Free Republic

Another bit of bad news for downtown San Francisco arrived Monday morning with the revelation that the investment firm that owns the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55 hotels is walking away from its debts and giving up hope on a return of SF's convention market. Virginia-based REIT Park Hotels & Resorts has opted to cease payments on a $725 million loan, as the SF Business Times reports today, essentially surrendering over 2,900 hotel rooms and hospitality facilities to its lender. This includes the 1,921-room Hilton San Francisco Union Square, which is San Francisco's largest hotel, occupying an...

Investigators from the FBI linked a New Jersey attorney to a series of violent rapes in Boston after tracking down his relative's DNA on a commercial genealogy database. Matthew Nilo, 35, was arrested last week on suspicion of raping three women and sexually assaulting a fourth in 2007 and 2008. Police took samples from the three women who were raped in Terminal Street, in Boston, at the time of the incidents and processed the glove of a fourth victim who poked her assailant in the eye while wearing the garment. All three matched the same profile, leading officers to believe...

Actor Mark Wahlberg is hoping to boost the Las Vegas, Nevada, economy with more film production. On Wednesday, he lobbied state lawmakers to pass a bill that would encourage additional people to bring film production to the area, CNBC reported Thursday

“Conservatives are waging a war on drag culture!” they scream. “Conservatives want to erase the LGBTQ community because they’re bigots!” they insist. And you know what? Odds are that somewhere out there, there are actually conservatives who hate drag queens with a fiery passion and believe that LGBTQ people are subhuman. But by and large, the conservatives being accused of hatred and bigotry against the LGBTQ community are not opposed to the community itself but rather to the members of the community — and their so-called “allies” — who have set their sights on children. And that’s where we’re at...

The case stems from an attempt by a California lawyer, Steve Elster, to trademark the sexually suggestive phrase and print it on T-shirts. Elster's bid to register "Trump too small" was rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office because he did not have Donald Trump's written consent to use his name. A federal court of appeals disagreed, ruling that it was a violation of Elster's First Amendment free speech rights. Somewhat ironically, it is the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden, on behalf of the US Patent and Trademark Office, that appealed to the Supreme Court.

A nuclear attack might be one of the biggest and scariest threats facing humanity, and will probably stay that way for the coming year. Even so, in the US, a medical experiment was recently carried out that aims to prevent the harmful effects of radiation on the body in the case of a nuclear attack.

Nova Kakhovka Dam on the Dnipro River is destroyed above Kherson and 80 other settlements.

Austria's center-left Social Democrats (SPÖ) on Monday publicly announced that they had named the wrong person chairman in a party vote over the weekend. The party's electoral commissioner, Michaela Grubesa, explained that an error had occurred when votes from the Saturday party conference were inaccurately transferred to a spreadsheet. Hans Peter Doskozil, governor of Burgenland province, had erroneously been declared winner when the vote had in fact been carried by Andreas Babler, mayor of Traiskirchen outside Vienna. Babler garnered 317 votes to Doskozil's 280. A recount was conducted Monday, said Grubesa, after a discrepancy was found between the number of...

A member of the powerful House Oversight Committee alleged Monday that the FBI is "afraid" the informant accusing President Biden of having been involved in a criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national while vice president could be "killed" if unmasked. "Just left meeting for House Oversight. The [FBI] is afraid their informant will be killed if unmasked, based on the info he has brought forward about the Biden family," Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., wrote on Twitter following a closed briefing by the FBI for the committee. When reached for additional comment, Luna told Fox News Digital the FBI's...

In May 2023 Fox News ratings felt the impact of the suddenly departed Tucker Carlson, whose last telecast was April 21. For May, Fox News averaged 1.42 million viewers in primetime, a 32% decline from April, when the network averaged 2.08 million viewers. (All ratings are based on live + same day from Nielsen.) For the total day, in May, Fox News had an average audience of 1.09 million viewers, compared to 1.29 million in April, a fall-off of 16%. Despite the audience decline, May 2023 marked the 27th straight month Fox News has been the top-rated cable news network...

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) made an apparent threat of kidnapping charges against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in a tweet on Monday. The California Democrat was likely referring to a recent flight of more than a dozen immigrants to Sacramento who, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, possessed "documentation purporting to be from the government of the State of Florida." ".@RonDeSantis you small, pathetic man. This isn't Martha's Vineyard. Kidnapping charges? Read the following," Newsom tweeted, providing a link to California's penal code. It was reported over the weekend that California officials were investigating the mysterious plane of immigrants and its...

New York City video shows a woman lunging at a mother and her baby in a park, dragging another woman by her hair and knocking over sidewalk tables in a public meltdown Sunday. When she targets the woman holding a baby in Manhattan's Tompkins Square Park, onlookers gasp, the video shows.

@iluminatibot Epstein was a fake billionaire set up by intelligence services. His private island was a massive child sex trafficking ring that was used to blackmail the global elite (billionaires, celebrities and politicians). That's why the FBI wouldn't let the client list come out in court.

...Is distinguishing Polanski spitting in the face of all victims”? What about watching his films – does that mean tacitly endorsing that “raping women isn’t that bad”? If the film is about antisemitism, how does that affect the morality balance sheet? Of course, really all these questions amount to just one, well-worn dilemma: can we separate the art from the artist?...Woody Allen (and) his relationship with Soon Yi-Previn, adopted daughter of Allen’s ex-wife Mia Farrow, made her feel “affronted, personally somehow” since she had, as a girl, identified with Allen due to his performative fragility and neuroticism. (Allen has repeatedly...

Officials of the College of the Ozarks, a small faith-based institution of about 1,600 students in Missouri, are challenging the HUD’s interpretation of the Fair Housing Act (FHA).The Biden administration, through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has announced rules in the form of a Directive that may threaten the College of the Ozarks in Missouri and other institutions grounded in biblical beliefs about the differences between women and men. This directive comes after the Biden administration has already proposed a regulation to restrict Christian speech on the campus of public institutions of higher education while limiting the...

The draining of a swimming pool at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort that led to the flooding of a computer server room last October has reportedly caught the attention of prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith. At least one witness has been asked about the server room flood by prosecutors investigating Trump’s handling of classified material, according to a CNN report on Monday. The flooded room on the property held video logs for the Palm Beach, Fla., club, according to the report. The videos may show the movement of boxes of classified documents that Trump, 76, held onto...

Protest took a back seat to celebration at the California Capitol Monday as lawmakers honored drag nun Sister Roma and proclaimed June LGBT Pride Month. Roma, who belongs to the San Francisco-based Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, was one of 15 guests invited by the legislature’s LGBTQ Caucus as the Assembly and Senate passed resolutions proclaiming June as LGBTQ pride month. Other honorees included tennis legend Billie Jean King and filmmaker Eugene Lee Yang.

The Philippines is the only place outside the Vatican where divorce is outlawedPhilippine mother-of-three Stella Sibonga is desperate to end a marriage she never wanted. But divorce in the Catholic-majority country is illegal, and a court annulment takes years. The Philippines is the only place outside the Vatican where divorce is outlawed. Pro-divorce advocates argue the ban makes it harder for couples to cut ties and remarry, and escape violent spouses. People wanting to end their marriage can ask a court for an annulment or a declaration that the nuptials were invalid from the start, but the government can appeal...

On a recent sunny day in May, Russian Orthodox priest Timothy Kolb unlocked a padlock securing the door to Anchorage’s oldest standing building and stepped inside. The small, rough-hewn building looks like a log cabin and is easy to overlook next to the taller, brighter, onion-domed new St. Nicholas Church. The old St. Nicholas Church has been in disrepair for years, and a $350,000 federal grant, awarded in 2022 under the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund, is intended to tackle many of the big issues, including a dangerously leaning bell tower and the construction of a new foundation. Inside...

DeSantis is down 34 points with men in this survey, but much closer with women. A new survey of the 2024 Florida GOP Presidential Primary reveals a 20-point lead for Donald Trump over Ron DeSantis. In the Sunshine State Battleground Poll conducted from May 31 to June 2, the former President commands 53% support, with DeSantis at 33%. No other candidates are remotely competitive: Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy all register 2% support, with others even farther back. Only 3% are undecided in this survey.