Free Republic

Police in Austin say "similarities" between two deadly package explosions in Texas' capital city this month lead them to believe the incidents are related. The latest incident, reported Monday morning, killed a 17-year-old boy and wounded a woman, Austin police chief Brian Manley said. The boy died at the scene and the woman in her 40s was taken to the hospital with potentially life threatening injuries after the explosion at the East Austin home before 7 a.m. In an earlier incident March 2, Anthony Stephan House, 39, was killed when a package exploded at his northeast Austin home, CBS affiliate...

This story is a little over a week and half old, but it remains topical. A Florida man avoided paying millions in social security, federal, income and Medicare taxes by failing to report a number of illegal aliens working on his payroll. However, his story also shows the potentially dangerous work environment that exists for illegal aliens when immigration laws are neglected. Mac Johnson owns several roofing, tree services, and dumpster businesses. According to WCJB ABC 20 News, he "devised a scheme to conceal the amount of wages earned by his undocumented alien employees to avoid paying more than $1.7 million in...

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday invoked President Donald Trump's name multiple times in response to a question about what advice he can give progressive leaders who have a tough time condemning noted anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. Several House Democrats have come under fire in the last week for their association with Farrakhan, including Democratic National Committee vice chairman Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), who recently earned a "Four Pinocchios" rating from the Washington Post Fact Checker concerning his interactions with the controversial Nation of Islam leader. Sanders sat down with CNN's Jake Tapper at the South by Southwest conference in Austin,...

I’m the guy who predicted a Trump victory against all odds in the 2016 election. I also predicted a “Trump Miracle” for the economy. Here’s my new prediction: President Trump guaranteed his re-election last week. Liberals must be sick to their stomachs. No matter what they do or say, no matter how hard they try to distract us from the booming economy, the “Trump Miracle” shines through. I was going to write about the Trump administration’s war with California, illegal immigration and liberal politicians serving as “lookouts” for illegal felons. This move is cheered by middle-class Americans sick of being...

RIO GRANDE CITY – An election complaint is now filed with the state. It comes from a woman in Starr County who was on the ballot and lost this past Tuesday. Her failed run for office is not what she's upset about. Clarissa Gonzalez ran for a position she didn't win. She says her opponent won fair and square. She has concerns about the election. Gonzalez said, "The voters of Starr County have lost a little bit of faith in the electoral process because they see all these things happening." The complaints are focused in Roma. Gonzalez cast her ballot...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating a case of purported voter fraud where a border county judge, who, although dead since 2010, continues to vote. This stunning information surfaced at a February Senate Select Committee on Election Security meeting when Brantley Starr, deputy first assistant to the AG, gave a “shout out” to the retired district judge born in 1930 who remains on the registration rolls despite his death nearly eight years ago. “The interesting thing that’s remarkable of him voting three times in his 80’s is he died in May of 2010,” remarked Starr.

BRENTWOOD, N.Y. — The old minivan appeared near the school on a Tuesday morning, its Illinois plates the only thing out of place in the blue-collar suburbs of central Long Island. But as backpack-toting teenagers passed by on their way to Brentwood High, the van’s doors suddenly swung open. Out sprang members of the violent street gang MS-13, armed with baseball bats. They attacked three 16-year-old students they suspected of being rivals before driving off. When police spotted the van in the same neighborhood the following afternoon and surrounded it at gunpoint, the MS-13 members were in the midst of...

No, the Democrats aren’t going to take over Texas, and no, they’re not poised to retake majorities on Capitol Hill. Here’s a new entry in McKay’s Rules of Politics, a list I need to compile in writing in this space at some point (and if you’d like to make suggestions to assist in populating such a list in the comments, feel free) — whenever mainstream media conventional wisdom crystallizes into a narrative so pervasive that even the pet Republicans on the CNN and MSNBC shows act as though it’s inarguable, said narrative is almost universally false and will be proved...

Perla Morales-Luna was identified as an organizer for a transnational criminal smuggling organization operating in East County, San Diego. She was arrested as a result of a targeted operation on March 3, 2018, in National City for being in the country illegally. 10:18 PM - Mar 8, 2018 Here's a primer:...... Transnational criminal smuggling organizations are conduits for the movement of narcotics, illicit goods, criminals, and illegal immigration. When you hear the term "coyote," this is what it's referring to. while Morales-Luna is innocent until proven guilty, the fact that she is accused of criminal culpability in this regard should...

Once a fringe idea on the far-left, abolishing the nation’s immigration enforcement agency now looks likely to become a campaign issue in the Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary. Former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon came out for abolishing the agency in January. “ICE operates as an unaccountable deportation force,” Fallon argued. “Dems running in 2020 should campaign on ending the agency in its current form.” “Any serious defender of undocumented people in this country would look at ICE and know that it is a cancer that needs to be excised from the U.S. Pretending that the most diseased levers of...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Democrats are salivating at the prospect of flipping a wealthy Houston enclave that has been solidly Republican since sending George H.W. Bush to Congress in 1967 — the kind of race they'll have to win for any hope of retaking the House in the November midterms. But their new opportunities, here and in other states, sometimes have them going after each other instead of the Republicans, and that could spoil their chances. Aside from the normal conflicts of ambition and personality, there's a more significant Democratic rift lingering from the 2016 presidential primary between the party's...

Thursday, the Austin City Council amended and approved a resolution to give the city manager the green light to explore a policy to reverse gentrification in east Austin. The city’s Institutional Racism and Systemic Inequities Task Force recommends that Austin adopt their own version of Portland, Oregon’s policy for bringing former residents back to gentrified areas. Austin’s policy hasn’t been finalized yet, but it would give priority status to people applying for affordable housing in east Austin who are part of families who have lived in the area for years or who have been forced out by gentrification. According to...

The Republican Jewish Coalition is calling for the resignation of seven Democratic members of Congress whom it claims are "connected" to controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The group describes him as a "known anti-Semite." Farrakhan has routinely spoke disparagingly about Jews over the years, as well as white people, in general. He was thrust into the mainstream spotlight again this week after excerpts from a speech he gave last week on the Nation of Islam's Saviour's Day surfaced online. During the speech, he once again described Jewish people -- who he says "are my enemy" -- in a...

For any motivated Freepers in Fort Worth, TX, there is a leftist continent in the city government called "Task Force For Race and Culture" which is an innocuous-sounding name for Cultural Marxism. A town hall tonight will solicit citizen input into issues of the "extent [which] Fort Worth residents experience disparities – in criminal justice, economic development, education, health, housing, and transportation – that are attributable to race and culture?" This is code for race baiting and homoFascism. Anyone interested in joining me, the meeting will be at Tarrant County College-South Campus at 6:30 pm.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration escalated what had been a war of words over California’s immigration agenda, filing a lawsuit late Tuesday that amounted to a pre-emptive strike against the liberal state’s so-called sanctuary laws. The Justice Department sued California; Gov. Jerry Brown; and the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, over three state laws passed in recent months, saying they make it impossible for federal immigration officials to do their jobs and deport criminals who were born outside of the United States. The Justice Department called the laws unconstitutional and asked a judge to block them. The lawsuit was the...

President Donald Trump lauded a win in a federal court affirming his authority to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The program — initiated by former President Barack Obama by executive action in 2012 — allows those who arrived in the United States before they turned 16 the ability to apply for renewable two-year deferments on deportation. “Federal Judge in Maryland has just ruled that ‘President Trump has the right to end DACA,'” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “President Obama had 8 years to fix this problem, and didn’t. I am waiting for the Dems, they are running for the...

Although much of the mainstream media such as The New York Times and CNN has recently gone ga-ga over the candidacy of Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke (D) who currently is running for the U.S. Senate from that state, Vox wasn't quite so kind in analyzing how he did in Tuesday's Democrat primary. In fact they called him a "Loser (sort of)" since he underperformed despite running against nonentities in his primary. Vox's loser label for O'Rourke came in their politics reporter's, Andrew Prokop's, assessment of the Texas primary election:

AUSTIN, TEXAS The 2018 midterm election cycle kicked off with a surge in voter enthusiasm for both parties in Texas, although the gains were bigger for Democrats. It boosted a slew of women candidate and helped Republicans who had drawn direct support from President Donald Trump. The primary set up Democrats to make inroads in November although they are unlikely to overturn two decades of Republican dominance in Texas politics. Here are some things to know from the first state primary in the nation. Trump's first term produced a wave of voters Texas hasn't seen in years. Spurred by big...

It's primary season for the 2018 midterm elections, and voters in Texas are the first in the nation to head to the ballot box. There's a surge of energy among Democrats that's enough to concern Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who has his own primary race to deal with Tuesday. Cruz is fighting for reelection for the first time since entering the Senate in 2013.

Washington (CNN) A crowded Democratic House primary in the Houston area has become a stand-in for the broader battle within the party between progressives who backed Bernie Sanders and members of the establishment. The controversy erupted more than a week ago, when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party's political arm for House races, unleashed a scathing attack against journalist and activist Laura Moser, one of seven candidates in the Texas 7th District Democratic primary to take on Republican Rep. John Culberson this fall. Now, with two days left before the Texas primary on Tuesday, the infighting has opened wounds...