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  • Parkland shooting survivor Cameron Kasky jumps into packed NY12 Congressional race | amNewYork

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    Cameron Kasky, who survived the Parkland, Florida mass shooting in 2018, launched his bid for New York’s 12th Congressional District on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025.

    Photo courtesy of Kasky for Congress

    Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, FL high school, on Tuesday became the latest candidate to launch a bid for retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler’s Congressional seat.

    Kasky, 25, of the Upper West Side, helped found the activist group March for Our Lives after the Parkland shooting on Feb. 14, 2018 that left 17 people dead, and 17 others wounded. He works as a contributor at The Bulwark news site; he told amNewYork his program is on hiatus as he makes his Congressional run.

    He announced his candidacy in a video posted on social media on Nov. 18, in which he highlighted a platform that champions universal healthcare, abolishes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and prevents gun violence.

    The young candidate said he would vote against continuing to send military aid to Israel in the wake of its war in Gaza, which was ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on, and invasion of, the Jewish state that left more than 1,200 dead and more than 250 people held hostage.

    Kasky appears to be positioning himself as a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary to replace Nadler, the 74-year-old representative of the 12th Congressional District covering much of central Manhattan. He suggested he was running for Congress “because there’s no real path forward for most Americans.”

    “You and your family are working all week just to spend most of your paycheck on rent and health care,” he says in the video, which shows him walking the streets of the Upper East Side. “Meanwhile, the richest people in our country are telling us that we can’t afford solutions like social housing and Medicare for All.”

    Kasky joins an increasingly crowded field running for the 12th District seat that includes Upper West Side Assembly Member Micah Lasher, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen City Council Member Erik Bottcher, Upper East Side Assembly Member Alex Bores, and Jack Schlossberg — President John F. Kennedy’s grandson.

    Kasky also recounted his journey of getting into politics because of the mass shooting, saying the incident did not happen “in spite of the American system, it happened because of it.”

    “But out of that tragedy, my classmates and I were able to get millions of people all across the country to take to the streets and call for real change,” Kasky said of the March for Our Lives movement.

    He pointed to his experience of asking then-Florida U.S. Sen., and now Secretary of State, Marco Rubio if he would reject money from the National Rifle Association (NRA) shortly after the Parkland shooting in 2018. Rubio ultimately did not say he would no longer accept NRA donations.

    After graduating from Parkland, Kasky enrolled at Columbia University in 2019, bringing him to New York City. He lived in Morningside Heights for two years before relocating to Chelsea.

    Like many of those already running for Nadler’s seat, Kasky is pitching himself as part of a new generation of aspiring lawmakers seeking to take the Democratic Party in a different direction. That appears to be in line with Nadler’s wishes, given that the 32-year Congressional veteran said he is not running for reelection to make way for fresh blood.

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    Ethan Stark-Miller

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  • Local congressman Maxwell Frost honors Parkland victims, introduces new gun legislation

    Local congressman Maxwell Frost honors Parkland victims, introduces new gun legislation

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    Local congressman Maxwell Frost honors Parkland victims, introduces new gun legislation

    Feb. 14, 2024, marks six years since 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Local congressman Frost held a news conference and introduced a new bill alongside Reps. Jared Moskowitz to honor all the lives lost in Parkland and other gun violence attacks. The bill is called the Identify Gun Stores Act, which prevents states from prohibiting credit card companies from establishing and implementing codes that track suspicions gun and ammunition purchases. Frost said this could’ve prevented the mass shooting that occurred in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the Orlando Pulse Club.”If we were able to allow credit card companies to flag these sorts of purchases and track them, we could have probably prevented the Pulse nightclub massacre. The Pulse nightclub shooter walked in there with an assault weapon and murdered and killed in cold blood, 49 angels due to armed bigotry and armed hate,” Frost said. “He spent $26,000 in the days leading up to the shooting to accumulate all of his ammo and weapons. Something like that would have been flagged by the credit card company using the merchant category code and could have potentially saved lives.”The bill would override state bills, like the one in Florida that currently prevents credit card companies from using a separate ‘merchant category code’ for sales at gun businesses. State Rep. Randy Fine (R)-Brevard County believes credit card companies shouldn’t have that power.”I don’t think it’s the role of credit card companies to oversee what Americans choose to spend their money on,” Fine said. “What you think is suspicious might be different than what I may think is suspicious, and in Florida we think credit card companies should stick to offering credit.”Rep. Frost said they are going to fight to get this passed on the house floor. Top headlines: School District: Student’s head injury ‘possibly caused by vape’ in brawl at Central Florida school Great Danes being investigated as dangerous after several attacks in St. Cloud Police: South Florida mall secure after reports of shots fired

    Feb. 14, 2024, marks six years since 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

    Local congressman Frost held a news conference and introduced a new bill alongside Reps. Jared Moskowitz to honor all the lives lost in Parkland and other gun violence attacks.

    The bill is called the _Identify_Gun_Stores_Act_FROSFL_024.pdf” target=”_blank”>Identify Gun Stores Act, which prevents states from prohibiting credit card companies from establishing and implementing codes that track suspicions gun and ammunition purchases.

    Frost said this could’ve prevented the mass shooting that occurred in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the Orlando Pulse Club.

    “If we were able to allow credit card companies to flag these sorts of purchases and track them, we could have probably prevented the Pulse nightclub massacre. The Pulse nightclub shooter walked in there with an assault weapon and murdered and killed in cold blood, 49 angels due to armed bigotry and armed hate,” Frost said. “He spent $26,000 in the days leading up to the shooting to accumulate all of his ammo and weapons. Something like that would have been flagged by the credit card company using the merchant category code and could have potentially saved lives.”

    The bill would override state bills, like the one in Florida that currently prevents credit card companies from using a separate ‘merchant category code’ for sales at gun businesses.

    State Rep. Randy Fine (R)-Brevard County believes credit card companies shouldn’t have that power.

    “I don’t think it’s the role of credit card companies to oversee what Americans choose to spend their money on,” Fine said. “What you think is suspicious might be different than what I may think is suspicious, and in Florida we think credit card companies should stick to offering credit.”

    Rep. Frost said they are going to fight to get this passed on the house floor.

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  • Change the Ref Announces Penalty Flag for Change, the Campaign to Mark the Inaction of the 34 ‘Pro Gun’ Senators

    Change the Ref Announces Penalty Flag for Change, the Campaign to Mark the Inaction of the 34 ‘Pro Gun’ Senators

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    While the United States is getting prepared once again for the Big Game on February 12th, few are aware that last year there were more than 45,000 gun violence victims.

    Press Release
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    Feb 12, 2023 09:18 EST


    WASHINGTON, February 12, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    While the United States is getting prepared once again for the Big Game on February 12th, the event with the highest audience nationwide, few are aware that last year there were more than 45,000 gun violence victims, and just during the first month of 2023, there were more than 39 massive shootings in the country.

    That is why the Penalty Flag for Change campaign gives a voice to victims and honors its memory, alerting about the “epidemic” gun violence and denounces those people who had the power in the U.S. to take action and change the statistics, but haven’t done anything.

    This campaign is an initiative of Change The Ref, an organization created in 2018 by the parents of Joaquin Oliver, one of the victims of the Parkland Florida massacre, whose 5th anniversary will be this February 14th. For this reason and the notorious blockade of 34 senators against gun control, Manuel Oliver, Joaquín’s father, visited the senate offices to throw each senator a penalty flag (https://youtu.be/RiFGSgjShOw) on behalf of all the victims.

    By this day, Manuel’s actions have turned into a movement which celebrities and family victims join, penalizing and demanding politicians to change the score of victims, posting videos in their own social media, throwing homemade penalty flags to them.

    To continue with the commemoration of the 5th year since the murder of his son, Joaquín and the 16 victims in the Parkland shooting, Manuel Oliver, his wife Patricia, and other young people from different organizations against gun violence have planned to take a tour aboard a school bus, another symbolic element of Change the Ref campaigns, from Florida to Washington D.C. This is what Oliver said about his final action:

    “We are going to do some spontaneous stops in the street. Patricia and I are going to be driving the Change The Ref School Bus to Washington. We will be leaving Florida tomorrow to be there for the weekend, that day is going to be really important, because we are going to finish our campaign with the Penalty Flags for Change and restart our street activism, which will culminate that day with a vigil, an event that will bring us all together.”

    Source: Change The Ref

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