Free Republic

David Allen Funston approached children playing outside their homes and used candy and toys to lure them into his vehicle in 1995 and 1996, he was sentenced to 20 years and 8 months in prison, as well as three consecutive sentences of 25 years to life. he was granted parole at a board hearing in September, Funston used a Barbie doll to lure the victim who spoke with The Times into his vehicle in Foothill Farms in 1995. He then took her to a house, bathed with her, put her on a bed, held a knife to her throat and...

Antisemitism has reached alarming levels in the United States, and California, which prides itself on tolerance, is no exception. It has reached nearly every major community. A story from Davis, California, illustrates the problem. The first time I visited Davis was in May 2025. I was invited to address Jewish students at UC Davis, and expected a quiet, innocuous visit to a university town. Instead, I walked into something entirely different. The Jewish students I met spoke in hushed tones about how they were afraid to be openly Jewish on campus. Faculty members confided that they were reluctant to speak...

Viewers of the Los Angeles mayoral debate overwhelmingly think Spencer Pratt won after his fiery performance against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and socialist Councilmember Nithya Raman. An online poll from NBC Los Angeles showed that as of Thursday morning, 89% of voters picked Pratt when asked who they thought emerged victorious from the Wednesday night showdown. In a sampling of of responses NBC got, many viewers felt Spencer Pratt appeared to be a formidable mayoral candidate. During the debate, the former reality TV star and Palisades Fire victim channeled months of frustration with the city and the state into an...

New data shows 18%, or nearly 1 in 5, of tested students and staff at Archbishop Riordan High School in San Francisco were diagnosed with either latent or active tuberculosis during an outbreak that started in November. New testing is scheduled to start today. In total, 96% of the school community was tested, seven people were diagnosed with active cases during the course of the outbreak and 241 latent cases were reported, according to data released by the San Francisco Department of Public Health on April 27 to the school community. In February, four active cases and three suspected active...

Jewish community leaders are blasting California’s Secretary of State for publishing a voter information guide statement from a fringe gubernatorial candidate who espoused anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Don J. Grundmann, an independent with no party affiliation and no prior political experience, is among dozens of candidates who qualified for the ballot. California residents are receiving their voter guides in the mail this month ahead of the June primary. Grundmann’s statement includes a litany of conspiracies, including claims that conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was killed by an Israeli bomb and that Israeli “art students” brought down the Twin Towers on 9/11. “These...

A pro-Palestinian professor charged with killing a 69-year-old Jewish dad during an anti-Israel protest in southern California in 2023 will not stand trial after he plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter. The 54-year-old Moorpark resident Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji pleaded guilty to felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery causing serious bodily injury related to the death of Paul Kessler, the Ventura County District Attorney’s office said in a press release on Tuesday. Alnaji-who teaches computer science at Moorpark College-and Kessler were both protesting the Israel-Hamas war during dueling pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations in Thousand Oaks in 2023 when Alnaji struck the...

A California college professor who scuffled with pro-Israel demonstrators has pleaded guilty in the death of a Jewish man who was fatally injured during the clash. According to the New York Post, Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji, 54, admitted on Tuesday to felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery causing serious bodily injury in connection with the 2023 death of Paul Kessler, a 69-year-old pro-Israel demonstrator from Southern California. The incident unfolded during rival demonstrations in Thousand Oaks, where anti-Israel activists and Israel supporters gathered amid escalating tensions following the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and the following war in Gaza....

I admit, I didn’t know a lot about Los Angeles Republican mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt. I have never seen the MTV show that made him famous, The Hills, and frankly, I assumed that a reality star was not a serious candidate to be the chief executive of the second most populous city in the nation. I fully remember, however, a grade teacher exhorting me back in the day, “Do not assume.” You make an “ass” out of “u” and “me.” I wholeheartedly admit that my bias was misplaced, because as I’ve now seen in numerous bombshell ads and interviews, Pratt...

More information has become available about what led to Loay Alnaji's surprise guilty plea on Tuesday morning and a potential sentence, but that information leads to additional questions we're still running down answers for. Alnaji, readers will recall, is the pro-Hamas agitator and community college professor who killed a Jewish man, Paul Kessler, when the two were attending dueling protests on November 5, 2023. Alnaji crossed two eight-lane streets to confront Kessler, who was waving an Israeli flag on the corner of Thousand Oaks Boulevard and Westlake Boulevard in Ventura County, CA. During that confrontation, Alnaji bashed Kessler's head with...

Federal agents flooded MacArthur Park on Wednesday as authorities announced a sweeping operation targeting what officials described as a notorious open-air drug market tied to fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking. The enforcement action, dubbed “Operation Free MacArthur Park,” involved federal and local law enforcement agencies serving arrest and search warrants throughout the area surrounding the park. In a statement posted Wednesday afternoon, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said the operation targeted street-level drug dealers and suppliers accused of distributing “massive amounts” of fentanyl and methamphetamine. “Federal agents have taken control of MacArthur Park to execute federal arrest and search warrants...

Critics of California’s long-overdue high-speed rail project are aghast after statehouse Democrats pushed through legislation that would give the rail auditor the power to shield its reports from the public. The bill, which passed the California Assembly on Monday and sits at the state Senate, lets the Inspector General do so if publication “would pose a substantial and articulable risk to the project or to state operations if publicly disclosed.” The role of the Inspector General has gained even more prominence in light of new estimates that the total cost of the train has ballooned to $231 billion. The fantasy...

Is California really primed for a switch to the Right? Sounds like the folks in LA has finally had enough.

Nithya Raman, a progressive urban planner, entered Los Angeles politics with a bang when she was elected to city council in 2020, defeating an incumbent Democrat endorsed by Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. More than five years on, the 44-year-old is making waves again with her last-minute entry into the LA mayoral race. Raman filed to run just hours before the deadline – after recently endorsing Mayor Karen Bass for re-election – to the surprise of constituents, and political allies and opponents alike. The bombshell development came after the race had finally appeared to be swinging in Bass’s favor, following...

AB 1608 would rename and expand the powers of the High-Speed Rail Authority’s Inspector General while creating broad exemptions to withhold records California’s high-speed rail project, originally pitched to voters as a $33.5 billion endeavor under Proposition 1A in 2008, has spiraled into a staggering taxpayer nightmare with estimates now exploding as high as $231 billion — a more than 700% increase. Against this backdrop of relentless cost overruns, Assembly Democrats are advancing legislation critics say is explicitly designed to conceal the extent of the waste and shield the failing project from public accountability. AB 1608, authored by Assemblywoman Lori...

One of the tricks Democrats have tried to pull since the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration began has been to implement directives, executive orders, and even pass legislation at the state level to try to thwart immigration enforcement agents from doing their jobs. Back in February, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) signed Executive Directive 17 (ED-17), which was designed to do just that. Among other things, the directive mandated "that City property is not [to be] utilized by federal immigration agents for staging areas, processing locations, or bases of operation." It also mandated signs to be posted that...

Kamala Harris has weighed in on the LA mayor’s race and issued endorsements in several other contests — but refused to back a gubernatorial candidate. The former VP, who now lives in Malibu, endorsed incumbent Karen Bass for mayor of the second-largest city in the US. “She has my full support for re-election,” the Democrat said. The two have known each other for more than two decades and were once rumored rivals for the vice presidency when Joe Biden pledged to select a woman as his running mate in 2020. Bass, who is serving her first term, was sworn in...

Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace named several lawmakers Monday who she claims used a congressional “slush fund” to cover up alleged sex scandals. Mace said she uncovered 1,000 pages of documents detailing how certain lawmakers allegedly evaded consequences for sexual scandals, according to a Monday post on X. Mace originally subpoenaed the House Oversight Committee in March in light of a string of sexual scandals that resulted in two resignations from Congress. (RELATED: REPORT: Two GOP Lawmakers Go Head-To-Head In Push To Expel One Another) Notably, Mace said that these documents are only from the last 22 years, claiming...

California’s largest home insurance company tore into state regulators Monday as it faces potential multi-million dollar fines and a suspension of its license. “Wildfire survivors deserve real solutions — not a distorted picture of State Farm’s response. We strongly disagree with the Department’s characterization,” State Farm General Insurance Company said in a statement. The lengthy, strongly worded response came within hours of the state of California issuing a damning verdict following an investigation into the company’s handling of customer claims after the 2025 wildfires. “The threat to suspend State Farm General’s ability to serve customers over primarily administrative and procedural...

The national retail average for a regular gallon of gas was $4.457 on Monday. That's a 1-cent increase from Sunday, according to the American Automobile Association, and 35 cents more than last Monday. At this time last year, a gallon of gas was $1.29 cheaper. The surging prices seemed to stabilize or even decrease for about two weeks, following a temporary ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran that has been indefinitely extended. However, the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route where roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes, has effectively remained closed or extremely limited to passage...

The “finest rug store in Santa Barbara” has sparked fury for proudly selling a product depicting horrific images of the 9/11 attack on New York City, the California Post can reveal. Tribal Rugs & Art was promoting one of the items as the centerpiece of its display on the sidewalk on the bustling State Street on Saturday afternoon. The controversial mat, priced at $450, shows the moment the two planes hit the Twin Towers with parts of the buildings missing where the jets collided.