Free Republic

Angela Li and Vivrd Prasanna have achieved the pinnacle of a public university education — she a senior at UCLA, he a freshman at UC Berkeley. Both are children of immigrants, with Li’s parents from China and Prasanna’s from India. *** But when it comes to Proposition 16, the Tuesday ballot measure that would once again allow affirmative action in public education, contracting and hiring, the two UC students and their families sharply diverge. *** Their diverse views reflect the complexity of the affirmative action issue among Asian Americans, who represent more than 50 ethnic subgroups with varying politics, histories...

President Trump has described his campaign rallies as “fun,” “wonderful,” “the Greatest Show on Earth,” and, of course, “BIG.” An effort to calculate whether those events have increased the spread of the coronavirus in the United States suggests that “contagious” and “deadly” would also apply. A rigorous attempt to gauge the after-effects of 18 of the president’s reelection rallies, all held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggests they have led to more than 30,000 additional cases and at least 700 additional deaths. Those casualties would not have occurred if the campaign events had not taken place, according to...

Luntz head explodes.

I have noted before that I grew up in Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates. From 1980-1990, my family lived in an ungated community in the middle of the city down the street from the Iranian Hospital with the Jumeirah American School just one long block up the road. We walked to school every day. The school changed its name to the American School of Dubai the year after I graduated. It moved locations. The current school at the old location is the Jumeirah Baccalaureate School. My old house is all that remains of my neighborhood. The whole place...

So, let’s talk about Nancy Pelosi’s hair. Or, more specifically, the wash and blowout that the Democratic House Speaker from San Francisco got at a salon there that was shuttered by pandemic rules but somehow managed to open for her — and just her.

Video widely shared on social media shows a man threatening Eden the Doll, Jaslene Whiterose and Joslyn Flawless around 2 a.m. Monday in the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard. All three women are influencers with large social media followings. In the video, a man is seen threatening Flawless with a crowbar as he robs her and then hits Whiterose over the head with something as bystanders laugh and taunt the women. Police said the man demanded Flawless’ shoes and bracelet while threatening her with the weapon and struck Whiterose with a bottle — all while making “derogatory remarks” about their...

Things weren’t great before COVID-19, but at least only about 570 families, hungry, broke and on the brink of homelessness, needed help from the volunteers at St. Joseph Center in Los Angeles. Today, that number is about 860. A month from now, it could be in the thousands — or even more. California is rapidly approaching what has been dubbed the “eviction cliff,” or the point where true protection from being evicted during the pandemic will fall away, at least for a short time. If that happens, as many as 1 million families across the state — some 365,000 in...

Three people were taken into custody and two were cited Saturday afternoon outside the Windsor Square home of Mayor Eric Garcetti, where hundreds of protesters converged to demand the mayor cancel rents, according to an LAPD spokesman.

At the beginning of the year, it looked like Jeremy Miller and his 9-year-old daughter were finally going to have a home of their own. They’d been homeless and relying on family, shelters and motels for housing. But he’d found stable work in the Kern County oil fields and had enough money for an $875-a-month, two-bedroom rental in Bakersfield. They moved into the apartment in March, and Miller lost his job within days. The pandemic caused a worldwide drop in demand for oil, triggering mass layoffs in the oil patch. Miller tried to find other work through a temp agency,...

SACRAMENTO — Democrats in the California Legislature have unveiled a new effort to significantly raise tax rates on taxable income of $1 million and higher, an effort they say would provide billions of dollars to improve K-12 schools and a variety of government services vital to the state’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill, jointly introduced by 15 Democrats Monday in the Senate, is the clearest sign so far that liberal legislators and interest groups intend to put pressure on business-aligned lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom for new tax revenue before the legislative session ends Aug. 31 — arguing...

[W]hat’s easy, when it comes to race, is pretending to be outraged about commonly used words. At the Los Angeles Times, for instance, an editor has said the word “looters,” which has been used many times in the paper, now has “a pejorative and racist connotation” and that anyone who is inclined to use the word should “talk to your immediate supervisor.” Translation: Best not use the word at all, if you want to stay employed. In Houston, a Realtors association announced it would no longer use terms such as “master bedroom” or “master bathroom” not because any sane person...

The LA Times is no longer going to say that looters are looting. It’s newly updated style guide warns: “’Looting’ is a crime that occurs only during a state of emergency (in any jurisdiction: state, county, city, etc.). Do not use it as a broad label or term for protest, burglary, theft or chaos. Because of the racial connotation and history of the word, use terms like ‘looting’ or ‘looters’ only in the context of criminal proceedings. Unless a story is specifically about looting or those charged with the crime, ‘looting’ or its derivations (‘looted,’ ‘looters’) should not be used...

Immanuel Jarvis has spent most of his life in sales. Cellphones. Life insurance. Real estate. He comes at it naturally, with a warm smile, clever wit and outgoing personality. He's hard not to like. And yet Jarvis gets taunting emails, nasty phones calls, dirty looks. He recalls people standing so close he felt their hot breath on his face as they told him, "If I was your mother, I'd be ashamed of you for who you are." Jarvis is a Republican. He is Black. And he's a staunch supporter of President Trump.

“The economic devastation wrought by the pandemic could ultimately kill more people than the virus itself,” The Los Angeles Times (“The Times”) admitted in a shockingly anti-liberal media narrative story published May 11. The story noted that the United Nations predicted that “a global recession will reverse a three-decade trend in rising living standards and plunge as many as 420 million people into extreme poverty, defined as earning less than $2 a day.”

Boston and Dallas have one each. New York City has not one, but two Malcolm X boulevards, along with a playground. Washington D.C. has Malcolm X Avenue. The Los Angeles City Council renamed the intersection near the Bilal Islamic Center, Malcolm X Way. These are a few of the hundreds of streets, schools, and assorted other civic infrastructure named after the black supremacist leader who worked together with the KKK and the American Nazi Party.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board suggests the current surge in gun sales is “madness.” It delivered this observation after describing month after month of record breaking firearm background checks during coronavirus shutdowns. They noted: Since the start of the pandemic, Americans are buying more guns. The FBI says it conducted a record 3.7 million background checks for would-be gun buyers, a loose proxy for firearm sales, in March as lockdown orders spread across the nation. In April the checks dropped to 2.9 million but rebounded to 3.1 million in May. The monthly average for 2019 — itself a record...

It was 45 minutes into his lecture when the rabbi pulled out an AR-15. “Who thinks, by show of hands, that we should be carrying more guns in shul?” Rabbi Raziel Cohen asked the crowd at a Westside Chabad synagogue Wednesday night, during an active-shooter seminar organized in the wake of the deadly attack at Chabad of Poway. Half the room raised their hands. In the days since the shooting, Chabad leaders in California have scrambled to secure public safety grants and to calm frightened congregants, mobilizing hundreds more through active-shooter drills and community defense training. In Southern California, religious...

One of China’s main propaganda outlets has paid American newspapers nearly $19 million for advertising and printing expenses over the past four years, according to documents filed with the Justice Department. China Daily, an English-language newspaper controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, has paid more than $4.6 million to The Washington Post and nearly $6 million to The Wall Street Journal since November 2016, the records show. Both newspapers have published paid supplements that China Daily produces called “China Watch.” The inserts are designed to look like real news articles, though they often contain a pro-Beijing spin on contemporary news...

The Los Angeles Times' top editor is scrambling to placate journalists of color after years of often-unfulfilled promises by the paper to make grand progress in the diversity of the newsroom's ranks. Some journalists have used terms such as "internal uprising" to describe their anger over racial inequity at the paper. Scores have participated in intense internal debates over the LA Times' coverage of recent protests and hiring practices, to the point that senior editors have weighed in, promising to listen and learn. "I would say in the case of black journalists, that we do not have enough journalists in...

Republican senators rebelled against Donald Trump late Wednesday by voting to tell the Army to rename bases named after Confederate generals within the next three years. The Armed Services Committee, whose members include Trump ultra-loyalist Tom Cotton, voted behind closed doors for the move, Roll Call first reported. The voice vote was on an amendment to the annual Pentagon policy bill — the Defense Authorization Act — which was put forward by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat and former presidential candidate. It came hours after Donald Trump tweeted furiously that he will “not even consider” renaming Forts Bragg, Hood,...