Free Republic

There was a time when buying a light bulb did not require government permission. Customer demand dictated market choices. You walked into a store, examined the alternatives, considered price and quality, and bought the one you wanted. The manufacturer wanted to sell it. The merchant wanted to stock it. You wanted to buy it. Three voluntary parties agreed; nobody else’s rights were violated, and that was the end of the matter. But that arrangement is incompatible with the agenda of California’s overlords. Today, while shopping online, Californians routinely encounter a disturbing message: “This item cannot be shipped to your location.”...

A depraved illegal alien who was previously deported and later slipped back into the United States is now wanted for allegedly sexually abusing and impregnating his own teenage daughter. Sergio Galvez-Perez, a 38-year-old illegal alien from Mexico, is wanted in Monterey County after authorities say he fathered a child with his own 14-year-old daughter. Investigators say the girl was only 13 when she became pregnant. The newborn, named Baby Angelita by detectives, was found dead on the side of Struve Road near Moss Landing on August 1, umbilical cord still attached, with signs of traumatic injury. Monterey County Sheriff Tina...

A depraved illegal alien who was previously deported and later slipped back into the United States is now wanted for allegedly sexually abusing and impregnating his own teenage daughter. Sergio Galvez-Perez, a 38-year-old illegal alien from Mexico, is wanted in Monterey County after authorities say he fathered a child with his own 14-year-old daughter. Investigators say the girl was only 13 when she became pregnant. The newborn, named Baby Angelita by detectives, was found dead on the side of Struve Road near Moss Landing on August 1, umbilical cord still attached, with signs of traumatic injury.

Police officers responded to the area at around 3:30 p.m. on Friday. According to a report by mynewsla.com, a witness saw the man “hunkered down” and approaching people to smell them. . . Police were also dispatched to a nearby clothing store near South Brand Boulevard and East Broadway regarding a similar report. At that location, police reviewed surveillance video and identified Crowder as the suspect in the incident after it showed him allegedly engaged in similar offensive “sniffing” behavior. . . According to the officers, Crowder was observed and captured on video as he crouched behind the female customer...

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wine connections are raising eyebrows as his winery group becomes the only Napa operation to score a settlement after a devastating wildfire ravaged wine country. California wineries have been scrambling to recover from the 2025 Pickett Fire, which caused an estimated $56 million in wine-grape losses across Napa Valley. More than 30 winery and vineyard owners are seeking up to $90 million from Hundred Acre Winery and its owner, Jayson Woodbridge — but so far, only Newsom’s PlumpJack Group has reached a settlement.

While California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta and Democrat legislators are working hard to… ban investigation of Somali health care fraud, the corruption is public, obvious and so commonplace that hardly anyone bothers talking about it anymore. The financial ramifications from the fire, which started at Hundred Acre Winery in Calistoga and destroyed the grape crop of dozens of wineries and substantially burned one vineyard, remain uncertain… more than 30 small winery and vineyard owners impacted by the fire are struggling to recover about $90 million they say they lost. Only one wine company has received compensation from Hundred Acre and...

A nearly century-old Wine Country cheesemaker is closing its award-winning factory citing ongoing challenges since the Covid pandemic. Vella Cheese in Sonoma County announced Monday that after 94 years it has made the “incredibly difficult decision” to cease production of its famous products. “Our business has never fully recovered from the challenges of COVID, and the financial demands of operating a small, artisanal company in today’s fast-paced food industry have become more than we can sustain,” the message read. The firm was founded in 1931 by Gaetano “Tom” Vella, who worked at the Sonoma Mission Creamery before a group of...

Delusional Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sought US political clout far beyond the dreams of any British royal since King George III, The Post has learned, with the Duchess of Sussex angling to take over the Senate seat held by Kamala Harris ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Weeks before Democrat Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump, a source says, Markle requested a sitdown with California Gov. Gavin Newsom because she “wanted to be considered to be appointed” to the seat held by Harris, which she vacated just before becoming vice president on Jan. 20, 2021. The source added...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio outperforms Vice President JD Vance in three hypothetical 2028 presidential match-ups against some of the top-polling Democrats, according to a survey released Thursday. Pitted against former Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rubio tops both by the same 48%-43%, the Emerson College National Poll showed. Meanwhile, Vance bests the “Squad” congresswoman 46%-44% but comes up short against the failed 2024 Democratic presidential nominee by 4 percentage points.

Gov. Gavin Newsom refused to take a position on a raging debate over standardized testing in University of California admissions — dismissing as “anecdotes” the alarming reports from college professors about students who can’t do basic math. The governor was asked at a Wednesday press conference in Hayward about an open letter from more than 1,200 UC professors, including Nobel prize winners and leading scientists, who warned of a “severe” crisis of incoming freshman who are unable to even do fractions, forcing educators to dumb down Calculus and other advanced courses. “Show me the data,” Newsom said. “I have feelings...

Golden State motorists and business owners are fuming over fresh regulations set to spike the price of new car tires — saying the new rules will further squeeze drivers already battling sky-high costs. On Monday, the California Energy Commission unanimously green lit the new rules to phase out the sale of replacement tires that don’t meet the state’s energy-efficiency standards. The change could potentially wipe out 70% of the tires currently available to California drivers, opponents say — and inflate the cost of an average set by hundreds of dollars. “I already can’t afford to buy a new set of...

California’s bullet train could have a new end point: Brokeville, USA. The state’s beleaguered high-speed rail line is once again careening toward a financial cliff, as a new report — delivered last month to Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators — says the project could run out of cash by the end of next year. The Office of the Inspector General warned that the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s funds could dry up as soon as December 2027 unless it secures financing — and the authority would need to borrow as much as $9.5 billion over five years just to keep construction...

Gavin Newsom’s official calendars show the lefty governor listing zero government business on a staggering 18 taxpayer-funded workdays in the first four months of the year, The California Post has learned. The uber-secretive Newsom — who only finally released his calendars after a monthslong delay that required legal intervention by The Post’s lawyers — marked the 18 non-holiday weekdays as “no official business,” or about one in every four days. The governor’s calendar also includes 53 murky entries only described as “work time,” blocking off the large chunks to tinker on unknown tasks. On Feb. 6, for example, Newsom’s sole...

Los Angeles has any number of problems: crime, homelessness, and productive people are leaving due to the idiot policies of the city and the state of California. Now, we can again add that ancient curse of big cities: Disease. The other thing Los Angeles shares with so many other large cities throughout human history is rats. Rats have accompanied humans almost everywhere, and they bring disease with them. That, too, is happening right now in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles County (L.A.), rats abound. You may see only an occasional rat dart across an alley or root through a restaurant...

Investigators have extensive wiretap evidence and may soon charge several individuals in a sprawling corruption probe involving Gavin Newsom and his wife Jennifer Newsom. It was reported earlier this month that the FBI used a Democrat insider as an informant to infiltrate Governor Gavin Newsom’s inner circle before the corruption probe expanded into the governor and his wife Jennifer Newsom. Recall that Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, was indicted on federal wire fraud charges last year. Last month, Newsom fumed as he announced the corruption probe had expanded, and he and his wife are now under investigation. Newsom...

The Skid Row Care Campus—funded by local, state, and federal dollars—handed us drug paraphernalia. As governor of California, Gavin Newsom has repeatedly supported “harm reduction” policies, which enable drug use in the name of making it “safer.” He created the state’s Harm Reduction Initiative, which funded “syringe services programs” for “people who inject and smoke fentanyl and/or methamphetamines.” His Department of Public Health has endorsed distributing syringes, glass pipes, and “[c]ontainers for mixing injectable drugs” to drug users. Newsom argued earlier this year that harm-reduction tactics “increase the like­li­hood of people enter­ing sub­stance use treat­ment.” But do California’s harm-reduction programs...

Gov. Gavin Newsom's former lover is pulling back the curtain on their affair ... revealing the lengths she went to get him alone -- and the advice Kamala Harris gave her when the scandal exploded. Ruby Rippey writes in a new Vanity Fair essay that professional boundaries with Newsom began crumbling while she worked as his secretary during his time as San Francisco mayor. Rippey says she would scan Newsom's calendar for openings, show up wherever he was expected to be and make sure he spotted her before slipping away. She says her phone would soon light up with a...

Florida Pizza Kitchen. It doesn’t have quite the ring to it that California Pizza Kitchen does. But had the iconic chain been dreamed up in the 2020s rather than the 1980s, it would have been FPK rather than CPK, not because the California Pizza Kitchen’s co-founders moved to Florida, though one did a couple of years ago, but due to the Golden State’s corrosive business policies. Not that long ago, California was “the greatest place to do business,” Rick Rosenfield, the CPK co-founder who fled to the Sunshine State, told Fox News Digital. “If it were me today, I would...

Nearly 150,000 California voters had their mail-in ballots rejected for the state’s June primary, a spike from recent elections even as the state attempts to make voting easier with the goal of boosting participation and counting every ballot. California has become notorious for its ponderously slow vote counts that can drag on for weeks and sometimes longer, largely the result of multiple changes over the years that were intended to increase turnout but have done little to achieve that. Among the changes: Every voter receives a mail-in ballot that can arrive at an election office seven days late and still...

We keep hearing about the Democratic Socialists of America now that several openly bold Communists and Marxists have been elected to public office, or have made it through primary elections. They typically run as regular Democrats, sounding fairly normal, promising the usual: universal healthcare, offering up Land Acknowledgements, defunding the police, making the wealthy and big corporations “pay their fair share,” Medicaid expansion, free child care, expanded paid family leave, ending “corporate greed,” rental assistance, student loan debt relief, yada, yada, yada, and then they pivot to communist ideals once in office. Rather than explain the DSA, let’s hear from...