Free Republic

Millions of middle-class California households are poised to pay an extra $24 per month for electricity, regardless of how much electricity they use. Regulators are hoping this utility billing policy will rescue their agenda to move everyone to electric cars and appliances by redistributing the massive costs of the state’s electric grid so utilities can lower their usage rates. But critics say the income-based premium will likely further hike utility costs for millions of Californians—nearly one-fifth of whom are already behind in paying their bills after household electricity rates almost doubled in the last decade—and likely won’t do much to...

resident Joe Biden called North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un the president of South Korea at a closed-door fundraiser Portola Valley, California Friday. Biden, 81, was going after his 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, for praising the North Korean leader after they met a handful of times during the Republican's administration. The president talked of Trump's pride from 'love letters from South Korean president Kim Jong Un.' The president of South Korea is Yoon Suk Yeol, who Biden has met a number of times - including at a White House state dinner, an official trip to South Korea and...

From “Mystic River” to mystery meetings. Sean Penn was spotted linking up with first son Hunter Biden at Soho House in Malibu, Calif., Wednesday. The “I Am Sam” star was photographed with a cigarette in his mouth, wearing a plaid blue shirt, a pair of cargo pants and holding a tan jacket as he exited his vehicle. Biden, meanwhile, kept a low profile in a black baseball cap, aviator sunglasses, a dark denim jacket and a pair of gray slacks. The two men were seen chatting casually while posted outside the swanky members-only club. We’re told Penn, 63, and Biden,...

A California thief used Target’s self-checkout service to snatch over $60,000 worth of merchandise during a shoplifting spree spanning across 100 visits to the retail store. Aziza Graves, 43, visited the Target at the Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco 120 times between October 3, 2020, and November 16, 2021, according to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. During her elaborate scheme, Graves picked items from the shelves before she headed straight to the self-checkout counter, scanned her items, and paid a nominal amount, such as a single coin or bill, before exiting the store. Graves was arrested in November 2021...

A car thief behind the wheel of a Lamborghini in Los Angeles fled the police at more than 100 miles per hour and moments later crashed the vehicle, totaling it and getting thrown hundreds of feet from the wreck. He died at the scene. Thieves are not usually very smart and this guy was no exception. People who have never been behind the wheel of a vehicle like the Lamborghini have no idea how much power these cars have and how easily you can lose control. This man found out the hard way. This happened in April but the footage...

Pete McCloskey — a pro-environment, anti-war California Republican who co-wrote the Endangered Species Act and co-founded Earth Day — has died. He was 96. A fourth-generation Republican “in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt,” he often said, McCloskey represented the 12th Congressional District for 15 years, running for president against an incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972. He battled party leaders while serving seven terms in Congress and went on to publicly disavow the GOP in his later years. He died at home Wednesday, according to Lee Houskeeper, a family friend. Years after leaving Washington, McCloskey made one last bid for elective...

A known gang member with a long violent criminal history accused of shooting a Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy could have been kept behind bars if not for soft-on-crime policies by the region's top prosecutor, his election opponent said. Raymundo Duran, 47, who allegedly shot Deputy Samuel Aispuro in the back at a stop light while he was sitting on his marked sheriff's department motorcycle on April 22 in West Covina, California, has been involved in a number of violent crimes, including two felony assaults that he committed while serving an 11-year sentence for manslaughter, according to court records. Aispuro,...

Two California teens who were forced to withdraw from an elite Catholic high school over accusations of blackface have been awarded $1 million and tuition reimbursement. A Santa Clara County jury sided with the teens, identified by the initials A.H. and H.H., on two claims concerning breach of oral contract and lack of due process. The boys sued Saint Francis High School in August 2020 after photos circulated of them sporting acne treatment masks. The controversy started when the boys were accused of performing blackface and were ultimately pressured into withdrawing from the prestigious Mountain View school. 'It was quite...

A new California bill has the potential to ban self-checkout options in grocery stores in an attempt to curb retail theft. Senate Bill 1446, introduced by Democratic state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, would “prohibit a grocery or retail drug establishment from providing a self-service checkout option” unless conditions such as ensuring that no more than two self-service checkout stations are monitored by one employee are met, according to a summary of the proposed legislation. The bill also mandates that stores access how using artificial intelligence or other technology may cut jobs and “significantly affects the essential job functions of its employees.”...

Link only, as this is from USA Today.

Survey comes after federal judge shouted down on campus More than one third of Stanford University students say using physical violence to stop a speech is acceptable in at least some circumstances, according to a new report. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression conducted the survey after federal Judge Kyle Duncan’s speech on campus was shouted down last year. The report evaluated students’ perspectives about free speech on campus and protests in the aftermath of the event. FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens told The College Fix the research found “considerably higher” support for canceling a speaker among Stanford...

A nonprofit that provides services to homeless people in San Francisco has been accused of $100,000 fraud and nepotism. The industry built on supposedly helping the homelessness in San Francisco means that those raking in money from donations want to keep the crisis going.

Donald Trump has secured the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination. Joe Biden has secured the delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.

You and I may think that Maxine Waters is an unhinged lunatic--she is, after all, an unhinged lunatic--but she is one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. As the Democratic Chief Deputy Whip, she has held positions of enormous power, including chairing the Committee on Financial Services and now serving as its Ranking Member. She sits on the DNC and is one of the most vocal members of Congress. She has served as an advisor to Democrat presidential candidates since 1980. JUST IN: Rep. Maxine Waters launches new conspiracy theory that Trump supporters are “training up in the hills”...

Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) said on this week’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show” that the Department of Justice should investigate “right-wing organizations” who supported former President Donald Trump “training up in the hill” for a civil war.Waters said, “You cannot trust anything that Donald Trump has to say no matter if he loses he is going to say it was fraud. He still has not accepted what happened in the last presidential election. We have to be very concerned about a former president of the United States talking about attacking his own country, talking about perhaps a bloodbath, talking...

Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters (CA) appeared on MSNBC on Monday and floated an unhinged conspiracy theory that Trump supporters are “training up in the hills somewhere.” Maxine Waters said she’s going to ask the weaponized Justice Department and Joe Biden what they’re going to do to protect the country against violence if Trump loses the 2024 presidential election. “I wanna know about all those right-wing organizations that he’s connected with who are training up in the hills somewhere and targeting what communities they’re going to attack,” Maxine Waters said without providing any proof whatsoever to back up her claims. WATCH:...

Earthquake

They're studying Facebook posts. They're using frame-by-frame video screenshots of faces to match with gargantuan databases of named faces. They're seeking and taking tips from "friends" and relatives and ex-boyfriends. For the UCLA Jewish students who got into a scrap with pro-Hamas illegal campout protestors, no doubt after hearing a slew of antisemitic statements and being blocked from attending class, they're doing exactly what they did to identify and hunt down January 6 protestors. According to the Los Angeles Times, which reports this like it was a good thing: It is shaping up to be perhaps the biggest case in...

A weekend spring storm that drenched the San Francisco Bay area and closed Northern California mountain highways also set a single-day snowfall record for the season on Sunday in the Sierra Nevada. The wet weather system had mostly moved out of the state by Sunday morning, but officials warned that roads would remain slick after around two feet (60 centimeters) of snow fell in some areas of the Sierra. “Did anyone have the snowiest day of the 2023/2024 season being in May on their winter bingo card?” the University of California, Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab asked on the social...

A public health emergency has been declared in Long Beach, California, due to a tuberculosis outbreak. A declaration from Dr. Anissa Davis, Long Beach’s health officer, said one person has died and nine people have been hospitalized, according to Live Science. Fourteen people with active TB had been identified as of April 29. All cases have been linked to a single-room-occupancy hotel. Officials are not naming the hotel in what they said was an effort to protect patients’ privacy. “People who were staying at the hotel at the time or could have otherwise been exposed have been or will be...