Tag: new york

American MAID: New York Issued About 20 Lethal Prescriptions in Just the First Month of Its Assisted-Suicide Law

New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act has been in effect for a little over a month, and the state still will not say how many people used it.

However, Columbia bioethicist David Hoffman, who works with hospitals and groups implementing the statute, told the New York Sun that he estimates about 20 prescriptions for life-ending drugs have already gone out.

That figure comes from conversations with doctors, not an official Health Department count.

Physicians must report when they write a prescription, but they do not have to say whether the patient took it.

“The state will have the data on a rolling basis. It’s an after-the-fact analysis,” Hoffman told the paper.

The law took effect August 5, after Governor Kathy Hochul signed it in February.

New York is now the 14th U.S. jurisdiction with legalized assisted suicide.

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‘MAGA? Nope’: Kitten adoption agency won’t place homeless cats with conservatives

A New York cat adoption agency’s policy not to approve any placements to “MAGA” people who may want to help is so extreme that the traditionally leftist PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is calling the organization out.

Not the Bee reported on a Facebook post by Itty Bitty City Kitties, a nonprofit in Rockaway Beach that specializes in neonatal kittens and feral cat welfare.

Stated the post: “MAGA? Nope. Conservative? Nope. ‘I’m not political’? Nice loophole. Still nope.”

Noted Not the Bee: “Discriminating against people based on who they vote for is actually super illegal. But this is New York, so they can get away with it as long as they’re being hateful against Republicans.”

Another online statement from the adoption group said, “Important Adoption Policy Update: No. F**king. MAGA.”

Yet another post explained the policy further, saying, “If your politics involve racism, bigotry, dehumanizing immigrants, or cheering on cruelty toward vulnerable people, please kindly f**k right off.”

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Netanyahu Threatens NYC Mayor Mamdani ‘I’m going to tell the truth about you’

Radical socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has repeatedly puffed up his chest with threats against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In July, Mamdan threatened to arrest Netanyahu during this week’s UN General Assembly.

“Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said, referencing Prison Scheveningen in The Hague, Netherlands, home of the United Nations Detention Unit (UNDU) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) Detention Center.

In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times, Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked Mamdani whether he would follow through on his campaign promise to “arrest Benjamin Netanyahu.”

A promise he later admitted he lacked the political power to follow through on.

Now, Netanyahu is pushing back.

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NYC House Seat Goes To Mexico-First DSA Candidate Who Hails “Comrades” In Morena

A radical Democratic Socialists of America candidate who is poised to waltz into a deep-blue New York House seat used Mexican Independence Day to all but declare that she is Mexico First.

Claire Valdez, a card-carrying DSA member and New York State Assemblywoman who secured the Democrat nomination for the state’s 7th Congressional District, posted a tweet on X celebrating 215 years since Mexicans “fought an empire that demanded our land and our labor.” Valdez then went one step further, making the kind of declaration that should end the career of any Democrat or Republican who dared to utter something similar about a foreign country.

“I’ll carry that fight with me to Congress as New York’s first Mexican American representative,” Valdez wrote, before gushing that she is “strengthened not just by Mexico’s history but its present” and boasting about a meeting last month with her “comrades in Morena,” the leftist party that currently rules Mexico.

Valdez lauded left-wing radicals for “standing up to the empires and corporations that have always taken from us” and “building a government for the working class.” The DSA lawmaker capped off the post with a triumphant “¡Viva la Independencia, Viva México!”

Notably absent from Valdez’s message was any mention of cutting taxes for struggling New Yorkers, securing the southern border, or tackling the soaring grocery prices that have hammered working families. In their place was the rhetoric of a hard-left activist who apparently views the United States Congress as merely one more battlefield in a global class war, complete with “comrades” embedded in a foreign government. Valdez has claimed that she is “a dual citizen of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Nation and the United States.”

Valdez’s tweet quickly ignited a firestorm of condemnation online.

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Letitia James Seized Nuns’ $19 Million and STILL Won’t Release It So They Can Care for Aging Members

For 123 years, the Sisters of the Congregation of Divine Providence devoted their time and money to help young women in Manhattan through the Jeanne D’Arc Residence.

Jeanne d’Arc Residence is dedicated to creating a welcoming and caring environment for women seeking safe, affordable and temporary housing in New York City. Through the ministry provided at Jeanne d’Arc Residence, the Sisters of Divine Providence are committed to ensuring a Christian environment which serves women of all nationalities, cultures and religions. In this setting, the good news of Jesus Christ is lived and proclaimed in the spirit of Providence.”

The nuns, whose order is based in Kentucky, have seen their number shrink and their population age.  The cost of continuing to run the residence has become too much to bear as they face caring for their own elderly sisters.

The sisters sold the property to John Catsimidis for $22.5 million. Because the property is part of a registered charitable organization, Letitia James’ office must, and did, approve the sale.

But devoting over a century to vulnerable women in the city is not enough for James.  Her office seized the proceeds of the sale and, for two years, has refused to release it to them.

James’ reason? She doesn’t like what the nuns will do with their money.

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NYC candidate endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America promises to fight for Mexico in Congress

laire Valdez, a socialist running for New York’s 7th Congressional District seat, said if she wins in November, she would “carry that fight” of Mexicans who fought for independence against Spain to Congress. 

“215 years ago, Mexicans fought an empire that demanded our land and our labor. And we won. I’ll carry that fight with me to Congress as New York’s first Mexican American representative,” Valdez wrote on Instagram Thursday. 

Valdez is one of a slate of socialists running for office in the midterms this year, The Post Millennial reported. She is running to fill the seat left open by departing Democrat Rep. Nydia Velázquez. 

Valdez has received the endorsement of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as support from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. 

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Biden’s Counterterrorism Director During Disastrous Afghanistan Withdrawal Running for NY House Seat

A national security expert is calling on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-endorsed Democrat congressional candidate Cait Conley to account for her record in the Biden administration when Iranian support for Hamas increased, terrorism intensified in the Middle East, and antisemitic incidents reached record levels in the United States.

Conley, the Democrat challenging Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in New York’s 17th Congressional District, served as the Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council (NSC) from April 2021 to March 2023. Conley states that it was her job to “counter Middle East terrorism, and non-state actor threats.” She was also responsible for countering the “domestic and global use of emerging technologies.”

Her tenure at the NSC also coincided with the Biden administration’s August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Fox News reported that the administration’s evacuation plan “has been faulted for failing to anticipate the swift collapse of Afghanistan’s government” and for “not ensuring adequate security precautions for U.S. service members and citizens against terror threats.”

The withdrawal culminated in a terrorist attack outside Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 Afghans. Fox News also reported that Conley has not commented publicly on the withdrawal since launching her congressional campaign. That silence mirrors Biden’s own omission of the 13 fallen service members from his 2022 State of the Union address.

During Conley’s time at the NSC, Iranian financial support for Hamas increased.

Iran’s cash flows to Hamas spiked following the May 2021 conflict, which occurred during Conley’s tenure at the National Security Council. In early 2022, Hamas’s leader said Iran had provided the group with $70 million to develop missiles and defense systems, while Israeli sources said Iran increased its overall funding to Hamas from $100 million to $350 million per year in 2022.

Across the Middle East, there was also a “relatively steady increase in the number of incidents and fatalities” from October 2022 to October 2023, culminating with the October 7 attack which occurred shortly after Conley left her NSC post.

Antisemitic incidents in the United States also rose sharply while Conley was at the NSC.

The Anti-Defamation League recorded 3,697 antisemitic incidents in 2022, up 36 percent from 2,717 in 2021. At the time, it was the highest number recorded since the organization began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979.

The number continued to rise in 2023 when the ADL recorded 8,873 incidents, a 140 percent increase from 2022.

Iran unveiled its Shahed-136 drone in December 2021 while Conley was serving at the NSC, where her responsibilities included countering the domestic and global use of emerging technologies.

The drone has since become a “fixture of modern warfare” and is “central to Iran’s retaliation strategy against the U.S. and its regional allies” including Israel. Despite the use of Patriot defense missiles against the drones, “many” of the Shahed drones “have still managed to hit their targets.”

The threat continued into March 2026, when Iran announced that their Shahed-136 drones destroyed a U.S. E-3 AWACS surveillance aircraft and damaged multiple refueling tankers, amounting to over $1.3 million in losses.

CNN military analyst and former U.S. Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton called the loss of the surveillance aircraft a “serious blow to [U.S.] surveillance capabilities.” A Center for a New American Security report described the AWACS as the “‘quarterback’ of the battlefield” and an “indispensable asset for U.S. military operations.”

Conley is also backed by J Street, which said following a House vote that there is “broad agreement” among Democrats that the United States should take a “fundamentally different American approach” to its relationship with Israel. J Street has expressed support for members who voted for an amendment that would cut off U.S. aid to Israel.

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) and democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have endorsed Conley; both representatives had voted for the amendment to halt aid to Israel.

Conley has not said whether she would have joined Ryan and Ocasio-Cortez in voting for the measure.

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New York Sheriff Rips Democrats for Defending Criminals: Albany Laws Turned Justice Into a “Revolving Door” of Repeat Offenders

Broome County Sheriff Frederick Akshar went to Capitol Hill Tuesday and did what Albany Democrats refuse to do: he said out loud that New York’s criminal justice system is broken by design.

Akshar, a former Republican state senator now serving as Broome County’s elected sheriff, accused Democrat lawmakers of defending criminals at the expense of law-abiding New Yorkers.

Akshar testified Tuesday before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement at a hearing titled “The Continuing Tragedy of Sanctuary Laws.”

The Broome County Sheriff’s Office confirmed he was called to Washington to discuss Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “Local Cops, Local Crimes Act” and the federal lawsuit filed by 15 New York sheriffs challenging Albany’s ban on ICE cooperation agreements.

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New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul Pardons Convicted Felon Migrant to Protect Him from Deportation

New York’s Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul intervened in a U.S. Supreme Court case by giving an official pardon to a migrant who was convicted of a felony to try and prevent the Trump administration from deporting him.

The U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case of Dominican Republic national Keisy Guerrero Mariano, who was at the center of an argument on bond rights for noncitizens detained for lengthy periods.

Mariano was convicted of second-degree assault in 2015 and actually served time for the crime. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) later arrested him in 2020 and marked him for deportation for being a migrant with a dangerous assault conviction on his record, which is a violation of immigration rules. But by 2024, the Second Circuit Court ruled that prolonged detention can allow a migrant to claim a constitutional right to a bond hearing.

The Trump administration had appealed the Second Circuit’s ruling allowing Mariano to seek bond and further insisted that noncitizens, even those with green cards, do not have a legal right to a bond hearing for a prolonged detention if they have committed crimes that are grounds for mandatory deportation, Fox News reported.

Apparently fearing that Mariano would lose his case and then be deported, New York’s left-wing governor jumped into action to protect the dangerous migrant convict from being deported.

Hochul issued Mariano a full state pardon for his criminal record, thereby quashing the Supreme Court case against him and protecting him from deportation.

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NYC and 21 states file federal suit over proposed changes to green card eligibility

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a pair of federal lawsuits attempting to block the Trump administration’s efforts to enforce self-sufficiency requirements for immigrants seeking permanent residency.

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Those applying for a Green Card or Visa – Primary Target

The public charge rule directly affects non-citizens who are currently in the U.S. legally on temporary visas (work visas, student visas, temporary statuses) or applying for green cards/visa adjustments from abroad.

If federal officers determine they are likely to rely on government benefits, their green card or visa application can be denied.

Current Green Card Holders – Secondary Target

Once a person already has a green card, utilizing public benefits generally does not jeopardize their status or lead to deportation. However, the rule can impact them if they leave the U.S. for more than 180 consecutive days and try to re-enter, as they are treated like new applicants subject to admissibility checks upon return.

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The legal challenges target the GOP administration’s updated “public charge” rule — a policy taking effect September 18th that directs immigration officials to evaluate whether non-citizen visa and green card applicants are likely to become dependent on taxpayer-funded government aid, including Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance.

Joined by local officials from liberal jurisdictions including Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle, alongside a coalition of 21 Democrat state attorneys general (AGs), the lawsuits argue that the administration “exceeded its authority” by broadening the criteria used to evaluate financial independence.

The left-wing plaintiffs allege that assessing non-cash benefit usage creates unnecessary confusion. During a press conference, Mayor Mamdani criticized the Trump administration’s policy, arguing it would deter immigrant families from utilizing city-provided services and lead to higher long-term healthcare costs for municipal governments.

However, the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) firmly defended the measure as a lawful, common-sense enforcement of longstanding immigration principles designed to safeguard federal resources.

Federal officials dismissed the local and state lawsuits as politically motivated attempts by sanctuary city leaders to preserve non-citizen access to costly public entitlement programs.

Defending the policy, a DHS spokesperson stressed that the GOP administration is committed to safeguarding taxpayer dollars, asserting that U.S. immigration laws must prioritize self-reliant applicants rather than foreign nationals seeking to live off government assistance.

Ensuring that immigrants remain self-reliant has been a fundamental tenet of U.S. immigration law for generations, they added, expressing confidence that federal courts will uphold the rule against the state and municipal challenges.

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