Free Republic

Nothing captures the hate experienced during another term of President Donald Trump more starkly than the victimization of transgender people.

Low incentives and complicated state regulations, combined with high housing and business costs, have rendered California unable to keep Hollywood from moving production to other states and countries, according to an entertainment industry report released on May 27 by the Milken Institute, a California-based think tank.Hollywood’s in-state production has dropped in the past two years as other states and international destinations continue to increase industry incentives, according to the report’s authors, Kevin Klowden, executive director for the Milken Institute Finance, and Madeleine Waddoups, a graduate teaching assistant in the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California–Los Angeles.The...

"For months, LA fire victims have been asking: where did the $100M from the FireAid concerts go? I followed the money — and it leads to a shadowy nonprofit called the Annenberg Foundation. Let’s just say the rabbit hole gets dark — fast." 5149jamesli X (3 min. video)

LOS ANGELES — Mayor Karen Bass is catching heat for her claims that new homes are springing up across the Pacific Palisades just months after wildfires leveled the neighborhood. “Karen Bass is full of crap,” Pacific Palisades resident Sara Trepanier, a physician and single mom of four who lost her home to the devastating blaze in January, told The Post Tuesday. Trepanier’s candid words come just a day after Bass proclaimed on X that “homes are under construction throughout the Palisades,” lauding her efforts to “cut red tape” on building permits and “get families home.

LOS ANGELES — Mayor Karen Bass is catching heat for her claims that new homes are springing up across the Pacific Palisades just months after wildfires leveled the neighborhood. “Karen Bass is full of crap,” Pacific Palisades resident Sara Trepanier, a physician and single mom of four who lost her home to the devastating blaze in January, told The Post Tuesday. Trepanier’s candid words come just a day after Bass proclaimed on X that “homes are under construction throughout the Palisades,” lauding her efforts to “cut red tape” on building permits and “get families home.”

Officers had to form a skirmish line to clear a large mob that vandalized a Metro train, a police car and several businesses in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday night.

Los Angeles’ deputy mayor for public safety has pleaded guilty to calling in a fake, anti-Israel bomb threat to himself in October. Brian Williams, who was charged by federal prosecutors Thursday, faces up to 10 years in federal prison. Mayor Karen Bass announced in December that Williams had been put on administrative leave, meaning he likely has been collecting his $245,143 combined salary and benefits without any official duties. As deputy mayor for public safety, Williams would have overseen the city’s fire and police response during the devastating January wildfires. The Department of Justice reports that during an online government...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) was fuming Thursday as Congress passed a repeal of California’s electric vehicle (EV) mandate, which relied on a special waiver from the outgoing Biden administration in December. “Make America Smoggy Again,” he announced, sarcastically. The Senate voted 51-44 to repeal the waiver, after a bipartisan majority in the House had done the same, as Breitbart News reported earlier this month. The repeal relies on the Congressional Review Act, a Bill Clinton-era law that allows Congress to repeal regulations that are not presented to it for timely approval. Newsom says the waiver is exempt from review....

Leaders of California's Democratic Legislative Latino Caucus on Monday said everything should be considered in order to keep providing health insurance to undocumented immigrants, including a new tax on Californians.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for closing another prison as part of his newly revised budget proposal. If that happened, it would be the fifth state prison that was closed during the Newsom administration. The Criminal and Judicial Branch portion of the Democratic governor’s budget, presented on Wednesday and subject to legislative approval, called for $13.6 billion for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It also called for closing one of the state’s prisons by October 2026 to save an estimated $150 million. Newsom’s budget didn’t say which prison would be closed. In his budget, the governor noted...

“Billions of us will come and kill you.” Thirty minutes after Hamas supporters first set up their operation outside a Los Angeles synagogue, they maced their first Jew. And the Los Angeles police did nothing.Not until an hour into the terrorist rally outside a synagogue, did the LAPD finally step in, pushing back masked Jihad supporters in keffiyeh terror scarves from the entrance of Congregation Adas Torah (Congregation of the Bible) which they had occupied.And then the mob, chanting calls for “intifada” and the destruction of Israel, moved outward to target two smaller synagogues attended by Persian Jewish refugees from...

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is a task force created by the Trump administration to root out waste and corruption in the federal government. To promote its mission and celebrate its accomplishments, Leo Zacky (foreground, left), a candidate for the Republican Party's nomination for governor of California teamed up with Shiva Bagheri (foreground, right), a fitness and dance instructor, community organizer and activist to perform the DOGE Dance, a lively dance set to the music of Brian Coyne's dance tune “DOGE.” The performance took place at a rally in Beverly Gardens Park in Beverly Hills, Calif. sponsored by the...

California Governor Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers are bracing for a $10 billion budget shortfall — even before federal spending cuts undertaken by the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Newsom and the Democrats took a near-$100 billion surplus in 2022– partly fueled by federal coronavirus funds under the Biden administration — to a near-$50 billion deficit in 2024. Earlier this year, the state was forced to borrow $6.2 billion to fund Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, which Newsom and his party expanded to cover illegal aliens. Now, according to Politico, Newsom and the Democrats are bracing...

A new poll shows that 54% of registered voters believe that Governor Gavin Newsom is focused on his own presidential ambitions, versus 26% who believe he is focused on his job and the state — a two-to-one margin. The University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) poll, conducted in April among 6,201 voters, with a 2% margin of error, also found that Newsom’s approval and disapproval are at 46%. A release accompanying the poll explained: The survey … finds that Californians continue to hold very mixed and highly partisan views of the job Gavin Newsom is doing as...

Comedian says it would benefit auto enthusiasts, while environmentalists say it would increase air pollutionShould old cars get a break from California’s smog check laws? Former Tonight Show host and avid car collector Jay Leno thinks so. He’s thrown his support behind a bill in the state legislature that would exempt vehicles 35 years or older from the state’s requirement to pass a smog check test that most other California vehicles face every two years. “I know there’s nothing more annoying than Hollywood people involved in politics,” Leno said at a rally at the state Capitol last month. “But this...

Prominent farmworker activist and organizer Dolores Huerta joined several other speakers at a public meeting in Watsonville Saturday to raise awareness about the dangers of agricultural pesticide use on farmworkers, children, consumers and residents throughout Santa Cruz County. Childhood cancer rates in the county are more than 38% above the nationwide childhood cancer rate of 16.3%. This makes the cancer rate for children up to age 14 the second highest of all California counties, according to Dr. Ann López, the director of the Center for Farmworker Families. The meeting was organized by the Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture (CORA)....

About one-third of all municipal bonds issued in 2024 and outstanding through 2024 are from sanctuary jurisdictions, concentrated in large cities and states, such as California, New York, and Massachusetts...The absence of truly objective bond ratings or comprehensive risk assessments for sanctuary jurisdictions may place investors, particularly individual investors, who own a significant share of this market, at a disadvantage.

The scamdemic is the gift that keeps on giving, and it’s only a matter of time before we the taxpayers are called upon to settle the student loan bill for robots too.According to a report from SFGate, “ghost” students are on the rise at colleges across the nation, particularly in California, a dramatic increase seen after much of the education sector transitioned to remote learning during 2020.Here’s the story:When the pandemic upended the world of higher education, Robin Pugh, a professor at City College of San Francisco, began to see one puzzling problem in her online courses: Not everyone was...

Oil refinery Valero has opted to close its operations in California due to excessive regulations on energy. Located in the small city of Benicia, the town is expected to lose 400 jobs, which the mayor is calling the exit “a major hit on the city.” Everyone in California is feeling the impact of Newsom’s war on fossil fuels. Valero said its decision ” follows years of regulatory pressure, significant fines for air quality violations, and a recent lawsuit settlement related to environmental concerns.” “California has been pursuing policies to move away from fossil fuels for really for the past 20...

In a reprehensible slap in the face to the oppressed people of Venezuela, far-left members of the Democratic Party are urging President Obama to resist bipartisan efforts to level sanctions against the authoritarian government of Nicholas Maduro. Based on comments by the Administration, apparently their sympathy for the Marxist regime is shared by the White House in a startling reversal of national doctrine of supporting freedom and liberty that has endured since the US was founded in 1776. John Conyers, Democratic Congressman from Michigan, penned a letter to Obama signed by he and 13 of his colleagues urging them to...