Free Republic

A man who was recorded toppling a statue of the Virgin Mary at the St. Rose of Lima Church in Buffalo, New York, has been arrested and charged with a hate crime. The Buffalo Police Department announced in a news release Sunday, that they arrested 40-year-old Michael Manns and charged him with one count of criminal mischief in the third degree, designated as a hate crime, which is a class D felony, as well as criminal mischief in the third degree, a class E felony. Manns’ arrest comes less than two weeks after the June 28 attack on the church...

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Sunday blamed the state’s soft-on-crime bail-reform mess on former boss Andrew Cuomo and Albany pols, claiming she “held the budget up” this year to fix it. Hochul said she has been fighting to reverse the controversial 2019 bail measures — while adding that the Big Apple is bouncing back from a post-pandemic crime wave to become one of the country’s safest big cities, even as New Yorkers flee the state. “People say they’re going to leave our state because it’s not safe,” the governor told host John Catsimatidis on WABC-770 radio’s “Cat’s Roundtable.” “Tell me the...

The head Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee says he is worried about a flurry of “extreme right-wing amendments” attached to the House version of the annual defense bill as lawmakers prepare to debate and vote on the legislation this month. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) told The Washington Post he was concerned about GOP measures on “abortion, guns, the border, and social policy and equity issues.” “We’ll just have to wait and see what amendments are made in order when the bill is debated on the House floor,” he said. “Depending on which amendments pass, I will make an...

House Republicans have slipped a massive foreign worker expansion into their Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending bill, a blow to the GOP’s promise to protect the nation’s working class from powerful special interests. After markups and hearings, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee approved the DHS spending bill which would blow the lid off blue-collar migration caps to the United States, spurring an influx of foreign visa workers in the labor market with whom working class Americans would have to compete for jobs. “Who represents the working class? This bill suggests it’s not necessarily Republicans,” Jeremy Beck of NumbersUSA...

Northwestern has fired coach Pat Fitzgerald amid allegations of widespread hazing within the football program, university president Michael Schill announced Monday. "The head coach is ultimately responsible for the culture of his team," Schill wrote in an open letter to the school community. "The hazing we investigated was widespread and clearly not a secret within the program, providing Coach Fitzgerald with the opportunity to learn what was happening. Either way, the culture in Northwestern Football, while incredible in some ways, was broken in others." Defensive coordinator David Braun is expected to be named the Wildcats' acting coach, sources told ESPN.

Explosions tonight in the Ukrainian city of Odessa... Russia's Foreign Ministry says that Ukrainian attacks in recent days on Kerch Strait Bridge and other targets... The Spanish Coast Guard has rescued 86 migrants... Tomorrow massive protests in Israel against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial reform agenda. Tonight a part of that agenda passing a first vote... Trying to stop Israel from "going off the rails" Comments from outgoing US Ambassador to Israel... Demonstrators opposed to judicial reform disrupting Israel's parliament... China and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific signing agreements including a police cooperation deal... Canada's military presence on...

No matter how many crimes occur in Chicago every day – carjackings, muggings, drug deals, political corruption – these rarely make the news, other than in reports of crime statistics. We hear numbers; we rarely learn the victims’ names. There are just too many of them. It’s the rarest of crimes – the incidents of severe police misconduct - that make the news. And the news of the day is a particularly disturbing story. The story broke on Thursday, July 6 that at least one Chicago police officer was being investigated for having sexual contact with illegal aliens (the press...

Former National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease (NAIAD) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and a dozen other directors of the National Institutes for Health (NIH) appear not to have been legally appointed to their offices, according to a year-long investigation by House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans. Mr. Fauci and the others were to serve five-year terms, beginning not later than Dec. 13, 2021, but repeated requests since March 2022 to Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra by the committee for documents verifying the appointments were delayed or ignored, according to GOP committee aides speaking on background. Because...

Gov. Tim Walz had the legal authority to mandate face masks when he declared a public health emergency in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday. Walz declared a peacetime emergency in March 2020 and mandated masking in most indoor public spaces in July 2020. The conservative Upper Midwest Law Center sued, challenging the mask requirement as unconstitutional. Walz lifted the mandate in May 2021, at which point the Court of Appeals declared the case moot. […] The appeals court rejected as “unreasonable” the plaintiffs’ assertions that the coronavirus “most likely” originated from...

Twitter’s traffic has plunged since billionaire Elon Musk took control of the social media platform last fall, as longtime tweeters are migrating to alternative platforms such as Meta’s Threads. In a tweet Sunday, Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, an internet services company, posted a chart showing Twitter has been on the decline since the start of 2023. Twitter’s skidding numbers arrive as Meta officially launches Threads, which is widely seen as a new competitor to Twitter and debuted last week. As of Monday, Twitter is currently ranked 37 in Cloudflare’s list of top 100 domains, which coincides with the unpopular...

Update from Ukraine | Kadyrov's Ahmat Battalion has been ambushed near to Bakhmut | Ukraine Wins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmQuZ9AR4jE The summary of the situation of Russian re-invasion to https://militaryland.net/news/invasion-day-502-summary/ *** Great interactive map with viewer controlled Map magnification tool to use for each Front! https://militaryland.net/maps/

HOLLYWOOD, CA — Hollywood critics, actors, and producers are reportedly confused by Sound of Freedom, an action thriller produced by Angel Studios and starring Jim Caviezel, because it depicts child sex trafficking as a bad thing. According to sources among the nation's entertainment elite, Hollywood insiders had been excited to learn there was a film coming out about sex trafficking but were then disappointed when they found out it's depicted as a negative thing in the film. Critics have been giving the film poor reviews, citing the filmmakers' "baffling" decision to take a stance against the practice, with The New...

The Chinese government has made five demands on the United States, including the cancellation of its chip exports ban and sanctions, during US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s four-day China trip ended Sunday. China’s Ministry of Finance said in a statement on Monday that it has expressed concerns to Yellen about the extra tariffs, company sanctions, investment restrictions, export controls and Xinjiang product bans imposed by the US on China in recent years. It said the US should take concrete actions to respond to China’s concerns. Chinese commentators said the China side arranged meetings between key economic officials and Yellen, showing...

MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill said on Monday on “Deadline” that the Democratic-controlled Senate needed to investigate “all of the business dealings of the Trump family” during former President Donald Trump’s term in office. Wallace said, “The Democrats control the Senate. Why isn’t there a committee investigating?” She added, “Why aren’t there Senate investigations into Jared Kushner’s business deals when he left the White House? I imagine a lot of people have a lot of notes about things Jared Kushner said and did while he was in the White House. Why isn’t there an effort to haul out anyone who might...

New York City’s migrant shelters are plagued with “volatile” and “dangerous” conditions, prompting a search by city officials to hire private security guards for the facilities, a report details. Since the spring of last year, more than 84,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York City with about 50,000 remaining in shelters across the city, now outnumbering native New Yorkers.

Starring Ray Milland, William Holden, Wayne Morris, Brian Donlevy, Constance Moore and Veronica Lake. Story follows the training and personal lives of three recruits in the Army Air Corps --- a wealthy playboy, a college jock and an auto mechanic.

~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, VirginiaJoint Expeditionary Base–Little Creek, formerly known as Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek and commonly called simply Little Creek, is the major operating base for the Amphibious Forces in the United States Navy's Atlantic Fleet. The base comprises four locations in three states, including almost 12,000 acres of real estate. Its Little Creek location in Virginia Beach, Virginia, totals 2,120 acres of land. Outlying facilities include 350 acres located just north of Training Support Center Hampton Roads in Virginia Beach and 21 acres known as Radio Island at Morehead...

A 7-year-old boy has been killed and his grandfather wounded after a shooting which police say stemmed from an argument over jet skis. The Fourth of July incident took place near a boat ramp just after 8:30 p.m. at the Courtney Campbell Causeway west of Ben T. Davis Beach in Florida, Tampa Police Deputy Chief of Investigations and Support Calvin Johnson said at a news conference on Wednesday. When gunfire erupted, the grandfather grabbed the boy and “pulled him” into a truck, police said. But when they were inside the vehicle, a round of stray gunshots went through the car,...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Multnomah County said it is suspending plans to distribute tin foil, straws and snorting kits to drug users across the Portland area.According to the county, the health department moved forward with the proposal without going through the proper protocols.

A man unearthed a huge hoard of Civil War-era gold and silver coins on his Kentucky farm A Kentucky man got the surprise of his life while digging in his field earlier this year: a cache of over 700 coins from the American Civil War era.The "Great Kentucky Hoard" includes hundreds of U.S. gold pieces dating to between 1840 and 1863, in addition to a handful of silver coins. In a short video, the man who discovered the hoard — whose identity and specific location have not been revealed to the public — says, "This is the most insane thing...