Free Republic

Art Acevedo, the police chief of the Houston Police Department (HPD), is calling on officers with the Austin Police Department unhappy over the recent budget cuts to come and work for him. The Austin City Council last week unanimously approved to slash about $150 million from its police department’s funding, or nearly a third of the department’s annual budget. “People of Houston, they don’t want less policing, they want better policing and well-trained police officers,” Chief Acevedo said. The HPD welcomed 44 new officers to the force during a Cadet Class #245 graduation ceremony Monday, Fox 26 Houston reported.

Former President Bill Clinton lectured President Donald Trump on Tuesday night about his conduct in the Oval Office. Clinton, who had an affair during his presidency with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky, made the remarks during his speech at the Democrat National Convention. “At a time like this, the Oval Office should be a command center,” Clinton said. “Instead, it’s a storm center. There’s only chaos. Just one thing never changes—his determination to deny responsibility and shift the blame. The buck never stops there.” 00:4300:56 Clinton was impeached during his presidency for lying under oath to a federal grand jury...

Twenty-two-year-old Taeshia Rochon, who live-streamed herself looting luxury items during Chicago riots last week, has been arrested and charged with two felony counts of burglary and two felony counts of looting, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Video streamed to Facebook appears to show Rochon allegedly stealing Canadian Goose jackets from Nordstrom and multiple pairs of sunglasses from Sunglass Hut, last Monday, the report says. 01:0601:16 The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the 22-year-old is being held on $4,000 bail. At one point during the live stream, Rochon is heard yelling “I can’t breathe,” a slogan tied to the Black Lives Matter...

An English professor at Iowa State University warned students that they might get dismissed from the class if they argue against abortion or criticize the Black Lives Matter movement, according to her syllabus. The syllabus, which was obtained by Young America’s Foundation, was written by professor Chloe Clark, a 2016 Iowa State University graduate, for students who will be attending her English 250 class. The student who sent the syllabus to the organization wanted to remain anonymous, fearing retribution. Clark notified students that “othering” is prohibited in her class, as well as “any topic that takes at its base that...

President Trump on Monday dismissed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accusation that he was trying to “sabotage” the 2020 election by “manipulating” the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), claiming the USPS has “run horribly” for years and “we’re going to make it good.” In an exclusive interview on Fox & Friends on Monday, Trump pointed out that the post office lost $78 billion over a “very short” period of time and he’s trying to improve operations ahead of the election. “I’m just making it good,” Trump said. “We have a very, very good business guy running it, and … I want to...

Two armed groups on opposing sides of the ideological divide squared off at Stone Mountain, Ga., on Saturday as right-wing militias and their allies stood face to face with Black Lives Matter and other left-wing radicals who had come to oppose them. A militia group from Georgia wanted to demonstrate their support for the monument at Stone Mountain — the largest bas-relief carving in the world that depicts Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee as well as Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Black Lives Matter was there to shout down the militias. The situation became dicey at times as...

Rioters tore down a statue of George Washington in Grand Park near Los Angeles City Hall on Thursday evening, the latest monument to fall in the ongoing left-wing demonstrations around the country. The monument to the first President of the United States was apparently vandalized and draped in the American flag when it was toppled. Unconfirmed video and images of the tearing down and the aftermath circulated on social media...

The mainstream media is being called out for skipping the murder of the 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant that took place over the weekend. The story: On Sunday, 25-year-old Darius Sessoms, who is black, reportedly walked up to Cannon Hinnant, who is white, and shot him in the head at point-blank. At the time, Hinnant was in the front yard of his family’s house, riding his bike. His two sisters, ages seven and eight, were also there and saw the shooting, according to witnesses. Sessoms left the scene and was arrested Monday. He has been charged with first-degree murder and is being...

Shortly before Joe Biden announced that his vice presidential pick was Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), a group of Democratic women released a letter, telling news organizations and journalists to avoid “racist” and “sexist” coverage of the candidate, among other things. Yet, the media broke most of those rules in reporting on John McCain’s vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin in 2008, writes NewsBusters’ Tim Graham. The recent letter urged the media to steer clear of “sexism” and “racism,” and to avoid commenting on Harris’ “ambition,” her relationship with staffers, her “tone of voice,” the way she dresses, and whether the California Democrat...

The last couple of weeks have been frustrating for the sizable chunk of Trump’s base who think lockdowns, untargeted social distancing, and forcing everyone to wear masks are neither effective nor necessary responses to COVID-19 and, in fact, are a much greater menace than the virus itself. They believe we ought to finally start listening to the thousands of doctors and scientists that the drive-by media have gone out of their way to silence instead of blindly following the dictates of life-long bureaucrats who’ve been puffed up, pushed, and placed on a pedestal by professional purveyors of fake news like...

The Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia is advising parents not to hire private tutors for their children, claiming it would “widen the gap in educational access” between students who can and those who can’t afford private tutors “While [the Fairfax County Public School system] doesn’t and can’t control these private tutoring groups, we do have concerns that they may widen the gap in educational access and equity for all students,” the FCPS said in a memo Friday.

Andrew Cuomo's got a load of nerve. Imagine being one of the relatives of the thousands of elderly nursing home residents who died as a result of their residences becoming sealed incumbators for COVID, which Andrew Cuomo literally ordered. These people were banned from visits from their own families for their own 'safety' they said. Yet it was Potemkin stuff, they had no protection from COVID, as they had to breathe the air of coughing, infected patients all around them, with absolutely no way to get away from it. Once they got it, they died alone. It's the biggest scandal...

A sheriff of a small New York town was forced to apologize after prompting calls to be fired for sharing news articles of violent crimes believed to have been committed by black suspects. Lou Falco, a third-term sheriff of Rockland who has been a law enforcement officer for four decades, was labeled a racist and was called out for sharing the stories, one of which included two black suspects shooting an infant in the face “just for the fun of it,” according to the article’s headline. After triggering outrage, Falco deleted the posts and apologized and members of the Rockland...

Chants of “Black Lives Matter” were heard outside the home of Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah’s girlfriend’s house Saturday night. Around 50-60 “peaceful protesters” began breaking windows, entering the premises, and shooting at Mensah and his girlfriend with firearms that included at least one shotgun. Mensah is Black. His girlfriend is Black. The children in the home that Black Lives Matter and Antifa “peaceful protesters” were shooting are black. Cities in Wisconsin are starting to look more like Portland and Seattle as rampant anarchy rules the streets. Neither law enforcement or the people of these communities are safe. The violence...

Axios reported on Sunday that Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) has become a “GOP Trump critic” ahead of the 2020 elections. Sasse, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Finance Committees, released a statement after President Donald Trump issued executive orders granting Americans a payroll tax holiday and unemployment insurance after negotiations with leading Democrats fell through. Referring to Trump’s executive orders as “unconstitutional slop,” Sasse said in a statement on Saturday: The pen-and-phone theory of executive lawmaking is unconstitutional slop. President Obama did not have the power to unilaterally rewrite immigration law with DACA, and President Trump does not...

A video of Christians meeting at Walmart, reportedly in North Versailles, Pennsylvania, has gone viral on the internet. The Christians were banned from meeting at their church thanks to Governor Wolf so they took to Walmart to come together in worship.

Wednesday during an interview at the 2020 National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists Joint Virtual Convention, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden said that while prosecuting a former president would not be “good for democracy,” if elected he would not stand in the way of the Justice Department pursuing criminal charges against President Donald Trump after he is out of office. Biden said, “Look, the Justice Department is not the president’s private law firm. The attorney general is not the president’s private lawyer. I will not interfere with the Justice Department’s judgment...

Former Vice President Joe Biden remarked in an interview released Thursday that “unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community.” Biden was addressing the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) Joint Virtual Convention. Portions of the interview were aired Wednesday, and the full video was streamed Thursday. “I’m going to look at every single country in the world … this guy [President Donald Trump] is sending them back,” Biden said, promising to extend the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program on his first day in office...

The mail-in ballots of more than 84,000 New York City Democrats who sought to vote in the presidential primary were disqualified, according to new figures released by the Board of Elections. The city BOE received 403,103 mail-in ballots for the June 23 Democratic presidential primary. But the certified results released Wednesday revealed that only 318,995 mail-in ballots were counted. That means 84,108 ballots were not counted or invalidated — 21 percent of the total. One out of four mail-in ballots were disqualified for arriving late, lacking a postmark or failing to include a voter’s signature, or other defects. The Post...

Jeanne Hedgepeth, a Palatine High School, Illinois, social studies teacher, has been fired over one of her social media posts after the Township High School District 211 board members voted 5-2 to terminate her employment. “I am about facts, truth-seeking and love,” Hedgepeth wrote in the Facebook post that led to her termination. “I will speak on any topic I choose because I live in a free country. I find the term ‘white privilege’ as racist as the ‘N’ word. You have not walked in my shoes either so do not make assumptions about me and my so called privilege....