Free Republic

nearly all of Rite Aid's Connecticut stores will be closed by Labor Day ... The only store that doesn't have a definitive closing is the Stratford store, which is located at 3680 Main St. A female employee there on Friday said workers haven't been told yet when that location will shutdown. When questioned about the closing date, she agreed to answer the question if she could remain anonymous, because of concerns of potential retribution by Rite Aid officials. Company officials did not respond to a request for comment about the remainder of its Connecticut closings on Friday. Rite Aid announced...

A man convicted in connection with the heartless murder of an 8-year-old boy and his mother in Bridgeport, Conn., has been released from prison after being granted clemency by former President Joe Biden. Adrian Peeler, 49, conspired with his brother Russell Peeler Jr. to shoot and kill 8-year-old Leroy “B.J.” Brown and his mother Karen Clarke in 1999 and was sentenced to a combined 60 years in state and federal prison. After completing his state sentence in January 2022, Peeler was granted clemency by the outgoing Biden administration for his 35-year federal sentence on separate drug charges, which would have...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he would hold off on advancing a closely watched package of sanctions targeting Russia’s trading partners after President Donald Trump said he was prepared to act himself later this summer if Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t move toward a peace deal with Ukraine. “It sounds like right now the president is going to attempt to do some of this on his own,” Thune told reporters. “If at some point the president concludes that it makes sense and adds value and leverage that he needs in those negotiations to move the bill, then we’ll...

A tired canard is surfacing again in the era of wokery: “Estimates suggest that only about a third of the colonial population actively supported independence.” This misconception originates from misreading an 1815 letter written by John Adams. Adams referenced Americans’ attitudes toward the French, not the American Revolution. English tyrannies weren’t welcome here by 1776. Straightforward facts tell the story, beginning with the Revolution’s impetus, the Stamp Act, effective Nov. 1, 1765, long before Boston’s December 1773 Tea Party. It was indeed a relatively modest tax. What enraged colonists was its purpose; namely, subsidizing British continental wars that had stretched...

Chicago, long infested with crime and poverty, keeps crawling ahead of its rivals to remain the champion of one more side effect of its decline. Pest control company Orkin said that the deep-blue Democrat-dominated city is top in the nation in bed bugs for the fifth consecutive year. Orkin bases its list on data from metro areas where the company has been called in to provide bed bug treatments between May 15, 2024, and May 14, 2025. Both residential and commercial calls are counted. ... Although Chicago remains on top, Orkin noted that Hartford, Connecticut, crawled onto its list of...

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “All In” that if Republicans passed President Donald Trump’s spending bill as is, they would “get smoked” in the 2026 midterm elections. Host Chris Hayes said, “Josh Hawley, Republican, Missouri, wrote a big op-ed in The New York Times saying Medicaid cuts are a bad idea. Does that end up mattering in the Senate?” Murphy said, “I think it’s a great question, Chris because the Republican Party still does essentially operate like a cult. And that’s not fundamentally different in the Senate than it is in the House. I mean, yes, you’ve...

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that America was stuck with a “madman” in the Oval Office because Democrats did not force then-President Joe Biden to step down. Murphy said, “The president should have gotten out of the race earlier, there’s no doubt the Democratic Party would have been better served by having the ability to have a primary, Kamala Harris probably would have done very well in the process but in retrospect, we lost so we can’t defend the way in which our politics played out.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy is refusing to address reports he is romantically involved with a former Democratic political operative running a Soros-funded media network masquerading as independent media. Murphy, who recently announced separation from his wife after nearly two decades together, was recently photographed having a cozy dinner with Tara McGowan, the founder and publisher of Courier Newsroom, a progressive media group that has received millions of dollars in funding from liberal mega-donors such as George Soros. McGowan has long held ties with the Democratic Party, working on former President Barack Obama's re-election campaign before serving in top positions at...

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Thursday spoke on the U.S. Senate floor to expose the unprecedented corruption of the Trump administration’s first six weeks in office. Murphy condemned Trump’s normalization of pay-to-play politics, where billionaire donors dictate policy and taxpayer money is funneled into the pockets of the president, Elon Musk, and the corporate elite.

President Trump’s public debacle with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky halted hopes for a signed minerals agreement while dividing the world — and Washington — over their support for them both. Long-simmering tensions between Trump and Zelensky exploded into the open during a heated Oval Office exchange that will have ramifications for the U.S., Russia, Ukraine and all of Europe. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called his vote to confirm Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in that meeting with Trump and Zelensky, “a mistake” in a Sunday interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It was a mistake. I think...

NEW — Senator Chris Murphy: Zohran Mamdani — A self-described Democratic Socialist — has an "economic message" that "is the future of the [Democratic] Party."

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) claims that suppressors make mass public shootings more deadly. Between January 1, 1998 and December 31, 2024, there were 104 mass public shootings, but only two of those involved suppressors (Virginia Beach, Virginia in 2019 and Milwaukee in 2020). The average number of casualties from mass public shootings with suppressors is actually lower than the average without (11 v. 19.8), though the average number of people murdered is exactly the same as (8.5 v. 8.5). Senator Murphy also claims that suppressors will make it so that “no one will be able to hear the gun shots.”...

What do you call a nation where a high school student can graduate with honors—yet cannot read or write?You call it America in 2025.This week, we learned about Aleysha Ortiz, a 19-year-old who graduated from Hartford Public High School in Connecticut with academic distinction—despite being illiterate. She is now suing the school district, alleging negligence, emotional distress, and a complete abdication of duty by the educators and administrators who were supposed to serve her. Her story, reported by CNN, is both infuriating and emblematic of a national crisis that’s been engineered from top down.Aleysha’s early assessments showed severe learning challenges....

Immigration agents nabbed a violent illegal migrant who was hiding in the sanctuary state of Connecticut after he allegedly beat a Mexican police officer to death. Orlando Diaz-Cebada, who is a member of the “Los Pochos” gang which traffics drugs for the Sinaloa cartel, had been deported from the US twice after crossing the border illegally, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday. “Thanks to our brave ICE law enforcement and federal partners, this criminal illegal alien fugitive wanted for murdering a law enforcement official in Mexico is off America’s streets. This heinous murderer attempted to evade justice by hiding...

New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom said Friday that former President Barack Obama will not be coming to Democrats' collective rescue as the party struggles to find national leadership in the wake of their stinging defeat in 2024. Cottom argued that Democrats desperate for Obama to save the party are "undignified" and weak, asserting that change will not come from above, but rather from "the streets." "We must start asking how we can save ourselves. We are seeing the start of that in places like Los Angeles, San Antonio and Raleigh, N.C.," she wrote, referencing the anti-ICE protests occurring...

Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” while insisting to “keep it peaceful,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) called for more protests around the country as rioting is underway in Los Angeles tied to the Trump administration’s deportation effort. The Connecticut Democrat lawmaker argued President Donald Trump was inciting behavior so he could invoke the Insurrection Act. “I mean, my first message is to keep it peaceful,” Murphy declared. “I mean, obviously, this is a moment where we have to be on the streets all over the country to protest what’s happening to our immigrant community, but more broadly, to protest what’s happening...

The discovery of Adriana Suazo’s body in a wooded area in Milton, Massachusetts has intensified growing concerns across New England about the number of unexplained deaths in the region in recent months. Suazo, a 21-year-old Boston resident, was found by a passerby around 11:45 a.m. on Sunday, June 1, in Milton, Mass, which is approximately 8 miles south from the capitol city, according to a press release from the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office. The department said that there were no obvious signs of trauma, and the cause of death is under investigation by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner....

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — Tweed New Haven Airport was the site of another protest against Avelo airlines on Saturday. Protesters gathered to speak out against the airline’s decision to provide deportation flights for the Department of Homeland Security.

Five people were shot at a mall in Waterbury, Connecticut Tuesday, when an argument escalated into a violent outburst from a gunman, according to authorities. Gunshots rang out at the Brass Mill Center just before 4:40 p.m., hitting five people who were taken to area hospitals, WTNH reported, citing Waterbury Mayor Paul Pernerewski, Jr. Cops said the bullets began to fly when an argument turned into a violent confrontation at the 1.1-million square-foot shopping complex with officials emphasizing at a press conference this was not a “random act of violence.” The suspect is described as a man in his 20s...

"A hypothetical small town regarded as typically dull or insignificant."That's the definition Google assigns to the word "Podunk." For many it's a mythical place filled with country bumpkins and nothing to do.As it turns out, Podunk actually exists and it's right in Upstate New York.There are no official signs to let you know you've arrived, other than map coordinates and the nod of a street sign reading "Podunk Road," but one can actually visit the hamlet of Podunk, New York. The tiny no-stoplight-town, made up of a handful of houses, is inside the town [township] of Ulysses, nestled within the...