Free Republic

Drivers are not helped by wage mandates is Seattle and New York. And customers complain higher prices and cold food.It’s a perfect trifecta of complaints.Neither drivers nor customers are happy with misguided politicians attempting to help driver get better pay.It’s losses all around as Delivery Drivers Got Higher Wages. Now They’re Getting Fewer Orders.The delivery companies—whose businesses are built on gig workers they don’t employ full- time—say they can only afford to pay so many workers under the two cities’ latest pay standards. The cities want the companies to pay couriers a minimum hourly wage based on the time they...

Seattle officials have opened up city police jobs to illegal aliens in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. With the Seattle Police Department (SPD) at its lowest staffing level in decades, officials in city hall are looking to take advantage of a recently passed state law that allows jurisdictions to hire non-citizens as police officers. The Democrat-dominated state legislature recently passed Senate Bill 6157, a law that allows jurisdictions to give DACA recipients police powers. One reason the bill was needed is because so many liberal cities have wiped out their police departments with Black Lives Matter (BLM)...

Seattle has become the latest Dem-run city trying to replace an exodus of police officers with illegal migrants. Washington's largest city has just 913 cops to serve its 750,000 people after losing 725 officers in the last five years. Now its police department has tweaked the rules to allow applications from migrants who crossed the border illegally as children and are registered on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or 'Dreamers', program. And under a law change signed by Democrat Governor Jay Inslee in February they can be chosen above an equally qualified candidate if they speak more than...

A Seattle police officer was fired for calling his Chinese American neighbor racist and sexist slurs while off duty in 2022, according to a news report. Officer Burton Hill was fired in May, The Seattle Times reported. The termination stemmed from an altercation with his neighbor, Zhen Jin, over the disposal of dog bones at the condominium complex where they lived in suburban Seattle. The Seattle Office of Police Accountability had recommended a range of disciplinary actions, from a 30-day suspension to termination of employment. Hill was fired by then-police Chief Adrian Diaz on May 2, police spokesperson Eric Muñoz...

Prosecutors in Thurston County filed charges Tuesday against an Uber driver who is accused of driving an intoxicated female passenger to a secluded area and raping her over the weekend. Ahmed Hassan Ali, 58, of Seattle, faces one count of rape in the second degree and one count of kidnapping in the first degree with sexual motivation aggravating circumstance. According to the arrest report, Ali was driving for Uber Saturday morning when he gave a ride to an intoxicated woman who was at a bar in Olympia. Investigators allege Ali marked the woman’s ride as complete in the Uber app...

SEATTLE — Seattle Police are investigating after a man was found shot in a stairwell in the Mount Baker neighborhood. A 911 caller alerted police to the shooting in the 3600 block of 34th Avenue South at around 2 a.m. on Sunday. When police arrived, they found a 22-year-old man alive but seriously injured. Despite aid from officers and the Seattle Fire Department, the victim later died at Harborview Medical Center. According to Detective Brian Pritchard, there was an altercation that occurred before the shooting, but detectives couldn’t share more information about the circumstances as the homicide investigation is still...

As Democrats make their case to voters around the country this fall, one challenge is that some of the bluest parts of the country — cities on the West Coast — are a mess. Centrist voters can reasonably ask: Why put liberals in charge nationally when the places where they have greatest control are plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction? I’ll try to answer that question in a moment, but liberals like me do need to face the painful fact that something has gone badly wrong where we’re in charge, from San Diego to Seattle. ...the truth is that too...

After a recent shooting killed a 17-year-old student, Seattle’s Garfield High School may begin rethinking its decision to remove police officers back in 2020. On June 6, a 17-year-old student was shot and killed in the school parking lot after trying to break up a fight between two boys. Police reported that the suspect fled on foot and still remains on the run. Meanwhile, former Garfield police officer Bennie Radford, who now lives in Florida, can’t help but wonder if he would have made a difference. "My stomach is wrenching right now," Radford told The Seattle Times. "I never should...

Retired American astronaut William Anders, who was part of the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, has died after his small plane crashed into Puget Sound in Washington State. The 90-year-old died after the small aircraft he was piloting crashed near Orcas Island on Friday, resulting in a fireball as the plane hit the water. Officials with the United States Coast Guard Pacific Northwest said the crash happened just before 11:45am on Friday. Video footage shot on the Sound shows the plane flying high in the sky before it plummets as it begins a dive. Just before the plane began to...

Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders' plane crashes northwest of Seattle. Search and rescue underway

Footage shows the moment a not-so-dynamic duo were caught stealing a cash register from a Seattle pharmacy - seconds after walking through its doors. The unnamed male and female suspect were promptly arrested, cops said on Wednesday - releasing the almost unbelievable clip in the process. The video shows a team from the Seattle Police Department approaching the Walgreens the pair had just looted - before coming face-to-face with the 20-year-old female, cash register in tow. 'Woah! Woah! Hey!' one of the officers says, as the woman stops in her tracks. Her 40-year-old accomplice, meanwhile, stands still, similarly dumbfounded. 'Put...

King County filed charges against 6 people for the blockade which trapped motorists and emergency vehicles for over 5 hours. Two Seattle public school teachers and an Antifa militant with ties to the MS-13 gang were among those charged for shutting down the Interstate 5 freeway in January as part of an anti-Israel demonstration. On Friday, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (KCPAO) filed misdemeanor charges against six people in connection with the January 6 blockade, during which hundreds of anti-Israel activists flooded the northbound lanes of the freeway and trapped thousands of motorists and emergency vehicles for over 5...

Nonprofit on boards in the city of Seattle are facing huge bosses because tenants in the city are not paying rent. Following the pandemic eviction moratorium, a lot of tenants became used to someone else paying their bills for them and continue to not pay to this day. This has hurt the revenue of the nonprofits

We have often discussed how cities and universities will use the threat of protests to block or shutdown free speech, particularly of conservative speakers or groups. We now have a major decision out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that could prove an important precedent in resisting the growing anti-free speech movement in the United States. In Meinecke v. City of Seattle, the court ruled against Seattle in a case involving the arrest of a pro-life protester. Matthew Meinecke was harassed by Antifa and other counterprotesters, but police arrested Meineche when he refused to yield...

A Seattle high school teacher has been placed on leave after footage emerged of him agreeing that the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel was justified. Ian Golash, the social studies department chair at Chief Sealth International High School, was placed on leave last week according to the district. The move to have him suspended came after conservative advocacy group 'Accuracy in Media' exposed his social media posts outside of the school.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked roadways in Illinois, California, New York and the Pacific Northwest on Monday, temporarily shutting down travel into some of the nation's most heavily used airports, onto the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges and on a busy West Coast highway. In Chicago, protesters linked arms and blocked lanes of Interstate 190 leading into O'Hare International Airport around 7 a.m. in a demonstration they said was part of a global “economic blockade to free Palestine,” according to Rifqa Falaneh, one of the organizers. Traffic in the San Francisco Bay Area was snarled for hours as demonstrators shut down all...

Pro-Palestinian protesters gathered across the nation Monday, including in the Seattle area, blocking landmarks and highways to bring attention to the war in the Middle East. The expressway to the Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) Airport was blocked by protesters for several hours. Subsequently, 46 people have been arrested, according to spokesperson for the Port of Seattle Perry Cooper. Cooper said those arrested have been sent to SCORE for processing. However, he said, more people may be arrested as an investigation continues.

The Borderline Dance team, a regional women’s country line dance team, was invited to the Emerald City Hoedown in Seattle last weekend to perform by event organizers, the Rain Country Dance Association. Rain Country Dance Association describes itself as creating “a friendly environment for LGBTQ people and friends to meet and dance in the Pacific Northwest. We support this Country Western dance community by providing opportunities to dance, learn, and perform. We cater to the LGBTQ community of Seattle and Greater Puget Sound but are open to However, The Borderline Dance team’s American flag-themed shirts resulted in them being “effectively...

Members of a regional women’s country line dance team were reportedly kicked out of a Seattle dance convention after organizers claimed their American flag-themed shirts made some attendees feel "triggered and unsafe." Over the weekend at the Emerald City Hoedown in Seattle, the Borderline Dance team was set to perform, but were essentially told they weren't welcome by organizer Rain Country Dance Association, an LGBTQ+ dance community, over their matching American flag themed shirts, Jason Rantz reported for 770 KTTH.

Members of a regional women’s country line dance team were reportedly kicked out of a Seattle dance convention after organizers claimed their American flag-themed shirts made some attendees feel "triggered and unsafe." Over the weekend at the Emerald City Hoedown in Seattle, the Borderline Dance team was set to perform, but were essentially told they weren't welcome by organizer Rain Country Dance Association, an LGBTQ+ dance community, over their matching American flag themed shirts, Jason Rantz reported for 770 KTTH. "Unfortunately, what our team was met with upon arrival was that our flag tops were offensive to some of the...