Free Republic

The San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco police unions are calling on House Speaker Paul Ryan to remove a student painting from the U.S. Capitol Complex that depicts officers as pig-like creatures. Last spring, “Untitled #1” by then-high school senior David Pulphus was selected as the winner of Missouri Democrat William Lacy Clay’s 16th annual Congressional Art Competition.

The Home Depot in Oakland is having problems with homelessness and crime, and it’s gotten so bad that the hardware chain may shut the store unless the city can curb the thefts and clean up the tent and RV camps that dot the area, City Councilman Noel Gallo said. Gallo said the hardware company has been raising concerns about crime and camps in the area for months. “It’s out of control — the tents, the garbage, and the thefts in the store and in the parking lot,” Gallo said. “People are getting their cars broken into in the parking lot.”...

San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. in which to live. Real estate prices are through the roof — the median price of a small two-bedroom home is $1.3 million; a family making nearly $120,000 annually is actually considered low income. And unfortunately, some people are falling through the cracks. “A federal count shows the number of homeless people increased by double-digit percentages in three San Francisco Bay Area counties over two years as the region struggled to tackle the growing problem, including 17% in San Francisco and 43% in the county that includes Oakland,”...

A federal count shows the number of homeless people increased by double-digit percentages in three San Francisco Bay Area counties over two years as the region struggled to tackle the growing problem, including 17% in San Francisco and 43% in the county that includes Oakland. More than 25,000 people were counted as homeless during an overnight tally conducted in San Francisco, Alameda and Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara counties in January. Detailed reports are expected later this year. “The initial results of this count show we have more to do to provide more shelter, more exits from homelessness, and to prevent...

The City of Oakland is in such dire financial straits that it is planning to use $2.9 million from state gas tax revenues to keep the city’s lights on, rather than using the money to fix pothole-riddled roads, for which the funding was intended. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday that the city is facing severe financial shortfalls, despite a booming economy that has seen wealthier households relocate from San Francisco across the bay to gentrifying neighborhoods. The problem is that the city’s costs are rising faster than its growing revenues, thanks partly to pension obligations — an increasingly common...

President Trump and a California mayor traded barbs over Twitter on Saturday, prompted by the president's repeated threats to release detained immigrants into “sanctuary cities.” The exchange between Trump and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf also appeared triggered, at least in part, by recent New York Times articles about the president's immigration policies. "So interesting to see the Mayor of Oakland and other Sanctuary Cities NOT WANT our currently 'detained immigrants' after release due to the ridiculous court ordered 20 day rule," Trump tweeted. Schaaf fired back, saying: “It’s time to stop fanning hate and division @realDonaldTrump - I’ve been consistent...

It is a man-bites-dog story when I support or applaud something that former President Barack Obama says or does. You may recall President Obama started a mentoring organization called My Brother’s Keeper. This initiative attempts to provide a responsible, positive message for young African-American men, a demographic plagued by poor lifestyle choices like dropping out of school, having multiple kids out of wedlock with different women, drug and alcohol abuse, gang involvement, and criminal and obnoxious behavior. These urban pathologies have been triggered by what I believe is our most urgent social crisis in the black community—absent fathers.Recent empirical data shows...

BERKELEY, Calif. - The Alameda County District Attorney's Office has filed three felony charges against an Oakland man who allegedly attacked a conservative activist at University of California at Berkeley's Sproul Plaza last month. Zachary Greenberg, 28, is charged with assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, battery with serious bodily injury and criminal threats for his alleged attack on Hayden Williams, an organizer with the conservative group Turning Point USA, while Williams was manning a table at Sproul Plaza on Feb. 19. Greenberg, who was arrested Friday but is now free on bail, also is charged with...

Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart and University of Southern California basketball player Brynn Cameron are expecting a baby in the fall, PEOPLE has learned. Leinart, 23, one of PEOPLE's 2006 Most Beautiful People, graduated from USC in December 2005 and lives in Los Angeles and Arizona. Cameron, a 20-year-old USC junior, will sit out the upcoming basketball season. "It's an exciting time in their life," says a source who knows both athletes. "They both have support from their families."

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Authorities arrested a man suspected of shooting the security guard of a news crew that was robbed while covering the Oakland teachers strike, according to a statement by the CBS affiliate. KPIX said a reporter and a photographer were gathering interviews Sunday about the strike at the Oakland Library when a car pulled up and the driver pulled a gun, demanding their camera. The crew surrendered the equipment and began walking away. The suspect then shot the guard, Matt Meredith, in the leg, the news station said. KPIX reporter Joe Vazquez said on Twitter that the...

OAKLAND — Police said they detained several suspects in connection with the Sunday afternoon robbery of a television station’s photographer and shooting of a security guard outside a library. In a statement Sunday night, Oakland police Officer Johnna Watson said a three-person crew from a local television station was working a story in the 1000 block of 81st Avenue at 4:47 p.m., when a vehicle pulled up and two suspects got out and robbed the crew’s cameraman. According to police, one of the suspects shot the crew’s security guard in the upper leg, and the guard then returned fire. The...

Sen. Kamala Harris on Monday explained why she married a white man while defending her black heritage during a radio interview. "Look, I love my husband, and he happened to be the one that I chose to marry, because I love him — and that was that moment in time, and that's it," Harris told the "Breakfast Club" hosts when asked about criticism she received on social media for marrying a white man. "And he loves me.” The hosts brought up a meme that began circulating after she announced she was running for president that questions her status as a...

OAKLAND — Sen. Kamala Harris began her Democratic campaign for president Sunday with an attack on President Donald Trump and a promise to unify a country deeply riven along social, cultural and political lines. Speaking from the steps of Oakland’s City Hall plaza to a crowd that spilled over several downtown blocks, Harris depicted her candidacy as a fight against those “trying to sow hate and division.” “We are here at this moment in this because we must answer a fundamental question,” Harris said. “Who are we? Who are we as Americans? So let’s answer that question, America. We are...

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. Like a preacher tiptoeing out of a brothel, the Democrat Party quietly dropped its sponsorship of the Women’s March. Like most of the other lefty establishment groups slowly backing away from its pro-Farrakhan leadership, the DNC offered a non-denial and no condemnation of the group’s anti-Semitism. Instead of condemning the March’s anti-Semitism, the Southern Poverty Law Center explained that it wasn’t going to sponsor it because “other projects were a priority.” Even though HRC and...

During an appearance on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch discussed President Trump, gentrification in Oakland, Colin Kaepernick and more.

A woman trying to protect herself from an alleged dog attack instead got bitten by a human. The incident occurred on the Goldenrod Trail at the Anthony Chabot Regional Park in Oakland, California, on Thursday, January 3. The runner attempted to defend herself when a dog reportedly attacked her on the trail by spraying it with pepper spray. Then, the dog’s owner approached the runner, and “a physical altercation ensued,” according to an alert by the East Bay Regional Park District Police. The dog’s owner bit the runner, a police spokesman told Runner’s World. The suspect also tackled and punched...

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf -- who once warned Northern California residents about an impending ICE raid -- said she has “no regrets” for her actions and said the federal immigration agency “has gone astray.” “I have no regrets, none. The more time goes by, the more certain I feel that I did the right thing in standing up for our community and pointing out our values are not aligned with our laws,” Schaff told BuzzFeed in an interview. “That’s hopefully the message that is sent out.” "I have no regrets, none. The more time goes by, the more certain I...

A California man arrested after several police officers were injured in an explosion at a July march reportedly told authorities he gave the incendiary device to a teen and told him to throw it. Giovanni Gaines, 23, was arrested last week for his alleged involvement in the blast, which injured 10 Oakland police officers during a July 23 march honoring Nia Wilson, Lt. James Beere said Thursday, according to the SF Gate. Wilson had been fatally stabbed at a BART station a day earlier in what initially appeared to be a racially motivated attack, though, it later emerged the suspect had...

A cheerleader for the San Francisco 49ers knelt during the national anthem ahead of Thursday's game against the Oakland Raiders at Levi's Stadium.

Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum graduated from an Oakland, California-based training school for progressive revolutionaries that has spawned a list of activists who have gone on to become the who’s who of the far-left leadership world, with many taking senior positions at organizations financed by billionaire George Soros. In scores of cases, graduates of the Rockwood Leadership Institute founded or directed notorious Soros-financed activist groups, such as Black Lives Matter, Media Matters for America, MoveOn.org and the Tides Foundation, one of the nation’s largest funders of progressive groups. Soros’s own Open Society Foundations sent top staff to Rockwood for training....