Free Republic

A meeting of a controversial reparations committee in San Francisco had to be postponed because one of the members of the city's board of supervisors was stuck in Colombia following a vacation which included a stop at a Hooters. San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton was due back in the city for the meeting on Tuesday. Due to his absence, the meeting will be delayed until March. The committee is planning to dispense $5 million per qualifying person in the Bay Area... Under the proposal, San Francisco will give $5 million to each eligible black person who lives in the city....

Among the 10 people who will decide whether to pay members of Boston's black community are two high schoolers and one college student. High school juniors Damani Williams and Denilson Fanfan, as well as 22-year-old University of Massachusetts student and Black Lives Matter organizer Carrie Mays, were named to the city's reparations task force on Tuesday.... The proposal has already sparked debate about whether monetary reparations should be paid exclusively to black Americans descended from slaves, WGHB reports, or whether it should include black immigrants who may have still suffered impacts of so-called systemic racism..... ...In announcing the members of...

DALLAS (AP) — A 24-year-old man now linked to an unusual string of crimes that kept the Dallas Zoo on the lookout for missing animals told police that after he swiped two monkeys from their enclosure, he took them onto the city’s light rail system to make his getaway, court records show. Davion Irvin also said he loves animals and that if he’s released from jail, he would steal more, the documents said. Irvin, who remained jailed Tuesday on $25,000 bond, was arrested last week after asking questions at a downtown Dallas aquarium about animals there. He is charged with...

An immigration official in Quebec has said it is "surprising" that New York authorities are sending migrants to Canada's border. Quebec immigration minister Christine Fréchette made the comment after the New York Post reported that National Guards are handing out free bus tickets for migrants to travel to Plattsburgh, in the north of New York state. From there, migrants hire cabs to take them on the 30-mile trip to cross the Canadian border via Roxham Road... Under the Safe Third Country agreement, signed by the US and Canada in 2002, migrants seeking asylum must file their claim in the first...

The man suspected of shooting an off-duty NYPD cop in a robbery gone awry was nabbed hiding out at an upstate hotel Monday, law enforcement sources said. The 38-year-old suspect, identified by sources as Randy Jones, was with his girlfriend and her kids when he was arrested in Rockland County, sources said. Jones was hauled off in handcuffs belonging to the critically wounded cop and taken back to Brooklyn, where he arrived at the 75th Precinct ... His suspected shooter has a lengthy criminal record ...His rap sheet lists 22 busts...

More than 100 chanting 'Trans Lives Matter' protesters descended on Oklahoma's State Capitol building yesterday, occupying the interior rotunda, to protest against a new bill that would ban gender affirming surgery for anyone under 21. The protesters from Oklahomans For Equality and Freedom Oklahoma started their demonstration outside the building, then moved indoors. While it remains unclear whether their entry to the building was peaceful, videos show them inside.... Their protest was against a new bill championed by Republican Governor Kevin Stitt, that bans anyone under the age of 21 from undergoing gender reassignment surgery....

Washington — Another intruder has breached one of the nation's most sensitive military bases — the home of Air Force One — and this time a resident opened fire on the trespasser, Joint Base Andrews said in a statement late Monday. During the incident, which occurred at about 11:30 a.m. Monday, "a man gained unauthorized access to a JBA housing area," Joint Base Andrews said in the statement posted to Twitter. "A resident discharged a firearm, security forces arrived on scene to apprehend the intruder....

The Biden administration took a first step Friday toward ending federal protections for grizzly bears in the northern Rocky Mountains, which would open the door to future hunting in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.... Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte welcomed the administration’s announcement and said it could lead to the state reclaiming management of a species that’s been under federal protections since 1975. He said the grizzly’s recovery "represents a conservation success." The federal government removed protections for the Yellowstone ecosystem’s grizzlies in 2017. Wyoming and Idaho were set to allow grizzlies to be hunted when a judge restored those protections in...

President Biden sought to contrast his administration's accomplishments with House Republicans' agenda Friday night during the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting in Philadelphia Friday... On the economy, the president particularly highlighted his administration's focus on manufacturing jobs, and on buying American products, before shifting gears in an effort to contrast his administration with House Republicans. "Jobs are up, wages are up, inflation is down," he said. "COVID no longer controls our lives. But now, the extreme MAGA Republicans in the House of Representatives have made it clear they intend to put it all at risk...These aren't conservatives. These aren't conservatives....

...Speculation was rampant on Friday night after Twitter user @MMtTreasures shared a video taken from a window in Billings that was said to show "a jet go by so fast and then [an] explosion in the sky." The video, which appears to show a jet contrail in the sky above a residential neighborhood, includes a brief and silent flash of light that is claimed to be an explosion.... A short time later, the City of Billings said on Twitter that there had been no "massive explosion" in the area.... Twitter user @Chase7601 seemingly attempted to stoke the flames of conspiracy...

A video of two students viciously beating a 9-year-old student on a Florida school bus has surfaced online, alarming the community and prompting a swift reaction from the girl’s parents. The disturbing footage shows two boys repeatedly striking the girl as she is folded over in a seat, barely defending herself with one hand as she tightly grips her backpack with the other. Many of the punches land on the girl’s head, neck and face. No fellow students or adults intervened... "We’ve had issues before with my son and the kids on the bus, and also in the cafeteria and...

...California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wife charged public schools across the country to screen her documentaries, making as much as $1.5 million, according to a new report. Siebel Newsom’s non-profit released four films, for which she is credited as a writer and director, advocating for "gender justice." Siebel Newsom's "gender identity" films are produced through her for-profit operation, Girls Club Entertainment, which is then licensed by the nonprofit The Representation Project, to public schools. The Representation Project claims that they fight "sexism through films education, research and activism."... ...The films, which include "Miss Representation," "The Mask You Live In," "The Great...

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is set to ban drag shows in order to 'protect' children after already cracking down on critical race theory in schools. Sanders and her supporters said the bill, which would re-define drag shows as 'adult-oriented performances,' is meant to protect social values.... Arkansas Senate Bill 43, which was filed last month, is aimed at placing restrictions on where drag performances can take place. The bill goes on to define a drag performance as ....

Liberals have spent the last few years obsessing over systemic racism, and yet they are the ones perpetuating it. Over the past two decades, nearly 200,000 black New Yorkers moved out of New York City, a decline of 9% of its black population. The New York Times lists several reasons for the decline, including “concerns about school quality,” but one issue reigns supreme: Black people, especially parents, are simply being priced out of living in New York City.... So where does the “national trend of younger black professionals, middle-class families, and retirees leaving cities” lead to? It leads to those...

The House of Representatives is expected Wednesday to pass legislation requiring hundreds of thousands of federal workers to return to federal offices and shutter many of the telework arrangements permitted amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the measure is unlikely to be passed into law, the proposal raises new debate over whether telework by public employees is squandering taxpayer money or is preventing a shortfall of the civil servants needed to operate the sweeping U.S. government. Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said services at the Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration and Department of...

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is suing the makers of so-called forever chemicals that have contaminated multiple sources of drinking water, saying the companies hid threats to public health and the environment. Raoul is suing 3M and several other large chemical companies that have in their past had some role in making a class of chemicals used in non-stick pans, clothing, furniture, water and stain repellents, food packaging and thousands of other products. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS, are tied to some types of cancer, liver damage and other health conditions. Minnesota-based 3M has promised to stop...

An organizational meeting of the House Judiciary Committee turned into a bitter debate over a proposed amendment to committee rules that would require the recitation of the pledge of allegiance at the beginning of committee meetings, allowing members to bring in constituents to lead it if they wish. The amendment, put forth by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., was met with a challenge and another amendment by Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., who said anyone who supported an insurrection against the United States should be barred from leading the pledge. .. Several Republicans were dismayed that the matter was being debated at...

President Joe Biden... is now reviving former President Barack Obama’s idea of adding yet one more racial category to our Balkanized nation and effectively turning Hispanics into a race, not an ethnicity. In a document from the Office of Management and Budget, published on Jan. 27 in the Federal Register, a working group of the U.S. Census Bureau proposes to create a category for people who can trace their origin to Middle East or North African (to be called MENA). Secondly, it proposes to collapse the current two questions on ethnicity and race into one.... The reason two questions have...

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Top Republican legislators in Kansas are focusing on helping conservative parents remove their children from public schools over what’s taught about gender and sexuality rather than pursuing a version of what critics call Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. A proposal to allow parents to use state tax dollars to pay for private or home schooling was to be available online Tuesday, a day after a committee on K-12 spending introduced the measure in the House. The introduction comes as funding and lesson plans for public schools have become hot button issues...

The Biden administration announced on Monday that it plans to end on May 11 a pair of emergency designations implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.... Here are three things that could be undone with the lifting of the national and public health emergencies. Title 42 Title 42 was a policy implemented by the Trump administration that allowed Border Patrol officials to expel foreign nationals at the border, citing public health protections related to the pandemic.... Medicare and Medicaid beneficiary benefits ...With the end of the public health emergency, Americans will need to start paying for COVID-19 tests and treatments such as...