Tag: new york

Mamdani’s Plan for Schools Draws Angry Backlash from New York Parents

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani continues to make waves with his radical agenda. This time he’s targeting charter schools, producing some strong reactions from parents and residents.

In an exclusive report by The New York Post, the newspaper wrote that Mamdani “plans to declare war on charter schools if he’s elected mayor,” according to a survey he answered June before the Democratic primary.

The state assemblyman said he would “fight efforts to open more charters, which largely educate minority, working-class students, and even opposed the schools sharing space in city-owned buildings,” the article read.

“I oppose efforts by the state to mandate an expansion of charter school operations in New York City,” he said in a Staten Island Advance questionnaire.

Mother Arlene Rosado, who has a son in 10th grade at the “Nuasin Next Generation” K-12 charter school in the Bronx, said Mamdani doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“I don’t understand why Mamdani would be hostile to charter schools,” she said. “I think he’s very misinformed.”

Rosado reportedly moved her son there because he was being bullied in public school. His situation has since improved after he was given the option to leave.

“Charter schools are helping kids in the community,” Rosado added. “You should always have a choice. Taking that choice away is not cool.”

The socialist candidate claimed charter schools divert public resources and mainly serve the wealthy, while harming lower-income families, The Hill reported last month.

Mamdani also promised to conduct audits of charter schools that are within the city’s Department of Education buildings, claiming they get too much public money.

“I also oppose the co-locating of charter schools inside DOE school buildings, but for those already co-located my administration would undertake a comprehensive review of charter school funding to address the unevenness of our system,” his survey answer read.

He added, “Matching funds, overcharged rent, and Foundation Aid funding would be part of this audit as my administration determined how to manage the reality of co-located schools and legal entitlements.”

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NYC to Open Nation’s First Trans-Only Homeless Shelter — Will Cost Taxpayers $65 Million

The city of New York is opening the nation’s first transgender-only homeless shelter.

The shelter, a partnership between a local LGBTQ nonprofit and the city government, will cost the city an extraordinary $65 million and will be the first transgender homeless shelter in the nation.

Further details were outlined in a joint press release:

There will also be a full-time psychiatric nurse practitioner onsite who will work closely with the social workers and other credentialed staff to provide comprehensive mental health support.

On-site clinical staff will provide health education through coaching and counseling with the end goal of improved health outcomes and increasing clients’ self-sufficiency.

This model will offer specialized services to address depression, anxiety, and other challenges our residents may experience.

Destination Tomorrow will also employ holistic approaches to health and mental wellness with programs offering yoga and meditation.

In addition, Destination Tomorrow is developing a work study program for culinary arts, this will provide hands-on experience and internship opportunities for residents seeking careers in hospitality and food service.

DSS and Destination Tomorrow will work closely with key community stakeholders to identify collaborative ways to better serve and support New York City’s thriving LGBTQ+ community.

“ We’ve watched so many other corporations and foundations and businesses just like completely turn their back on the community and the city didn’t do it,” said Sean Ebony Coleman, founder and CEO of Destination Tomorrow, the nonprofit that will manage the shelter for the city.

“The city is keeping in line with what New York City has always been, a sanctuary city, a safe haven, but more importantly, a trendsetter when it comes to LGBTQ rights.”

City officials are openly championing the initiative, with Department of Social Services Commissioner Molly Wasow Park declaring they “could not be prouder” of the announcement.

“Ace’s Place will offer Transgender New Yorkers a safe place to heal and stabilize in trauma-informed settings with the support of staff who are deeply invested in their growth and wellbeing,” she added.

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Zohran Mamdani Opposes Charter Schools in NYC, Even Though He Went to a Private School

New York City Democrat candidate for mayor, and noted communist, Zohran Mamdani has gone on record saying that he opposes charter schools in the city.

When Mamdani came to the United States as a child, he attended the Bank Street School for Children, a private school that charges $37,554 – $68,793 in tuition, according to Wikipedia.

There are two important issues in play here.

First, charter schools are important because they offer an alternative to traditional public schools, which frequently benefits minority children. Second, charter schools are typically opposed by teacher unions who correctly see these schools as a form of competition for public schools. As a Democrat candidate, Mamdani is undoubtedly depending on the support of teacher unions in the mayoral election.

The New York Post reports:

Zohran Mamdani’s vow to declare war on charter schools if elected NYC mayor sparks outrage from parents, advocates: ‘Very misinformed’

Socialist Zohran Mamdani plans to declare war on charter schools if he’s elected mayor, according to a survey he answered — sparking outrage from advocates and parents who called the front-runner’s views “very misguided.”

The 33-year-old Queens assemblyman said he would fight efforts to open more charters, which largely educate minority, working-class students, and even opposed the schools sharing space in city-owned buildings.

“I oppose efforts by the state to mandate an expansion of charter school operations in New York City,” he said in a Staten Island Advance questionnaire before the June 24 Democratic primary.

Mamdani’s hostility to charter schools — which are privately run and publicly funded — puts him in sync with the United Federation of Teachers union, which endorsed him in the November general election following his primary victory over ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others.

So typical for the left. School choices for me but not for thee.

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NYC designer Martha Nolan ID’d as woman found dead on Montauk boat — as residents report late-night screams

The woman found dead onboard a boat in Montauk on Tuesday was identified by authorities as a beloved local designer from Manhattan who spent her summers working on the East End.

Martha Nolan-O’Slatarra was found unconscious on a vessel docked at the Montauk Yacht Club at approximately 12 a.m., according to Suffolk County police.

The 33-year-old, who went by Martha Nolan professionally and in social circles, was pronounced dead at the scene by first responders.

Her cause of death is still under investigation and will be determined by the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Members of the Montauk Yacht Club, including some captains, heard screaming from the docks late Monday, one club member told The Post.

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How JFK and the CIA Gave NYC Zohran Mamdani (and Obama to the US)

Prompt Grok to create an Alex Jones-inspired headline about modern American politics and it would be easy to conceive a title similar to that of this article. Of course, like chemicals in the water turning frogs gay—or, at least, significantly impacting their sexual functions—this would result in another quarter in the “Alex Jones is right jar.”

Zohran Mamdani’s unexpected nomination as the Democrat nominee in New York City’s mayor’s race has been a boon for political pundits. For the left, he embodies the future of the American political left: a charismatic radical with bold visions who consistently churns out social media content that attempts to provide leftwing solutions to “kitchen table” problems. On the right, he is a perfect example of the true socialist impulses lurking behind their opposing party and, perhaps, a symptom of some deep-seated Islamic agenda in America.

While the political impact of Mamdanism is difficult to forecast, the history of the Mamdani family does serve as an interesting example of the consequences of state-directed immigration policy.

To truly understand the Mamdani story, we must return back to the days of the Cold War. In 1959, a Kenyan liberation activist named Tom Mboya organized with the African American Institute a plan to subsidize the travel of African college students to America for their intellectual development. While attempts to secure direct Washington funding initially stalled, Mboya found an essential benefactor in the form of Senator John F. Kennedy, who at the time was running for president in 1960.

His family’s Kennedy Foundation dedicated $100,000 to the program, resulting in 295 African students being brought to American universities as part of the initial run of the “Kennedy Airlift.” For JFK’s political ambitions, history judges it to be a prudent decision. Mboya’s time in America gave him the admiration of many of the leading Civil Rights leaders of the time, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harry Belafonte. In 2009, The Nation noted that Tom Shachtman, a historian of the effort, credits JFK’s support for the project as being “’equally if not more crucial’ in Kennedy’s razor-thin victories in several key states with significant African-American voting strength than the often-cited phone call Kennedy made to Coretta Scott King after her husband was arrested and a subsequent call Robert Kennedy made to the judge in the case.”

One of the students that benefited from this program was Mahmood Mamdani, father of Zohran.

While one could point to the Kennedy Airlift as a purely private venture, the historical record is a bit more complicated. While it is true that the Kennedy Foundation was a major benefactor in the plan to come to life, the Eisenhower State Department offered to match the funding offer, widely viewed as an attempt to prevent JFK from obtaining valuable political capital with black voters.

More important though, the CIA had their own plans for the students that made the trip to the United States. With rising Soviet influence in Africa, Washington officials saw the potential for the development of a rival political elite that could compete with political leaders whose alliance was directed towards Moscow. In 1967, it was revealed that the CIA was funneling money to a number of international youth groups and student organizations, which included the African American Institute—the same organization Mboya used to help support his airlift program. In 2024, the CIA published previously classified documents revealing that the organization had assets so deeply embedded in AAI that it would report full meeting minutes back to the State Department.

Originally reported by the Washington Post, historian Dr. Susan Williams noted “The exposure of the CIA was picked up by the radical magazine Ramparts and the Saturday Evening Post, which fleshed out the details. ‘Like electricians tracing out the underground wiring of complicated circuits’, reported one journalist in 1969, newsmen dug deeper and ‘examined hundreds of foundation tax records and grant lists. Again and again, to their amazement they succeeded in making connections between a labyrinth of non-profit organisations and a hidden generator. This generator was demonstrably the CIA’.”

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Kathy Hochul says NY ‘exploring every option to redraw our state congressional lines’ to counteract Texas’ new map

New York Governor Kathy Hochul hosted Texas Democrat lawmakers at the State Capitol on Wednesday, after the lawmakers fled their state in order to deny Republican lawmakers the quorum needed to pass a redistricting proposal. During her speech, Hochul said that she and other New York lawmakers were exploring options to conduct redistricting in the state to counteract redistricting in Texas.

“I have a news flash for Republicans in Texas. This is no longer the Wild West. We’re not going to tolerate our democracy being stolen in a modern-day stagecoach heist by a bunch of law-breaking cowboys. Americans don’t want a system that’s stacked against them. They believe in fairness; it’s fundamental. And I’ll tell you this: they’re done with the chaos, they’re done with the cruelty, and I would say they’re ready to vote Republicans out of power in Washington, certainly in the upcoming 2026 elections.”

“Republicans know this. They’ve seen the polls. They know they’re sliding downhill because Americans are rejecting their policies, so this is why they’re fighting. They know they’ll lose the elections, but to subvert the will of the people, they’re hell bent on rigging the system.”

She said that “rigging the system is un-American,” and Congressional districts “are never redrawn mid-decade,” but “here they are flagrantly breaking the rules so they can hold onto power, and with that power they’re going to inflict even more pain, and they’d rather eliminate fairness in the system than to proceed knowing they’re going to lose. They’d rather silence voters than serve them.”

Hochul later added, “what Texas and Republican states are doing at the direction of Donald Trump, I say, is nothing short of a legal insurrection against our Capital—legal meaning they’re using the legal process, does not mean it’s legal, and it must be stopped. If Republicans are willing to rewrite these rules to give themselves an advantage, then they’re leaving us no choice, we must do the same. There’s a phrase, ‘you have to fight fire with fire.’ That is a true statement of how we’re feeling right now.

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Another Mental Health Killing Spree…How Long Will Shooter’s Mental Health History be Hidden?

Last Monday the nation had to endure the horror and tragedy of another mass shooting carried out by another “mentally ill” gunman. The questions that come from this shooting incident should begin with how tough can it be for those in power to finally accept that there’s a problem with the behavioral health model that seriously has been broken for decades?

Nevada resident Shane Tamura drove cross country in record time reportedly hell-bent on shooting up the headquarters of the National Football League (NFL). Unfortunately, the mentally ill Tamura didn’t wait to start shooting at the apparent NFL target but, rather, began shooting in the lobby of the mid-town office building, taking out innocent lives for no apparent reason. A shocking unnecessary tragedy and the powers that be, once again, fail to address the elephant in the room…Tamura was being “treated” for mental illness(es) with serious psychiatric mind-altering drugs.

In a three-page hand-written note found on his lifeless body Tamura whined about Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease associated with head trauma. Yes, Tamura played High School football but never played for any college or for the NFL, his apparent target. And according to one of his former high school coaches Tamura did not sustain any head injuries.

However, Tamura had regularly seen a neurologist who yearly took MRI exams and provided various treatments, including Sumatriptan injections. There is no evidence to date that yearly MRIs revealed any CTE.

But what sport Tamura played in High School really isn’t relevant. What is relevant is that police knew immediately that Tamura had a history of mental illness. As usual, no specific details are ever provided about the alleged “mental illness.” Why? It is allegedly due to this mental illness that innocent lives were taken. Shouldn’t the public have a right to know what specific mental illness Tamura suffered from, what his doctors were providing as “treatment” and how long had Tamura been a mental health patient?

Unfortunately, the public might never get the complete details of the gunman’s mental health issues and drug “treatment,” but it has been revealed through media sources that, despite Tamura’s mental health issues, the gunman was working in security/surveillance at the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas.

Because Tamura had been taken in on two Mental Health Crisis holds in Nevada, first in 2022 and then again in 2024, investigators may want to look into how Tamura was able to obtain a conceal carry permit in Nevada and, more importantly, work in security at a Las Vegas casino? Further, Tamura had been arrested in 2022 at a Las Vegas casino for trespassing after reportedly “grabbing a security guard and refusing to leave.” Those charges were suspiciously dropped, but one has to wonder how this incident slipped through the Horseshoe Casino’s background check?

But even these incidents don’t provide the data that is necessary to understand the obvious decent into mental illness that the gunman was experiencing. If investigators want to know why this senseless shooting occurred, the first action would have been to subpoena Tamura’s mental health records.

It was early on reported that a “medication” was found in Tamura’s abandoned automobile in Manhattan, and it later was revealed that an antipsychotic was found in his room where he lived in Las Vegas.

It was only after police reported what was found in his apartment that one can easily surmise that Tamura’s problems weren’t with the NFL but, rather, with the mental health industry. According to news reports police removed from Tamura’s apartment “multiple prescription bottles along with paperwork, other prescription bottles with pills…”

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New York City’s Ranked Choice Voting System Favors Socialist Mamdani

New York City’s mayoral race uses a unique system called ranked choice voting, which fundamentally alters how winners are determined. Unlike traditional elections where voters select a single candidate, New York voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference on their ballot.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, a computerized elimination process begins. The candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and those votes are redistributed to each voter’s next-ranked choice. This process continues through multiple rounds—potentially factoring in third, fourth, and even fifth choice, until only two candidates remain. The final winner is the one with majority support among the remaining ballots, though that may not be the candidate most voters originally preferred.

In the June 2025 Democratic primary, the ranked choice system significantly altered the initial results. Zohran Mamdani led on election night with 43.5% of first-choice votes, but after several rounds of eliminations and redistributions, he was declared the winner with 56%, while Andrew Cuomo finished with 44%.

This system creates a far more unpredictable election environment. Candidates who appear to hold solid leads on election night can end up losing, or winning, once all voter preferences are fully counted and redistributed.

Ranked choice voting can appear unfair because a candidate with fewer first-choice votes may ultimately win the election. A key technical flaw is “ballot exhaustion,” which happens when voters rank too few candidates to remain in the final rounds. If all of a voter’s selected candidates are eliminated before the last round, their ballot is no longer counted in the final outcome.

A 2015 study of 600,000 votes cast in four local elections in Washington State and California found that winners in all four elections received less than a majority of total votes cast. Studies have found exhaustion rates ranging from 9.6 percent to over 27 percent in some elections, meaning the winner may only represent a majority of remaining votes, not all votes cast.

The increased complexity of ranked choice voting is another major issue. It’s absurd that Democrats, who argue voter ID is too confusing for many people, somehow believe voters can understand and navigate ranked choice voting, and remember to rank enough candidates just to avoid having their ballot disqualified early in the process.

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Hochul: I ‘Have a Lot of Alignment’ with Mamdani ‘on Issues Like Affordability’

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) stated that New York City mayoral candidate Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D) has “taken a lot of positions that I don’t agree with, but we have a lot of alignment on issues like affordability.”

Host Chris Hayes asked, “In the 45 seconds I have left, the mayoral race is headed towards the general election in New York City. Zohran Mamdani won that quite surprisingly, but quite definitively, that New York City primary. You have not endorsed him as of yet. Other officeholders, Democrats have. What are you waiting for, what are you looking for to make the decision whether you’re going to endorse the Democratic nominee for mayor?”

Hochul responded, “We’ll have more conversations. I already started that. I went and I visited him just a couple of days after the election. He’s taken a lot of positions that I don’t agree with, but we have a lot of alignment on issues like affordability. He supports my efforts to build more housing so it’s not the most expensive purchase, … more supply, the prices go down. I understand what it’s like to be a struggling mom. I was that mom. I had to leave a job with Sen. Moynihan because I couldn’t afford childcare. I know what it’s like, and I’m there with him in dealing with the affordability issues. So, we’ll just have more conversations.”

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Mamdani Already Owes New Yorkers $1.3 BILLION

New York City is crumbling under failing schools, surging homelessness, and unsafe streets. But Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, in his time as a state legislator, decided to sink the state even deeper—by wasting another $1.3 billion on ideological vanity projects with no measurable benefit for ordinary New Yorkers.

As a co-author of the so-called “People’s Budget” proposed by the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus, Mamdani has backed spending proposals that read more like activist wish lists than responsible fiscal policy. Every dollar demanded in the name of “equity” is a dollar stripped from basic needs—needs that millions of New Yorkers, especially working-class families, continue to go without.

Take, for example, Mamdani’s push for an $8 million recruitment and training initiative to make New York’s teachers “more diverse.” 

The irony here is hard to miss. In New York City’s public schools—the largest district in the country—Black teachers already make up roughly 42% of the workforce, despite the city’s Black population being only 22%. The goalpost for “representation” has shifted away from proportionality and toward performative politics. 

What Mamdani labels as reform is, in practice, just another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy driven by race-based metrics instead of educational ones.

Mamdani’s caucus also proposed spending $250,000 to promote “racial and cultural inclusivity” in K–12 classrooms—without ever explaining how this helps students learn to read, write, or do math. Another $351,500 was allocated for conventions supposedly designed to help “underrepresented” educators, which is another way of saying the funds will go toward political networking events with no tangible classroom results.

Mamdani also supports an additional $8 million for a Fair Housing Testing Program—money that would go toward “paired testing” for housing discrimination that is already illegal under both state and federal law. 

New York already invests billions in housing and tenant protection. If discrimination occurs, there are legal pathways for enforcement. This new testing program is redundant and unnecessary. 

Meanwhile, New York City continues to face a staggering homelessness crisis. That $8 million would be far better spent building shelters or expanding emergency housing than funding an academic experiment in bureaucratic redundancy.

One of the largest items in Mamdani’s wish list is the $1 billion proposal for climate mitigation and adaptation over five years. This includes $75 million for electric school buses and another $80 million for centralized procurement of zero-emission buses and infrastructure. 

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