last updated December 7, 2025Comments? Send email to: fny@freenewyork.net
Episode #1039: Never Reads the News
First Broadcast: 12/8/25
In yet another move that seems calculated to discourage more people from entering the United States, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services agency has changed the requirements for the citizenship test, raising the number of possible questions on the test from 100 to 128, raising the number of questions that will be on the test from 10 to 20, and raising the passing threshold from 6 questions to 12. Additionally, some of the new questions on the test seem to be a lot more open-ended than others (e.g., "What are two examples of civic participation in the United States?") and some seem to have a lot more answers than the ones defined by the USCIS (e.g., "Why did the United States enter the Vietnam War?" whose one listed answer is "To stop the spread of communism"). Anyone who applied for citizenship after October 20, 2025, will be subject to the new exam, and I wonder how many more people will be deterred or prevented from becoming citizens as a result. The Trump administration is already denying a greater percentage of citizenship applications than Biden did, so I can only imagine this more difficult test will make those numbers even higher, but it's too early to tell. Do you think you could pass? Well, here's a link to the test, so you can see for yourself. Considering that Trump is also trying to stop people who are born here from becoming citizens (a move which would violate the 14th Amendment), I have to also wonder if he envisions testing everyone for citizenship in the future? Is the chance of the Supreme Court ruling sensibly on this issue higher or lower than the chance of Speaker Mike Johnson reading the news? Flipping a coin to find out...
So, what is Free New York anyway? The simple answer is that it's a
this neat little
public access TV show on
Manhattan Neighborhood Network which I co-produce with the
tremendous help of my camerawoman/editor/everything else,
Kim. The complicated answer
is that it's a project of mine to broadcast opinions and events which
don't always appear within "the mainstream media" (like The New York Times,
the major networks, local radio, etc.), and so far I think it's been working.
If you think I'm doing a good job--or not--and you feel
like sending me snail mail, the address is:
Free New York
P.O. Box 20945
Tompkins Square Station
New York, NY 10009
You can also email me at fny@freenewyork.net, which should get to me a lot faster than the snail mail.
last updated December 7, 2025
Comments?
Send email to: fny@freenewyork.net