Free Republic

A man is being held in the Metro Jail on a felony charge after he reportedly destroyed parts of a Catholic charity building. According to an affidavit from the Metro Nashville Police Department, officers responded to a call regarding an irate person “actively destroying items on the property” of a Catholic charity on Monday, April 22 on Lea Avenue. When they arrived, they saw Napoleon Meredith on the roof of the building. Upon accessing the roof of the building, officers said they witnessed Meredith destroying an air condition unit. Officers approached Meredith, telling him to come out from behind the...

A 16-year-old boy spray painted LGBTQ graffiti Wednesday outside of the Central Catholic High School chapel, Lafayette police said. The vandal struck in the early afternoon Wednesday, and school officials covered up the vandalism on the walls with plywood. The vandal returned about 6:10 p.m. Wednesday and spray painted new messages on the plywood covering the earlier graffiti. The graffiti read, "Queer Lives Matter" and "God loves trans kids too," police said. The vandalism included inverted crosses spray painted on the chapel's stained-glass windows, according to police reports.

A pair of men driving a spray-painted van trespassed onto one of Fresno’s Jewish temples and Catholic churches, papering their facilities with fliers, leading to their arrest.Fresno police are investigating a possible hate crime at Temple Beth Israel, a Jewish temple in north Fresno, after vandals papered the religious facility with fliers. Officers apprehended two men around 4:15 p.m. when they began to post fliers on the campus of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church nearly a mile south of the Jewish temple. Driving the news: The suspects’ van, which was spray-painted to read “Repent or Perish” was seized at...

A known gang member with a long violent criminal history accused of shooting a Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy could have been kept behind bars if not for soft-on-crime policies by the region's top prosecutor, his election opponent said. Raymundo Duran, 47, who allegedly shot Deputy Samuel Aispuro in the back at a stop light while he was sitting on his marked sheriff's department motorcycle on April 22 in West Covina, California, has been involved in a number of violent crimes, including two felony assaults that he committed while serving an 11-year sentence for manslaughter, according to court records. Aispuro,...

A new California bill has the potential to ban self-checkout options in grocery stores in an attempt to curb retail theft. Senate Bill 1446, introduced by Democratic state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, would “prohibit a grocery or retail drug establishment from providing a self-service checkout option” unless conditions such as ensuring that no more than two self-service checkout stations are monitored by one employee are met, according to a summary of the proposed legislation. The bill also mandates that stores access how using artificial intelligence or other technology may cut jobs and “significantly affects the essential job functions of its employees.”...

Survey comes after federal judge shouted down on campus More than one third of Stanford University students say using physical violence to stop a speech is acceptable in at least some circumstances, according to a new report. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression conducted the survey after federal Judge Kyle Duncan’s speech on campus was shouted down last year. The report evaluated students’ perspectives about free speech on campus and protests in the aftermath of the event. FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens told The College Fix the research found “considerably higher” support for canceling a speaker among Stanford...

You and I may think that Maxine Waters is an unhinged lunatic--she is, after all, an unhinged lunatic--but she is one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. As the Democratic Chief Deputy Whip, she has held positions of enormous power, including chairing the Committee on Financial Services and now serving as its Ranking Member. She sits on the DNC and is one of the most vocal members of Congress. She has served as an advisor to Democrat presidential candidates since 1980. JUST IN: Rep. Maxine Waters launches new conspiracy theory that Trump supporters are “training up in the hills”...

Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) said on this week’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show” that the Department of Justice should investigate “right-wing organizations” who supported former President Donald Trump “training up in the hill” for a civil war.Waters said, “You cannot trust anything that Donald Trump has to say no matter if he loses he is going to say it was fraud. He still has not accepted what happened in the last presidential election. We have to be very concerned about a former president of the United States talking about attacking his own country, talking about perhaps a bloodbath, talking...

They're studying Facebook posts. They're using frame-by-frame video screenshots of faces to match with gargantuan databases of named faces. They're seeking and taking tips from "friends" and relatives and ex-boyfriends. For the UCLA Jewish students who got into a scrap with pro-Hamas illegal campout protestors, no doubt after hearing a slew of antisemitic statements and being blocked from attending class, they're doing exactly what they did to identify and hunt down January 6 protestors. According to the Los Angeles Times, which reports this like it was a good thing: It is shaping up to be perhaps the biggest case in...

Last winter’s unusual onslaught of rain and snow led to California’s first increase in groundwater levels in four years, state officials reported on Monday. The 2023 Water Year — which spanned from Oct. 1, 2022, through Sept. 30, 2023 — brought a welcome 4.1 million acre-feet of managed groundwater recharge and a total rise in groundwater storage of 8.7 million acre-feet, according to the California Department of Water Resources. Managed groundwater recharge involves purposefully replenishing supplies by injecting excess water into an aquifer. The 4.1 million acre-feet recharge volume was equivalent to the entire storage capacity of Shasta Lake, the...

When postal manager José Belloso put his Paris apartment up for sale this year he was required to have an inspector grade the home for energy efficiency under strict rules designed to fight climate change. Belloso’s building was built in the early 1900s from millstone, a porous sedimentary rock that was popular among architects of France’s Belle Époque. His apartment flunked the inspection—and under a regulation that came into force this year, the property was barred from the rental market until costly renovations are made. Belloso was ultimately forced to knock 50,000 euros, equivalent to $54,000, off his asking price...

The O.J. Simpson 1994 Chase with CGI animation

A L.A. Dash bus driver was attacked Sunday by a homeless woman in South Los Angeles, just two days after dozens of Metro transit operators staged a “sick out” amid ongoing safety concerns. Officers with Los Angeles Police Department responded to reports of the most recent attack at just before 1 p.m. at the intersection of South-Central Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard, police confirmed. Early reports by the video news service OnScene suggest the transient assaulted the driver after refusing to pay for a ride. Video footage of the incident obtained by KTLA showed the violent struggle between the female bus...

State leadership and delegation chairs from several Libertarian Party chapters, including those in Florida, California, Colorado, Tennessee, Minnesota, Vermont, Nebraska, and the District of Columbia, have extended an invitation to independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., urging him to seek the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. The letter, published on Friday by Libertarians for Kennedy and signed by various party leaders, including an alternative region representative on the Libertarian National Committee, urges Kennedy to seek the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, with the understanding that the undersigned would consider voting for him in the first round if he accepts. Notably, the...

The High Speed Rail Authority shared an update on the Fresno River Viaduct .. They were widely mocked with Elon Musk and Billy Markus piling in .. California has been mercilessly mocked for boasting about completing the 'world's most pointless crossing' to nowhere at a cost of $11billion. The California High Speed Rail Authority shared an update on the Fresno River Viaduct in Madera County last week, proudly saying it was one of the 'first completed high-speed rail structures'. The Tweet did not get the reaction officials were hoping for with Elon Musk and Dogecoin creator Billy Markus piling in...

Expert worries they are 'coming to this country to commit acts of sabotage'.. More Chinese-based illegal immigrants were encountered at the U.S. southern border in just two days than in all of fiscal year 2021, according to Fox News’ Bill Melugin. There were approximately 262 Chinese migrants caught by Border Patrol at the San Diego sector on May 1, as well as 223 on May 2, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) source told Melugin. Only 323 Chinese nationals were apprehended by Border Patrol at the southern border throughout all of fiscal year 2021 ... There has been a surge...

The Palestine Solidarity Encampment at UCLA ended in the precise manner university leaders initially sought to avoid — with a massive police force arresting more than 200 protesters in the dead of night. When the encampment sprung up on Royce Quad last Thursday, April 25, the university envisioned a world in which students could peacefully display their message on the large green field while students shuttled to class nearby. Instead, they faced a situation where protesters allegedly blocked student access to classes, counter-protesters violently attacked the encampment, and leaders across the nation condemned the university’s failure to keep students safe....

LONG BEACH, Calif. (CNS) -- A tuberculosis outbreak among residents of a single-room occupancy hotel in Long Beach has left one person dead and led to the hospitalizations of nine others, prompting the declaration of a public health emergency, city officials said Thursday. The city Department of Health and Human Services insists the risk of exposure to the general public is low, with the outbreak restricted to a "distinct population" of people with "significant barriers to care, including homelessness and housing insecurity, mental illness, substance abuse and serious medical comorbidities." As of April 29, a total of 14 cases have...

Two police officers were shot and wounded Thursday in the Saint Teresa neighborhood of San Jose, California. The East Bay Times reported that the incident occurred around 10:30 p.m. Officers were responding to a disturbance call at an Extended Stay America in “the 6100 block of San Ignacio Avenue” when the shots were fired and the two officers wounded. he officers had just made contact with the suspect in the disturbance call when he opened fire. NBC Bay Area noted that one of the wounded officers is in critical condition. The suspect was hit by return fire and is also...

A teacher with the Mill Valley School District was found dead in the water off of Drakes Beach on Point Reyes on Wednesday, just a day after he was arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing a child, according to the Marin County Sheriff’s Office. Darren Smith, 55, was arrested on Tuesday following a report that the school district filed with the Marin County Sheriff's Office on March 28, according to a news release. The Marin Independent Journal reported Thursday that after initially being booked into the Marin County Jail, Smith was released on $200,000 bail. A Google Search preview of...