Free Republic

The Trump administration has rolled out Project 2025-aligned policies on trade, immigration, the federal workforce, the media, diversity initiatives and voting and transgender rights.The White House said Trump’s policies are “based on the best interests of the American people, period.”Experts have questioned the legality or wisdom of some policies, and liberal activists have promised to resist. In his Project 2025 chapter on trade, economist Peter Navarro called on the next U.S. president to bring about a domestic manufacturing “renaissance” by adopting reciprocal tariffs against trading partners and taking a particularly hard line on China.Promptly after being elected, President Trump appointed...

For years, the bright green turf of Whitsett Fields Park has served as a joyous hub for Los Angeles youth soccer — particularly for thousands of immigrant families in the San Fernando Valley. On most weekends, the sprawling North Hollywood complex echoes with the shouts of hundreds of boys and girls, as vendors hawk aguas frescas, balloons and candy along the sidelines. But recently, immense grief and worry have settled over this close, Latin American community. Just last week, a well-known coach and Salvadoran national was charged with murder in the killing of 13-year-old soccer player Oscar Omar Hernandez during...

Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman will allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty again in Los Angeles, undoing one of the signature policies of his predecessor, George Gascón. The move comes as little surprise: Hochman campaigned on the issue almost as soon as he announced his challenge to Gascón in 2023. But it still marks a significant shift in one of the largest prosecutor’s offices in the nation. Under California law, the death penalty can only be sought in cases where a defendant is accused of murder with special circumstances. That can include multiple homicides or cases where the victim is...

After years of hustle, film and TV producer Stephen Love found himself in a situation many of his peers would salivate over: He was in four bidding wars. Studios clamored to snap up his projects. Hollywood trade news outlets gushed about their merits, bolstering Love’s career and reputation. But all the while, Love was shooting commercials and music videos and trying to get consulting gigs to make ends meet. He even drove for ride-share companies. The son of a preacher and a teacher, Love, 35, grew up on a farm in York, S.C., almost 40 miles south of Charlotte, N.C....

Pro-Bass forces argue that she is under attack from “wealthy oligarchs,” including Rick Caruso and Elon Musk.The rallying cry from the mayor’s allies follows the toughest two months of her political career.Proponents of the recall say Bass has mishandled the wildfire, public safety and other issues. For more than two months, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has faced lacerating criticism over her handling of the Palisades fire — her absence from the country when it erupted, her wobbly public appearances once she returned, even her failure to preserve her text messages.In recent days, pro-Bass forces have been pushing back hard,...

Hear me on this: Stephen A. Smith is no joke. Democrats, do not underestimate him. Do not mock him. Do not take him lightly. Do not ignore him. Do I think the face of ESPN (who, according to multiple sources, just inked a five-year, $100-million contract extension) and the most influential man in sports media is going to run for president on your ticket? No, I do not. But he’s not wrong when he boasts that he could wipe the floor in a debate with just about any other prospective Democratic candidate (Pete Buttigieg and New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being...

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is deleting her text messages, thus defeating efforts by media organizations to obtain them as government communications subject to public records requests, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Times reported that it had been unable to obtain Bass’s text messages concerning her overseas trip to Ghana, during which the L.A. fires broke out, because they were automatically deleted and the city had not retained them.

President Trump upended political norms and sparked widespread confusion with a series of executive orders challenging the Constitution and congressional control over the federal budget.Democrats responded in outrage, blasting the administration for sowing “chaos” and harming average Americans, and California and other states sued. Standing before a mourning nation following a tragic commercial airline crash that killed nearly 70 people in Washington, D.C., President Trump offered his somber condolences and said everyone was “searching for answers.”He then insinuated, without evidence, that diversity hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration — and the politics of his Democratic predecessors — were to...

House Speaker Mike Johnson has thwarted the installation of a plaque, approved by Congress, honoring officers who protected the Capitol. It is vital that partisans aren’t allowed to whitewash history simply because it makes some people uncomfortable. On Monday, Donald Trump will visit the scene of a crime, laying his hand on a Bible and vowing to preserve and protect the Constitution as he swears a formal oath to become the nation’s 47th president.The bloodstains of the Jan. 6 insurrection have long ago washed away. The shattered windows of the Capitol are mended, the broken doors replaced. You’d never know...

Not quite six years ago, wildfire expert Jack Cohen, who lives in Missoula, Mont., visited Pacific Palisades to instruct firefighters and property owners on how to protect homes against wildfires. Three days of training, including a tour of the community, left Cohen hopeful, but the feeling faded when it became clear that his lessons were not going to be fully implemented. This week’s tragedy has left him with a deep sadness. Respected by fire agencies across the country, Cohen and Pyne have found their straight-talk admonitions often disregarded or dismissed. Sensitive to losses and suffering, both said they are motivated...

Talk of a mass exodus of residents was always overblown and more political than real.A population uptick will hopefully end all those premature death notices — at least for a bit California is growing again, news that comes as a relief, vindication or vexation, depending on where you stand in regard to the Golden State. Or, perhaps more aptly, where you reside.The state, which had its modern birth in a fever of money-lust and speculation, gained population in every assay going back to those Gold Rush days. Growth — heady, unrelenting — was not only the natural order of things,...

It was an ordinary day at his Los Angeles law office when John Nadolenco opened a letter from Brazil enlisting his help in a mission to retrieve a stolen, and quite possibly cursed, 836-pound emerald. The year was 2014, the heyday of the Nigerian prince email scam, and the up-and-coming attorney was no fool. “I immediately thought it was just completely fake, a total hoax,” he said. “I was like, ‘I’m not falling for this one. I’m smarter than this.’” He tossed the letter in the trash. But Nadolenco’s boss asked if, as a favor, he could look into the...

A poll co-sponsored by the left-leaning Los Angeles Times props up failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a front-runner for the 2026 California gubernatorial race. The poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies shows Vice President Kamala Harris may benefit from some name recognition in a potentially crowded field, and has the support of many Democrat voters in the state. Current Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) cannot seek reelection because of term limits.

Soon-Shiong said he was specifically looking for influential conservative voices like Scott Jennings at CNN. Jennings has been a commentator on the left-leaning outlet since 2017. Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong on Thursday night said that he was looking to hire conservative voices to help balance out the editorial section of his newspaper. Soon-Shiong previously stated that he would be working to make the newspaper more fair moving forward, after deciding not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 elections. Several newspaper owners withheld endorsements in the 2024 elections, with Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos claiming it...

A new report highlighted a growing number of Americans, and particularly Californians, who are planning to move overseas because they are “fed up” with the divisiveness of U.S. politics. The Los Angeles Times spoke to global migration experts who’ve documented a spike in the number of Americans seeking to move out of the country since 2020, with many of them being California residents. The number of requests this election year has already exceeded last year, global firm Henley & Partners said. The consultant company helps clients obtain residency and citizenship in other countries and said that about 80% of their...

A new report highlighted a growing number of Americans, and particularly Californians, who are planning to move overseas because they are “fed up” with the divisiveness of US politics. The Los Angeles Times spoke to global migration experts who’ve documented a spike in the number of Americans seeking to move out of the country since 2020, with many of them being California residents. The number of requests this election year has already exceeded last year, global firm Henley & Partners said. The consultant company helps clients obtain residency and citizenship in other countries and said that about 80% of their...

Before producer David Foster completed their transformation into pop stars, Chicago had built an early reputation as a tough jazz-rocking outfit. Peter Cetera was just one of their vocalists, rather than the honey-sweet ballad-singing frontman. He actually played bass. Robert Lamm, one of Chicago's other prominent singer-songwriters, served as principal pianist. Foster changed all of that, beginning with 1982's Chicago 16. "I get it — I get why they were unhappy," Foster tells the Los Angeles Times. "I just came in like a young, arrogant barnstormer: 'OK, I'm playing all the piano now,' and Peter let me play the synth-bass...

The media world is in a fury: the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times recently announced that they would not endorse a presidential candidate. Editors and columnists at both papers have resigned in protest; readers have cancelled their subscriptions en masse. Why the outrage? Because everyone knew that those papers would have endorsed Kamala Harris. Why the certainty? Because the papers’ coverage of Donald Trump has been so unrelentingly negative. (The decision not to endorse was made by the papers’ owners: Jeff Bezos, in the case of the Post, and medical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, in the case of the Times.)...

The daughter of the Los Angeles Times‘s owner explained that the paper’s non-endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris was based on the Biden-Harris administration’s stance on the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Nika Soon-Shiong, 31, daughter of Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, explained to the New York Times that her family made a “joint decision” to not endorse either Harris or former President Donald Trump.

Since 1986, whistleblowers have been in the forefront of the government’s war on fraud, accounting for $53 billion, or more than 70%, of the $75 billion recovered from swindlers on defense contracts, from Medicare and from other federal programs.There’s no debate over what’s driving this record: It’s a 1986 federal law that awards whistleblowers up to 30% of the recovery. For the federal government, this is a bargain. Without the law, the government might never even know about most of the $75 billion in fraud that was unearthed. That makes the law “one of the government’s top fraud-fighting tools,” says...