Free Republic

While Lorenzo Sewell was in high school, his dad got incarcerated and his brother got murdered in East Detroit. “I was mentored by murderers. I was a student of the street,” said the former drug abuser, drug dealer and gang leader. But Lorenzo found God in Paul-like conversion in his senior year in 1999 and now pastors the dynamic 180 Church in Pontiac, Michigan. When Donald Trump asked to visit his church to listen to members talk about their issues, Pastor Lorenzo thought it was a prank call. When he subsequently got invited to speak at the Republican National Convention,...

A McDonald's employee posted an unhinged Instagram rant accusing her manager of bullying her a day before she stabbed her to death. Afeni Muhammad, 26, stabbed her manager Jennifer 'Jamma' Harris at least 15 times at the Detroit area McDonald's on Thursday after she was sent home over her performance. Just a day before, Muhammad had taken to social media to express her rage at being sent home early two days in a row. 'I got sent home early yesterday. I got sent home early today by the same person,' Muhammad said in the Instagram reel. 'I'm telling you, she's...

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...

A former West Point hopeful made ominous Facebook posts weeks before he opened fire on a church with an AR-15. Brian Anthony Browning, 31, was shot dead by security guards at CrossPointe Church in Wayne, a suburb of Detroit, on Sunday morning. Exactly four weeks before the shooting, on May 25, Browning posted a screenshot of his Facebook feed making his feelings about the church clear. The image showed a video of CrossPointe's April 13 service above one by popular YouTuber PewDiePie titled 'The Biggest Liar Cheapskate!' 'Sometimes God will very "subtly" show you the signs,' he wrote. Two days...

Detroit Highwaymen have ruled Southwest Detroit since the 1950's. Ice protesters had their lil rally right down the street from their clubhouse. Guess a few Highwaymen wandered over and thumped a few of em. Naturally, protesters whined and called the police...crybabies. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DK5AO89AeUd/

A Detroit high school student who was detained by federal agents last month was denied a request to pause his deportation, according to his attorney. The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, which represents 18-year-old Maykol Bogoya-Duarte, said it received a notice from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday. "While we are angry and sad about this decision, we are heartened by the overwhelming support for Maykol shown by so many of you — fellow students, educators, neighbors, friends, faith leaders, community members, elected officials, and the DPSCD Board of Education. In the words of Maykol's mother, 'mil mil gracias,'" the...

Michigan Army National Guard member was inspired by Islamic State. The FBI has arrested a former member of the Michigan Army National Guard who prosecutors said was inspired by Islamic State to plan a mass shooting at a military base outside Detroit. Ammar Abdulmajid-Mohamed Said, 19 years old, spent months plotting to attack the facility with the help of two people he believed were ISIS supporters, but who were actually undercover agents, according to a criminal complaint. Agents arrested Said just before he allegedly intended to attack on Tuesday, when he launched a drone over the base to conduct aerial...

Every failing city in America follows the old Detroit playbook. The only thing better than learning from your own mistakes is learning from someone else’s. Unfortunately, today’s urban leaders haven’t been paying attention. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Chicago, New York, and other cities could have avoided their current dire conditions if only they had heeded the lessons of Detroit. In 1950 the Motor City was home to nearly two million people and built half the cars in the world. Today two-thirds of those people are gone and its auto industry is a shell of its former self. After decades...

In the seventh century BCE, the Greek poet Homer wrote the Odyssey. This fascinating tale of adventure and loss would captivate readers for centuries, even millennia. It tells the story of Odysseus attempting to travel home after the Trojan War. One of the most intriguing things about this lengthy poem is that there is significant controversy surrounding the locations mentioned throughout. Based on the best available evidence, where did Odysseus really travel to in the Odyssey? Does the Odyssey take place all over the Mediterranean? The most common belief is that the Odyssey takes place over a very large area....

A federal judge has sentenced former Detroit Riverfront Conservancy CFO William Smith to 19 years in federal prison for embezzling more than $44 million from the nonprofit over more than a decade. The judge also ordered him to pay more than $48 million in restitution. The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy released a statement after the sentencing. It reads: "Today, we move forward to a bright future. We are incredibly grateful to U.S. District Judge Susan DeClercq for imposing a sentence commensurate the damage Will Smith inflicted on the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy and its community of visitors, donors, and supporters. The U.S....

A glamorous city known for sprawling mansions, boutique shops and glamor is at risk of becoming 'the next Detroit,' according to experts. Los Angeles is being rocked by an exodus of big budget TV and film production companies — long considered the backbone of the local economy. Detroit was once the center of America's auto production, but fell into decline when factories began to shut, triggering a major housing crisis. Now, some fear LA faces a similar threat. FilmLA reports that on-location production in the city fell by 22.4 percent in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same...

DETROIT (FOX 2) - Two brothers are in critical condition, and at least three other family members were shot after an altercation at a house in the 14500 block of Sussex Street in Detroit on Saturday afternoon. Assistant Chief Charles Fitzgerald of the Detroit Police Department said that two brothers were arguing over a family matter, when they got into a fight. A family member who called FOX 2 said that the two brothers were fighting over something to do with their mother, who had died earlier in the day. Fitzgerald said that during a fight, the gun fell out...

The Hamtramck clerk alleged pervasive ballot trafficking in the city’s elections. Meanwhile, Michigan’s AG met with a fraud suspect. Voter fraud has been taking place in the Detroit-area suburb of Hamtramck “for years,” potentially affecting “hundreds of ballots,” the city clerk told The Federalist. She wrote Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel weeks ago imploring action, but heard “nothing” in response. “That’s the only thing I can do, since there’s nobody else that helps me put a stop to them breaking the law,” Hamtramck City Clerk Rana Faraj told The Federalist. “It’s been ongoing for years, and nobody does anything about...

Following efforts with our interagency partners, I can report that a career Director level employee at US Customs and Border Protection has been charged with allegedly attempting to defraud FEMA, as well as lying to federal agents.. This is part of the new FBI’s renewed efforts to crack down on public corruption and deliver accountability for the American people. Justice will be done. Thanks to our partners @AGPamBondi @TheJusticeDept and our @FBIDetroit team for their work.

Christmas 2009, 23 year old Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a plane heading from the Netherlands to Detroit Michigan. He was not successful. Philip Haney was a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002, serving as a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer. Fluent in Arabic and knowledgeable about Islamic culture, he played a significant role in identifying potential terrorist threats. He left DHS after 15 years and became a whistleblower. In an article he wrote for The Hill, he stated that the Obama administration had forced him to remove raw intelligence data...

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan announced he would not fight the Trump administration’s campaign to deport illegal immigrants. During the 2025 Detroit Policy Conference, Duggan said that while he supported lawful immigration, the city would not resist Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ efforts to remove people in the United States illegally. “Detroit is not a sanctuary city,” Duggan said. “We are a welcoming city. A welcoming city means if you are in this country lawfully as an immigrant, we encourage you to come here. We support your success. If you are in this country illegally, we should not be shielding you...

Donald Trump has been president for three days and one of the big automakers, Stellantis, is already announcing the reopening of a plant in Illinois which will make new Durango trucks in Detroit. This is not a coincidence. This is what happens when the United States has a leader who cares about American jobs and building products in America. This is also a reminder of why so many American union members backed Trump in the 2024 election, even though union leaders backed Kamala Harris. Do you think this plant would be reopening if Harris had won? Yahoo Finance reports: Stellantis...

Black fellow just prayed that amazing emotional prayer. I did not catch his name. Very earnest.

Berry Gordy’s record label used the ‘sound of young America’ to bring people togetherOn January 12, 1959, Berry Gordy Jr. started Tamla Records with the help of an $800 loan from his family, starting a journey that would forever change the music industry. The following year, it merged into Motown Record Corporation. For Gordy, starting his own label was the product of a longtime love of music. When he returned from Army service in 1953, he opened a short-lived record store in Detroit. Later, to amuse himself on the Ford assembly line, Gordy would make up songs. Eventually, he found...

The same conditions that allowed rape gangs to run rampant in the U.K. are already in place in some U.S. jurisdictions.The United Kingdom’s “grooming gangs” scandal has reentered the public spotlight, largely thanks to X posts by Elon Musk showcasing court transcripts.They detail how groups of men, mainly Pakistani Muslims, groomed and raped thousands of English girls across the country over a decades-long period. The simultaneously infuriating and blood-curdling descriptions of the violations those girls suffered are only compounded by the British authorities’ complicity in and cover-up of the abuse.The first reports on these crimes came out in the early...