Free Republic

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler came under fire over a viral video showing Antifa protesters blocking traffic and harassing drivers, but he says he supports the decision by police to watch from a distance without getting involved. “I was appalled by what I saw in the video, but I support the Portland Police Bureau’s decision not to intervene,” he said at a Friday press conference. “This whole incident will be investigated.” The video posted by journalist Andy C. Ngo showed protesters, including members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, blocking an intersection and attempting to direct traffic at while officers on...

The chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus is purging himself of a surprise, $20,000 contribution from Mayor Rahm Emanuel amid concern that it might damage his chances of winning re-election. Instead of keeping the money and putting the windfall into his campaign fund, Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) is distributing the mayor’s check — in $2,000 increments –– to ten community organizations and other groups in his ward that are working to stop the never-ending cycle of gang violence and train people for jobs. The alderman said he appreciated the mayor’s gesture and means no disrespect. But he was concerned...

The driver of a car seen in a viral video driving through a protest in downtown Portland, Ore., last week said Friday that he never tried to run them over, according to reports. "When you have an angry mob yelling at you and beating on your car you just want to get out of there," Kent Houser, 74, told the Oregonian. The demonstrators were protesting last Saturday after a fatal police shooting that occurred the previous week.

A young colored Republican, while making an address at Forty-fourth street and Second avenue last night, came near being roughly handled by a number of men. There were some policemen watching those listening to the speaker at the time, and they quickly suppressed the disturbance by severely shaking two or three who were in a riotous mood. A person at the meeting said sticks, stones, garbage and eggs were thrown at the person on the cart and at people in the gathering, but the police of the Fifty-first st. station denied that any sticks or stones were hurled at anyone...

President Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West spoke to reporters in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon before their lunch meeting. West, who has sparked outrage from some on the left with his outspoken support for the president, riffed on a series of topics, including racism, tax breaks, education, prison reform and gun control. “The problem is illegal guns, illegal guns is the problem. Not legal guns. We have the right to bear arms," West said when a reporter asked him about the debate over gun violence in America and gun control. West, a Chicago native, said he and the president...

Only 32 of the 273 officers who took the test passed, according to the city’s Department of Human Resources, which oversees the exam. The passing rate of 11.7 percent is far lower than the last three sergeant exams, which have been given every two years. In 2016, 176 of the 290 officers who took the exam passed, for a rate of 60.7 percent. In 2014, 171 of 330 officers passed, for a rate of 51.8 percent. And in 2012, 218 of the 412 officers passed, for a rate of 52.9 percent.

Thomas Caldwell once told a federal agent that selling guns was an addiction. Even after being told to stop because he had no license, the Wisconsin man kept peddling firearms, posting more than 200 ads on a controversial website. One of those guns, a Glock 26 9 mm handgun, ended up in the hands of a four-time felon who used it in February to kill Chicago police Cmdr. Paul Bauer in a shocking daylight shooting in the heart of the Loop, according to recently filed federal documents. The records give a rare look at how shadowy gun deals flourish between...

The San Francisco school board’s new president broke with protocol Tuesday night by deciding to skip the Pledge of Allegiance before a meeting, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. In its place, Steven Cook recited a quote from the poet Maya Angelou: “When you learn, teach. When you get, give.” Cook told The Chronicle he chose not to enforce the pledge because of his disappointment with the political climate. He said the Trump administration “has been attacking our liberties.” The Pledge of Allegiance, while required by state education code, is rarely enforced by schools, district officials said. District spokesman Gentle Blythe...

A flea-borne typhus outbreak in the Los Angeles area has also rocked Long Beach – the third city to be struck down in the region. Officials have this year recorded 12 cases of the bug in the city, home to 470,000 people and around 20 miles (32km) south of downtown LA. A further 20 cases have been recorded in Pasadena since the start of 2018 - and 59 in the whole of LA County in total. Pasadena and Long Beach are both technically in LA County, however they have their own health departments which record their own figures.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday signed a bill that adds a third gender category on birth certificates issued in New York City. The new non-binary identity category, known as X, is for those who don’t consider their gender to be male or female. A letter from a physician or an affidavit by a licensed health care provider will no longer be provided. Residents can now submit their own affidavit requesting a change in gender identity. “New Yorkers should be free to tell their government who they are, not the other way around,” de Blasio said. “This new legislation will...

Chicago officials summarily rejected President Trump's advice Monday to use "stop and frisk" policing to reduce violence, with the mayor's office calling the president "clueless" and motivated by the fear of losing midterm elections. Trump urged Chicago to use "stop and frisk" policing at a police convention earlier in the day and offered federal assistance to undo a 2015 legal agreement between the Chicago Police Department and the American Civil Liberties Union. The office of Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the city was uninterested in Trump's idea for reducing violent crime.

San Francisco has become “too permissive” even for the city’s former Democratic mayor, Gavin Newsom. Newsom, who is now California’s lieutenant governor and a candidate for governor, met with The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board last week. The paper reported the comments Sunday. Although he has always promoted “progressive” approaches to drug use, Newsom admits he was “hardened by reality” while mayor as he watched drug use and its consequences encroach upon the city’s population. “You can be too permissive, and I happened to think we have crossed that threshold in this state – and not just in this city....

City police are investigating after they said a local rapper was killed in a drive-by shooting outside a lounge in Queens on Sunday morning. "I just see chairs all over the floor and then I just see him on the floor, and then I didn't see anything until he starting gasping and blood just was going everywhere," said bartender Tieshajah Reynolds, who witnessed the shooting. Police said 35-year-old Frank Snyder, who goes by the stage name Hollywood Play, was shot in the neck and leg around 3:15 a.m. in front of the Tavern Bar and Lounge on Jamaica Avenue in...

The largest city named for Christopher Columbus has called off its observance of the divisive holiday that honors the explorer, making a savvy move to tie the switch to a politically safe demographic: veterans. Ohio's capital city, population 860,000, will be open for business Monday after observing Columbus Day probably "for as long as it had been in existence," said Robin Davis, a spokeswoman for Democratic Mayor Andrew Ginther. City offices will close instead on Veterans Day, which falls on Nov. 12 this year. Native Americans and allied groups have long used Columbus Day to elevate issues of concern to...

SAN FRANCISCO — The heroin needles, the pile of excrement between parked cars, the yellow soup oozing out of a large plastic bag by the curb and the stained, faux Persian carpet dumped on the corner. It’s a scene of detritus that might bring to mind any variety of developing-world squalor. But this is San Francisco, the capital of the nation’s technology industry, where a single span of Hyde street hosts an open-air narcotics market by day and at night is occupied by the unsheltered and drug-addled slumped on the sidewalk. There are many other streets like it, but by...

Democrats plan at Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to use the high school yearbooks of embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, which they say imply he and his prep school pals regularly got drunk and boasted of sexual conquests, to discredit what they call his “choir boy defense” against sex-assault charges leveled by Christine Blasey Ford. But Ford, whose story suffers from significant gaps in her memory, wasn’t exactly a choir girl. In fact, congressional sources say her own yearbooks, among other things, present a potential issue for her and her character, and Republicans are prepared to cite them in...

A suspect was in custody after at least five people, including three infants, were slashed at an overnight New York City day care facility early Friday, police said. The wounded were found inside the Queens home around 3:30 a.m., according to NBC New York. The injuries were not considered to be life threatening, police said. [Snip] The suspect, identified as a 52-year-old woman, was found in the basement of the home with self-inflicted cuts on a wrist, according to the station.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions drew a parallel between a recent increase in Chicago violence and groups like the ACLU, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter.

An arrest has been made in the stabbing death of a 35-year-old woman who was attacked as she jogged through D.C.'s Logan Circle neighborhood. Wendy Martinez of Northwest Washington was out for a run in the 1400 block of 11th Street NW when she was stabbed multiple times just before 8 p.m. Tuesday. The suspect, who has not been identified, was arrested Wednesday night, sources tell News4. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Police Chief Peter Newsham were scheduled to appear at a news conference Thursday morning to give an update on the case. After the stabbing, Martinez staggered into a...

Nearly half in top 5 U.S. cities don’t speak English at home, record 67 million Nearly half of the residents in the nation’s five biggest cities do not speak English at home, choosing instead their native language, according to the latest Census Bureau data that details the impact of a decade of soft immigration policies. Overall, a record 67 million do not speak English at home, said the bureau. That is nearly double in 27 years. In its just-released analysis of the Census data, the Center for Immigration Studies said, “As a share of the population, 21.8 percent of U.S....