Tag: new york

CDC expands Ebola screenings to New York’s JFK airport

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has expanded its passenger screening for Ebola to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

The federal agency said the expansion of its around-the-clock Port Health Protection system went into effect at Kennedy airport Thursday night. 

 The CDC also said Kennedy previously conducted enhanced public health entry screening and has established operational procedures in place.

The enhanced screening” is also now underway at Washington Dulles International Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, in Houston, for air passengers arriving from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Uganda. 

“Public health entry screening serves as one component of CDC’s layered public health approach, which also includes overseas exit screening, airline illness reporting, and post-arrival public health monitoring,” the CDC said in a post on X.

The State Department issued a travel advisory recently, instructing all U.S.-bound American citizens and lawful permanent residents who have been in the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan within 21 days of arrival in the U.S. to go through the “enhanced public health screening” carried out by the CDC and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The screenings come ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which is scheduled to take place in the United States, Canada and Mexico next month. The first match will take place in Mexico City on June 11.

The United States has not seen an Ebola case so far, though one American tested positive for the virus while overseas and is being treated in Germany.

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Black New Yorkers Reveal How Much They Want in Reparations from the State and What They Think These Payments Should Look Like

Black New York residents have some provocative thoughts on the issue of reparations as compensation for slavery and other ‘racial injustices.’

Back in December 2023, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill that established a “community commission to study the history of slavery in New York state” to examine “various forms of reparations.”

Less than a year later, an emboldened NYC council passed slavery reparations legislation to ‘yield material solutions’ from US history.

FOX News caught up with activists following a New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies last Saturday and asked them several questions, including how much the reparations should cost.

One New Yorker said that the cost per resident should be “$800,000 for each foundation of Black Americans.”

“We need $800,000 for each foundation of Black Americans. That’s simple,” Aubrey Muhammud told Fox News in an interview. “That’s in New York.”

“That’s about the cost of living that’ll get you a home, or a small business, or for you to recover from any financial duress.”

New Yorkers had differing opinions on what such payments should look like, however. One thought it should operate like a central bank for black people.

“I think it should be, me personally, I think there should be a new Freedmen’s Bureau back, and that is like a central bank almost to Black America and would be distributed to Black communities,” Rex Burns said.

Others said the state government should write a check.

“It shouldn’t only be a check, but it should start with a check,” Brooke Lean told Fox News.

Regardless of the final payment amount and method, locals who attended the public hearing said that the government owed them after their ancestors were enslaved.

“I think that we are owed a debt,” Caprice Reins told Fox News.

Attendee Tanasia Poke added that financial compensation is the only way to achieve “true justice.”

“It’s been the greatest impact to our community overall, generationally. And so, by policy and finance, it’s how it’s been institutionalized in the first place. It is the way to repair it,” Poke said.

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The Big Apple’s Woes Are Not Just the Result of One Election

The destruction of New York is the logic of decades of history and long-forgotten pols addicted to outrageous spending and taxation.

Today’s successors of these big taxers are as myopic as the Bourbon kings who “learned nothing and forgot nothing.”

It didn’t start with the election of socialist/communist Mayor Zorain Mamdani, who followed in their footsteps and said the government should control “the means of production.”

Mamdani is the logical outcome of generations of New York City’s drift toward bigger and bigger government along with destroying the private sector. This leads the most productive citizens and businesses to head for the exits. It’s been going on for generations.

These problems happened as, little by little, the city’s Democrats trended radical left. Even some Republicans moved left. An example of the latter was liberal Republican mayor John Lindsay, elected in 1965 and the author of the city’s first income tax. He later turned Democrat. New York’s popular Republican governor, Nelson “Rocky” Rockefeller—elected four times from the late 1950s to the early 1970s—nearly spent the state into bankruptcy. It was all in the stars. Before winning the statehouse in 1958, a predecessor Republican governor, Thomas Dewey, told a young Rockefeller, “Nelson, I like you but I can’t afford you.” Dewey was prescient.

In some 15 years as governor, he quadrupled the state budget and quintupled the state debt, including substantial authority debt, practices continued by his successors, including governor Andrew Cuomo. “Rocky” raised taxes many times and initiated a state sales tax. These taxes accelerated the departure of industry, with New York state losing some 500,000 manufacturing jobs between 1969 and 1975.

In 1961, two-term New York City mayor Robert Wagner, who successfully sought a third term, faced the same overspending problems as today’s state and city leaders. Like today’s pols, he whined as the bills piled up. Wagner blamed the bankers selling city bonds.

Wagner—in a statement that could have been made by several succeeding mayors—said he was going ahead with this welfare program expansion: “I do not propose to permit our fiscal problem to set the limits of our commitments to meet the essential needs of the people of the city.” About a decade later, the spending bomb he lit blew up. Lindsay’s successor, Abe Beame, campaigned for mayor in 1973 as the man “who knew the buck.”

Yet a 1975 New York Magazine profile described his budgetary practices as “lies and a sham.” William Simon, US Treasury Secretary in his book, A Time for Truth, said New York governor Hugh Carey “ping ponged from position to position,” and demanded a federal bailout.

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Mamdani’s Housing Program Follows the Socialist Playbook: Create the Crisis, Seize the Property

“When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers. And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards,” said New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, explaining how the city plans to seize private property and transfer it to “stewards that include community land trusts, non-profits, or even the tenants themselves.”

The good news is he will not be taking property from all landlords, only the ones he decides are bad. “Through our new citywide campaign, Fix the City, we will focus on the worst landlords in New York City.”

Mamdani does not seem troubled by the fact that his proposal appears to violate the Fifth Amendment, which states, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Even before being elected, he announced that he would be seizing private property. As a candidate, Mamdani declared: “We will use every single tool at our disposal, including seizing buildings from slumlords, to ensure that each and every New Yorker is given what is their right, a safe place to call their home.”

Now, as mayor, he is moving to act on it. On May 27, Mamdani unveiled his 112-page “Block by Block” housing plan in Gowanus. The enforcement mechanism involves the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development will launch a “Fix the City” initiative to conduct roof-to-cellar inspections in targeted buildings and aggressively use the 7A Program, through which the city can initiate legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers from day-to-day management.

The plan also has Housing Preservation and Development collaborating with other agencies and borough district attorneys to pursue criminal charges against property owners.

What Mamdani is proposing is a textbook Austrian economics interventionism cascade. Austrian economics, the discipline in which the author of this article is educated, holds that rather than solving problems and making life better for citizens, government intervention generally exacerbates problems, making them worse, more widespread, and increasingly difficult to resolve. Each resulting distortion is used to justify the next intervention, which in turn causes the problem to get worse, necessitating more government intervention, making things worse…until all properties fall under state control.

The landlord crisis Mamdani claims to be solving was created by the very rent control policies his administration is now doubling down on.

The methodology for creating a crisis that allows the state to seize property begins with artificial rent controls such as freezes and rent ceilings. Below-market rates destroy the landlord’s incentive to maintain and invest in property. When rents fall below a certain level, the landlord may not even be able to afford repairs and maintenance.

The rational economic response for a landlord who is forced to rent at rates below operating costs is to defer maintenance. The building deteriorates. The landlord becomes, by definition, a “bad landlord,” not from malice but from economic necessity created by the policy itself.

The city then uses the deterioration it caused as the legal and moral pretext to seize or transfer the property. The government manufactured the problem and now presents itself as the solution.

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Report: Zohran Mamdani’s Harlem Grocery Store Already Received $25M in Taxpayer Funds, Bringing Total to $55M

Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s chosen site for a $30 million, government-owned grocery store in East Harlem was approved for a $25 million taxpayer-funded facelift several years ago, setting up the total price tag at a whopping $55 million.

The proposed location is La Marqueta, a food-forward market located between East 111th and East 119th streets under the elevated Metro North tracks on Park Avenue. The purpose of the city-run store would be to offer super low prices because the store would not pay rent or taxes. 

“That same site, however, already won approval from the city’s Economic Development Corporation nearly a decade ago for a $25 million project to redevelop La Marqueta — bringing the total price tag of the market’s proposed makeover to a staggering $55 million, city officials confirmed,” New York Post first reported. 

Stephen Zagor, adjunct associate professor of food studies at Columbia Business School, told the outlet the $30 million price tag was already “an outrageous number,” and “you’d expect the doorknobs and cash registers to be solid gold.”

“And to think there is another $25 million allocated years ago for the rest of La Marqueta, which is well past its prime, I’d think they would have to revisit that,” Zagor added.

Anthony Pena, president of the National Supermarket Association, said city leaders have “not been transparent and open about anything they are doing” and noted that Mamdani never mentioned the location’s previous project in the report. 

Mamdani has allocated approximately $70 million for five government-run stores, one for each borough. Pena said the final cost raises questions about why the city would be spending so much on the East Harlem location specifically. 

“They are going to spend $10 million on a 20,000-square-foot store and $30 million on a 9,000-square-foot store,” Pena said. “There is a massive disconnect right now and there are more questions than answers.”

The Economic Development Corporation (EDC) confirmed to the Post that the $25 million deal and the $30 million store are two separate investment items. 

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Vile ex-Mamdani aide who’s running for Congress called white women ‘ugly colonizers’ in rant against interracial relationships

Vile racial remarks have surfaced from a former aide of New York City socialist Mayor Zorhan Mamdani as she makes a run for Congress.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, who was the lead for Mamdani’s campaign in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan areas, had her racially charged uploads to X in 2019 brought back to light, according to the New York Post.

‘Black men [handshake emoji] Arab men fetishizing ugly colonizer women,’ the 32-year-old allegedly wrote in a September 2019.

Chevalier, who is currently on the campaign trail in hopes of representing Harlem’s 13th Congressional District, also detailed an incident with a ‘white lady’ who questioned her anti-Israeli shirt.

‘I held the door on an old white lady at Popeyes… Her: is that a BDS shirt? Me: Yes, she wrote, referring to the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” campaign against Israel and Israeli-owned businesses, “Her: Do you know what they do to– Door closed before I could find out what they do,’ she wrote on X in September 2019, as cited by the Post.

The uploads were published by an X account, which at the time was Twitter, named darializabonet, which could no longer be found.

Chevalier trails behind incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat by 14 points, according to a poll conducted toward the end of March by The City.

She also had a successful first quarter of the year, funding outraising Espaillat $270,000 to his $230,000, according to campaign finance reports.

Chevalier launched her bid for Congress in November, following Mamdani’s win for mayor, appearing to ride the moment of the democratic socialist movement.

She has pledged to legalize prostitution and private drug use, as well as abolish prisons, according to her DSA candidate questionnaire.

Additionally, she called for the abolishment of Immigration Customs Enforcement and the end of US military support for Israel.

The Congress hopeful boasted on her campaign site about releasing immigrants who were allegedly illegally detained from ICE detention centers and highlighted how she has protested outside of Trump Tower.

Furthermore, she credited herself as a leader of the ‘tentefada’ encampments at Columbia University, which she attended from 2012 to 2016.

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NYC Mayor Mamdani’s Housing Plan Sparks Property-Rights Alarm Over Forced Transfers To Nonprofits

NYC socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani released “Block by Block: The Housing Plan for a New Era,” which presents a sweeping, deeply troubling blueprint to tackle the metro area’s deepening housing crisis.

Mamdani told the crowd:

When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers. And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards. Stewards include community land trusts, nonprofits, or even the tenants themselves.

X user Difficult Froyo outlined what he described as the obvious playbook by the socialist mayor:

Rent control so landlords cannot raise rent to properly maintain the property. NYC takes the property and gives it to his political friends that donate to him. This is all going to be a theft scheme.

Another X user asked:

“Insane. If this isn’t communism, I don’t know what is. Has America really reached the point of communism?”

Mamdani’s backdoor property-seizure strategy will likely spook lenders, insurers, and small landlords. That’s because it caps landlord income, allows residential buildings to become distressed, then uses the city’s enforcement to push properties into nonprofit, community land trust, or tenant ownership.

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Mamdani’s ‘Balanced Budget’ Is an Accounting Atrocity

In mid-May, after extending the executive deadline, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released his $124.7 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Executive Budget. 

After warning that NYC faces a budget crisis of “historic magnitude” in late April, Mamdani now assures the 8.5 million residents of the Big Apple that the city is on “firm financial footing” after he “balanced the budget” “without raising property taxes” or “slashing services.”

While it is certainly true that Mamdani did not slash services or raise property taxes even higher than they already are, it is ludicrous for him to declare that NYC’s budget is sound and sustainable.

Aside from Mamdani’s smoke-and-mirrors budget summary, the harsh reality is that the Big Apple is bankrupt. 

According to NYC Comptroller Mark Levine, the “$2.2 billion budget shortfall for FY2026 and projected $10.4 billion gap for FY2027… is the first time since the Great Recession that the City faces a budget shortfall of this magnitude.”

Based on Mamdani’s “balanced budget,” the FY 2026 and FY 2027 deficits are no longer a concern. 

Much of the gap has been taken care of by what Mamdani calls a “partnership with Albany.” New Yorkers outside of the Big Apple call it a bailout.

“Thanks to Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, the City secured an additional $4 billion in state support and actions to help stabilize the budget,” Mamdani bluntly put it.

However, Albany could not supply enough money to make the short-term math work.

Thus, Mamdani’s balanced budget relies upon accounting gimmicks and “new tax revenue.”

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Zohran Mamdani Wants NYC to Spend $4.2 BILLION on Services for the Homeless After Claiming City is in ‘Historic’ Budget Crisis

In April, New York City’s new Democratic Socialist (communist) Mayor Zohran Mamdani, claimed that the city was facing a ‘historic’ budget crisis.

Now, he wants to spend $4.2 billion on services for the homeless. So which is it? Does a city in a budget crisis have that kind of cash to spend on homeless services?

Also, does anyone believe there will be any drop in the number of homeless people after he does this? The number could actually go up as a result once it becomes known that the city has money to burn on this.

The New York Post reports:

Mamdani wants to spend stunning $4.2B on NYC homeless services — more than during crippling migrant crisis

Mayor Zohran Mamdani plans to spend more money on homeless services next year than his predecessor Eric Adams did during the height of the city’s migrant crisis — proposing a $4.2 billion budget for the agency in 2027.

Mamdani’s plan was rolled out in his latest budget proposal last week, which sought to hike the Department of Homeless Services’ budget by $700 million, from $3.5 billion for 2026 to the towering $4.2 billion sum.

That would be $100 million more than the $4.1 billion budget DHS hit in 2024, at the height of the migrant crisis when the city’s shelter system was housing a peak of about 69,000 asylum seekers.

Then-Mayor Adams had budgeted $2.4 billion for DHS in 2023 — but that number ended up rising to $3.5 billion as the new arrivals ramped up , straining the city system.

More than 230,000 asylum seekers ended up cycling through the Big Apple during the crisis, which began in the spring of 2022. The homeless services department budget was $2.3 billion that year, the first of Adams’ tenure.

How many people working to ‘solve’ the homeless problem will get rich off of this? We have seen that happen in Los Angeles and other cities.

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Mamdani Approves ‘Journalists’ for Mangione Trial, But They’re So Hateful, Even Mangione Disavows Them

Two “fans” of an accused murderer made statements so outrageous this week that even the defendant disavowed them.

Ashley Rojas and Lena Weissbrot call themselves “Mangionistas” on social media, a nod to Luigi Mangione, the young man accused of gunning down United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a pre-dawn attack on Dec. 4, 2024.

In a video interview with the New York Daily News Monday, the two voiced disdain for Thompson and expressed glee over the insurance executive’s death, saying Thompson’s children “are better off without him.”

“I’m saying f*** Brian Thompson. I don’t give a f*** he died,” Rojas told the Daily News.

Weissbrot then taunted the victim’s family.

“His children are better off without him,” she said. “They need to learn to not be like their dad. And enjoy the blood money, kids.”

“He’s responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden,” Weissbrot added, comparing Thompson to the Al Qaeda leader responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks, “and I remember Americans celebrating when Osama bin Laden was killed. It’s not like we don’t understand heroic violence or when violence is good. That’s, like, as American as America gets.”

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