Free Republic

Under one party rule, ‘Criminals know how to exploit California’s policies for their gain’. Californians have recently been treated to images of mountains of trash along the Union Pacific rail line in Los Angeles. CBS-LA reporter John Schreiber went to the site and took video of looted packages from Amazon and UPS, prescription drugs, Amazon packages, “unused Covid tests, fishing lures, epi pens. Cargo containers left busted open on trains.” His videos went viral on social media, and many news reports followed. California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the site Thursday and helped perform clean up for the cameras. “What has...

Reacting to recent media images of trash-strewn railroad tracks in Los Angeles – the result in part of thieves stealing from passing rail cars and discarding packaging – California Gov. Gavin Newsom showed up Thursday with a clean-up crew and vowed action. And the Democrat, dressed in a T-shirt, baseball cap and coronavirus mask, pitched in himself, joining crew members from the state Department of Transportation in grabbing handfuls of debris and placing the trash in bags or in a dumpster. "What has happened on this stretch of the Union Pacific Railroad is unacceptable," Newsom told reporters. He said the...

Two California counties violated the Constitution's right to keep and bear arms when they shut down gun and ammunition stores in 2020 as nonessential businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. Officials in Los Angeles and Ventura counties had separately won lower court decisions saying gun stores were not exempt from broader shutdown orders aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus early in the pandemic. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected both lower court rulings.

Signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom last September, Assembly Bill 173 amended state firearms laws to allow California to turn over gun owners’ personal information to gun violence researchers. Finding there was no “emergency” to warrant restraining California from sharing millions of gun owners’ personal information with gun violence researchers, a federal judge Wednesday declined to block the state’s enactment of Assembly Bill 173.U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns heard from attorneys for Jane and John Does and Attorney General Rob Bonta regarding a constitutional challenge to Assembly Bill 173, a law which amended California firearms laws to authorize...

Monte Sereno Councilwoman Rowena Turner was convicted of illegal voting last October in Oregon circuit court after allegations that she voted in both California and Oregon for years gained public attention in 2020. The Republican councilwoman, along with her husband Ahval Turner and son Sean Edward Turner, pleaded “no contest” to charges of illegal voting during the November 2018 general election in Josephine County, Ore., where she owns a vacation home. Elections records show Turner has been a registered voter in California since at least 1990, when she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. Documents show she was...

On Monday, off-duty LAPD officer Fernando Arroyos and his girlfriend were out in South L.A. looking at houses, in anticipation of getting married and settling down there. Sure, it was after dark, and most Angelenos do not venture out at night these days, but Fernando was LAPD, highly trained in police work and educated at U.C. Berkeley, and thought he had it all down. Then four gangbangers from the local crime organization (too highly advanced to be called a gang), Florencia 13, saw the silver chains around his neck and decided to rob him. Arroyos told his girlfriend to run....

The Golden State Warriors tried to quickly distance themselves from tech billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya’s incendiary remarks about the Uyghur genocide, but the team has been slammed for a “cowardly” response that critics say shows their fear of upsetting the Chinese government. But the team has since been called out for not being more forceful in denouncing Palihapitiya’s remarks. The U.S. government has declared that the Chinese government has committed genocide against the Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim minority group that is native to the northwest Xinjiang region, the Washington Post reported. Scholars estimate that more than 1 million Uyghurs have been...

Just days after more than $10 million worth of personal protective equipment was found outside damaged by rain at a Bay Area event center, a similar discovery was made at a Hollister business where hundreds of thousands of face shields were found outside and are now headed to the landfill, never to be used. “That's a shame because if it would've gone to someplace that really needed it, it would've been used in a proper fashion, it's a downright shame,” said Antonio Rodriguez, who saw hundreds of boxes piled high. The face shields are owned by ICU Eyewear out of...

Thieves have been raiding cargo containers aboard trains nearing downtown Los Angeles for months, taking packages belonging to people across the U.S. and leaving the tracks blanketed with discarded boxes. The packages are from retailers including Amazon, REI and others, CBSLA reported Thursday. The sea of debris left behind includes items that the thieves apparently didn’t think were valuable enough to take. While CBSLA cameras were on the scene, one person was spotted running off with a container used to hold small packages, and a Union Pacific railroad police officer was spotted pursuing two other people who were apparently going...

The dramatic exit last Friday by Rep. John Katko (R-NY), who announced he would not run for reelection, may have shocked liberals but was no surprise to Trump supporters. One by one, the Republicans who voted for the second impeachment or who publicly blamed Trump for the Jan. 6th rally at the Capitol are leaving public office. Katko was the third to prematurely retire among the impeachers, and the most significant due to his seniority and otherwise bright future. He was in line to become chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee after the predicted takeover of the House by...

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday that 45 colleges and universities in California, including some of the most prestigious campuses in the state, will be part of a new public service program that will subsidize tuition for students who do community service alongside their studies. The program called “Californians For All College Corps” will start in the fall 2022 semester with 6,500 students who will be deployed to part-time work in areas of pressing need like K-12 education disparities, climate change and food insecurity, Newsom said in a news conference with the leaders of the state’s public university and community college...

Most Americans don’t realize it but the Mexican state is in serious trouble, and we won’t be able to ignore it for much longer. Video footage recently surfaced on Twitter showing C4 explosives being dropped by a drone near a town in Michoacán, Mexico, reportedly by members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, following hours of clashes between armed groups. In the video, a small explosion hits a woodland camp, a cluster of tents amid dense trees and dirt roads. Men scatter, running for cover. Another volley of explosives is released. When it hits, the camp erupts in flames. The...

In the city of Los Angeles, where I live, you can’t enter a restaurant, a government building, a gym, a bar, or a coffee shop without showing proof of vaccination. I know some establishments are less apt to check than others, but each time I walk past a “no vaccination, no service” sign, my heart skips a beat.

A UCLA grad student has been stabbed to death in a random attack while she was working in a luxury furniture store in Los Angeles. Brianna Kupfer, 24, was alone in the Croft House store on La Brea Avenue in LA's upscale Fairfax neighborhood when a man entered and knifed her. The architectural design student from Pacific Palisades was discovered 20 minutes later by another customer. By the time police arrived at the scene, she was already dead. Police said the male suspect is believed to be homeless and fled through the back door before calming walking down an alley,...

A UCLA grad student has been stabbed to death in a random attack while she was working in a luxury furniture store in Los Angeles. Brianna Kupfer, 24, was alone in the Croft House store on La Brea Avenue when a customer entered and knifed her. The architectural design student from Pacific Palisades was discovered 20 minutes later by another customer after Thursday's attack. By the time police arrived at the scene, she was already dead. Police said the male suspect is believed to be homeless

A 24-year-old woman was stabbed to death Thursday afternoon while working at a Hancock Park furniture store by a man who is still on the loose. Brianna Kupfer of Pacific Palisades was working alone at the Croft House furniture store in the 300 block of La Brea Avenue, near Beverly Boulevard, when a man entered the store, attacked her and stabbed her to death with a knife, Los Angeles police said. The man was last seen exiting the store through the back and heading northbound in the alley, according to video surveillance footage.

Los Angeles police have identified the suspect wanted in the fatal stabbing of UCLA grad student Brianna Kupfer, who was brutally slain at her job in a luxury furniture store. Shawn Laval Smith, 31, was named by LAPD on Tuesday night as the suspect captured on video in chilling footage as he calmly purchased a vape pen from a 7-Eleven 30 minutes after the cold-blooded murder. 'He should be considered armed and dangerous. If seen do not approach, call 911,' police said in a statement. Los Angles County Sheriff's Department records list Smith as currently free on a $1,000 bail...

San Mateo County workers are scrambling to clean up a mess uncovered by the ABC7 I-Team. More than $10 million worth of precious personal protective equipment-- purchased with your tax dollars - was left outside in the rain. We all know how important masks, hospital gowns, and other protective gear are, as the COVID pandemic surges yet again. This seems hard to believe, but top county officials didn't know that thousands of boxes of PPE were moved outside and forgotten for months until the I-Team told them. Dan Noyes got a tip on a recent rainy day and went straight...

A convoy of truck drivers took to the streets on Highway 75, Emerson, Manitoba near the U.S.-Canada border on Jan. 17 following the introduction of new COVID-19 vaccination requirements on truckers put in place by the Canadian and U.S. governments. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said that a “large number of vehicles” were involved in the “demonstration” near the Emerson Port of Entry, affecting both northbound and southbound lanes. The RCMP was monitoring traffic flows onsite. In a video shared on Twitter, protestors in the fleet can be seen flashing signs such as “Last year’s heros, this year’s zeros”...

Two House Democrats on Tuesday said they will not seek reelection, bringing the number of Democratic retirements to 28. Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) announced his retirement in an op-ed in the Providence Journal. Langevin, 57, is the first quadriplegic elected to Congress and is currently serving his 11th term. “I have not come to this decision lightly, but it is time for me to chart a new course, which will allow me to stay closer to home and spend more time with my family and friends,” Langevin said in the op-ed. “And while I don’t know what’s next for me...