Free Republic

Mayor Adams’ ambitious rezoning proposal he calls the “City of Yes” — aimed at encouraging new housing construction throughout the five boroughs — is filled with commonsense ideas such as permitting apartments to be built above storefronts and relaxing the expensive requirements for new parking. Adams, in many ways, is harkening back to the golden age of pre-zoning when row homes and brownstones sprouted across the city in the hundreds of thousands. Only in New York would the idea that increased housing supply is the best way to meet increased demand be controversial.

The wife of a Southern Baptist pastor has been charged with stealing more than $400,000 from a South Carolina church and may face additional charges related to theft at other churches, police say. Ware Shoals Police Chief Bryan Louis told The Roys Report (TRR) that Shelley Strickland, wife of Baptist Pastor Mark Strickland, confessed to stealing $404,000 from First Baptist Church of Ware Shoals, South Carolina. Shelley Strickland worked as the financial secretary at First Baptist from 2017—2024, Louis said. However, her husband pastors First Damascus Baptist Church in nearby Bradley, South Carolina, and the couple live in the parsonage...

The Democratic National Convention kicks off in Chicago on Monday, and the city has been bracing for violence and riots. Businesses started boarding up their windows and doors last week due to the many thousands of antisemitic, pro-Palestinian protesters expected to descend on the area organized by more than 200 different groups. Some are saying it could be reminiscent of the violence that plagued the 1968 DNC, which was also in Chicago. Chicago law enforcement dismisses that idea. "Chicago 2024 won’t be like Chicago 1968. That is the promise of law-enforcement officials and protest organizers alike as the curtain prepares...

The minister was outspoken against sexual abuse reforms in the SBC Jonathan Elwing, 43, a pastor from Palmetto, Florida, is facing a minimum sentence of life without parole over harrowing child rape allegations. However, due to an updated Florida death penalty law, he could receive capital punishment if convicted. According to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, police initially charged the father of four with four counts of possessing child pornography for using cryptocurrency to buy explicit images of children from the dark web. Detectives began investigating Elwing after a crypto-currency company tipped them about the purchases. Days later, police conducted...

The boss of Foxtel - a majority News Corp-owned cable television company in Australia - has "unreservedly" apologised after an image surfaced of him performing a Nazi salute. Patrick Delaney said he believed he was showing "the similarity" between the gesture and one used by some fans of a Western Sydney soccer club when the photo was taken a decade ago. "Regardless of the context, the fact I demonstrated this offensive salute was wrong," he said in an email to staff seen by the BBC. The Jewish Council of Australia condemned Mr Delaney's actions as "deeply concerning". “Equally [concerning] is...

If you leave the media bubble with its insistence that Kamala is brilliant and joyful and, instead, look at Kamala objectively, it’s clear that something is very wrong there. Most of us have assumed that she’s an ambitious dim-bulb who’s been stage-managed into a situation beyond her minimal capabilities and that she responds with strange word salads. However, there are now reports that Kamala’s real problem is that she’s an uncontrolled alcoholic who is showing up drunk at a lot of events. Is this true? I have no idea, but it’s certainly a reasonable explanation for what we’re seeing. It...

Talk about gas-lighting. Keir Starmer has basically gone over to Northern Ireland and told them that they're racists. Yes he's told the Protestants and the Catholics, who have joined together over there in the face of a greater threat, that they're racists because they've appreciated that threat. Link to transcript below video.

Democrats can’t govern to save their own lives (or cities), but one thing they are very good at — with the help of billions and billions of dollars in corporate media propaganda — is fabricating an alternate reality. Reality-reality is this: Wherever Democrats go, chaos follows. We’ve seen it in Baltimore, Ferguson, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Oakland, etc., etc., And now that the entire Democrat elite and their palace guards in the fake media have landed in Chicago — a city already bucking under the horrors of decades of one-party rule (Democrats) — the Windy City is...

The six-day bank siege that inspired the controversial Stockholm Syndrome theory began on 23 August 1973. In 1980, a BBC documentary featured two pioneering New York police negotiators who had built their careers on the lessons they had learnt from hostage situations past, including this bizarre robbery attempt. "But Sven, it's only in the leg." Those were the words of Kristin Enmark, 23, who was one of four people being held hostage at gunpoint in a Swedish bank. It was day two of the siege, and robber Jan-Erik Olsson wanted to show the police he meant business by shooting her...

My flak jacket is on as I write this since I am sure to offend or piss off some friends, family, and colleagues who are ostensibly Republicans or conservatives but have a visceral aversion to Donald Trump. Some tell me they are Republican and miss Ronald Reagan but also admit they “couldn’t” vote for Donald Trump in either 2016 or 2020. Nothing says one is Republican like voting for a liberal Democrat. This is the NeverTrump wing of the Republican Party, emerging shortly after Trump secured the GOP nomination in 2016. Reasons for NeverTrump-ism are myriad. Some were offended by...

Retired federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar put on the bench by President George H.W. Bush, is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump, whose candidacy he describes as an existential threat to American democracy. It will be the first time Luttig, a veteran of two Republican administrations, has voted for a Democrat. “In the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law,” Luttig...

LexCity Church in Lexington, KY, is no more after their former executive pastor, Zachary King, admitted in July to law enforcement that he’d been engaging in a ‘sexual relationship’ with a 15-year-old girl over the last year and a half, prompting the beleaguered congregation to shutter their doors for good. By ‘sexual relationship’, we mean that the 47-year-old pedophile impastor groomed and sexually abused her repeatedly. According to WHAS11, on August 15, a Fayette County Grand Jury indicted him on the following charges: One count of first degree rape. One count of first degree sodomy. One count of unlawful use...

Following a spate of predator attacks on hikers and park rangers in the US, Ally Hirschlag investigates why animals attack humans in the wild. Keri Bergere was on a Saturday afternoon bike ride with her friends on the heavily-forested Tokul Creek trail near Fall City, Washington, when two cougars ran out in front of them. One went off into the woods, but the other turned around and, within seconds, had pulled the 60-year-old woman off her bike. "We didn't have a chance to face off with them to scare them away or anything," her friend, Annie Bilotta, told the local...

A New York Republican and Trump diehard claims she was barred from entering Citi Field until she took off her “Make America Great Again” hat, a decision the organization claimed was a mistake. Aura Moody and her friend Taisha were both wearing MAGA hats when they arrived at the venue for the Mets game Wednesday night, along with other members of the Queens Village Republican Club. They had just made it past security when a Citi Field staffer told them they were not allowed inside with their Trump gear on, she said. “The United States of America is no longer...

That places parading as “churches” have handed themselves over to Satan and his legion of homosexual sycophants isn’t exactly breaking news anymore. These dens of iniquity, teeming with demonic influence, proudly flaunt their “gay pride” as if it were a divine mandate—as if the Apostle Paul himself had commanded us to boast in nothing but Christ. But no, in these darkened corners, homosexuality is their god, their twisted version of deity. But this might be one of the worst I’ve ever seen. When you visit their website, the first thing you’re bombarded with are disgusting images of women decked out...

Evangelicalism’s “White Guilt” apostle, Latasha Morrison—what can be said that isn’t already obvious to anyone paying attention? She’s the founder of “Be the Bridge,” a so-called Christian organization that is primarily concerned with cultivating white guilt within the ranks of Evangelicalism. Seriously, though. Life must be miserable living in perpetual victimhood the way these people do. It’s like wandering through a never-ending night where the shadows of resentment choke out every glimmer of light, leaving only the cold, suffocating darkness of self-imposed despair. Latasha Morrison’s doctrines are as predictable as they are pernicious—if you’re white, you’re guilty, and no amount...

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow warned Monday that Republicans on election boards across the country could refuse to certify the 2024 election results should former President Trump lose in November. “Election boards across the country now include Republican officials who have not only propounded Mr. Trump’s lies about the last presidential election being ‘stolen,’ they have tested how far they can go in denying the certification of the vote,” Maddow wrote in an op-ed published with The New York Times. Maddow argued the spread of what she called “refusenik Republicans” began in 2020, when Trump and then-Republican National Committee Chair Ronna...

Weeks after their contract expired, thousands of workers are going on strike in hopes of better pay and benefits. Nearly 17,000 AT&T workers are on strike as their union, the Communication Workers of America, accused the company of "unfair labor practices." The 17,000 workers are in the AT&T Southeast region and serve the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Striking employees include technicians, customer service representatives, and others who install, maintain, and support AT&T’s residential and business wireline telecommunications network, the union said. The Communication Workers of America filed a grievance with...

Explanation: Inside the Cocoon Nebula is a newly developing cluster of stars. Cataloged as IC 5146, the beautiful nebula is nearly 15 light-years wide. Soaring high in northern summer night skies, it's located some 4,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus). Like other star forming regions, it stands out in red, glowing, hydrogen gas excited by young, hot stars, and dust-reflected starlight at the edge of an otherwise invisible molecular cloud. In fact, the bright star found near the center of this nebula is likely only a few hundred thousand years old, powering the nebular glow...

Mpox has been declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization in response to a new, potentially deadlier strain of the virus circulating in Africa. On Thursday, the first case of this new variant was detected outside the continent, in Sweden. So what does this mean for vaccinations? Do they still work against the new variant? And do you need a booster? Newsweek spoke to experts to find out. Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, gained recognition during the global outbreak in 2022, affecting the U.S., Europe, Australia and many other countries. The virus comes in two "flavors"—clade I...