Free Republic

Celebrity chef Madison Cowan has relied on soft eviction laws to avoid more than $145,000 in rent payments on his Brooklyn apartment the past four-and-a-half years, his landlord claims. The British-born former champ of the Food Network’s “Chopped” and “Iron Chef” owes 53 months in back rent on a one-bedroom Boerum Hill pad he and his family have occupied since October 2019, according to landlord Gus Sheha. Cowan hasn’t paid a cent of rent since January 2020, relying on legal loopholes like repeatedly appealing eviction orders to remain in the State Street apartment, said the landlord.

A defiant French teacher is still in the classroom after being fired by the Department of Education — crowing that the city “can’t touch me” despite the sexually-charged accusations that got her sacked, including making nearly 30,000 late-night texts to a schoolgirl. Dulaina Almonte, 33, lost her job at Harry S. Truman High School in The Bronx in 2020 after the Special Commissioner of Investigation substantiated claims of her creepy behavior with teens. “I can’t be guilty if I’m still a teacher,” Almonte — who now teaches at a Bronx charter school — boasted to The Post this week.

Police disbanded the two-week-old pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Pennsylvania this morning, resulting in 33 arrests of those who defied orders to leave, 6ABC reported. A Penn spokesperson said the university’s police department and the Philadelphia Police Department began an operation around 5:30 a.m. to dismantle the encampment. Protesters received a two-minute warning 20 minutes later to leave. Some of the protesters defied order and locked arms by the Benjamin Franklin statue on College Green. Thirty-three people were arrested without incident and cited for defiant trespass, according to the university. “Those who chose to stay did so knowing that...

McLean [VA] Police District – Detectives from our Tysons Urban Team (TUT) arrested a retail theft crew who stole merchandise, mostly underwear, from stores in nearby jurisdictions. Wednesday around 3:30 p.m., TUT detectives were alerted to a retail theft crew in the 1900 block of Chain Bridge Road in Tysons. The crew was involved in larcenies that occurred in nearby jurisdictions earlier in the day. Detectives located the crew and took three suspects into custody. A search of the suspect’s vehicle revealed over $24,000 worth of merchandise, mostly underwear from Victoria’s Secret. The merchandise was connected to recent thefts that...

CNN — Hunter Biden’s latest attempts to throw out his federal gun case were rejected in back-to-back rulings Thursday, teeing up a high-stakes criminal trial next month in Delaware. The president’s son had asked the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss the charges by overturning prior decisions from the trial judge that let the case move forward. But the appellate panel instead rejected Hunter Biden’s appeals, which related to his defunct plea deal and his claims that the case was tainted by political bias. Hours later, the trial judge, Maryellen Noreika, rejected Hunter Biden’s remaining motion to dismiss...

The U.S. has promised to vote against any resolution that would seek to grant the Palestinians full membership in the United Nations after a General Assembly resolution passed with significant support from member states. "Our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood," U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood said after the vote. "We have been very clear that we support it and seek to advance it meaningfully: Instead, it is an acknowledgment that statehood will only come from a process that involves direct negotiations between the parties." "This resolution does not resolve the concerns about the Palestinian...

resident Joe Biden was blasted on social media this week over a past anti-Trump tweet that critics said showed he should be impeached for withholding some weapons from Israel if it moves forward with a military operation in Rafah, Gaza. "President Trump withheld Congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine unless they granted him a political favor," Biden tweeted as a candidate in 2019 about the impeachment push against Trump over a phone call with Ukraine that Democrats claimed was a "quid pro quo." "It's the definition of quid pro quo. This is no joke—Trump continues to put his own personal, political...

Shocking video footage shows two masked thieves using sledgehammers to smash up a Connecticut jewelry store in a brazen smash-and-grab raid. Video released by Westport police starts with quiet scenes in Lux, Bond, and Green on Main Street at about 3:10 p.m. Thursday, with only a few people in one room in the store. Suddenly, the two crooks race into another part of the store, dressed completely in dark clothing — including hoods and covered faces — apart from orange gloves.

Yesterday, anti-gun New York legislators introduced a bill designed to COMPLETELY ban the sale of Glock handguns and other semi-automatic pistols.Their bill, S. 9225, comes under the guise that Glocks, and other semi-automatic “convertible pistols,” can be easily turned into machine-guns through the installation or attachment of a “pistol converter,” more commonly known as a “Glock switch.”New York state lawmakers are intentionally targeting a major firearms manufacturer and banning the sale of their product because criminals, who don’t obey the law in the first place, could illegally acquire handguns and then illegally alter them further.Under federal law, machine guns are...

When I was growing up, my father taught me to get my opponent down, and while down stomp and kick them while they couldn't get back up. Thinking about Trump being elected again, I know liberals would be pissing themselves and running in circles not knowing what to do. In order to finally get them to bust a vein and fall over, we need to write our congressmen to add a bust of Trump to Mt. Rushmore. There appears to be a space on Rushmore big enough for this project. Just voting and discussing the project for a few months...

Contractors curious about an extension cord on the roof of a Michigan grocery store made a startling discovery: A 34-year-old woman was living inside the business sign, with enough space for a computer, printer and coffee maker, police said. “She was homeless,” Officer Brennon Warren of the Midland Police Department said Thursday. “It’s a story that makes you scratch your head, just somebody living up in a sign.” The woman, whose name was not released, told police she had a job elsewhere but had been living inside the Family Fare sign for roughly a year, Warren said. She was...

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 North Texas woman was sentenced to nine years in prison after using Bitcoin to pay for a murder. Federal prosecutors said 58-year-old Michelle Murphy of Bedford used the dark web to find a hitman for her boyfriend’s lover. "To my knowledge, it's the first time this has happened in Texas, but it's happened plenty of places all over the United States," said former U.S. attorney Richard Roper. Investigators learned she used an ATM to convert cash to cryptocurrency at least three times and transferred about $10,500 to the hitman’s Bitcoin wallet. The person who accepted the money tipped off...

Her experience brings new meaning to the "bear vs. man" question.While social media users debate if they’d rather be left alone in the woods with a bear or a man, one woman is considering herself “lucky” after surviving a real bear attack. A Scottish tourist was mauled by a bear in Romania. Friends Moira Gallacher and Charmian Widdowson were visiting the Carpathian Mountains when they encountered a group of bears, according to Scottish news outlet STV. Widdowson said, “We saw these bears — a mummy bear and a baby — they were gorgeous.” What the women didn’t know was that...

A California high roller who says he was drugged while playing blackjack in a private Strip gaming salon has doubled a reward to $1 million for information leading to an arrest. Dwight Manley, a California real estate executive and sports agent with high-roller status at MGM Resorts International, sued the company after he says he was drugged with ketamine while playing in a high-limit area at MGM Grand in December 2021. The suit, first filed in the U.S. District Court in Nevada in November 2022 and amended in March, alleges while he was under the influence of the drug, he...

pair of 15-year-old boys were stabbed outside a Bronx McDonald’s Wednesday afternoon — the latest teens caught up in a troubling spate of youth violence in the Big Apple. One of the young victims was knifed in the chest, while the other was slashed on the hand in front of the fast food restaurant at 1600 Boston Road in Charlotte Gardens just before 4 p.m., according to police. The youths were rushed by EMS to NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi with non-life threatening injuries, cops said. Police said it’s unclear what led to the bloodshed, and the attacker was in the...

Democrat Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was swarmed by a group of anti-Israel protesters last week as she celebrated her daughter's college graduation at a local restaurant. The exchange occurred at Bobcat Bonnie's, a brunch-style restaurant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, not far from the University of Michigan, when a group screaming about "genocide" in Gaza approached Whitmer. "How do you justify genocide?" the protesters repeatedly screamed as Whitmer's security detail blocked them from coming into contact with her. The protesters continued screaming, asking how Whitmer was able to "sleep at night," and what she was doing to help Palestinian children. "I appreciate...

FIRST ON FOX: A new House Republican bill would send any person charged and convicted for illegal activity on a college campus to Gaza for at least six months. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., introduced the bill on Wednesday alongside Reps. Randy Weber, R-Texas, and Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., in response to the ongoing anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses across the country. Several of those protests have turned violent, with clashes between police and activists, as well as hundreds of activists being arrested across multiple campuses. While Ogles' bill text does not mention Israel or the anti-Israel groups, it specifically targets unlawful...

A transgender abortion activist who vandalized a pregnancy resource center (PRC) was found guilty of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. However, unlike pro-life advocates, she will not be spending any time in prison. Whitney Durant, a biological woman who also goes by the name of Soren Monroe, was sentenced to a mere two years of probation and a $2,000 fine after pleading guilty to intentionally damaging a reproductive health center, according to a Department of Justice press release. Last year, Durant attacked the Bowling Green Pregnancy Center in Kentucky, also known as HerChoice, and spray-painted...

For pregnant mothers, the number one cause of death is homicide. Research has found that homicide, frequently committed by a husband or partner, took more pregnant mothers’ lives than any other cause. These crimes often destroy the lives of the mothers’ unborn babies as well, and a mother’s refusal to have an abortion frequently is a factor. And that’s what happened in Wisconsin, where a man has bene charged with first-degree intentional homicide after confessing that he shot and killed his girlfriend because she told him she was pregnant and wanted to keep the baby. According to police, 23-year-old Logan...