Free Republic

Mayor Eric Adams unveiled a $111.6 billion executive budget for fiscal year 2025 that restores $515 million in school funding and will put more cops on Big Apple streets — but falls short of plugging more than $58 million in cuts for libraries. The proposed spending plan, released by City Hall on Wednesday, came in at $2.2 billion above the preliminary budget announced in January and carves out billions for the city’s migrant crisis. The plan, which is $4 billion more than the current budget, benefited from higher-than-expected tax revenues and proactive cuts in city spending critics contend were premature...

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) said that Jewish students are “going through” the same experience as black students did in Little Rock when they had “to be escorted on campuses because they were afraid for their lives.” Adams said, “I can feel the duality of this moment. As I stated, I understand the pain that is playing out in Israel and in Gaza at this time. I understand what Palestinian New Yorkers are going through, and, in a peaceful way, to display that. I understand what the Israeli[s] experienced on October...

Mayor Eric Adams might be crying poverty over the Big Apple’s migrant crisis, but that didn’t stop him from quietly pushing through a giant $2.1 billion raise package for 10,000 bureaucrats. The salary increases, which Adams approved in February without putting out a press release, will retroactively boost salaries by 16.2% for managers and other non-union employees when compounded annually over a five-year period dating back to 2021.

State Senator Faith Winter arrived late and drunk to a pubic meeting .. She slurred her words and scrolled on her phone at the halfway-house hearing.. ... A Democratic Colorado State Senator announced she is getting substance abuse treatment after she arrived late to a public hearing late, intoxicated, slurred her words and scrolled on her phone while community members talked. Faith Winter, the assistant senate majority leader, was nearly 10 minutes late on Wednesday to a community hearing in Northglenn about a plan to open a halfway house for sex offenders near an elementary school. When she walked in...

Serious crime spiked again last year to levels unseen in nearly two decades, according to internal NYPD data obtained by The Post — even as Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly claimed that “crime is down” in the Big Apple. For the second year in a row under Adams, overall crime was on the rise — driven by a historic surge in assaults, which neared 28,000 for the first time in the city’s publicly recorded history, according to the police department’s rolling report. The report tracks the tally of seven major felony offenses after the time of arrest to when cases...

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was baptized at notorious Rikers Island jail on Good Friday. Adams was baptized by civil rights campaigner Rev. Al Sharpton, alongside a group of male prisoners. The ceremony came as part of a visit to the jail, which has seen reports of violent crime and inmate deaths, where Adams met with detainees over Easter weekend. Adams was seen joining Sharpton in prayer, being baptized and having his feet washed by the reverend. 'Having been arrested and then elected mayor, I reminded these young men that where you are is not who you are,' Adams...

Mayor Eric Adams took aim at a woke criminal defense lawyer who downplayed the murder of Police Officer Jonathan Diller as a “rare occurrence” — and instead focused on cops who have “killed” citizens. The mayor fired back while talking to anti-cop, “abolitionist thinker” Olayemi Olurin on iHeartMedia’s “The Breakfast Club” Friday morning — after she tried to rip Adams for not caring enough about alleged police brutality. Adams quickly tried to shut her down. “I’m not going to dismiss the loss of a life of an innocent person that wears a uniform,” he said. The confrontation on the show...

Today, a side of Adams that was not made much of in his lifetime has for many of us become the most important, and much-needed, part of his legacy: his critical view of Islam and of Muhammad. He derived these views from experience — his own and his father’s — of Muslim behavior (both of the Barbary Pirates and of the Ottoman Turks), from his lifelong study of history, and from his intensive reading of the Qur’an. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were sent in 1786 to negotiate in London with the ambassador from Tripoli, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, about the...

The Mayor’s Office did not immediately provide information about which city had safety concerns. Adams was invited to head south to Mexico by Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in San Juan. “But due to safety concerns at one of the cities we were going to visit in Mexico flagged by the U.S. Department of State, we have decided to pause this visit at this time,” Cockfield said.

Mayor Eric Adams on Friday blamed the shocking rush-hour shooting onboard a Brooklyn subway car on an agitator suffering from “severe mental health” issues, as he pushed for legislation that would allow police to institutionalize mentally unstable people. Adams claimed a 36-year-old aggressor was not “in the proper frame of mind” when he was filmed brawling with another man and was shot by his own gun onboard an A train as it pulled into the Hoyt-Schermerhorn Street station Thursday night. “When I looked at this tape and broke it down piece by piece and frame by frame, it is clear...

New York City is forking out an average of $387 per day to put up a single migrant household in taxpayer-funded shelters, the latest data from City Hall show. That number — known as the “cumulative per diem” — is the average of what the city has spent to house and feed each migrant household per day every month since the start of the crisis in spring 2022. The daily bill has slowly been dropping as the city desperately continues to try and slash asylum-seeker spending amid the ongoing crisis, with about 64,800 migrants in its care as of last...

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration issued a plea to faith leaders this week, asking them to open their doors to some of the thousands of migrants currently in the city’s care, The Post has learned. The administration sent out a letter to religious groups across the Big Apple asking for volunteers to provide daytime respite centers for 150 migrants, in exchange for up to $54,000 a month. It also asked if religious centers would be willing to house 19 other migrants at night, for up to $35,500, according to the letter obtained by The Post. The first such shelter opened in...

In 2023 Venezuela reported 26.8 murders per 100,000 inhabitant. This was down from 35.3 the previous year. A possible explanation is that the surge in illegal migration from Venezuela to the US included a contingent of criminals in its midst. This past week, Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, was arrested for murdering Laken Riley, a student studying nursing at the University of Georgia. Last summer, Ibarra was arrested in New York City for "acting in a manner to injure a child," but was immediately released under the City's sanctuary policy toward illegal migrants. NYC Mayor Eric Adams...

During an interview with 1010 WINS on Friday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) discussed changing the city’s sanctuary city laws and stated that “the goal is not to deport someone who breaks the law. You just take an apple off an apple stand. That’s breaking the law, no one is calling for them to be deported.” Adams said, “I want to be clear that the goal is not to deport someone who breaks the law. You just take an apple off an apple stand. That’s breaking the law, no one is calling for them to be deported. I...

Top Mayor Eric Adams aide Winnie Greco is being investigated by the feds for potentially using workers at a Queens mall to hide campaign donations to Hizzoner, law-enforcement sources told The Post on Friday. The FBI launched raids Thursday on two homes Greco owns on Gillespie Avenue in Pelham Bay in The Bronx — as well as the offices of the New World Mall in Flushing — over the alleged possible illegal straw donor scheme, sources said. The 61-year-old longtime mayoral adviser suffered a “medical episode” during the morning raids — which included federal agents hauling off boxes of files...

Mayor Eric Adams made his first public visit to a Big Apple pot shop and walked away with a free “weed bag” — but not the kind with marijuana in it. Adams was gifted a customized leather tote bag branding him “The Cannabis Mayor Eric Adams” as he cut the ribbon at the grand opening of Matawana Dispensary in Park Slope — the city’s 36th legal marijuana store and the first owned by a black woman. “What’s in it?” Adams said as he shook the empty bag, which was covered with images of marijuana buds.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) is calling for changes to the city’s “sanctuary” policy that helped an illegal alien walk free, without being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who is now accused of kidnapping and murdering 22-year-old Laken Riley in Athens, Georgia. “For those who are committing crimes, we need to modify the sanctuary city law that if you commit a felony or a violent act, we should be able to turn you over to ICE and have you deported,” Adams said at a town hall on Monday in Brooklyn. Canarsie Brooklyn NY During...

New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Monday doubled down while speaking to a group at a town hall meeting in Canarsie, Brooklyn, saying the sanctuary city law needs to be modified so that any migrant who commits a felony can be turned over to ICE and deported. Adams commended his administration for doing an excellent job during a challenging time, but stated his hands are tied by federal and local law. The mayor spoke about some migrants participating in robberies and using mopeds to commit snatch and grab stick-ups. The issue, Adams said, became a real problem, so the...

The New Jersey start-up that snagged a controversial no-bid $53 million contract with New York City to give migrants prepaid debit cards could net a whopping $1.8 million in profits by taking a cut of the funds doled out to asylum seekers, The Post has learned. The one-year deal signed by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration and tech finance company Mobility Capital Finance .. is now raising eyebrows with some members of the City Council, who noted the agreement didn’t undergo the usual competitive bidding process. “Something’s wrong with this deal, and taxpayers are getting fleeced,” Councilman Bob Holden (D-Queens) .....

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) vowed on Wednesday to cut funding to border crossers and illegal aliens amid record-low approval with New Yorkers. In November 2023, Adams authorized city-wide budget cuts where New Yorkers would have public services eliminated to afford waves of illegal immigration to the sanctuary city. The move came as fewer than 3-in-10 New Yorkers said they approved of Adams — a record low for a mayor in New York City. On Wednesday, Adams said he is canceling the proposed budget cuts and will instead reduce taxpayer funding currently going to newly arrived border crossers...