Free Republic

(Bloomberg) — US supplies of gasoline are being shipped out of the country to travel thousands of miles via the Bahamas before finally ending up in California, a state battling shrinking fuelmaking capacity and high pump prices. Shipments on the circuitous route are increasing. California imported more gasoline in November than ever before, with more than 40% coming from the Bahamas.

Casey Wasserman, the chairman of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, is selling his eponymous talent agency in the wake of the release of emails between himself and Ghislaine Maxwell. Wasserman's emails with Maxwell were revealed by his appearance in recently released government files on Jeffrey Epstein. Wasserman, whose agency represents some of the top pop music artists in the world, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. The recently released documents revealed that in 2003 he swapped flirtatious emails with Maxwell, who would years later be accused of helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse his victims. Wasserman said...

A pair of women's rights groups is making waves in California with an eye-catching campaign to raise awareness about men being housed in women's prisons. The statewide billboard truck campaign is calling attention to the upcoming rape trial of a man accused of assaulting two women in the female prison that he was allowed to transfer into. NTD's Daniel Monaghan spoke with the director of Women to Women about the campaign. This week, advocacy groups Women Are Real and Woman to Woman launched a statewide billboard truck campaign across California to raise awareness about men being housed in women's prisons...

These are draining times for your bank account at the gas pump. California gas prices have jumped up to 40 cents in two weeks, as refinery closures tighten fuel supplies across the state. The statewide average now stands at $4.582 per gallon, up from $4.463 a week ago and $4.182 just 14 days ago, according to the American Automobile Association. Energy experts say the spike is tied directly to shrinking refinery capacity. Specifically, Valero’s Benicia refinery — a key Northern California supplier — is in the process of idling operations. The move follows other major pullbacks, including Phillips 66’s Los...

The violent deaths linked to the group known as Zizians stopped at six a year ago, after a U.S. border agent was killed and three members were arrested on trespassing and gun charges in the woods of western Maryland. Seven of the group’s members are jailed in three states, all awaiting trial.

A group of Redwood High School’s ASB students in Visalia are under investigation for a “homophobic slur” photo incident on Thursday on school campus. LGBTQ advocates condemn those actions. “Let’s be clear: this is not a harmless joke,” said The Source LGBT+ Center in Visalia in a statement Friday afternoon in response to the incident. “Incidents like this reinforce stigma, normalize hate and send a painful message to LGBTW+ students.”

"A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money," Sen. Everett Dirksen is supposed to have said more than 50 years ago, and if you do that 370 times, according to California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, you might have enough to cover the Golden State taxpayer dollars diverted into Democrat "voter machines."The details get a little technical — money laundering isn't supposed to be easy to follow, after all — so I'll break down Hilton's allegations as quickly and cleanly as possible before we get to the big picture.According to Hilton’s unofficial CAL DOGE, after...

High schoolers in numerous blue cities around the country have regularly been playing hooky, preferring to attend anti-ICE protests rather than focus on their education. Not surprisingly, the data show that many of these so-called learning institutions have disastrous academic records.The kids don’t need to worry about consequences, though — all too often, the teachers and administrators are egging them on and skipping school themselves to join in the fun.Our teachers' unions should be so proud.On Friday, it was Los Angeles that got hit as hundreds of students left campus and headed downtown to create a little mayhem:What began as...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called on world leaders attending the Munich Security Conference in Germany to think about a future without President Donald Trump. Newsom's comments on climate policy reflected the larger theme of his message for Europe. "I hope if there is nothing else I communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary. He'll be gone in three years," Newsom said. He added, "It's important for folks to understand the temporary nature of this current administration in relationship to the issue of climate change and climate policy." He slammed the Trump administration's rollback of the 2009 "endangerment finding" and accused the...

It refers to the circle of self-enrichment through which political donors and special interests bag cash from government spending — then kick some of that cash back to politicians’ campaigns. That’s the only way to explain why the high-speed rail project persists in the Central Valley, even though almost nobody wants it and nobody is even pretending the state can afford it. Fraud is also the only way to explain how California spends nearly half a billion dollars on an overhaul of the 911 emergency system, only to find that the project doesn’t work. And when you double state spending...

Key Points On Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said the company is ending production of its Model S and X vehicles. “It’s time to basically bring the Model S and X programs to an end with an honorable discharge,” Musk said. Tesla beat estimates for the quarter but still wrapped up its first annual sales decline on record. SNIP Tesla is developing Optimus with the aim of someday selling it as a bipedal, intelligent robot capable of everything from factory work to babysitting. The company said in the release that it plans to unveil the third generation of...

A sleepy race to succeed Gavin Newsom as California Governor just got a little bit of a jolt, as Senator Adam Schiff publicly put his chips on East Bay House Representative Eric Swalwell. California Governor Gavin Newsom is termed out of office once the November 2026 election rolls around, though interestingly, no one is really paying much attention yet to the race to replace Newsom. We have eight credible Democrats running, and splitting up the vote so much that some pollsters have Republican candidates currently winning the race. So it behooves these Democratic candidates to do something to shake up...

As part of its efforts to expand its physical presence around the U.S., Immigration and Customs Enforcement is reportedly leasing space at an office park in Irvine and at the federal building in Santa Ana. As first reported by Wired, ICE is moving into offices on the 2000 block of Main Street in Irvine, a larger building part of an office complex near a child care center, an Equinox gym and John Wayne Airport. “This is news to me,” Irvine Mayor Larry Agran said. “We try to maintain some channels of communication with Border Patrol, with ICE, with Homeland Security,”...

Detective Shaun McCarthy has worked on a lot of cases in his more than 40 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “I was 10 years as a street gang detective, and now I’m in my 23rd year as a homicide detective,” he said. “So, a total of 33 years as a detective.” These days, he devotes his time to the cases that remain unsolved. “To solve a homicide and prosecute somebody who committed the worst crime, there is nothing higher than that.” This is why he says he said couldn’t fully retire. McCarthy, like many others in the...

I was listening to an episode of the Rob Lowe podcast Literally!, which featured fellow actor Adam Scott. I wanted to hear the two as they bandied about their time together on the former NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. It promised to be a cool listen, as the genuine friends kicked back and discussed a variety of topics in the industry, but the host let slip a surprising nugget.He currently is the host of the Fox Network game show The Floor, and Scott was jarred when Rob let it be known that they film the program entirely in Dublin, Ireland....

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just purchased a mansion located in South Florida’s most exclusive neighborhood, signaling that the multi-billionaire may be permanently moving out of California as the state weighs implementing a one-time 5% “billionaire tax.” Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan purchased an estate located in Indian Creek, on an island off of Miami. Indian Creek is home to about 41 homes owned by the top elite such as Jeff Bezos, Tom Brady, Carl Icahn, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. The two acre property located along Biscayne Bay, which includes several private properties, is estimated to have sold for...

You may vote red or blue, but would you rather live in a blue state or a red state? Regardless of what people do at the ballot box, newly released data from the Census Bureau overwhelmingly show people voting with their feet, leaving blue states for red states. And this is nothing new.From July 2024 to July 2025 (the latest numbers available), blue states like California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts hemorrhaged their most valuable resource—people—at an alarming rate.These were the five worst states for net domestic migration, meaning more people left those states than moved in, for...

Days after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a Watsonville resident last month, social media circles in the Pajaro Valley erupted in outrage over a pro-ICE Facebook comment by a teacher intern at a Watsonville elementary school.

It's not hard to understand why people live in California, nor why it boomed in the decades after World War II. There are few places more blessed by God than California, even with its mudslides, wildfires, and earthquakes, which deterred not a single person from moving there. It is, in most ways, a paradise. If there was anyplace that could be said to embody the American Dream, or at least the postwar American Dream in which anybody could aspire to be middle class, it was California. New York City may be where people went to strike it big, but California...

Over the weekend a video clip posted by RNC Research of the Sheriff of San Joaquin County saying, "You're able to register and cast a vote if you don't live in the country," and stating that a Pakistani citizen voted in a California election went viral. San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office: "You're able to register and cast a vote if you don't live in the country."Care to explain? pic.twitter.com/uzEWh4X4G4 https://t.co/QJvhNtLKeT— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 5, 2026Many social media users were wondering if this actually happened and if what he said about the "honor system" of registering to vote online in...