Free Republic

So, this is weird.Vi Lyles, the five-term mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, has announced her resignation and will leave office at the end of June.Charlotte Observer: Longtime Charlotte, NC Mayor Vi Lyles plans to step down less than halfway through her latest term leading the nation’s 14th-largest city. https://t.co/8lkHJasPBY— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) May 7, 2026Huh.As well, you might imagine, speculation is swirling like mad concerning the 'why' of it, only six months into a new term that ran in the face of her horrific performance during the Iryna Zarutska murder.For urging compassion for a multi-felonious, vicious, bestial...

Former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper holds a 9-point lead over Republican Michael Whatley in North Carolina’s open US Senate race, according to a new poll commissioned by the elections-integrity group RightCount and released earlier this month. The survey, conducted by Opinion Diagnostics, found 50% of registered North Carolina voters supporting Cooper, compared to 41% for Whatley, with 8% undecided. An earlier poll commissioned by Healthier United and conducted March 8-9 — days after both candidates clinched their party nominations — showed a wider 18-point Cooper lead. A March 13-14 survey from Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-aligned firm, found the race...

Police in North Carolina arrested and charged a 24-year-old over the alleged rape and murder of his teenage girlfriend, who was found stripped and bound in a Charlotte apartment — after suffering months of torture. The body of 19-year-old Isabella Stroupe was found almost naked and bound with a tow strap in east Charlotte on Friday, WSCOTV’s Hunter Sáenz reported, citing court records. Her boyfriend, Thomaz Hamilton, 24, initially claimed the couple was having sex when she suffered a suspected heart attack, according to court documents. But following an autopsy, the medical examiner ruled Stroupe’s death a homicide, Sáenz reported....

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro on Sunday appeared to abandon a plan to appeal an adverse ruling in her attempts to criminally investigate Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Pirro has long said she planned to ask a higher court to review recent rulings by Chief Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia quashing her subpoenas to the Fed. She has argued that the judge’s decision makes it difficult for her to conduct grand jury investigations in general. Her appeal was due by Monday. ...... Boasberg ruled against Pirro because her office presented no specific evidence...

… The North Carolina State Board of Elections found the thousands of dead individuals during its “ongoing effort to verify” voters United States citizenship, according to ABC11 News. In a statement, Sam Hayes, who serves as the executive director for NC’s State Board of Elections, expressed that the number was “higher” than they had “anticipated.” “While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” Hayes said in a statement. “The benefit of entering into cross-state and federal database checks is that it allows us to uncover issues like this. Our goal is to use every available...

Two North Carolina legislators are leaving the Democratic Party to become unaffiliated after facing scrutiny for not sufficiently supporting the party’s agenda. State Reps. Carla Cunningham and Nasif Majeed, both of Mecklenburg County, announced in recent days that they are leaving the Democratic Party. Cunningham has served in the state House of Representatives for about 14 years and Majeed has served for eight years. Their moves come about a month after losing primary elections to Democratic challengers who attacked Cunningham and Majeed for occasionally voting with Republicans to override vetoes by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and, before him, by former...

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has placed a professor who is a member of a far-left gun club on administrative leave. "The University of North Carolina has informed Dr. Dwayne Dixon, professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, that he has been placed on administrative leave, effective immediately, following recent reports and expressions of concern regarding alleged advocacy of politically motivated violence," Vice Chancellor for Marketing and Communications Dean Stoyer said in a statement to Fox News Digital Monday afternoon. "Placing Dr. Dixon on leave will allow the University to investigate these allegations in a manner that...

The parents of an 18-year-old Lexington, North Carolina, woman charged in connection with an alleged plot to attack a Houston synagogue say their daughter had no means or intention to carry out any attack, describing the online activity that led to her arrest as nothing more than fantasy role-play. Angelina Han Hicks was arrested on Wednesday by the Davidson County Sheriff's Office and faces two felony conspiracy counts after investigators alleged she and co-conspirators planned a mass-casualty attack at Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Houston. A juvenile was separately charged in Harris County, Texas. Her father, Dannie Hicks, speaking in...

Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., all voted against a modified version of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act early Thursday morning. Their defection came during the Senate’s marathon "vote-a-rama," where lawmakers could force votes on any number of amendments, regardless of whether they mesh with the underlying budget blueprint.

A man is now behind bars and being charged with a fatal stabbing in North Carolina that left a U.S. Marine from SoCal dead. The deadly incident occurred on April 5, according to authorities in Wilmington, North Carolina. Around 2 a.m., the Wilmington Police Department responded to reports of multiple fights in the 1300 block of Corbett Street, which is located in the city’s downtown area. The investigation revealed that two people were stabbed, including Daniel Montano of San Bernardino.

DETROIT -- Two men pleaded guilty Friday to charges of conspiracy to violate the "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act" (RICO), U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Murphy announced today. Imad Majed Hamadeh, 51, of Dearborn Heights, and Theodore Schenk, 73, of Miami Beach, Fla., pleaded guilty here before U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen to the following charges: operating a criminal enterprise to traffic in contraband cigarettes, counterfeit Zig Zag rolling papers and counterfeit Viagra; producing counterfeit cigarette tax stamps; transporting stolen property; and money laundering. Sixteen other defendants faced the same charges. Some of the profits derived from the illegal...

Democrats have a double-digit advantage over Republicans in the North Carolina Senate race between former Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and former Republican National Committee Chair (RNC) Michael Whatley, a survey commissioned by Nexus Strategies for Healthier United found. The survey asked respondents, “Looking forward to the November election for United States Senator. If the election were held today, would you vote for Roy Cooper, a Democrat, Michael Whatley, a Republican, or Shannon Bray, a Libertarian?” Across the board, 50 percent chose Democrat Cooper, leaving Whatley nearly 18 points behind with 32.3 percent support. Bray only sees single digit support...

A second Republican senator spoke out in defense of Nato on Thursday, joining Mitch McConnell and the Democrats, after Donald Trump said that he was “absolutely” considering withdrawing from the alliance after it refused to take part in the joint assault with Israel against Iran. “Nato stood by America when we were under attack and came to our aid after the September 11th attacks. Their soldiers fought and died alongside our troops in Afghanistan,” said Thom Tillis, a Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, who co-chair the Senate Nato observer group. “Any president that contemplates attempting to withdraw from Nato...

Meet the ‘Mohammeds’ running the Church’s migration agenda. The Catholic News Herald, “Connecting Catholics in North Carolina”, bragged that the refugee case coordinator for the Catholic Charities Diocese of Charlotte, had been recently honored. His name? Ashir Haji-Mohamed. The latter part of the name meant that he had made a pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city of Mecca. Haji-Mohamed, a former Somali refugee, had previously been in the news for helping resettle Syrian Muslims, as well as Jordanians and Turks, in North Carolina. After the Biden retreat, Catholic Charities of Charlotte had also worked to bring Afghans to North Carolina....

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (CN) — A federal judge shot down a seven-year case Thursday that claimed that North Carolina’s voter ID requirements target Black and Hispanic voters and are burdensome. The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and several of its chapters first claimed in 2018 that a law requiring photo ID to vote disproportionately impacts minority voters, arguing it violates section two of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th and 15th Amendments, imposing burdens on the right to vote that the state can’t justify. The defendants, including Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger and former state Speaker of...

BREAKING: 4 individuals sentenced to federal prison after carrying out a $12.7 MILLION "Minnesota-Somali-style" Medicaid fraud scheme in North Carolina. The scammers operated a company called "Life Touch," which lured patients into unnecessary treatments and then billed Medicaid with fake claims. This fraud needs to be rooted out EVERYWHERE Image from X post: 4 individuals involved in Medicaid fraud scheme.

Newly counted votes widened the gap between Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page and state Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger in the race to earn the Republican nomination for state Senate District 26. Unofficial election results released Tuesday placed Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page two votes ahead of incumbent NC Senate President Pro Tempore Berger with a tally of 13,077 votes to 13,075. On Friday, Rockingham County and Guilford County election officials worked to tabulate cured absentee-by-mail ballots and provisional ballots, adding 59 votes for Page and 38 votes for Berger. The machine reading in Rockingham County listed 56 votes...

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., lashed out at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday, calling her leadership of the agency a “disaster.” “We’re an exceptional nation. And one of the reasons we’re exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership. And you have demonstrated anything but that,” said TIllis, who has previously called on Noem to resign. He struck out at Noem for her handling of disaster response and the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, among other things. “What we’ve seen is innocent people getting detained that turned out are American citizens,” Tillis said in a roughly 10-minute diatribe that included references...

In 911 recordings, the two men involved in a road rage incident give chilling details of what happened to them on Interstate 587 Monday morning. The Wilson County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the incident that left one driver, Isaiah Quawi Farden, 20, of Greenville, crashed and the other, Anthony Alan Cape, 39, of Goldsboro, shot and in critical condition. The first call lasts just over four minutes and is from Cape at 7:15 a.m. Yelling, Cape can be heard using multiple expletives and a racial slur, saying he had just been shot by a man with an “AR.” During the...

A former exotic dancer who made headlines for falsely accusing three Duke lacrosse students of raping her has been freed from prison in the 2011 slaying of her boyfriend. Crystal Mangum, 47, was let out of the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh just before 10 a.m. Friday after serving a 14-to-18-year sentence for fatally stabbing beau Reginald Daye in April 2011, according to a report by NBC News. .....