Free Republic

New regulations will bar cardrooms from offering blackjack and other player-dealer games — a move opponents say will devastate the industry in California. Under one of the two new rules, cardrooms cannot offer blackjack, the world’s most popular casino card game. Players would no longer “bust” by exceeding 21 points, and cardrooms may not use the name “blackjack” or include the number 21.

A Palestinian activist has called for dogs to be banned as pets in New York City claiming they aren't Islamic. Nerdeen Kiswani said dogs have a 'place in society' but 'not as indoor pets.' 'Like we've said all along, they are unclean,' she wrote on X. After receiving fierce backlash she later claimed that her post was a 'joke'. '[Laughing] at the Zionists frothing at the mouth at this, thinking they're doing something,' she wrote. 'It's obviously a joke I don't care if you have a dog, I do care if your dog is s***ting everywhere and you're not cleaning...

In his famous 20th century novel "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway’s character, Mike Campbell, was asked by a friend how his financial ruin had happened. Campbell replied to the question simply, "Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly." Just a cursory look at today’s headlines and one can see this very idea of "gradually and then suddenly" playing out in the fiscal health of many blue states. California, the poster child for a state heading down the road to financial ruin, is slated to lose four congressional seats in the 2030 census due to population loss. Moreover, major companies such...

It's not hard to understand why people live in California, nor why it boomed in the decades after World War II. There are few places more blessed by God than California, even with its mudslides, wildfires, and earthquakes, which deterred not a single person from moving there. It is, in most ways, a paradise. If there was anyplace that could be said to embody the American Dream, or at least the postwar American Dream in which anybody could aspire to be middle class, it was California. New York City may be where people went to strike it big, but California...

The Democratic Socialists of America LA chapter has released a 40-page, 9,000-word manifesto that lays out an aggressive, six-to-eight-year plan to seize control of the nation’s second-largest city and impose full-blown socialism In what can only be described as a chilling blueprint for economic destruction and social chaos (see below), the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Los Angeles chapter has released a 40-page, 9,000-word manifesto that lays out an aggressive, six-to-eight-year plan to seize control of the nation’s second-largest city and impose full-blown socialism. This radical document, published in 2025, doesn’t mince words: Los Angeles is “on the burning edge...

California’s already sky-high gas prices are expected to surge after Valero abruptly shuttered its Benicia refinery amid a spiraling “oil crisis,” a new report claims. The Benicia refinery began shutting down on Saturday, four months earlier than planned, a former Valero manager told the California Globe Tuesday. US gas prices: national average of $2.883 with California's average at $4.368, and a legend for retail prices ranging from $2.370 to $4.404. The closure will cause the state’s already sky-high gas prices to soar, a new report said. Thermal imaging showed the facility went cold as the Crimson Pipeline – which transports...

Trash and rats are piling up as snow stays uncleared, but Mayor Mamdani has more important things to do. Under socialism, New Yorkers are learning the hard way how fast a city can go downhill. Garbage filled streets is providing New Yorkers with the Warmth of Collectivism. https://t.co/hewdZHfJKq — Rob Schneider 🇺🇸 (@RobSchneider) February 3, 2026 In Mayor Mamdani's New York City, they don't actually remove the snow, they just spread it out on the street so that everyone suffers equally. It's called Socialist Snow Plowing. pic.twitter.com/LW7EcOJoKe — Joel M. Petlin (@Joelmpetlin) February 4, 2026 NYC outdoor death toll rises...

A sweeping gun control proposal that critics say represents one of the most extreme assaults on the Second Amendment in New Mexico history is now headed to the Senate floor. Senate Bill 17, which would ban the sale of a broad range of semi-automatic firearms and impose heavy new mandates on federally licensed gun dealers, advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday night on a 6–3 party-line vote. An effort to strip out the bill’s semi-automatic firearm and standard-capacity magazine bans failed on a 4–5 vote, clearing the way for the legislation to move forward in largely intact form....

New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is facing backlash for reserving a bus seat to honor Rosa Parks during Black History Month. More than 4,000 people chimed in on an Instagram post from the MTA about the tribute to civil rights icon Parks. Parks famously refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman in segregated Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955. Her arrest for the act of protest sparked a 381-day bus strike - a significant turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. The MTA celebrated her legacy by marking a seat on one of the city's...

Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va) ran on a platform of making Virginia more affordable. Now she and the expanded Democrat majority in the legislature are set on imposing new taxes on dog walking and grooming, guns and ammunition, storage facilities, dry cleaning, home repairs, electric leaf blowers and electric landscaping equipment, and creating some new income tax brackets. The Governor admitted that "these new taxes seem like they will raise the cost of living for the folks that spend money on these items. However, none of the things we're putting new taxes on are necessities. No one needs to own a...

First a foot of snow, then the plowed-in cars, and now frustrated New Yorkers are furious over mountains of trash piling up on city streets, as collection has been reduced by January’s massive winter storm. A reporter from the New York Post took in the “unsavory sights” of the aftermath and documented heaps of garbage bags and cardboard boxes littering the sidewalks as the Department of Sanitation was still playing catch-up in several neighborhoods since the winter onslaught. Garbage is not the only problem, as snowplows have tended to deposit high banks of the white stuff against cars parked along...

Last fall, when New York’s business community warned that the election of a self-described democratic socialist as mayor would trigger an assault on the city’s economic engine, we were waved off as hysterical. The press assured us that Zohran Mamdani was "evolving," that his rhetoric would soften, that we should focus instead on his vague promises of "affordability." That reassurance evaporated almost instantly. Barely two weeks after his swearing-in — amid lofty rhetoric about the "warmth of collectivism" — the Mamdani administration unveiled its real agenda. Sam Levine, the newly installed commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection...

A source close to the Mission Impossible star, 63, said he left his £35million pad because he felt the star-studded location had 'declined' recently. A terrifying robbery of the Rolex store near Cruise's building last week saw attackers on motorbikes ram into the shop and swing machetes at brave security guards who tried to stop them. The thugs entered the Bucherer with a large sledge hammer, two small claw hammers and a centre point tool used for smashing thick glass. Around 20 watches were robbed in the broad daylight raid last week which went on for three terrifying minutes before...

California drivers and Republican legislators are furious over a Democrat-led proposal that could see motorists taxed for each mile they drive. With the state staring down a budget deficit in the billions and more Californians switching to electric vehicles, Democratic lawmakers are searching for new ways to shore up declining gas tax revenue. Californians pay the second-highest gas price in the nation behind only Hawaii. In January, the average price was $4.23 per gallon, according to the American Automobile Association. On Thursday, state legislators advanced Democrat Lori Wilson’s bill, AB 1421, which would direct the California Transportation Commission and the...

Virginia Democrats have introduced a host of new tax proposals that would tax a range of services, including dog walking and gym memberships despite running on a campaign to increase affordability. More than 50 proposals and new rules were introduced for the new legislative session, including additional local sales tax in all Virginia counties and cities, 7News reported. The new proposed policies include: dog walking and grooming tax gun and ammunition tax new income tax brackets storage facility tax dry cleaning tax home repair tax new personal property tax on electric leaf blowers and electric landscaping equipment

New Yorkers are scrambling to buy required but tough-to-find official trash cans or face a fine — but the only company allowed to make the bins has already left town. A former worker at Otto Environmental Systems told The Post the company shut down its New York operation after City Hall axed its request to hike prices for the branded “NYC Bins.” Meanwhile, thousands of residents have complained that they paid for the $50 bins but still haven’t received them. “The volumes that were spoken about within the contract the city wrote did not come to fruition,” the ex-employee, who...

Newly-minted Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger was compared to a 'Bond villain' after enacting far-left policies on her first day in office despite campaigning as a moderate Democrat. Spanberger, a former Congresswoman and CIA officer, stormed to a blowout victory over sitting Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears in a momentum boost for Democrats. However, many conservatives have been horrified by some of Spanberger's first week executive orders, which includes reducing cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Spanberger campaigned on the order.

Residents in a trendy apartment building in Denver, Colorado say their peaceful lives turned into a nightmare when homeless families were given free apartments next door. Owen Johnson, a 25-year-old from Missouri, says he moved into the White Swan apartment building near the city's Congress Park in May with his wife. But Johnson says their honeymoon period after tying the knot was quickly ruined when a homeless man was given a state housing voucher to move into the apartment next to theirs, and he says it dawned on them the tenant 'was crazy.'

Mayor Mamdani’s new chief equity officer disparaged liberal white women in numerous posts on an X account deleted shortly before her appointment — and just as another aide landed in hot water for her radical screeds, The Post has learned. The city’s new equity officer, Afua Atta-Mensah liberally sprinkled the phrase “comrade” throughout her posts and retweeting statements such as, “there’s NO moderate way to black liberation.”Mamdani — in appointing Atta-Mensah to the top city position designed to promote inclusion — said, “There is no one I trust more to advance racial equity across our work in City Hall.”Atta-Mensah’s disturbing...

Shoppers across the US are seeing higher charges at grocery store checkouts as a new phase of a carryout bag law tied to 2026 environmental goals takes effect, increasing the minimum fee for plastic bags statewide. Under the law, which took effect on January 1, retailers and restaurants must now charge at least 12 cents for each plastic film carryout bag, up from the previous 8-cent fee, according to the Washington State Department of Ecology. The minimum charge for paper carryout bags remains unchanged at 8 cents. The fee is part of legislation passed in 2020 aimed at reducing the...