Free Republic

Zion Teasley, the man who stabbed Phoenix hiker Lauren Heike 15 times on a trail in 2023, has pleaded guilty to her murder in a deal that takes the death penalty off the table and sends him to prison for life. Teasley, 25, killed Heike, a 29-year-old beauty technician, after stalking her on a hiking trail near her home. Neighbors found her body at the foot of a barbed wire fence. Police said he chased her, killed her with a pocketknife, and jumped the fence to get away.

SEATTLE (AP) — Federal authorities arrested and charged a 30-year-old from Washington state on Tuesday in connection with a February school shooting in British Columbia. The U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle says James Cody Bryant of Bellingham, Washington, communicated with the 18-year-old shooter for six months ahead of time. Bryant, who identifies as female, did not report the shooter’s plans to authorities and conspired with her to broadcast the attacks, authorities allege. “Without Bryant’s misplaced loyalty and willingness to operate the livestream, we don’t ultimately know if the shooter would have gone through with the crime,” said W. Mike Herrington,...

In 2022, I went on a French television show to debate what makes a woman a woman. For expressing my opinion, I have been convicted as a criminal. Marie Cau, the first transgender woman elected as mayor in France, poses on May 24, 2020. (François Lo Presti/AFP via Getty Images) The show was Quelle Époque!, a popular talk show, and across from me sat Marie Cau, France’s first transgender mayor. I argued that self-identification laws were potentially dangerous to women. I cited cases of men identifying as trans women who were transferred to women’s prisons, and later committed acts of...

Fall 2026 graduate-course syllabi obtained by The Dallas Express show Texas Christian University placing “settler colonialism,” “structural violence,” decolonial thinking and group “complicity” at the center of two College of Education courses. The documents do not present those concepts only as historical subjects for debate. One syllabus describes a land acknowledgment as part of “the ongoing process of breaking colonial mindsets” and asks how students may perpetuate colonial harm. Another says TCU continues to benefit from the forceful removal of Indigenous people. TCU requires all Curriculum Studies students to take “Curriculum History.” Course connects evil to settler colonialism The three-credit...

The old joke that “whoever said marriage is a 50-50 proposition didn’t know the half of it,” takes on a whole new meaning in a culture flirting with “polyamory.”... Most important in the drive to normalize polyamory is the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision. By legalizing same-sex “marriage” nationwide, the male/female distinction was treated as irrelevant for marriage, which opened the door to additional relational arrangements. In his dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts even questioned whether the arguments for same-sex marriage would justify “people who find fulfillment in polyamorous relationships.” The answer is unfortunately “yes.”

The wife of slain New York Times executive Jonathan McKinsey and daughter of his accused killers was seen strolling with her three young children in their Bay Area neighborhood Wednesday. The sighting came about an hour after Candice Jang’s 77-year-old parents, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, made their first court appearance, each accused of murder and 11 other criminal counts for their alleged part in McKinsey’s shooting death in the parking lot of a local park Saturday afternoon. One of those counts includes 'lying in wait' – a charge that presumes premeditation and carries a life-in-prison sentence with no chance...

New undercover footage shows a minister at Democrat U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico’s longtime church describing evangelical churches as “almost cult-like” and claiming white men in Texas are afraid of black and Hispanic Americans gaining political power. Rev. Babs Miller, Minister to the Parish at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, also said some evangelicals treat the Bible as a “magic book” and are “slightly or maybe greatly misguided.” In the footage obtained by Texas Scorecard, Miller was asked, “What is wrong with evangelicals?” Miller responded that some people “pick words over people,” pointing to how evangelicals interpret the Bible....

A couple in their late 70s gunned down their son-in-law in a California city park over the weekend, authorities said, and court documents showed the victim had been in a bitter custody dispute with their daughter. Jonathan McKinsey, a 40-year-old gaming engineer for The New York Times, was shot to death Saturday afternoon in the parking lot of a sports complex in Dublin, east of San Francisco. A police sergeant was driving nearby and saw him on the ground as witnesses began calling 911 and pointing out the couple, who were still near the scene, Dublin Police Services said in...

On any given day in San Francisco there’ll be thousands of people out on the street walking their dogs, but only one day a year when you’ll see humans wearing the leashes instead of holding them.

A transgender Florida teenager was sentenced to 50 years behind bars after accepting a plea deal in the grisly 2024 slayings of her mother and her mom’s much-younger boyfriend. Julia Egler, 18, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the killings, in which she lay in wait for the couple to arrive at their Palm Bay home — greeting them with a “welcome home” before opening fire with her mother’s .38 revolver and then staging the scene to look like a burglary. The mom, Kelly McCollom, 38, and her boyfriend Matthew Szejnrok, 22, both died at the scene. Egler, who was...

Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed once called for repealing a Michigan law that made it a felony for people who knew they had HIV to have sex without first informing their partner — a position he is standing by eight years later as he campaigns in one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races. As he unsuccessfully ran for Michigan governor in 2018, El-Sayed repeatedly took aim at the law. The law carried a prison sentence of up to four years for people who knew they were HIV-positive and engaged in sexual penetration without first informing their partner of their...

Over at Salon.com, atheist Amanda Marcotte is in a state of joy over her belief that notorious biblical cherry picker James Talarico, could be an "existential threat" to the beliefs of Republican Christians during the course of his Texas campaign for the U.S. Senate.It is no error or slur to label Marcotte as an atheist since she herself flat out admitted it. In fact her brand of atheism goes beyond merely tolerating religion to outright hostility of Christianity in particular as you can see in "Salon’s Marcotte: ‘Merry Christmas!’ Is Conservative Code For ‘F**k You!’."With an attitude like that you...

Former first lady Michelle Obama’s voter registration and engagement initiative is targeting Generation Z, launching a “Voting Squad” made up of popular content creators and aimed at urging young people to head to the polls. Some of the content creators joining the effort announced Tuesday include Brandon Edelman, who is known as Bran Flakezz on TikTok and boasts more than 1.4 million followers; “plant enthusiast” Paige Tailyn; physician and “medical mythbuster” Joel Bervell; and influencer Leon Ondieki, who’s followed by 4.5 million TikTok users. Cameron Jerrard, J.C. Carter, Wildlin Pierrevil, Justin Frett, Scot Louie, Olive Okoro, Carrie Snipes and Gabriel...

A federal judge has temporarily barred UC from enforcing parts of its misgendering policy against members of conservative group, finding likely First Amendment violations. The injunction shields members who use pronouns or names assigned at birth when referring to transgender people. The case lands amid intensifying legal battles over transgender rights in California schools.

Rutgers University professor and "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook" author Mark Bray is releasing a new book recounting his decision to flee the United States with his family in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, portraying modern America as consumed by a "fascist present." Bray’s forthcoming book, "Unpunctuated Death Threats: Notes from a Fascist Present," is scheduled for release Jan. 19 and chronicles the professor’s departure for Spain after he allegedly received death threats and had his home address circulated online. The publisher explicitly connects Bray’s decision to leave to the political atmosphere after Kirk’s murder, saying that "in the wake...

GOP U.S. House candidate Joseph Arminio was removed from a candidate forum Thursday after repeatedly misgendering Democrat U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride. Dr. Mike Katz, the Republican candidate for Delaware’s U.S. Senate seat, is calling on his fellow party member Joseph Arminio to withdraw from the U.S. House of Representatives race after Arminio repeatedly misgendered incumbent U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride at a candidate forum Thursday night. In a statement, Katz said that public forums should be focused on issues and “be grounded in civility, basic decency, and mutual respect.” Katz also wrote that people can disagree on policy, but it does...

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed claimed that slavery “profoundly” influenced the American health care system and that any public opposition to taxpayer-funded treatments for illegal immigrants would be a “deliberate, racist attack.” In a resurfaced 2022 interview, the doctor claimed slavery still weighs on America’s for-profit health care. “Racism continues to flummox our capacity as a society to invest in collective public goods” and remains “more powerful than the self-interest of … lower income white folks … in legacy confederacy states,” he said. The Michigan Democrat, who ran a failed campaign for governor of his state in 2018, went...

In addition to her government and advocacy work, Afridi is currently listed as an editor at Pinko, a magazine which describes itself as “a collective for thinking gay communism.” On the masthead, she went by “L. Israh Afridi.” Israh is an Arabic word for “night journey” that is sacred in Islam. . . . .Afridi is a close friend of Cea Weaver, the notorious top Mamdani housing official who’s called home ownership “a weapon of white supremacy” and expressed a desire to “impoverish the white middle class.”. . .Afridi is only the latest in a string of oddballs, cranks, antisemites,...

James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, once described parents who refused to acknowledge their children’s gender identity as potentially engaging in "abusive" behavior. "I think there are some folks that would think that if you deny your child's gender identity, that's incredibly harmful. And whether or not we label it with the term abuse, it's abusive for sure," Talarico said while speaking at a committee hearing in the Texas Legislature in 2019. Talarico’s resurfaced comments add to a growing pile of past remarks that cut against his efforts to paint himself as a moderate on issues...

This New York pol has a secret BDSM past. Chris Gallant, 37, the Democratic nominee running against Long Island Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) was previously involved in a very different kind of campaign: selling toys as a model for a fetish sex shop, The Post can reveal. Gallant appeared in multiple pics for “Mr. S Leather,” a San Francisco-based purveyor of leather-daddy supplies, wearing collars, leather straps, neoprene, bondage gear, and more. These images of Gallant are no longer on the store’s site, but are still accessible in internet archives, which show they were online between 2011 and 2020. “The...