new book, “Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy,” which comes out on October 5th. The book’s publisher, Penguin Random House subsidiary Crown, promotes the book as “a powerful and urgent warning that we must step back from the brink and plot a new way forward for our democracy.”
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Now relegated to the history files of the New York’s police department, a September 2001 after-action report prepared by then-NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik for then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani provides a stunning account of what happened on the deadliest day in American history as four hijacked planes pierced the sunny, blue morning skies 20 years ago.
Nineteen terrorists — working under the command of Osama bin Laden (since executed by the U.S. military) and his chief planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (since captured and on trial now at Guantanamo Bay) — exacted unspeakable carnage on an unsuspecting country that was forever changed.
The report, provided by Kerik to Just the News as part of its “9/11: Never Forget” podcast special, details how the NYPD executed “Condition Omega,” an emergency plan that achieved an unprecedented sealing of the Big Apple, an historic evacuation of hundreds of thousands from the city’s financial district and a grim, gruesome recovery of more than 2,500 bodies, including hundreds of police officers and firefighters who rushed into the burning Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and its adjoining command center.
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The nation’s largest LGBTQ rights advocacy group has fired its president for advising Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on the #METOO allegations against the governor.
The two Human Rights Campaign (HRC) boards terminated Alphonso David “for cause” Monday evening, The New York Times reported. David called his termination unjust in a Monday evening statement and accused the HRC board of lying to him about its investigation.
“As a black, gay man who has spent his whole life fighting for civil and human rights, they cannot shut me up,” he said. “Expect a legal challenge.”
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The New School’s mascot, a Narwhal named Gnarls, got a gender-neutral redesign for the Fall 2021 semester, the university reports.
Gnarls backstory includes an “unconventional” upbringing due to “distressing levels of ice loss” that forced the Narwhal’s family out of its Antarctica home.
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul disclosed on her first day in office nearly 12,000 COVID-19 deaths that were previously unreported in the state’s data tracker during former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration.
The New York State Department of Health’s COVID-19 data tracker reported Wednesday nearly 55,395 virus deaths in the state reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since the start of the pandemic, just under 12,000 more than the roughly 43,400 COVID-19 deaths disclosed in the state-managed tracker on Cuomo’s last day in office.
The discrepancy results from the Cuomo administration’s decision to report only laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases in which patients died at hospitals, nursing homes and adult care facilities. The Cuomo administration’s tally deliberately excluded New Yorkers who died from COVID-19 at their homes, hospices, state prisons or state-run homes for those with disabilities.
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The second TIME’S UP co-founder has resigned from her position following backlash over reports that she worked against Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s accusers.
“Now is the time for Time’s Up to evolve and move forward as there is so much more work to do for women,” TIME’S UP co-founder Tina Tchen said in a statement, according to The Washington Post. “It is clear that I am not the leader who can accomplish that in this moment.”
“I am especially aware that my position at the helm of Time’s Up has become a painful and divisive focal point, where those very women and other activists who should be working together to fight for change are instead battling each other in harmful ways,” she added.
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A majority of New York lawmakers were ready to remove Gov. Andrew Cuomo from office over misconduct allegations, a removal that was only averted by his resignation. But despite the near-universal condemnation of his actions as governor, Cuomo still stands to earn a substantial pension from taxpayers for his time in office.
News reports this week indicate that Cuomo has filed for his pension as the date when he has promised to resign, Aug, 24, draws near.
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Under the glare of a looming impeachment, precipitated by Attorney General Letitia James’ report of Andrew Cuomo’s sexual harassment of 11 women, Cuomo transformed before our eyes from beloved Emmy winner to “the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing.” And it all happened faster than you could say, “Cuomo is responsible for the deaths of more than 15,000 nursing home residents from COVID-19 because of his incompetent-at-best-and-criminal-at-worst handling of the pandemic.”
What happened? Why did the preventable, tragic deaths of 15,000 elderly New Yorkers not sink Cuomo, but the allegations of 11 women about sexual misconduct on his part did?
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday he will resign from office in 14 days, bowing to pressure following a bombshell attorney general report accusing him of violating federal and state laws involving sexual harassment of subordinates.
Earlier Tuesday, an attorney for the governor held a press conference in an attempt to discredit elements of the New York Attorney General’s report, which was released last week. Rita Glavin, who is representing the governor, said “This is about the veracity and credibility of a report that is being used to impeach and take down an elected official.”
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State legislatures in six states limited their governors’ emergency powers wielded during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing executives have overextended their authority.
As of June 2021, lawmakers in 46 states have introduced legislation stripping governors of certain emergency powers, according to USA Today. Legislatures justified their actions as necessary to restore a balance between the branches of state government, pointing to examples of executive overreach and the centralization of power in the hands of governors.
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Over half of New York voters think Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo should be criminally charged after an investigation found he sexually harassed 11 women, a new poll shows.
The Quinnipiac University poll found that 55% of voters think Cuomo should be charged with a crime, while just 29% said the opposite. It also found that 70% believe Cuomo should resign from office and that he has lost his ability to govern, while 25% believe he should not.
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Ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo aide Lindsey Boylan plans to sue the Democratic governor for allegedly retaliating against her for publicly accusing him of sexual harassment.
Boylan said last year in a series of tweets that she had been sexual harassed by the governor for years, allegations that led to other woman coming forward with similar stories and a state probe into the matter.
“Our plan is to sue the governor and his and his coconspirators,” Boylan’s attorney, Jill Basinger, said Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show.
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In recent years, an acute housing crisis has engulfed both America’s coastal metros and Rust Belt regions. California’s Bay Area, for example, confronts a crisis of affordability and limited supply that hastens a population exodus. Midwest cities like Detroit face low real-estate prices and low demand, intensifying urban decline.
Pennsylvania is a microcosm of such alarming housing trends, especially east of the Susquehanna River, which is seeing an influx of metro New Yorkers relocating to the area.
From the Keystone State’s middle-class suburbs to its post-industrial locales, the housing crisis is a major challenge. In the midstate, most notably in Harrisburg and Lancaster, housing has become significantly more expensive. In the northeast’s anthracite coal region, anchored by Scranton, rents are spiking. And in suburban Philadelphia’s Lansdale, a townhouse went for nearly $500,000.
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by Ailan Evans As rates of violent crime continue to rise across the country and once-safe neighborhoods face increased dangers, many liberal communities are having to confront their complicated relationship with the police. Following the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, the defund the police movement attracted attention and support…
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Several borough District Attorneys in the city of New York have controversially decided to drop the majority of cases against rioters and looters who were arrested over the course of the last year, as reported by Breitbart.
The report first came from NBC New York, which says that “data reviewed by the NBC New York I-Team shows 118 arrests were made in the Bronx during the worst of the looting in early June.” Of those 118 cases, the Bronx DA has dismissed 73 cases, leaving only 45. There are still 18 cases open, and there have been just 19 convictions so far.
“In Manhattan,” the report continues, “the NYPD data shows there were 485 arrests. Of those cases, 222 were later dropped and 73 seeing convictions…another 40 cases involved juveniles and were sent to family court; 128 cases remain open.”
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Immigration cases deciding if migrants will be legally allowed to stay in the U.S. have doubled since 2017, according to migration data released Monday.
Over 1.3 million cases are pending, with more than 110,000 pending in New York courts alone, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Migrants wait an average of two and a half years for a judge to decide their case, Axios reported Monday.
“The number of pending deportation cases more than doubled during the Trump administration, but the court backlog still continues to grow under the Biden administration,” TRAC Assistant Professor Austin Kocher told the Daily Caller News Foundation Tuesday.
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A psychiatrist from New York City went on a racist rant back in April in which she expressed her desire to kill White people simply because they are White, as heard in recently-revealed audio of the lecture, the New York Post reports.
The comments were made by Dr. Aruna Khilanani during a lecture to the Yale School of Medicine on April 6th. She said that she dreams of “unloading a revolver into the head of any White person that got in my way,” and that if she did so, she would leave the scene of the crime “with a bounce in my step.” She added that White people “make [her] blood boil,” and also believes that White people “are out of their minds and have been for a long time.”
The lecture was titled “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.” During the speech, Khilanani talked about “learning objectives” such as “[setting] up White people’s absence of empathy towards black rage as a problem,” and also claiming that “White people are psychologically dependent on black rage.” These details, along with the full audio of the lecture, were posted online via Substack on Friday, by former New York Times editor Bari Weiss.
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Patrisse Cullors, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, will depart from her role as the organization’s executive director, the charity announced Thursday.
Cullors’ abrupt departure from the charity, which serves as the national arm of the BLM movement, came three weeks after the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that she had used her position as the charity’s leader to funnel business to an art company led by the father of her only child. Charity experts said BLM’s arrangement with the art company, Trap Heals, amounts to self-dealing and raises ethical and legal questions.
BLM Global Network did not provide an explanation in its statement Thursday for Cullors’ sudden departure. The statement said Cullors would be replaced by two senior executives who will lead the group until it “finds a new permanent team.”
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A children’s show on PBS featured drag queen and author “Little Miss Hot Mess” singing, dancing, and reading a book about drag queens to an intended audience of three to eight year olds.
“Today I’m going to read from my own book, which is ‘The Hips On the Drag Queen Go Swish Swish Swish,’” explained Little Miss Hot Mess, who is reportedly one of the founding members of Drag Queen Story Hour.
“I wrote this book because I wanted everyone to get to experience the magic of drag and to get a little practice shaking their hips or shimmying their shoulders to know how we can feel fabulous inside of our own bodies,” Little Miss Hot Mess said.
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Federal authorities in New York on Wednesday raided former city Mayor and President Trump’s attorney’s Upper West Side apartment, as part of a criminal probe into his work in Ukraine, according to multiple news reports.
The investigators confiscated Rudy Giuliani’s electronic devices as part of a search warrant, according to the New York Times, which cited sources.
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Texas and Florida are slated to gain congressional seats during the decennial redistricting process, while California and New York are set to each lose one, the U.S. Census Bureau announced Monday.
The U.S. Census Bureau released the decennial state population and congressional apportionment totals Monday, outlining how many districts each state will have for the next decade. The data also determines how many Electoral College votes each state will have through 2032, and allocates how federal money is distributed to each state for schools, roads and other public projects.
The release was originally scheduled for December, but faced delays due to the coronavirus pandemic and the Trump administration’s unsuccessful effort to exclude non-citizens from the count.
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A public school district in New York state is facing criticism after it promoted a children’s book that falsely claims that police target black people instead of White people, and that black people are more likely to be shot, as reported by Fox News.
In the city of Binghamton, the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) denounced the city’s school district for their promotion of the book “Something Happened In Our Town.” The book, which was selected by the school as the “Book of the Month” for April for MacArthur Elementary School, was read aloud to students.
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Democrats have repeatedly denounced the new Georgia election integrity law that requires IDs for absentee ballots, but seldom criticize blue states that have comparable laws on their books—or in some cases, laws making it more difficult to vote than in Georgia.
“Overall, the Georgia law is pretty much in the mainstream and is not regressive or restrictive,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told The Daily Signal. “The availability of absentee ballots and early voting is a lot more progressive than what’s in blue states.”
Here’s a look at how the new Georgia election law stacks up to voting laws in Democrat-leaning blue states.
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Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is “not a nice person” who “doesn’t have any friends,” according to the former lieutenant governor of New York.
Former New York Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch discussed the governor’s fall from grace in an interview with the New York Times after the majority of the New York Democratic congressional delegation called for Cuomo’s resignation.
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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio became the latest Democratic lawmaker to call on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign after a sixth woman accused him of sexual misconduct.
After the Albany Times Union reported that a woman accused Cuomo of reaching under her blouse and touching her at his Executive Mansion last year, de Blasio said that the governor “could no longer serve.”
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As New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday announced the attorneys who will conduct the independent review on the sexual harassment allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Republicans in the state Legislature said they intend to seek the embattled leader’s impeachment.
James appointed Joon H. Kim and Anne L. Clark to look into the sexual harassment allegations. Kim is a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Clark focuses on employment law.
James said the state is committed to a thorough review and heralded Kim and Clark as experts. Kim and Clark will be able to issue subpoenas, depose people and review records. They will give James’ office a weekly update throughout the investigatio
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Most New Yorkers oppose Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigning despite facing dual scandals that have tanked his popularity across the state, according to a Thursday Quinnipiac poll.
Less-than-half of voters, 40%, more than half which were Democrats, said that Cuomo should resign, the poll showed. Although most voters said the New York Democrat shouldn’t resign, only 36% said that he should seek a fourth term, compared to 59% who said that he should not run for reelection.
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After a rollercoaster weekend of reversals, recriminations and apologies, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s legal troubles are deepening as New York’s top law enforcement officer prepares to secure subpoena powers to investigate allegations of sexual harassment.
Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, announced Sunday night she will deputize an outside law firm to investigate the allegations by two former Cuomo aides after the governor’s effort to fashion his own investigation led by a former federal judge backfired.
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A Democratic state assemblyman in New York says that lawmakers are “inching toward” opening an impeachment probe of Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his handling of coronavirus deaths in nursing homes.
In an interview on the “Skullduggery” podcast, Ronald Kim, a Queens assemblyman, also said he is willing to cooperate with federal investigators in an ongoing probe of the Cuomo administration.
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Hours after New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a scathing report over how the state reported deaths at nursing homes due to COVID-19, state Heath Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker went on the offensive.
Zucker claimed the attorney general’s report affirmed the total number of deaths overall and that the state has repeatedly said its policy is to count deaths by where they occurred.
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