Free Republic

“Suburbia will be no longer as we know it,” President Donald Trump warned on the campaign trail. He told voters that Biden wanted to get rid of single-family zoning, laws which require that only typical suburbia homes may be built in residential areas, which he warned would bring “who knows into your suburbs, so your communities will be unsafe and your housing values will go down.” Now, it seems, Joe Biden is proving him correct. In a White House issued ‘fact sheet’ for Biden’s radical infrastructure bill, he “calls on Congress to enact an innovative, new competitive grant program that...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The two men stepped from the shadows as the car turned off an upscale shopping street into a residential area located on the far edge of the rioting that swept through Minneapolis. It was after midnight. A pair of metal dividers blocked the road, and the men stepped to either side of the car as it stopped. Both carried assault rifles. “Do you live here?” one of the men asked, politely, but forcefully. His hands rested casually on the rifle slung across his chest, and a pistol was strapped to his belt. “We have lots of old...

Agitators behind the rioting that has paralyzed the country over the past week want to move into more suburban areas, a government intelligence source has told Fox News. Much of the worry stems from the notion that many in well-armed, suburban, and rural neighborhoods won't hesitate to exercise their Second Amendment rights and elevated anxieties could lead to heavy confrontation. "Antifa knows this," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Local and state authorities have to get a grip on this because if it moves to the suburbs, more people will die." Several analysts pointed to places...

Virginia House Del. Ibraheem Samirah introduced a bill that would override local zoning officials to permit multi-family housing in every neighborhood, changing the character of quiet suburbs.Oregon passed a similar bill, following moves by cities such as Minneapolis; Austin, Texas; and Seattle.Proponents say urban lifestyles are better for the environment and that suburbs are bastions of racial segregation. Democrats in Virginia may override local zoning to bring high-density housing, including public housing, to every neighborhood statewide — whether residents want it or not.The measure could quickly transform the suburban lifestyle enjoyed by millions, permitting duplexes to be built on...

Women who live in America’s suburbs are supporting President Donald Trump’s re-election bid, says a new report at OpenSecrets.org, that shows Trump is benefiting from a surge in large-dollar donations from women in suburbs – more than any Democrat candidate. While mainstream media are reporting some polls that suggest Trump is losing the support of women, the report by Open Secrets, part of the Center for Responsive Politics, shows the president has over 10,500 large-dollar contributions from women in suburbs, and has received $8,293,135 from them – the largest amount than any of the Democrat 2020 candidates. “Suburban women, who...

MIDDLETOWN, N.J. — It was only 7 a.m., but for the commuters stewing inside a Spartan train station in this bedroom community, the day was already off to a predictably bad start. Their train, North Jersey Coast Line 2606, which is supposed to depart at 7:06 a.m., had been canceled. Again. This time — the 18th cancellation of the year — the official explanation was “equipment availability resulting from a mechanical issue.” But these aggrieved riders in Middletown did not seem to care. They had heard all the excuses the railroad had to offer. All that really mattered was that...

ST. LOUIS • Continuing recent trends, new census data show the city of St. Louis is still losing population, with the overall metropolitan area registering hardly any growth at all. The new estimates, released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau, also show St. Charles County had the biggest gain in population in the area from 2017 to 2018, while the population of St. Louis County, the region’s most populous, essentially remained the same. It’s a familiar dynamic. The city started bleeding population in the 1950s as suburbs grew; St. Charles County started booming a generation later. For the city, though,...

The Democratic Party’s triumphal romp through suburbia was the big story of the midterms. In 2016 the suburbs, home to the majority of American voters, voted 50 to 45 for Donald Trump; this year, 52 percent went Democratic. In affluent suburban districts once controlled by the GOP—outside Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle, Kansas City and Philadelphia, and in Orange County, California—long-held GOP seats flipped and are unlikely to flip back unless Democrats alienate their new constituents by seeking to destroy suburban life.

One of the Donald Trump’s top political allies in New Jersey says that Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield) could face a primary challenge if he doesn’t stop bashing Trump. Nutley Commissioner Steve Rogers says that when Republicans like Bramnick bash Trump, they hurt the GOP brand. “Our party must return to its conservative roots-roots that are embedded in the Constitution,” Rogers told the New Jersey Globe. “I have been all over New Jersey and I find a hunger and thirst among Republicans as well as conservative Democrats and independents for a return to the values we embraced years ago.”

Democrats took control of the House by flipping seats in the nation’s suburbs, which have long been political battlegrounds. But those victories rested on more than just the votes of college-educated white voters, whose shift away from Donald Trump and the Republican Party has drawn wide attention. People of color were also a large component of the Democrats’ victories in the suburbs—increasingly diverse communities that no longer fit the stereotype of racial homogeneity. They are more likely to live in the suburbs than in urban areas, and no matter where they live, they tend to vote Democratic. In the AP...

For almost 35 years, Tarrant County has been the most reliably red, urban county in Texas. Then, on Election Day, Democrat Beto O'Rourke beat Republican incumbent Ted Cruz in the county.

Rep. Karen Handel (R-Ga.) conceded Thursday in her tight House race in an Atlanta suburb to gun control activist Lucy McBath (D). The victory puts the Georgia district in Democratic hands more than a year after the party fell short last year in a heated special election that drew national attention. Handel ended up winning by about five points over Jon Ossoff.

....Counties that haven’t voted for a Democrat in decades turned out for Beto O’Rourke in his unsuccessful bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, and he picked up enough support in ruby red Republican counties to force Cruz into single-digit wins. ... Tuesday night's results suggest that the Republican firewall in the suburbs could be cracking....

..."Rural America is really Republican and urban America...is pretty Democratic," and the suburbs are getting bluer, says New York Times columnist David Brooks.

House Republicans struggling to preserve their majority are facing a wave of Democratic money and enthusiasm in suburban districts across the country, as well-educated and moderate voters consider new checks on President Trump. An analysis of the types of districts in play shows that two-thirds of the Republican-held seats that a top election handicapper sees as vulnerable are in suburban areas. That has Republicans on defense in an area where Trump has bled support, even in the 2016 election he won. The Cook Political Report lists 64 Republican-held seats as either pure toss-ups, or leaning slightly toward Democrats or Republicans....

Dead malls are popping up all over the states, particularly in the Midwest, where economic decline has sped up the "going out of business" process. This map, put together by a Dead Malls Enthusiasts Facebook group, shows that well. As Americans are faced with multiple shopping options and more stores are leaving malls, it should be interesting to see if malls and mall culture will survive. What you are about to see is what happens when malls are abandoned. It's apocalyptic and really, really creepy....

HUNTERDON COUNTY, N.J. (CBSNewYork) – A tiny parasite could become a big problem this year in New Jersey. It’s an exotic tick that’s never been seen before in the United States. It was first spotted on a sheep in Hunterdon County, and efforts to wipe it out have failed. New Jersey has always been home to different species of ticks – five to be exact. But a new variety of the bloodsucking bug is now in the mix. It’s the East Asian tick, sometimes called a longhorned or bush tick. Originally found in Asia, thousands of them are now in...

During the final months of the U.S. race for the presidency, both major candidates claimed the “middle class” for their own, but what either meant by the term itself was left for voters to puzzle out. Confusion about the middle class—specifically, white suburban families—is nothing new, says Matthew Lassiter, a Research Fellow and associate professor of history at the University of Michigan. “For more than half a century, American political culture has celebrated white middle-class suburban families as the heart and soul of the nation, the hard-working, tax-paying heroes of Middle America, who safeguard traditional family values and maintain a...

Caucasian St. Louisans are to white flight as Kenyan runners are to the Boston Marathon. Volumes have been written about the ability of white St. Louisans to empty out a region, or as a former colleague from Fox 2 once said, “Yeah, a black family moved in seven blocks away and my parents ended up in Ellisville.” An entire library wing could be devoted to white flight in the Gateway City. From James Neal Primm’s 1998 Lion of the Valley to Colin Gordon’s 2009 Mapping Decline to 20 years of the Where We Stand reports from the East-West Gateway Council...

He's not going back to school. There aren’t enough grief counselors, well wishers or positive prayers to make Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg return to the school where his classmates were massacred unless Florida lawmakers pass gun control legislation. “I’m not going back to school on Wednesday until one bill is passed,” Hogg said at gun control rally Sunday in New Jersey.