Free Republic

A Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen franchisee that operates more than 130 locations filed for bankruptcy to rightsize itself after facing mounting debt. Sailormen Inc., a Miami-based franchisee that operates locations in Florida and Georgia, filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida, according to its legal counsel. The company, represented by Cole Schotz, is attempting to renegotiate or resolve the $129 million that it owes to lenders so it can emerge as a healthier franchisee. The company blamed "various macroeconomic factors" for disrupting the business and forcing it to file for bankruptcy protection. "Those...

Attallah Williams is accused of using her roles at the SBA and IRS to bypass security checks and approve $3.5 million in fraudulent COVID-19 relief. The suspect allegedly used Instagram to recruit "accomplices" who submitted fake business applications for a share of the stolen funds. Williams faces federal charges for conspiracy to defraud the government following a multi-year investigation. ATLANTA - A Henry County woman has been charged with stealing millions in COVID-19 pandemic relief funds through an elaborate insider fraud scheme. What we know Attallah Williams, 32, of Hampton, was arrested and arraigned in federal court on charges of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The killing of a Minnesota woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer is reverberating across Capitol Hill where Democrats, and certain Republicans, are vowing an assertive response as President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation operations spark protests nationwide.Lawmakers are demanding a range of actions, from a full investigation into Renee Good’s shooting death and policy changes over law enforcement raids to the defunding of ICE operations and the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in what is fast becoming an inflection point.“The situation that took place in Minnesota is a complete and total disgrace,” House Democratic...

ATLANTA — President Donald Trump has filed a motion in Fulton County Superior Court asking to be reimbursed for more than $6.2 million in attorneys’ fees from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Prosecutor Pete Skandalakis announced in November that he would not pursue charges against the president or more than a dozen of his allies. Skandalakis, who heads the state’s non-partisan Prosecuting Attorneys Council, took charge of the case on Nov. 14. Willis was removed from the case after a romantic relationship with her special prosecutor was revealed.

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. — A second Georgia lawmaker has been charged with defrauding taxpayers by receiving pandemic unemployment assistance that she was not entitled to. A federal grand jury indicted State Rep. Karen Bennett (D-Stone Mountain) on Monday. Prosecutors say she received $13,940 for her in-home physical therapy company, Metro Therapy Providers, which she says could not operate during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, investigators say the company was only briefly closed, and remained open through the majority of the pandemic. On her application, Bennett only reported receiving income from Metro Therapy and the Georgia General Assembly. But she failed to...

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — An Uber driver was shot in the back and killed early New Year’s morning in what police say was a carjacking by a 15-year-old suspect. 58-year-old Cesar Tejada, of Grayson, a father of two, picked up Christian Simmons on Rangewood Drive in Lilburn around 4 a.m. on Thursday, according to Lawrenceville Police. Simmons requested a ride to Groveland Parkway in Lawrenceville. Surveillance video captured Tejada’s black SUV in the neighborhood just before the shooting. According to the arrest warrant, Simmons exited the back seat and shot Tejada in the back. Tejada’s body was left in the...

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) did not leave Washington as a martyr to principle. She left as a case study in how rank opportunism masquerades as populism, and how loudly proclaimed integrity can coexist with some of the most cynical behavior the D.C. swamp has on offer. Greene entered Congress in January 2021, branding herself as a sworn enemy of the political class, promising to drain the swamp and to stand shoulder to shoulder with working Americans. Five years later, she timed her exit to meet the minimum service threshold for securing a taxpayer-funded congressional pension. That benefit was locked...

More than $1 million worth of illegal drugs, including a large amount of fentanyl, has been taken off metro Atlanta streets after a months-long investigation that led to 10 arrests, authorities said. Investigators with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Northwest Georgia Drug Task Force, working alongside the FBI's Atlanta and Cartersville offices, executed multiple search warrants on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. The searches uncovered a large amount of illegal drugs, weapons and cash tied to drug trafficking impacting several Georgia counties. Authorities seized around 8.2 kilograms of suspected fentanyl, along with about 3 ounces each of suspected heroin and cocaine....

While soon-to-be-former Georgia Republican Congresscritter Marjorie Taylor Greene continues her one-sided breakup from President Donald Trump, one of her favorite conspiracy theories just became reality in Israel. That's right: Jewish Space Lasers are real, everybody. Well, kind of. As of this week, there are lasers, and they are deployed for the defense of the Jewish homeland, but the Jewish lasers are not actually out in space. Although we're working on that as part of Trump's Golden Dome missile shield. More on that story soon, I hope. But you might recall that way back in 2018 — two years before her...

The 2026 midterms are coming, and Republicans have work to do if they want to hold Congress. Yet the nation’s MAGA minds are still looking back at 2020 and stretching to justify President Trump’s delusion of a stolen election. The latest involves the embarrassing news that Fulton County, Ga., failed to have its poll workers sign many of the tabulator tapes for early voting. “I have not seen the tapes myself, but we do not dispute that the tapes were not signed,” an attorney for Fulton County told the Georgia State Election Board during a December hearing. “It was a...

Eleven days after Charlie Kirk was killed in September, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the third-term Georgia congresswoman, was watching his memorial service on TV as the luminaries of the conservative movement and the Trump administration gathered to pay tribute to the young activist. What stayed with Greene long afterward were the last two speakers who took the stage. First there was Kirk’s widow, Erika, who stood in white before the crowd filling the Arizona stadium, lifted her tear-filled eyes and said that she forgave her husband’s killer. And then there was President Trump. “He was a missionary with a noble spirit...

Jennings: MTG Became a ‘Lib,’ She Went ‘Off the Deep End’ Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” CNN political commentator Scott Jennings said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) went “off the deep end” and became liberal. Host Jonathan Karl said, “The, kind of, divide in MAGA, which is a relatively new phenomenon — I mean, there was always a little bit there, but if I were to say what the most surprising story was, I would say Marjorie Taylor Greene becomes not just a Trump critic, but a—” Jennings said, “MTG becomes a lib. I mean, that is what happened...

Marjorie Taylor Greene and her new fiancé spent Christmas all loved up in Costa Rica, the Daily Mail can reveal The congresswoman appeared de-mob happy as she prepares to step down in the new year, strolling hand-in-hand with Brian Glenn along the beach on Christmas Day. The pair began dating in 2023 and announced their engagement last week, about a month after Green surprised the nation by quitting Congress following a bitter tirade about her former ally President Trump.

A Georgia Superior Court judge has granted a state election board access to Fulton County’s 2020 presidential ballots and documents. The Republican-led Georgia Election Board last year reopened an investigation into how the county handled the 2020 election, FOX5 in Atlanta reported. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Tuesday that the board will need to cover the costs of the ballots and documents.

WASHINGTON - A Kenyan man who federal prosecutors say researched Delta flights and Atlanta’s tallest skyscraper as part of a 9/11-style terror plot has been sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. What we know: Cholo Abdi Abdullah, 34, was sentenced after a jury convicted him in November 2024 of conspiring to support the terrorist group al-Shabaab and plotting to hijack a commercial aircraft and crash it into a building in the United States. Court records show Abdullah specifically researched flights linked to Atlanta and focused on the Bank of America Plaza, a 55-story downtown tower, during his attack...

The recent admission by Ann Brumbaugh, attorney for the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, that 315,000 illegally certified votes were included in Georgia’s 2020 final vote totals, has once again raised the issue of the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.After the 2024 election, the New York Times published “An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2024 Election,” showing a rightward shift in precincts across the country. Commentators have explained this as a surge in Trump’s support. But the map tells another story: The real shift came from a dramatic drop in Democrat votes between 2020 and 2024. That...

A few days ago, the Federalist reported that Fulton County, Georgia, had over 300,000 illegal early-vote ballots during the 2020 election. The votes were illegal because they were unsupported by poll worker signatures (contrary to Georgia law). In other words, the vote totals were miraculously born without a mother or father.Independent analysts have known of this evidence for years. Indeed, a reference to the phony 2020 votes is included on page 108 of my book (Debunked?), which was published three years ago:“All but two of the early vote tabulator closing tapes for 350,000 votes were unsigned. Thus, there was no...

Bondi Beach is meant to be neutral ground. A place without history. A democratic beautiful stretch of sand where politics dissolves into sunlight, surf, and families pushing strollers toward the water. That illusion died when Jews gathered there to light Hanukkah candles—and were slaughtered for it. The massacre belongs to a broader pattern that has accelerated since Oct. 7, 2023: Jews targeted far from any battlefield, in the ordinary spaces of civic life. Synagogues, campuses, cafés, city streets—and now a beach—have become killing fields aimed not at a state, but at a people. The mass murder at Bondi did not...

The mayor of Savannah, Georgia does not want to concern himself with a terrifying crime that happened on his watch and was sure to let a constituent know in no uncertain terms.As The Gateway Pundit reported last week, a white Georgia woman named Ashley Wasielewski sustained horrifying burns to her face, neck, and scalp after a black man emerged from the bushes at a Forsyth park in Savannah and dumped acid on her.The suspect, who is still at large, approached the victim from behind and poured the liquid chemical on her. According to police, the attacker was not known to...

(The Center Square) – Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will appear before a Georgia Senate committee on Wednesday to talk about her case against President Donald Trump and others, the Senate said Monday. The Senate Special Committee on Investigation has been battling Willis over a subpoena first issued in 2024. The Supreme Court of Georgia heard oral arguments over Willis' challenge to the subpoena last week. Willis' attorney, former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, said she would be appearing at a future meeting. The meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Capitol and will be livestreamed, according to the...