Free Republic

State Farm is evidently not satisfied with an emergency 17% rate hike for homeowners in California, and intends to ask for 11% more, adding up to a total of nearly 30% — despite failing its obligations to consumers. As Breitbart News reported earlier this month, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara granted State Farm’s requested rate hike, despite protests from residents affected by the recent California wildfires. Victims of both the Eaton and Palisades Fires have complained that State Farm engages in “lowballing” estimates of compensation for damages — a practice that, Sen Josh Hawley (R-MO) reported last week, the company...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine and its allies are ready for a “full, unconditional ceasefire” with Russia for at least 30 days starting on Monday, Ukrainian FM Andrii Sybiha said Saturday. His remarks came as the leaders of four major European countries visited Kyiv, amid a push for Moscow to agree to a truce and launch peace talks on ending the nearly three-year war. They followed what Sybiha said was a “constructive” phone call between them, U.S. President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Saturday also marked the last day of a unilateral three-day ceasefire declared by Russia...

WASHINGTON — President Trump spoke Friday with Canada’s new prime minister as the US prepares to slap 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports — and referred to Mark Carney by his title, dropping the “governor” moniker he applied to predecessor Justin Trudeau. “I just finished speaking with Prime Minister Mark Carney, of Canada,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It was an extremely productive call, we agree on many things, and will be meeting immediately after Canada’s upcoming Election to work on elements of Politics, Business, and all other factors, that will end up being great for both the United States...

Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Wednesday on CNN’s “OutFront” that the Signal chat among senior national security officials shows President Donald Trump’s second administration was “drunk with power.” Schiff said, “There will be no accountability in his administration. He isn’t going to hold people responsible. He doesn’t want to fire people. He doesn’t even want to talk about it. He wants to put this off as another witch hunt, another hoax is kind of go to deflection. Don’t look at me whatever you do, America, I’m not responsible. That’s just going to breed further mistakes. We can’t have any confidence...

President Donald Trump was hailed with massive cheers in Philadelphia Saturday, as he attended the NCAA Men’s Division I Wrestling Championship. The crowd rose to its feet and heartily applauded Trump as he entered the Wells Fargo Arena and stood on the event floor for about a minute waving to the onlookers. Broadcaster ESPN even interrupted an interview with national champion Carter Starocci to cut to the president’s grand entrance.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience in Berlin, Germany, on Tuesday the Trump administration “has thrown in its lot with the autocrats.” “Autocracy is on the march,” Clinton said, apparently at the World Forum on the Future of Democracy, Tech and Humankind. “And we now have a government in the United States that has thrown in its lot with the autocrats, which has made a choice to support those who wage war, not peace, who have given enormous power to the men who control the information flow in our world, who have all pledged allegiance to the...

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky shot down the prospect of agreeing to an immediate ceasefire with Russia despite his country being on the back foot after three years of war with a much larger adversary. Apparently bolstered by fawning displays of support from European leaders in London on Sunday, Zelensky expressed intent to continue the war until he is satisfied with the security guarantees on offer from Western powers. “If you don’t have an end to the war and you don’t have security guarantees, no one is able to control a ceasefire,” Zelensky said, according to the Financial Times. The Ukrainian leader...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on this week’s broadcast of “Sunday Morning Futures” that former President Donald Trump was “100%” with him. Host Maria Bartiromo asked, “The former president, President Trump has talked about the possibility of turning aid for Ukraine into a loan. Is that what you’re considering?” Johnson said, “Yes. You know, I had a great visit with him on Friday, and he and I are 100% united on these big agenda items.”

BEIJING—The extent of China's soil pollution, long guarded as a state secret, was laid out in an official report that confirmed deep-seated fears about contaminated farmland and the viability of the country's food supply. Nearly one-fifth of the country's arable land is polluted, officials said in the report, shedding unexpected light on the scale of the problem—a legacy of China's three decades of breakneck economic growth and industrial expansion.

Water insecurity. China is home to about 20 percent of the world’s population but only 7 percent of its freshwater sources. Overuse has led to severe shortages, and industry along China’s major water sources has polluted supplies. Construction of hydropower dams along major rivers has also damaged ecosystems. The government released a plan in 2015 for preventing water pollution that included placing controls on polluting industries. The quality of surface waters—bodies such as lakes, rivers, and streams—has since improved. However, groundwater continues to fall short of targets, with more than 80 percent categorized as “bad to very bad.” Desertification. More...

China has increased its reliance on food imports over the past two decades, prompting concerns among officials who worry that disruptions to food supply chains could trigger domestic unrest. In particular, this reliance has heightened China’s sensitivity to food supply disruptions caused by geopolitical tensions, such as Russia’s war in Ukraine. What is China’s current food security situation? With less than 10 percent of the planet’s arable land, China produces one-fourth of the world’s grain and feeds one-fifth of the world’s population. Data from the country’s National Bureau of Statistics showed that in 2022, China’s grain output reached a record...

No one should ever have taken this story seriously in the first place. But it fit the Left’s picture of reality so well, it couldn’t be resisted. The idea that there would be a second-grade teacher in any school in the country in 2022 who would feel free to rip off a Muslim student’s hijab simply doesn’t accord with the real world. But in the Left’s world, we’re not living in 2022 at all, or if we are, it is a nightmare version of 1955, with “white supremacists” running rampant, terrorizing defenseless People of Color whose just grievances are laughed...

The Italian Higher Institute of Health has revised the February 2020 to October 2021 COVID death toll from a previously reported 130,468 fatalities to only 3,783. The reason for the revision is that the higher figure included all deaths in which the deceased tested positive for COVID, while the lower figure counted only those who actually died from COVID. This revision was soundly denounced by Dr. Anthony Fauci who called it "the wrong message at the wrong time. It clashes with the protocol we've adopted here in the United States that anyone dying with COVID should be classified as a...

t may contain the “Crossroads of the World,” but Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday that Manhattan is “not the center of our universe.” Only about 10 percent of Manhattan office workers were back as of Sept. 18, more than six months after the coronavirus pandemic upended life in the Big Apple, the Wall Street Journal had reported, citing data from commercial real estate services firm CBRE Group Inc. “When Mayor de Blasio makes dismissive comments about the dire lack of commercial activity in Midtown, he’s really dismissing the needs of hundreds of thousands of everyday New Yorkers who will...

Elevator etiquette requires that no more than two parties share a ride, and that’s only if the next party in line says it’s OK. And Broadway is still dark, an ominous symbol of what Covid has wrought on the Big Apple.

Six weeks after the city and county of San Francisco reopened restaurant dining rooms, cases of COVID-19 have skyrocketed by 250 percent, city officials say. That’s why, as of 11:59 p.m. on Friday, November 13, 2020, restaurants will be required to shut their indoor dining operations down again, and to revert to an outdoor dining, takeout, and delivery model for an unknown period of time. “With winter on the way, limited indoor dining represented the only real hope for many restaurants to survive the next three months,” the GGRA says, as “the majority of restaurants simply cannot make it financially...

San Francisco’s Department of Public Health (DPH) has shut down at least 10 bars across the city, saying that even after repeated warnings, the venues continued to violate health orders intended to slow the spread of COVID-19. And according Ben Bleiman, the city’s most vocal defender of bars and nightlife, they should shut down even more. According to DPH spokesperson Jenna Lane, that list is accurate, but she hastened to add that all of those closures were only temporary, and that as of November 11, all the bars had reopened. Here’s how it works, Lane says: Members of the public...

The Bay Area’s brief indoor dining boom is over, as Santa Clara, Marin, and Contra Costa Counties announced that all restaurants must move back to takeout, delivery, and outdoor service as of Tuesday, November 17, after a sharp uptick in cases of COVID-19. Those three counties join San Francisco, which closed dining rooms as of November 14, even as other regions, like Alameda and Solano counties, warn that they might also revert to takeout and outdoor service only.

San Francisco CrossFit helped broaden the appeal of a type of training that was considered unconventional in the fitness industry when it opened 15 years ago. Now the popular business has become another victim to the pandemic. CrossFit held a final training session on Sunday then closed for good. Longtime members of the facility said the loss is much bigger than just a gym. They said they will miss the community and the relationships that they’ve built over the years. “It’s really sad. I mean we’ve been here for 15 years. As you can see, you know, there’s a huge...

With coronavirus again surging across California, officials are faced with a narrowing number of options to slow the spread.Weekly coronavirus cases have doubled in the last month around the state, and Los Angeles County recorded more than 6,800 cases over the weekend, an alarming spike that has officials talking about more restrictions.