Free Republic

A task force formed by Mayor Brandon Johnson nearly a year ago to determine whether and how the city should pay reparations to Chicagoans who are the descendants of enslaved African Americans will start meeting this summer to craft a plan to tackle the thorny issue. The 40-member task force will be charged with developing “Chicago’s first comprehensive reparations study, a critical step forward in acknowledging, addressing and repairing generations of harm experienced by Black communities,” according to a statement from the mayor’s office. Task force members will be paid to serve for a year, with the study of recommendations...

Parts of Toronto Pearson International Airport have been put on lockdown after a man was shot, with police and paramedics swarming the area. Terminal 1 Departures at the major airport has been closed due to a 'police-involved shooting', the province's Special Investigations Unit confirmed. They later confirmed that an adult male had been shot, adding that it was an isolated incident and there are no known threats to the public. Images taken at the scene show a body on the ground behind a blacked out SUV outside of the terminal. Police said that the officer involved in the shooting was...

President Donald Trump on Thursday offered rare criticism of Vladimir Putin, urging the Russian leader to “STOP!” after a deadly barrage of attacks on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!”

After years of ominous headlines about the world's shrinking birth rates, there's a bright spot. The US birth rate increased slightly in 2024, according to preliminary data from the CDC. The 1% rise in births was largely driven by moms in their early 40s, who gave birth to 2% more children in 2024 than in 2023. Moms in their 30s and late 20s also experienced slight increases in births. Brady Hamilton, the lead author of the report, told Business Insider that the stats are a continuation of the trends of the last three decades. Women in their late 20s to...

Two Massachusetts men have been indicted on felony charges in connection with vandalism of a Tesla Cybertruck in the parking lot of a hotel in northern New Hampshire. Investigators said a 52-year-old man spoke with the truck owner at the Bretton Woods Ski Area parking lot on March 22 and then drove a 55-year-old man to the location of the Tesla Cybertruck at the parking lot of the Omni Mount Washington Resort & Spa. The 55-year-old man is accused of scratching the vehicle panels, causing more than $1,500 in damage. According to court documents, the 52-year-old faces a felony charge...

New York Attorney General Letitia James, champion of the poor and wretched, is now facing criticism for her conduct as a landlord. Records from the New York City Department of Buildings and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) indicate a troubling pattern of neglect at her five-unit apartment building at 296 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn. In the past 20 months alone, there have been 17 complaints against James with the New York City Department of Buildings. ... These include unauthorized construction work without proper permits, the alteration of a load-bearing wall without permits, illegal use of apartments as...

More insanity from the globalist Western European elites. According to news reports last week, the Trump Administration suggested it was prepared to recognize Russian control over Crimea. This is part of a broader peace agreement that the US has facilitated between Ukraine and Russia. If elected, President Trump promised to bring peace to Ukraine, but he did not understand that illegitimate President Volodymyr Zelensky and the globalist Western warmongers would be his main obstacles to peace in the region. Crimea is a peninsula off Ukraine in the Black Sea. In 2014, Russia took control of the region and its ports...

A scraggly octogenarian allegedly scratched five Teslas at a Long Island mall in a tantrum over Elon Musk and President Trump – but he later told The Post it was all a big mixup. Victor Divergilio, 83, caused $23,000 in damage to the cars at the Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City on Sunday afternoon and allegedly fumed to detectives that Tesla CEO Musk “should die” and “so should Trump f–king die,” according to a criminal complaint. But he sang a different tune in a brief phone interview with The Post Wednesday. “If I did something against him, it wouldn’t...

The fentanyl seized by our team in this case could have yielded over 1.5 million lethal doses - enough to kill everyone in Portland twice.".. Federal and local law enforcement agencies arrested 46 Honduran nationals on drug trafficking charges in Portland, Oregon, following an extensive joint operation to disrupt open-air drug markets in Multnomah County. Authorities seized an array of illicit drugs, firearms, and cash. The Honduran nationals were reportedly working on behalf of the Mexican Sinaloa Drug Cartel, a designated foreign terror group, according to a press release. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Seattle Field Division said that the...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) celebrated Wednesday as his state became the world’s fourth-largest economy — albeit one that cannot fix homelessness or protect its citizens from devastating wildfires. Newsom’s office cited data indicating that California had surpassed Japan and that only the U.S., China, and Germany had larger economies, in terms of total output. He boasted in a press statement: California isn’t just keeping pace with the world—we’re setting the pace. Our economy is thriving because we invest in people, prioritize sustainability, and believe in the power of innovation. And, while we celebrate this success, we recognize that our...

Whether the threat was abusive Hamas guards, hunger, illness or Israeli strikes, there were moments during Tal Shoham‘s 505 days of captivity at the hands of terrorists in Gaza when he didn’t think he’d be alive the next morning. There were “many times that I separated from life and… tried to accept death,” the 40-year-old Israeli, who also holds Austrian citizenship, told The Associated Press. “There are so many ways to die there.” Shoham was one of dozens of hostages released from Gaza in February as part of a ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel that has since been broken....

"They can use their own personal credit cards," said one Republican chairman.. Republican leaders in the House have denied requests by Democrats to approve congressional trips to check on deportees at a mega prison in El Salvador. With a post to X on Friday, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) revealed a letter in which he told a pair of Democrats that he was rejecting their demand for authorization of a Congressional Member Delegation (CODEL) to visit the Terrorism Confinement Center or CECOT. “If Democrats wish to travel to El Salvador and meet with a foreign illegal MS-13 gang member,...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday he will cut short an official visit to South Africa because of a major Russian attack on Kyiv overnight. Zelenskyy still held a planned meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the government's Union Buildings in Pretoria but said on his Telegram page that he would return home after that. Zelenskyy arrived in South Africa late Wednesday night just as Russia launched a large-scale missile and drone attack on the Ukrainian capital that killed at least nine people and injured more than 70.

Sen. Van Hollen took a highly publicized trip last week to El Salvador to advocate for Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return.. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Monday after he admitted that his trip to El Salvador to meet a deported illegal immigrant was paid for by taxpayers. Van Hollen took heat from Republicans and one of his constituents, Angel Mom Patty Morin, after he flew to El Salvador in an effort to bring home deported illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the White House maintains is an MS-13 gang member. On "Fox...

The U.S. Navy officially scrapped a Biden-era “climate action” plan for the force on Tuesday, signifying the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to refocus the military towards warfighting. “Today, I’m focusing on the warfighters first, and I’m rescinding the Biden administration’s climate action program. Our focus needs to be on lethality and our warfighters,” Navy Secretary John Phelan announced in a video message. Released in May 2022, the Climate Action 2030 program contained a series of actions and goals the Department of the Navy (DON) has taken or planned to undertake to tackle what Biden Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro characterized...

TORONTO - The Canadian Securities Administrators says it has indefinitely paused work on developing new mandatory climate disclosures and updating diversity reporting rules in response to recent developments in the United States. Stan Magidson, chair of the CSA, says it made the decision to support companies because of the rapid shift in the global economic and geopolitical landscape. He says the regulator will instead focus on making Canadian markets more competitive, efficient and resilient. In recent years, there’s been a push to require companies to report more details on what climate-related risks they face and how they plan to address...

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “All In” that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is acting “unconstitutionally and illegally” on behalf of President Donald Trump. Discussing Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk, Markey said, “There have been no charges that have been lodged against her, no evidence produced except for an op ed that she wrote in the Tufts University newspaper as part of a debate going on at Tufts University. Beyond that, they have charged her with nothing. And so to the extent to which this is more like Russia or more like Belarus, where someone might be swept...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The world’s biggest corporations have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, a new study estimates as part of an effort to make it easier for people and governments to hold companies financially accountable, like the tobacco giants have been. A Dartmouth College research team came up with the estimated pollution caused by 111 companies, with more than half of the total dollar figure coming from 10 fossil fuel providers: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, National Iranian Oil Co., Pemex, Coal India and the British Coal Corporation. For comparison, $28 trillion is a shade less than...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California is spending $500 million to put an additional 1,000 electric school buses on the road as federal cuts and freezes paused efforts in other states to replace aging diesel-fueled fleets that are more polluting. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced Wednesday that 1,000 zero-emission school buses and related charging infrastructure will be provided to over 130 rural, low-income and disadvantaged school districts. The state grants add about 500 more charging stations for school buses to more than 200 stations already in operation in districts. The expansion contrasts efforts in other states that were hampered by the...

President Trump continues to walk back his original tariff assault, and markets are pleased. They rose again Wednesday after Mr. Trump said he won’t fire the Federal Reserve Chairman and is likely to retreat from his highest China tariffs. Is this Mr. Trump’s François Mitterrand moment? Readers of a certain age will recall how the French Socialist President swept into power in 1981 promising a far left agenda of government control over the private economy. The market reaction was brutal. Within a year he had put socialism on pause and by 1983 he had abandoned most of it. He went...