Free Republic

CNN — In the high-stakes criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Georgia, the defendant isn’t the only one campaigning. In an election year oddity, both the prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and the judge presiding over the case, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, are fighting to keep their seats. “They probably a little nervous,” Willis said with a nod to her team as she took the stage at a recent Democratic Party awards dinner. “They write all these speeches and then I say what I wanna say.” Such is the high-wire act for the...

The estranged wife of ex-special prosecutor Nathan Wade said in a Georgia court filing Friday that Wade claims his resignation from his post at the Fulton County District Attorney's office "constitutes a substantial change in circumstance, rendering him unable to meet his financial obligation" in their divorce proceedings. Wade was hired in 2021 by DA Fani Willis to help prosecute the sweeping election interference case against former President Trump. She was accused by Trump and co-defendants of having an "improper" affair with Wade. On March 15, Wade resigned after a Georgia judge gave Willis an ultimatum of either Willis or...

Yosemite has ranked high on a list of the top 10 list national parks for hiking, according to a recent report. The report by KURU Footwear considered all 63 national parks and looked at several metrics including the number of trails, miles of trails, and a high average trail rating score. ‘Most Instagrammable’: Yosemite awarded online top spot They also determined the crowd density in each park by comparing the average number of daily visitors with the acreage of the park. The list has placed Yosemite National Park at number one, and nearby Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National...

Note to self: Go to Mexico City immediately.Need one more reason to book a trip to Mexico City? Easy. You need to go taste the food at El Califa de León, the very first Mexican taco stand to earn a Michelin star. In May, a Michelin representative presented chef Arturo Rivera Martínez with the award, including the coveted white chef's jacket, which the Associated Press noted he didn't even bother putting on. He was just too busy searing his daily meats. The taco stand, located in the San Rafael neighborhood, only serves four tacos, but those four tacos, Michelin explained,...

Former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has applied for a presidential pardon ahead of her upcoming sentencing on perjury and mortgage fraud convictions, according to a letter sent to President Joe Biden by the Congressional Black Caucus on Thursday. Mosby, who was convicted on one count of mortgage fraud and two counts of perjury, is set to be sentenced next week. In February, a federal jury agreed she had made a false statement on a mortgage application for a home in Long Boat Key, Fla. The verdict came about three months after another jury convicted the once-high-profile prosecutor on...

A billionaire Wall Street financier who notoriously lost tens of billions in a matter of days has returned to court for his blockbuster fraud trial. Sung Kook 'Bill' Hwang, 60, the founder of Archegos Capital Management, is alleged to have triggered over $100 billion in shareholder losses when his family office fund failed to meet margin calls in March 2021. He was arrested in April 2022 and charged with fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, as prosecutors claim he carried out a scheme to defraud investors by lying about his firm's portfolio, which at one point stood at over $100 billion. If...

It’s part of a $51 million project to rebuild Washington-on-the-Brazos, “the birthplace of Texas,” where the declaration that created the Republic of Texas was signed.In 1843, Sam Houston toiled away at a desk in a sixteen-by-sixteen-foot log cabin not far from the muddy banks of the Brazos River. From that makeshift office in Washington-on-the-Brazos, about halfway between Austin and Houston, the then-president of the new Republic of Texas penned letters inviting the chiefs of several Native American tribes to join him for a council meeting. Many of the chiefs came, among them leaders from the Caddo, Delaware, and Shawnee tribes....

The callous Citi Bike rider who attacked two Orthodox Jewish boys in Brooklyn is shown in new surveillance footage released by the NYPD on Friday — as the department probes the violence as a possible hate crime. The victims, 11 and 13 — dressed traditionally as they played with several others on Franklin Avenue near Myrtle Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant — were both targeted Sunday night when the rider spotted them as he pedaled down the street. “Get off the sidewalk,” the man, believed to be between 18 and 20 years old, allegedly snarled at the kids as he rode past...

Back in December, Former UWL Chancellor Joe Gow was stripped of his Chancellorship and barred from campus the UW Board of Regents discovered he and his wife had been posting intimate videos of themselves on pornographic website. While Gow has said he understands the university’s decision to remove him as chancellor, it’s their push to terminate his position as a tenured professor he’s opposing. On Wednesday, in an exclusive interview with News 8 Now, Gow and his wife, Carmen Wilson, offered a candid look at the challenges ahead of them as they defend his faculty position. On Thursday, the couple...

<p>President Biden cited executive privilege Thursday to block the House Oversight Committee from getting copies of five hours of audio recordings from his interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur on Oct. 8-9, 2023, as well as tapes of ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer allegedly admitting to deleting incriminating recordings of Biden discussing classified information.</p>

The “West Point for Democratic operatives,” which credits itself for aiding President Biden’s victory, hired a digital director, who previously shared that “terrorism is the dream of politics.” Johannah King-Slutzky landed the digital director gig at the Democratic-aligned The Arena during the Fall in 2019, a few years after she had made a post discussing “terrorism” on her personal blog. “Terrorism is the dream of politics — ultimate togetherness, ultimate realness — in a way that neuters criticism,” the post on JKS’s personal blog said prior to her hire. “The point is this: Terrorism (and American anti-terrorism) are compelling because...

Headline-chasing Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s vanity project of a trial against former president Donald Trump comes at a high cost for New Yorkers. The time and expense Bragg has devoted to the flimsy-as-a-cobweb Trump charges are indefensible given how many dangerous crimes go unprosecuted. Criminals roam the streets with little fear of facing jail time. Manhattan’s crime clearance rate is an abysmal 29.8%. In 2023, NYC’s 109,303 prosecuted arrests resulted in an imprisonment rate of less than 7%. While Trump is going to trial and faces six to eight weeks of “embarrassing evidence,” most New York criminal cases summarily...

Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson are investigating whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office misused federal funds. The two Republican senators highlighted multiple reports accusing Willis’ office of squandering funds, including from the Justice Department Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and other initiatives, on frivolous items such as “swag” and unrelated travel. “In Fiscal Year (FY) 2020, OJJDP awarded Fulton County nearly $500,000 to establish the Fulton County Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention,” Grassley (R-Iowa) and Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote in a letter to Willis Wednesday. “The Center has yet to open and the ‘building...

Car manufacturers are slowing their transition to producing electric vehicles (EVs), because of low customer demand and production problems. Mercedes-Benz announced to investors in March of this year that it is going back on its pledge to sell only fully electric cars by 2030. Instead, investors were told that the company plans to continue to make gasoline-powered cars well into the next decade. Fully electric cars and hybrids will account for only up to half of its sales by 2030. It appears that carmakers are suffering after committing wholeheartedly to the ideological fad of EVs, rather than introducing them as...

A teen robbery crew ambushed more than a dozen victims — most around their own age — during a months-long violent mugging spree in and around the Bronx’s Claremont Park, police said this week. Three boys, 13, 14 and 17, plus an 18-year-old, Sincere Johnson, have been arrested in connection to the string of callous crimes that began back in January, the NYPD said — adding cops are still hunting for at least two more suspects. Most of the victims — some of whom were punched or threatened with knives during the muggings — were teenagers, as young as 14,...

Utah farm boy Dylan Rounds’ cause of death was revealed Wednesday as the “killer squatter” accused in the disappearance and death of the teen in 2022 pleaded guilty to murder. James Brenner, appearing in Utah’s First District Court for a preliminary hearing, pleaded guilty to a felony murder charge and two counts of possession of a firearm by a restricted person related to Rounds’ disappearance on Memorial Day weekend two years ago. During the preliminary hearing, Rounds’ cause of death was revealed as a gunshot wound to the head. As part of a plea deal, Brenner’s first-degree felony aggravated murder...

A bill aimed at booting illegal immigrants out of the U.S. if they assault a police officer passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening. It's one of several pieces of legislation that House Republican leaders are putting up for a vote this week as part of National Police Week. The bill passed with a 265 to 148 vote, with 54 Democrats voting with the GOP. The bill is called the Detain and Deport Illegal Aliens Who Assault Cops Act and is led by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J. He said in February when the bill was being introduced, "There...

The Madison Police and DNA Doe Project have identified skeletal remains found in a chimney in a music store in 1989. The remains were identified as Ronnie Joe Kirk from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Kirk according to investigators, was born in 1942, was adopted and raised by family members and attended high school in Tulsa. He was married and divorced twice, and fathered children. He had ties to Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, Alabama and Wisconsin. Kirk's remains were found on September 3, 1989. Speaking to Madison Magazine's Doug Moe in 2022, Good n' Loud Music owner Steve Liethen said he was working in...

The governing body that oversees high-school athletics in Florida could soon approve a proposal that would lead to high-school athletes getting paid through business agreements such as endorsement deals. The Florida High School Athletic Association held a discussion Tuesday about a potential change to the organization’s bylaws that would allow student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness under what is commonly known as an NIL policy. The 13-member board, which includes eight members appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in August, is slated to vote on the proposal during a June 4 meeting. “Student-athletes and their parents/guardians will be...

Mothers, law-enforcement officers and veterans are among people included in a new $5 million statewide ad campaign aimed at boosting support for a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow recreational use of marijuana in Florida, supporters of the measure announced Tuesday. Four ads will run on broadcast, cable, streaming, radio and digital platforms, according to the Smart & Safe Florida political committee, which has led efforts to pass what will appear as Amendment 3 on the November ballot. The ads say, in part, that regulated recreational marijuana is a better alternative to cannabis products sold on the black market.