ByJohn Binder-Breitbart

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) is floating the idea of having newly arrived migrants become lifeguards for the city’s public pools, declaring them “excellent swimmers.”

On Tuesday, during a press briefing, Adams complained that the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have arrived in New York City over the last few years remain ineligible to work.

HAHAHA NYC Mayor Eric Adams says he wants illegals to become NYC lifeguards because they are “excellent swimmers” pic.twitter.com/nhimINNB9w

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 14, 2024

Instead, Adams said he would like to see migrants be offered lifeguard jobs at the city’s public pools and beaches because they are “excellent swimmers.”

“Let me just take your imagination for a moment. If we had a migrant and asylum seeker plan that states ‘Those jobs that we are in high demand, we could expedite [work permits],’” Adams said:

How do we have a large body of people that are in our city and country, that are excellent swimmers, and at the same time we need lifeguards? And the only obstacle is that we won’t give them the right to work to become a lifeguard. That just doesn’t make sense. But if we had a plan that says ‘We have a shortage of food service workers, those who fit the criteria, we’re going to expedite you.’ [Emphasis added]

…

We have all these eligible people waiting to work with the skills they need to fill the jobs but we’re unable to allow them to work because bureaucracy is in the way. That just does not make sense. [Emphasis added]

Adams has long been a proponent of using the southern border as a mere checkpoint where migrants can pass through with work permits into the United States to take jobs.

Last October, while traveling through Latin America, Adams suggested that the world’s migrants deserve a “right to work” in the U.S. regardless of the impact that mass immigration has on the job prospects and wages of Americans.

“When you look at Colombia, they have really shown how to absorb individuals into their societies, and one of the most important ways to do it is to allow people to work,” Adams said. “Nothing is more humane and, nothing is more American than your right to work, and we believe that is a right we should extend.”

RELATED: Human Smuggler Dumps Illegals in the Street, Swims Back to Mexico After Texas DPS Troops Chase Him

Texas Department of Public Safety

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.

By: Tom Ozimek

A judge struck down an executive order issued by New York’s Nassau County that barred male players from competing at county-run facilities in any league that doesn’t correspond to their biological sex or that isn’t a coed or mixed league.

Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Francis Ricigliano said in a May 10 order that Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman did not have the authority to issue the order imposing the transgender athlete ban without corresponding action by the Nassau County Legislature.

“Precedent has repeatedly established that an executive cannot enact his/her own view of what persons should be protected from discrimination without regard to laws enacted by the legislature,” the judge wrote.

Mr. Blakeman issued the executive order on Feb. 22, prohibiting the Nassau County Department of Parks, Recreation & Museums from issuing permits for the use of county facilities for competitions or sports events in which males participate in female-designated teams and leagues. The ban only applied to female-identifying males while allowing the department to issue permits for events in which women compete in men’s leagues or events.

“There is a movement for biological males to bully their way into competing in sports or leagues or teams that identify themselves or advertise themselves as girls’ or female or women’s teams or leagues,” Mr. Blakeman said at a Feb. 22 press conference, explaining the rationale for the ban.

“We find that unacceptable. It’s a form of bullying,” he said at the time.

Mr. Blakeman also argued that allowing female-identifying males to compete in women’s sports poses a safety risk to female competitors due to men’s generally superior strength and size, while also depriving women of opportunities.

The move drew backlash, with New York Attorney General Letitia James threatening to sue if the ban wasn’t overturned, prompting Mr. Blakeman to sue Ms. James, accusing her of unconstitutional discrimination.

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) sued Mr. Blakeman over the order on behalf of the Long Island Roller Rebels, a recreational women’s flat track roller derby league that welcomes female-identifying males to participate in its activities.

The plaintiffs argued that the executive order violated numerous laws and, according to Curly Fry, a member of Roller Rebels, was “transphobic and unjust.”

Gabriella Larios, staff attorney at the NYCLU, said in a statement that the group is “gratified that the court has struck down a harmful policy that belongs in the dustbin of history.”

Mr. Blakeman told media outlets in a statement that he disagrees with the decision.

“Lack of courage from a Judge who didn’t want to decide the case on its merits. Unfortunately, girls and women are hurt by the Court,” he said. remove

Mr. Blakeman did not respond to inquiry from The Epoch Times as to whether he intends to appeal.

The overturned Nassau County executive order mandated that sports organizations applying for permits in Nassau County facilities must designate teams according to a team member’s biological sex.

Teams were to be designated into one of three categories: males, men, or boys; females, women, or girls; or coed or mixed, including males and females.

The order barred the Nassau County Department of Parks, Recreation & Museums from issuing permits for the use of county facilities for competitions or sports events in which boys or men participate in female-designated teams and leagues.

          (TheEpochTimes.com)

By: AP

Once Donald Trump’s loyal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen pointed the finger at his former boss Monday in pivotal testimony about hush money payments at the center of the first criminal trial of a former American president.

Cohen provided jurors with an insider’s account of payments to silence women’s claims of sexual encounters with Trump, saying the payments were directed by Trump to fend off damage to his 2016 White House bid.

Cohen is expected to be on the witness stand for several days, and face intense grilling by Trump’s attorneys, who have painted him as a liar who’s trying to take down the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

While prosecutors’ most important witness, he’s also their most vulnerable to attack — having served time in federal prison and built his persona in recent years around being a thorn in Trump’s side.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the case.

Here are some takeaways from Cohen’s testimony so far:

Cohen tied Trump directly to the hush money scheme, recounting meetings and conversations with his then-boss about stifling negative stories in the waning weeks of the 2016 campaign.

“He expressed to me: Just do it,” Cohen said of the $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, who was threatening to go public with claims of a sexual encounter with Trump decade earlier. Trump denies they ever had sex.

Less than two weeks before the election, Cohen finalized the payments to buy Daniels’ silence. Immediately, he went to Trump to inform him the deal was done, he testified.

“The task he gave to me was finished, accomplished and done,” Cohen testified, before pointing to a second reason for updating his boss: “to take credit for myself so that he knew I had done it and finished it, because this was important.”

About another story of an alleged affair with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, Cohen said Trump told him, “Make sure it doesn’t get released.” Cohen testified that he personally had no interest in acquiring the rights to McDougal’s story, telling jurors, “What I was doing was at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump.” Trump also denies having an affair with McDougal.

Cohen also recounted going to Trump after learning about a Trump Tower doorman who claimed, falsely, that Trump had a child out of wedlock.

In reply, Trump told him, “You handle it,” according to Cohen.

Cohen described being angry when he wasn’t initially reimbursed for the Daniels hush money payment. Eventually he met with Trump and then Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg in Trump Tower to discuss the debt owed to him, Cohen told jurors. There, Weisselberg informed Cohen the reimbursements would be paid as “legal services” in monthly installments, he testified.

That’s important because the 34 counts of false business records Trump is charged with stem from paperwork such as invoices and checks that were deemed legal expenses in company records. Prosecutors say those payments largely were reimbursements to Cohen for Daniels’ hush money payment.

Cohen testified that Trump feared Daniels’ story would be a “disaster” for his presidential campaign, which was already reeling at the time from the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump boasted about grabbing women sexually without their permission.

That testimony could be key for prosecutors, who are trying prove that Trump schemed to illegally influence the 2016 race by burying unflattering stories that could damage his campaign.

(AP)

By: Juliette Fairley

Taiwanese immigrant Joseph J. Chou, 60, knows the American dream is true because he’s living it.

After immigrating to the United States with his parents, he started a successful auto-mechanic business in the migrant community of Flushing, Queens.

He was campaigning to unseat Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) in the 6th District as a Republican. But, the political newcomer is facing obstacles he didn’t foresee.

“I’m realizing they get you on the signatures,” Mr. Chou alleged. “The GOP does not want anybody to challenge their candidate [Thomas Zmich] and the GOP nominated the same candidate in 2020 and 2022.”

In 2022, Ms. Meng defeated Mr. Zmich with 63.9 percent of the vote.

Because Mr. Zmich is the Republican nominee, Mr. Chou had to collect 1,250 signed voter petitions before he could be placed on the upcoming June 25 primary ballot.

“All the district leaders of the Queen GOP nominated [Zmich] as a candidate,” Queens Republican Chairman Anthony Nunziato told The Epoch Times.

“That’s how that works. Zmich ran before so I guess they decided to run him again.”

Mr. Chou thought he had successfully gathered 1,903 proper signatures until on April 15, the Queens County GOP challenged 1,363 as invalid.

Vincent Ignizio, deputy executive director of the New York City Board of Elections, said after Mr. Chou presented an exceptions list, he still did not have enough valid signatures.

“Mr. Chou appeared personally on the second date saying he had fired his lawyer and that the list submitted was somehow defective and he now wanted to submit another list—which the commissioners declined because it had not been presented at the original hearing and he had already been given an opportunity to present an exception report,” Mr. Ignizio told The Epoch Times.

The commissioners then adopted the clerk’s report resulting in Mr. Chou being removed from the ballot.

“Mr. Chou represented himself in court in a validated proceeding and Judge Catapano-Fox ultimately decided against Mr. Chou,” Mr. Ignizio added.

Mr. Chou isn’t the only candidate whose ballot-qualifying signatures were challenged by either the New York GOP or the Democrat party.

Overall, in New York County, 62 objections were filed. In Bronx County, 25 objections were filed. Kings County has 129 objections on file.

In Queens County, 73 objections were filed, and in Staten Island, two were filed.

Mike Zumbluskas, a former GOP candidate for New York’s 12th Congressional District, thinks the signature petitioning requirement is problematic.

“The party nominee has a super advantage because you have the establishment helping you,” Mr. Zumbluskas told The Epoch Times.

“My whole thing is to get rid of petitioning altogether and just pay a fee to get on the ballot.

“A number of states do that. The city and state would save millions of dollars a year and the courts would have more time to hear other cases.”

Although he is disappointed, Mr. Chou hasn’t given up. He is gathering the 3,500 signatures necessary to be listed on the ballot as an independent candidate.

Like Mr. Chou, Helen Qiu is gathering signatures in New York County as an independent after being disqualified as a Republican.

She is campaigning against Democrat state assembly incumbent Grace Lee who objected to Ms. Qiu’s ballot-qualifying signatures.

“I have to spend thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer to prove my signatures and I don’t have that kind of resources.”

          (TheEpochTimes.com)

By: Meghan Blonder

The head of the New York City public school system testified to Congress that he recognizes the “urgency of addressing” and “rooting out” anti-Semitism. Just weeks prior, he held an event alongside an anti-Semitic Democratic fundraiser who has promoted Holocaust denial and runs a pro-Hamas Facebook group.

Chancellor David Banks testified before the House Education and Workforce Committee on Wednesday to address the New York City public school system’s response to rising anti-Semitism. He told the committee that his schools are “focused” on being a “candle in the darkness” in the fight against Jew hatred.

“At New York City Public Schools, we are focused on our charge to fight hate and foster inclusion through safety, engagement, and education,” Banks said. “We’re working hard and we have a long way to go. There’s always more to do. I hope in New York we can be a candle in the darkness.”

Less than a month before, on April 11, Banks and New York elected officials held an Arab American Heritage celebration which featured anti-Semitic Democratic fundraiser Maher Abdel-qader, who has promoted Holocaust denial and online content that describes Jews as “Satanic.” Banks posed for a photo with Abdel-qader, who also is the founder and administrator of a Facebook group called “Palestinian American Congress” where members have posted anti-Semitic content and cheered Hamas terrorists.

In 2018, Abdel-qader shared a video that said Ashkenazi Jews are “not true Jews,” accused Israeli Jews of “identity theft,” and cast doubt on the validity of the Holocaust. “The Jews in Israel are not true Jews, they are Khazars Ashkenazi Jews, identity theft,” the video said alongside a photo of a Jewish man wearing a ski mask to cover his face. “Research the truth about the Holocaust, and you’ll definitely start to question what you thought you knew,” the video’s narrator says. In another post, Abdel-qader compared Israel to ISIS and accused the Jewish state of running “concentration camps.”

In a 2017 post that echoed an anti-Semitic trope of Jews controlling the government, Abdel-qader claimed Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.) was a “foreign agent.”

“Our US Congress is full of ass-kissing Israeli defenders. A few of them are actually unregistered foreign agents. Ben Cardin is one of them. He is convincing the rest of the lowlifes in Congress to throw away our rights to free speech, and kowtow to the illegal so-called ‘state’ of ‘Israel,'” Abdel-qader said.

In the days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, members of Abdel-qader’s Facebook group cheered the terrorist group’s fighters.

An Oct. 12, 2024, post in Abdel-qader’s Facebook group read, “We don’t want to throw you in the sea … we want you to ride it back from where you came,” accompanied by a photo of a Hamas terrorist with an elderly Israeli hostage. Another post commended the “achievements” of “resistance” fighters after they killed Israeli soldiers.

NYC Public Schools posted a photo online of Banks speaking at the event, with the caption: “Today we hosted our inaugural Arab American Heritage Month celebration!”

The revelation comes as other Democratic members of Congress also embraced Abdel-qader around the same time. “Squad” members Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.), Cori Bush (D., Mo.), Summer Lee (D., Pa.), Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.)—many of whom face a pro-Israel primary challenger—embraced Abdel-qader at an April 18 Washington, D.C., event.

          (FreeBeacon.com)

By: AP

Harvey Weinstein will remain locked up in New York as a court works out whether he should stay in a city jail while awaiting retrial or be sent to California to serve his prison sentence for rape there.

The fallen movie mogul, who showed up for the hearing in a wheelchair and wearing a dark suit, did not consent to California’s extradition request during a brief court hearing Thursday. The 72-year-old will remain behind bars at the Rikers Island jail, where he was returned to from a city hospital just days ago.

California now needs to produce a warrant signed by the governor within 90 days, Judge Joanne Watters said.

“They are not in a position to extradite Mr. Weinstein because they have not done what they need to do,” Diana Fabi Samson, Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, said outside court following the appearance.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Mr. Weinstein, referred extradition questions to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Judge Watters scheduled Mr. Weinstein’s next appearance on the extradition question for Aug. 7—just weeks before New York prosecutors said they could be ready to try him again.

The 16-year sentence Mr. Weinstein received in California in 2023 for raping a woman at a 2013 Los Angeles film festival had been on ice while he served a 23-year rape sentence in New York.

After the Empire State conviction was overturned late last month, Manhattan prosecutors said they are working to retry him, and at least one of two accusers was willing to testify again.

The once-powerful former movie executive has denied the New York charges, which accused him of raping an aspiring actor in 2013 and sexually assaulting a TV and film production assistant in 2006.

In vacating the convictions, New York’s highest court found that the trial judge prejudiced Mr. Weinstein with improper rulings, including by letting other women testify about allegations he wasn’t charged with.

Representatives for Mr. Weinstein said Thursday their main concern is making sure he gets the medical care he needs while in custody in New York.

“He is holding up as well as expected under the circumstances of being incarcerated with the health issues,” Ms. Samson said.

Mr. Weinstein was doing his time in an upstate New York prison until he was transferred to city custody following the appeals court decision. Then he was sent to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital, where his publicist says he was treated for pneumonia and other medical issues. He was moved back to Rikers on May 6.

Craig Rothfeld, a jail consultant working with Mr. Weinstein’s attorneys, stressed that the decision where to house Mr. Weinstein was made solely by city officials without input from his legal team.

“There’s been a lot of rumors about him having a cushy room. There have been false narratives about what that room is like,” he said. “He has very serious health issues. Since the day he has been incarcerated, he has been in a hospital setting, so the narrative that he should not be in Bellevue is really not a narrative that makes sense.”

  (AP)

Edited by: Fern Sidman

Last weekend, Ronn Torossian, a public relations executive from New York City and an associate of Mayor Eric Adams, was arrested during a confrontation at a pro-Hamas encampment on the campus of Syracuse University in upstate New York, as was reported on Friday in the New York Times. The incident, which escalated into Torossian being taken into custody by campus security, has spotlighted ongoing issues of student safety, violence, and anti-Semitism that concern parents and university administrators alike.

Torossian, who is Jewish and the father of a Syracuse student, was participating in a protest with other parents against the university’s inadequate response to safety concerns in light of burgeoning campus Jew hatred. The tensions reached a peak when Torossian engaged with a student protester holding a sign that read, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free,” according to the information provided in the NYT report. Described by university officials as “especially aggressive,” his refusal to leave the scene led to his arrest. Syracuse University later issued a statement saying that “harassing behavior or conduct from anyone that creates a safety concern will not be tolerated.”

The events at Syracuse are part of a broader pattern of incidents at universities across the country, where protests and counter-protests have led to complex challenges for university administrations.The NYT report observed that the presence of non-students at these protests adds an additional layer of complexity, often blurring the lines between campus and community issues.

Torossian, known for his role in organizing fundraising events for Mayor Eric Adams, expressed frustration over the university chancellor’s refusal to meet with a group of concerned Jewish parents. According to the NYT report, these parents have been particularly vocal since the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, seeking more decisive action from university leadership to address the growing threat to Jewish students.

The catalyst for the demonstration was a distressing occurrence involving a confrontation between pro-Hamas protesters and Jewish students. According to multiple accounts, including those from witnesses, parents of an involved Jewish student, and official reports from the Syracuse Police Department, the incident unfolded over the course of a day starting at Walnut Park, the NYT report said. This location, adjacent to the university, is near several fraternity houses, including one identified as a Jewish fraternity.

The protesters, a mix of Syracuse University students and non-affiliated individuals, initially gathered at Walnut Park before marching to a campus encampment and then returning to the park. The information provided in the NYT report said that during the disbandment of the rally, a particularly hostile act occurred: a protester issued a Nazi salute directly across from the Jewish fraternity, which at that time was playing the Israeli and American national anthems at high volume. The situation escalated when a few Jewish students approached the protester to confront him, resulting in one of these students being punched in the face. The assailant then fled the scene.

In the aftermath, Torossian criticized Syracuse University for its lack of action, labeling the event as clear anti-Semitism that needed addressing, as per the NYT report. However, the university’s response, as articulated by Jeff Stoecker, the chief communications officer, highlighted a jurisdictional limitation, stating that the university does not have the authority to intervene in incidents that occur off-campus.

This stance has done little to quell the concerns of students and parents.