Free Republic

Supply chain issues and the popularity of garden centres during lockdown are causing a shortage of garden gnomes. The ornaments are in short supply with raw materials hard to come by and the recent blockage of the Suez Canal contributing to the national shortage. Ian Byrne, assistant manager of Highfield Garden World in Whitminster, said there had been a "massive upswing" in the sales of garden gnomes. "There aren't any [gnomes]. There's definitely a shortage. It's a combined thing with garden centres being so busy, I looked at some figures based on March which said garden centres were 97% busier...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) praised Donald Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, in a new interview, but apparently he is still not ready to endorse the presumptive GOP presidential nominee... “In this election I am where a great many voters are," he said, "which is that I am listening and watching and coming to a decision...”

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s poll numbers have slid in the aftermath of his unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for president, according to the new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll released Monday, leaving Gov. Greg Abbott far and away the most popular Republican in the state. Abbott has an 11 percentage-point approval margin among the general electorate — calculated by taking those who like what he’s doing minus those who don’t — and a 65 percentage-point net approval rating among Republicans. Cruz has a 39-point net approval margin among Republicans, but, among the broader electorate, he has an approval...

If you hoped to get your hands on some of the garden gnomes at the City of Gillette auction on Thursday, you’re out of luck. The little guys will be hanging around the Gillette Police Department a while longer. More than 100 garden gnomes that were supposed to be sold at the city auction were pulled from the auction block after Gillette police got reports that the gnome nabbing may have been more expansive than just northeastern Wyoming. Three teenage girls confessed to stealing 143 gnomes from lawns in Gillette and Campbell County in May after Sundance police caught them...