Zohran Mamdani will be the first New York City mayor to be sworn in on a Quran when he takes his oath of office on January 1st. Mamdani will be the first Muslim mayor of the Big Apple. According to the New York Post, Mamdani will use at least three different sets of the Quran to take the oath of office during public and private ceremonies. Zohran Mamdani will become first NYC mayor sworn in on Quran when he takes oath of office https://t.co/mvQT31E48R pic.twitter.com/O0wK1pcsDM — New York Post (@nypost) December 31, 2025 More from the New York Post: The far-left pol is expected to use his grandfather’s Quran and one that belonged to black writer and historian Arturo Schomburg, lent by the New York Public Library, during a private midnight ceremony at the abandoned Old City Hall subway station. During his daytime oath of office outside City Hall, he will again use his grandfather’s religious book and at least one other family Quran, the New York Times first reported and Mamdani’s rep confirmed. State Attorney General Letitia James will swear in Mamdani at midnight while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will deliver the oath of office to the democratic socialist later in the day. Recent mayors have used a variety of different religious texts with personal meaning and historical significance when getting sworn into office. The Old City Hall station was part of the city’s first subway line. It was decommissioned in 1945. “When Old City Hall Station first opened in 1904 — one of New York’s 28 original subway stations — it was a physical monument to a city that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working peoples’ lives,” Mamdani said, according to NBC New York. “That ambition need not be a memory confined only to our past, nor must it be isolated only to the tunnels beneath City Hall: it will be the purpose of the administration fortunate enough to serve New Yorkers from the building above,” he added. EXCLUSIVE: @zohrankmamdani will be sworn in as mayor on midnight on January 1 inside the old abandoned City Hall subway station, saying that he sees the venue as a symbol for the aims of his upcoming administration. https://t.co/qBmYXIeZGk — Streetsblog New York (@StreetsblogNYC) December 29, 2025 NBC New York shared further: Mamdani’s transition formed an inaugural committee that includes actor John Turturro, playwright Cole Escola and writer Colson Whitehead, as well as advocates, small business owners and campaign workers who the incoming mayor’s office says have “provided perspective, guidance, and cultural sensibility” for the ceremony. The public swearing-in will be accompanied by a block party along a stretch of Broadway leading up to City Hall. Mamdani’s office expects thousands of people to attend and says there will be performances, music and interfaith elements.

Flu-vaccinated individuals face sharply higher rates of pneumonia and other non-flu respiratory illnesses compared to the unvaccinated, according to multiple peer-reviewed studies. While the flu shot may slightly reduce influenza itself, multiple studies prove that susceptibility [...] The post Major Study Links Flu Shot to 440% Surge in Pneumonia and Other Respiratory Illnesses appeared first on The People's Voice.

It looks like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is traveling the world on work time and can now say she is gaining experience in foreign affairs. Whitmer wants to run for President. This year alone, it has cost a million dollars and 25% of her work time for her travels away from the USA, and to other […] The post Part-Time Gov: Whitmer Spent 25% of Her Time Outside Michigan appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Minnesota wins the clown world’s most corrupt election award. It was a tough choice, and they had to share it with California, which has banned voter ID. The prize is a Night with the Governor and His Family to listen to their favorite stories of opening windows as Minneapolis burned, so they could smell the […] The post Minnesota Ties for Clown World’s Most Corrupt Election Award appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Editor’s note: This week, we’re reprinting some of our best stories from the past year. In this piece, originally published in June, former college president Greg Salsbury recounts the cost of California’s failed leadership. * * * Perhaps it is fitting that legendary Beach Boy and California native son Brian Wilson would pass away in the same year that a New York Times headline would ask, “Is the California Dream a Mirage?” The social, environmental and economic disaster that is California has been mushrooming for decades now, with any improvements in the near term looking about as likely as a working bullet train from the north to the south in that state. The litany of negative facts emerging for the state is accompanied by descriptors such as “worst,” “first,” “record,” “ballooning,” “unsustainable,” “disaster,” and “mismanagement.” These ills are detailed in the myriad articles pointing to California’s failed leadership. Consider the overall economic situation. California went from a state budget surplus of $100b to a deficit of $73b in just three years. This was driven in part from its decision in February of 2020 to escalate spending significantly while it was losing jobs, and for the first time since receiving statehood in 1850, population. Between 2010 and 2023, the state saw 9.3 million people leave while only 6.7 million arrived — with a disproportionate number of the “leavers” in the high-income, high-tax-paying category. California had the distinction of being rated as the very worst state in which to do business by Chief Executive magazine — for ten years in a row. Others were more positive with The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council seeing them as only the second worst state, and the Cato Institute placing them at 48th out of 50 for entrepreneurs. The California Policy Center concludes: “For anyone operating a business in California – small, medium or large – the experiences of the last twenty years have been challenging, and it gets worse every year. California’s regulatory environment, its high taxes and exorbitant fees, and the overall cost of doing business are the toughest in the nation. Many businesses have voted with their feet, moving their operations to more welcoming business environments.”  According to WalletHub.com’s report “Best & Worst Places to Retire (2025),” which examined 182 cities across the U.S., four out five of the worst cities in which to retire are in California. The story is equally daunting in a host of other arenas for the state — education, illegal immigration, water, violent crime, theft, housing, insurance, energy, environment, assorted taxes and fees, cost of living, state employee pensions, healthcare, and more. ConsumerAffairs, a consumer news and advocacy organization, compared all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. across five categories: affordability, economy, education and health, quality of life, and safety. California ranked as the single least desirable state to move to. Their conclusion might have been influenced by seeing that, compared to all other 49 states in the nation, California has the: Highest poverty rate Highest top marginal state income tax rate Highest median home price Highest gasoline tax Highest number of federal welfare recipients Highest amount of unemployment benefit fraud Highest number of illegal immigrants Highest percentage of high school dropouts Highest rates of human trafficking Highest homeless population Highest level of state pension shortfall Highest level of net exodus from the state Highest cost for kilowatt hours in the continental U.S. While many folks have wryly referred to California as, “the most expensive weather in the world,” an increasing number of people are rethinking that cost — especially when the weather itself is now regularly accompanied by wildfires, mudslides, and earthquakes. The Hampton Global Business Review concludes, “The allure of California’s beaches and innovation hubs might not be enough to counteract the growing disenchantment among its residents and business leaders.” While all of this is more than sobering, contrary to the popular narrative, the untenable situation in which the state now finds itself cannot be blamed solely or even largely on the handful of people who have occupied the top leadership roles or even the few thousand in mid-tier management/political roles for the state. To be sure, many of those people have largely been far worse than feckless; they have been actively counterproductive — perhaps even maleficent. But blaming leadership is like blaming guns for shooting homicides. They could not have performed this disservice without the active support of the California voters. Time and time again, California voters continue to check the box for more of the same people who continue to inflict damage on them for decades now. But more importantly, they knowingly do so. No objective observer can credibly argue that Californians have been fooled or misled by their leaders or the outrageous decisions they have made, or failed to make. The great scholar, author, and life-long California resident Dr. Victor Davis Hanson has for years detailed the disastrous results of many of these decisions — from eliminating fire-preventing forest management, to not only failing to build appropriate dams but blowing up existing dams and eliminating reservoirs, to promoting unchecked and mass illegal immigration. There was likely no more clarifying moment of truth on this point than when Governor Gavin Newsom faced a recall. His record was damning. There was the bungled and hypocritical mismanagement of the COVID virus response — complete with vaccine shortages, maskless French Laundry dinners with friends, and arbitrary business closure guidelines, a budget deficit that was more than double his own projection, and most importantly, the ignoring or exacerbation of most of the long list of the aforementioned maladies destroying the state. Not only did the recall effort fail miserably, with Newsom receiving a convincing approval mandate of 62% of the vote, but he was then solidly re-elected in 2022 with nearly that same margin. California voters, no doubt painfully aware of all of these issues essentially said, “Yes, yes, yes! Give us more of this!” But suppose for just a moment that Newsom had been recalled, that perhaps he had skewered one of the sacred cows big enough to motivate his ouster. Perhaps he drove a diesel car, or contended that there is something wrong about allowing a 250lb biological male athlete to compete with women, or suggested that maybe the unpunished shoplifting limit should be reduced from $950 to say $500, or publicly stated that illegal immigrants are not entitled to the same rights as U.S. citizens. Who would voters have suggested take his place? It almost certainly would have been another entity not dissimilar to Newsom in any significant way. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that so many logically thinking, hard-working, patriotic Americans are leaving California if they can. With each passing year, the state is left with an increasingly left-leaning voter base — and they like it that way.  Thus, it is folly to believe that California’s ills can be solved as simply as replacing a few, key incompetent leaders. California’s failed leadership is not nearly as problematic as its failed follower-ship. And that is a far harder nut to crack. Brian Wilson made a career writing songs about the abundant fun, fun, fun available in the Golden State. Were he with us today, begrudgingly or not, he would have to admit that clearly, daddy took the T-Bird away. * * * Greg Salsbury, Ph.D. is former president of Western Colorado University and Board of Advisor member for STARRS.US. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Amanda Nguyen, one of the women aboard the so-called first female space flight, says she experienced depression due to the “tsunami of harassment” following the highly publicized Blue Origin ride. Besides Nguyen, pop singer Katy Perry, CBS anchor Gayle King, and Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez were among the six women who flew to the edge of space on the Amazon founder’s Blue Origin spacecraft in April. Their flight was touted as historic and important by many major outlets, but critics mocked the circus surrounding the 11-minute space tourism flight. Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist, said backlash to the flight affected both her career and mental health. The 34-year-old posted about it on her Instagram on Tuesday, describing it as “another dream turned into a nightmare.” She said the news coverage and social media reactions were “unprecedented,” and argued that even a “small fraction of negativity becomes staggering.” Nguyen also noted that her accomplishment of becoming the first Vietnamese woman in space was “buried under an avalanche of misogyny.”   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Amanda Nguyễn (@amandangocnguyen) “It amounted to billions of hostile impressions,” she wrote, “an onslaught no human brain has evolved to endure.” “I did not leave Texas for a week, unable to get out of bed. A month later, when a senior staff at Blue [Origin] called me, I had to hang up on him because I could not speak through my tears,” Nguyen went on. “In my moments of deep grief this year, I reached back out to a familiar place, to her – my survivor self – who found the strength to fight. How horrible that I needed to deploy that skill once again,” she said. The space flight participant said only recently that the “fog of grief has started to lift.” “Vietnam saved me … You all saved me,” she went on.  Blue Origin is a private space company founded in 2000 by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The all-female space flight was criticized by social media users and celebrities for being over-promoted for what it turned out to be. Actress Olivia Munn said as much on an episode of “Today with Jenna and Friends,” as The Daily Wire previously reported. “What’s the point? Is it historic that you guys are going on a ride? I think it’s a bit gluttonous,” Munn said. “Space exploration was to further our knowledge and to help mankind. What are they gonna do up there that has made it better for us down here?”

In a move that has sparked intense criticism for its timing and lack of transparency, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie quietly signed the city’s highly controversial Reparations Bill just two days before Christmas. The ordinance establishes a dedicated reparations fund, creating a legal framework to address what they deem to be historical systemic harms against the city’s black community, including a proposal that could eventually grant eligible residents lump-sum payments of $5 million. The timing of the signing — tucked away during the peak of the holiday season — has been characterized by critics as a calculated attempt to avoid public scrutiny and bypass the inevitable backlash associated with such a divisive policy. San Francisco journalist Erica Sandberg and conservative activist Richie Greenberg were among the first to sound the alarm, with Sandberg noting the hypocrisy of making such a “unilateral decision” that appears fundamentally at odds with general public sentiment. The bill stems from the 2023 report by the African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC), which outlined over 100 recommendations. Beyond the $5 million payments, the plan suggests debt forgiveness, city-funded homes for $1, and a guaranteed annual income of $97,000 for qualifying black residents. Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships While the Mayor’s office emphasized that the bill currently allocates no taxpayer dollars and serves only as a “structure” for future city or private funding, the legislative move signals a massive potential shift in city policy. In 2023, the Hoover Institution estimated the cost, “presented on a per-household basis, will be nearly $600,000 per non–African American San Francisco household.” Lurie defended the quiet signing by citing the city’s dire financial situation, noting a looming $1 billion budget deficit that prevents immediate funding. He suggested that the city “stands ready” to facilitate private donations instead. However, the “sly” nature of the passage has reignited concerns regarding the city’s history of financial mismanagement. Critics have pointed to the “Dream Keeper Initiative” — a similar program plagued by allegations of “grift and cronyism” — as a cautionary tale of how such funds can be mismanaged by local officials. Even the local NAACP expressed skepticism, calling the $5 million figure “arbitrary” and warning that the Mayor’s quiet endorsement of the framework may be providing residents with “false hopes” while avoiding the difficult public debate such a massive proposal requires.