Tag: new york

Mamdani’s Proposed Racial Equity Tax Targeting White Neighborhoods

The mayor of America’s largest city, socialist Zohran Mamdani, has a plan to tax white people more. This appears to be an egregious violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which calls for all races to have equal protection under the law.

On April 7, 2026, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released the Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan, described as the first government-wide racial equity framework in the city’s history, along with a “True Cost of Living” measure. The plan spans 45 agencies and includes more than 200 agency-level goals, over 800 strategies, and roughly 600 performance indicators.

The framework is inseparable from a property tax proposal Mamdani advanced during his mayoral campaign, in which he called for shifting tax burdens from outer-borough homeowners to “more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods,” arguing the current system undertaxes high-value real estate.

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Millions of gallons of RADIOACTIVE water released into New York’s Hudson River, damning report shows

Radioactive water was discharged into New York’s Hudson River for more than 60 years, with millions of gallons released annually during its decades of operation.

The long-running practice at the now-defunct Indian Point nuclear plant is drawing renewed scrutiny after a 2025 court approved a controversial plan to release an additional 45,000 gallons of radioactive water per year from the shuttered facility.

The Daily Mail has uncovered a 1970 federal investigation showing the plant discharged an average of two to three million gallons of processed wastewater each year between 1962 and 2021, including treated radioactive effluents.

The probe into the plant’s environmental impact found that millions of fish were killed during its early years, largely after being pulled into the facility’s cooling system.

Investigators also documented chemical discharges that exceeded state safety limits and warned that gaps in monitoring made it impossible to rule out toxic releases that may have contributed to fish kills.

Testing conducted near the plant further detected measurable increases in radioactivity in water, sediment, vegetation and fish closest to discharge areas.

The findings, combined with a newly circulated stakeholder letter from the plant’s current owner, Holtec International, confirming decades of releases, have intensified concerns about the long-term environmental impact on the Hudson River.

Patrick O’Brien, director of government affairs and communications for Holtec International, which purchased the plant in 2021, told the Daily Mail: ‘I can’t speak to operations, since that covers previous owners to the ’60s.’

‘During our ownership, no releases have occurred exceeding federal limits, and every batch is tested and reviewed prior to dilution and discharge.’

The Indian Point nuclear power plant is located along the Hudson River just south of Peekskill. Holtec International purchased the facility shortly after its closure and now oversees its decommissioning, including the handling of stored wastewater and spent nuclear fuel.

A recently circulated letter to stakeholders confirmed that treated radioactive wastewater had been discharged into the Hudson River since the plant’s earliest years, with annual environmental and radiation reports submitted to federal regulators.

Those records indicate that radioactive materials, including tritium and other radionuclides, were diluted and released into the river following treatment processes designed to remove most contaminants before discharge.

Federal investigators first examined concerns about the plant’s environmental impact decades ago, launching a detailed study in 1970 amid growing public alarm about the effects of nuclear facilities along the Hudson River.

While the investigation found no clear evidence that radioactive releases alone caused widespread ecosystem collapse, it documented significant environmental impacts tied to plant operations.

Among the most notable findings was the death of large numbers of fish during the plant’s early years.

Between 1962 and 1970, officials estimated that between 1.5 million and five million fish were killed after becoming trapped against intake screens used to draw cooling water from the river.

The report also warned that fish eggs, larvae and other small aquatic organisms were likely harmed as they passed through the plant’s cooling systems. 

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NYC Socialist Mayor Mamdani Openly Declares War on White Taxpayers, DOJ Fires Back

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a “Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan” on Monday, outlining a broad framework aimed at addressing disparities in housing, education, income, and other areas across the city.

According to a press release from the mayor’s office, the report was delivered within the first 100 days of his administration and is intended to reshape how the city measures affordability and evaluates inequality.

Officials said the plan seeks to “establish a new framework for how New York City measures affordability, understands inequity and plans for a more equitable future.”

Mamdani said the report introduces a new cost-of-living analysis designed to reflect the financial realities faced by residents.

“The True Cost of Living Measure offers an honest account of what it actually costs to live in this city — and who is being left behind. It shows that this is not a crisis affecting a small minority of New Yorkers. It is a crisis touching the vast majority of our city, in every borough and every neighborhood,” Mamdani said in the press release.

He added that the impact of rising costs is not evenly distributed among residents.

“But we know this crisis is not felt equally. Black and Latino New Yorkers — who have been pushed out of this city for decades — are bearing the brunt. The Preliminary Racial Equity Plan is where we begin to reverse that pattern. These reports make one thing clear: we cannot tackle systemic racial inequity without confronting the affordability crisis head-on, and we cannot solve the cost-of-living crisis without dismantling systemic racial inequity.”

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Kiwi Farms Challenges DMCA Subpoenas as Tools to Unmask Anonymous Speech

A new lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York offers a clean example of something that keeps happening and keeps getting ignored: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act being used to censor speech and unmask anonymous speakers.

The case is Lolcow LLC v. Fong-Jones, filed on March 12, 2026, and it pits the operator of the web forum Kiwi Farms against Liz Fong-Jones, an activist and field Chief Technology Officer at SaaS observability platform Honeycomb, who has been filing DMCA subpoenas in an attempt to identify anonymous forum users.

The content Fong-Jones wants censored is a screenshot of a Fong-Jones Bluesky post and an edited version of a Fong-Jones headshot, both related to what Fong-Jones has previously described publicly as a “consent accident.”

Forum users posted and discussed those images. Fong-Jones responded by claiming copyright ownership and filing DMCA subpoenas to force the site to hand over the identities of the people who posted them.

The copyright claims seem thin. Kiwi Farms operator Joshua Moon argues that the screenshot is a derivative work over which Fong-Jones holds no copyright, and that the edited headshot represents a textbook case of fair use, given that the image has no commercial value and was modified specifically for purposes of criticism and commentary.

That argument carries weight. Courts have long recognized that transformative use of images for commentary or ridicule sits comfortably within fair use protections.

What makes this case useful as a case study is less the copyright question itself and more the mechanism being exploited. The DMCA subpoena process, codified in Section 512(h), allows copyright holders to obtain a judicial subpoena to unmask the identities of allegedly infringing anonymous internet users just by asking a court clerk to issue one and attaching a copy of the infringement notice.

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New York’s Governor Seems Indifferent to the Health Consequences of a Steep Tax on Nicotine Pouches

By pushing a 75 percent wholesale tax on nicotine pouches, New York State Budget Director Blake Washington says, Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying to address “a public health concern.” That rationale is absurd on its face, since this tax would sharply raise the cost of a nicotine product that is far less hazardous than cigarettes, perversely discouraging smokers from making a switch that could save their lives.

Hochul, who seems determined to portray a money grab as a benevolent intervention, is either oblivious or indifferent to the health consequences of taxing nicotine patches at the same rate as cigarettes. “We see it as a distinction without a difference,” Washington told reporters in January.

That position ignores the huge difference between inhaling tobacco smoke, which contains myriad toxins and carcinogens, and orally absorbing nicotine from a pouch placed between the lip and gums. Hochul’s framing also contradicts what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said four days before the end of the Biden administration, when it authorized the marketing of Zyn nicotine pouches in two doses and 10 flavors.

That decision was based on the FDA’s determination that “the new products offer greater benefits to population health than risks.” The data, said Matthew Farrelly, director of the Office of Science at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, “show that these nicotine pouch products meet that bar by benefiting adults who use cigarettes and/or smokeless tobacco products and completely switch to these products.”

Nicotine pouches contain “substantially lower amounts of harmful constituents than cigarettes,” the FDA noted. They therefore offer “a lower-risk alternative for adults who smoke cigarettes.”

How much lower? To give you a sense of the difference, the Royal College of Physicians estimates that “the hazard to health” from e-cigarettes, which likewise do not contain tobacco or burn anything but do require inhalation, “is unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco.”

Nicotine pouches “contain far, far fewer harmful constituents compared to traditional tobacco products,” notes Mary Hrywna, a tobacco control specialist at the Rutgers School of Public Health. The FDA’s Zyn decision implicitly acknowledged that nicotine pouches are “much safer than cigarettes,” says Ray Niaura, a professor at New York University’s School of Global Public Health.

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Backlash After NYC Mayor Mamdani Blames Death of 7-Month Old Baby on Guns Instead of the Violent Criminals Who Killed Her

Radical socialist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is facing backlash for politicizing the death of a 7-month-old baby and blaming ‘guns’ instead of the violent criminals responsible for the tragedy.

On Wednesday, the baby, Kaori Patterson-Moore, was shot and killed as her mother pushed her in a stroller down a Brooklyn Street. Two men drove past on a moped, with one of the men firing two shots at passersby.

Per The New York Post:

Sources said the tot’s mom heard the shots and rushed her daughter into a nearby bodega for shelter — then looked down at the stroller and saw the blood.

The suspects fled but crashed the moped two blocks away, sending one of them to the hospital where he was identified as a person of interest and the second goon still on the run.

Meanwhile, the tragic youngster was rushed by ambulance to Woodhull Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 1:46 p.m.

Rather than addressing NYC’s soft-on-crime policies and blaming the actual violent perpetrators, Mamdani instead blamed guns.

Mamdani said during a press conference, “Earlier today, a 7-month-old baby was shot and killed on the corner of Moore Street and Humboldt Street here in Brooklyn. A life that had barely begun was taken in an instant.”

“This is not the first family in our city to know this pain. Too many children have never grown up into becoming adults. Too many parents have had to bury those that they love the most. We cannot accept this as normal. In our city.”

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NYS bill would force MTA to tell riders about bed bug infestations

They’re itching for the truth.

New York State lawmakers are pushing a bill that would force the MTA to tell riders about bed bug infestation on trains and buses within 24 hours.

The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember William Colton (D-Brooklyn), would set rules to require the MTA to either post a message on its website or send an alert via email or text about any infestation.

“The MTA – for no good reason – has been resistant about alerting its customers when an infestation has been detected,” Colton said in a statement.

“Millions of New Yorkers use our critically important trains and buses regularly,” Colton added. “They should not have to add ‘will I bring home bed bugs?’ to their list of concerns as they go about their daily life.”

A previous version of the bill passed the Assembly but died in the state Senate, according to representatives. The latest legislation made it through the Assembly last month and is now in the hands of the Senate’s Transportation Committee.

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Prominent New York synagogue hosts presentation on why U.S. Jews should support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza

The American press does its best not to cover savage Israeli views of Palestinians, but a leading New York synagogue gave an honored platform to those views ten days ago. It hosted an Israeli advocate with connections in its government who argued for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and said American Jews need to support that operation.  

Benjamin Anthony said that all “Palestinian Arabs” in Gaza pose such a threat to Israel that the international community should use “muscular diplomacy” with Egypt so as force the population out of Gaza into an “enclave” in the Sinai peninsula. 

“I believe the international community would very handily be able to create some sort of enclave for the…Gazans in the Sinai peninsula. And then we might have the breathing room to think about long-term solutions.” 

Though those two million Gazans would likely be displaced again, into African countries, said Anthony, the leader of an Israeli think tank called the MirYam Institute. 

“I think someone like [Egyptian president] Sisi would likely move the Gazans along from the Sinai peninsula in the event that he didn’t want to build a place for them there, and you would probably see them dispersed through the continent of Africa quite quickly.”

Anthony’s argument is widely shared by Israelis (according to a 2025 poll), and it only received mild push back from Eliot Cosgrove, a leading conservative rabbi in the U.S., who had brought Anthony, his first cousin, onto the synagogue dais.  

Cosgrove called the scheme “very intriguing,” but protested that Anthony was conflating “Hamas with the entire Gaza population.” And that by creating a refugee population with a “narrative”, Israel was practically and morally kicking the can down the road. Speaking “as a proud Zionist,” Cosgrove said the scheme is not in Israel’s interest.

Anthony insisted that no Gazans could be trusted because Gazan civilians cheered the atrocities against Israelis on October 7. Cosgrove folded his hand: “Well, I love you, and I disagree with you, but let’s move on.” 

Cosgrove ended the hour-long dialogue by thanking Anthony “for fighting the good fight” and “for representing our people.”

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Hochul running mate Adrienne Adams funneled $435K to migrant shelter tied to federal probe

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s running mate – former NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams – dished out $435,000 in taxpayer-funded political pork to a shady migrant-shelter provider at the center of a federal corruption probe, The Post has learned.

The Democratic lieutenant governor candidate gave Brooklyn-based nonprofit BHRAGS Home Care Inc. $375,000 in discretionary funds through her speaker’s pot from 2022 to 2025, Council records show. The taxpayer’s dough was earmarked for the group’s senior and youth after-school programs.

The Queens-based pol also directly tacked on another $60,000 to help it assist the mentally ill, the records show.

In all, the Council under her leadership doled out $544,900 to BHRAGS since 2021, according to the records.

Councilwoman Farah Louis kicked in another $72,000, and other council members chipped in the remaining $37,900, records show.

The feds are looking into whether Louis; her sister, Deborah Louis, who serves as Hochul’s assistant secretary for NYC intergovernmental affairs; Edu Hermelyn, husband of state Assemblywoman and Brooklyn Democratic Party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn; and others accepted bribes or kickbacks to boost BHRAGS.

The Flatbush-based nonprofit has received $185.4 million in no-bid city contracts since 2022 to provide emergency shelters for migrants and other homeless people, according to NYC Comptroller’s Office records. 

The nonprofit’s executive director, Roberto Samedy, its former board chairman, Jean Ronald Tirelus, and two others connected to BHRAGS were arrested Tuesday as part of the corruption probe for allegedly pocketing more than $1 million in kickbacks linked to city-run migrant shelters.

BHRAGS reps have said it’s “fully cooperating with law enforcement” and that Samedy was placed on administrative leave.

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NY assembly to get million-dollar lounge —while demanding huge tax hikes on hardworking New Yorkers

State assembly members are set to personally enjoy a million-dollar renovation for their lounge space just off the chamber floor — even as they push to hike taxes on businesses while driving up spending, The Post has learned.

The Office of General Services, a division of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration which handles much of the capitol complex, is moving forward with plans to renovate the space with the price tag potentially exceeding $1 million, according to bidding documents reviewed by The Post.

The move comes as the same pols who exclusively get to recline on the couches in the antechamber and chomp down on treats prepared in the lounge’s kitchenette demand Hochul hike taxes on businesses amid next year’s proposed $263 billion state budget.

“Albany Democrats always find money for themselves while asking New Yorkers to pay more. They are completely out of touch,” upstate Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), a former assembly woman, told The Post.

Ex-Assemblyman Andy Goodell (R-Chautaqua) added, “The assembly members should work harder rather than ‘lounge’ around.”

A source confirmed to The Post that OGS had received a request from the Assembly for the project.

Lawmakers ran for the hills Wednesday for Passover break after failing to come to an agreement with Hochul on her proposed $263 billion state budget proposal.

Despite being on a scheduled two-week recess, lawmakers will likely have to gather to vote Tuesday on another stopgap spending bill to keep state workers paid.

At least some will likely skip the tally in person, Goodell said.

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