Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- A fake 911 call that the White House was on fire sent emergency vehicles to the complex Monday morning, when President Joe Biden and his family were at Camp David. Fire engines and other emergency vehicles responded to a report just after 7 a.m. that the White House was ablaze and a person was trapped inside, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person was not authorized to talk about the fake emergency call and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Within minutes, District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services and...

A New York Democrat says taxpayers deserve answers after she captured and shared "unbelievable" video of cars appearing to belong to migrants being towed outside a Brooklyn shelter. "It seems like they're having more resources than the average American, so we deserve answers," Assemblywoman Jaime Williams, who represents southeast Brooklyn-area neighborhoods like Marine Park and Canarsie, told "Fox & Friends First" on Monday. "As soon as the tow trucks arrived on the scene, we saw the migrants running out of the tents, saying that it was the vehicles that had belonged to them. Actually, one of the migrants had a...

PITTSBURGH — Despite concerns raised by the city of Pittsburgh solicitor and the city council president after a series of 11 Investigates reports into the Jim Rogers tasing incident, the city controller has made the first payment to the family of Jim Rogers to settle the wrongful death lawsuit. Just several weeks ago, both the city solicitor and the council president vowed to delay the payment after 11 Investigates raised more questions about the settlement. Chief Investigator Rick Earle obtained a copy of the $4 million check the city sent to Rogers’ family. --snip-- Just last month Earle exclusively reported...

I'll never forget the day in 1983 when white people on my college campus accused me of not being a "real" Arab. And, worse, of acting and thinking like a white person. It was a surreal moment because it was white people doing the accusing. I'd been a dark-skinned person all my life, with a quintessential Arabic last name, but never considered myself white. I'm also Italian on my mother's side, and in the summers, my skin gets darker than Barack Obama's. I was raised in a New Jersey suburban town of 20,000 and was the only person with an...

Five Venezuelan migrants were arrested in two separate incidents last week after stealing hundreds of dollars in merchandise from retailers in the suburbs outside of Chicago, authorities said. The latest incident happened just before 1 p.m. Saturday at a Macy’s store in Oak Brook, the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office said. Lenguieyer Guevara-Muro, 27, and Jinder Moises Angulo-Aparicio, 20, allegedly stuffed the $770 worth of clothing into a foil-lined bag and left the store without paying. Guevara-Muro left the store carrying the bag and refused to stop when loss prevention officers and an Oak Brook police officer on patrol approached...

Students at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria gathered inside a lecture hall recently to hear me talk about race relations in America. But after making a few remarks about polarization and efforts to “roll back the clock” on civil rights, I cut short my verbal doom-scroll and wandered into the audience. The students were roughly 18 to 23. Gen Z, the zoomers. With their mastery of laptops and smartphones, this generation is said to put a premium on “proactive learning,” preferring interactive educational experiences “versus passively sitting and listening to a professor lecture for hours,” as the Annie E....

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has struggled to stop a hyper-aggressive cybercrime gang that's been tormenting corporate America over the last two years, according to nine cybersecurity responders, digital crime experts and victims. For more than six months, the FBI has known the identities of at least a dozen members tied to the hacking group responsible for the devastating September break-ins at casino operators MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment, according to four people familiar with the investigation. Industry executives have told Reuters they were baffled by an apparent lack of arrests despite many...

Furious migrants are refusing to stay in tent shelters set up for them in New York City - at great expense to the taxpayer - as they prefer their plush hotels in Manhattan. A group of asylum seekers were seen being bused to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn on Sunday. The site, part of a national park located in southeast of the New York City borough, is expected to hold 2,000 people. But they were immediately loaded on a bus back to Manhattan as they complained that they had jobs back in the city - and their kids had schools...

An Oregon man’s dogged search for the truth has left him nearly $1.4 million richer. Joshua Smith was forlorn when his feline sidekick, Frank, mysteriously disappeared. But Smith sported a Cheshire cat smile this week after a Multnomah County Circuit Court jury deliberated less than two hours before awarding him $1.375 million for the loss of his 3-year-old tabby, oregonlive.com reported. Smith had previously sued, claiming his landlord had “catnapped” the furball. “The jury’s message should be loud and clear to landlords,” said purr-suasive attorney Michael Fuller, who won the case. “You need to respect the rights of tenants, especially...

Amother and her family are being slammed on social media after video captures them wiping out an entire bowl filled with Halloween candy in front of a country musician’s Texas home. Cody Tate, a musician from the well known country band Whiskey Myers, posted security footage to his Instagram showing the family ravaging a giant basket full of treats on Tuesday. The video starts off by showing three adults, followed by four to five kids, running up to the house and clearing a huge black-colored basket loaded with candy one-by-one. One woman in a black hoodie appears to even smile...

Maisy Biden made a fashion statement at the White House State Dinner in October, celebrating the Prime Minister of Australia. Wearing a [pant]suit and a white bow tie, Maisy joined her sisters Finnegan and Naomi, and her brother-in-law Peter Neal, for the big event. Here, get to know President Biden's third-eldest grandchild: Maisy Biden was born in 2001, the youngest daughter of Hunter Biden and Kahleen Buhle. She has two older sisters, Finnegan Biden and Naomi Biden, and a younger half-brother, Beau Biden. She attended high school at Sidewell Friends with Sasha Obama, and the two were reportedly close.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — More than 260 charter flights believed to be carrying migrants from Haiti have touched down in Nicaragua in recent months, according to flight data and experts in the region, adding to a historic crush of migration by people hoping to reach the U.S. The flow of migrants has left the Biden administration and Latin American leaders scrambling for solutions, and experts say it's also being used as leverage by governments like Nicaragua’s to get concessions from the U.S. amid tightening sanctions. “The Ortega government knows they have few important policy tools at hand to confront the...

When Norelis Vargas heard about housekeeping work at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, she did not hesitate to sign up. Vargas, 39, who migrated from Venezuela and entered the U.S. about three months ago seeking asylum, had been living with her husband and three children for months at Union Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter on Skid Row, and needed the income. But when she arrived at Four Points by Sheraton on Oct. 6, Vargas said she was surprised to find a group of hotel employees picketing. “I thought, it’s good they are fighting for their rights,” Vargas said....

Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants the cows to stop farting, but it doesn’t appear that the Congresswoman is willing to stop farting herself. During a recent X/Twitter livestream, while discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict, Ocasio-Cortez appeared to rip a massive and loud fart mid-sentence. --snip-- Maybe AOC should limit her own carbon emissions. The fart quickly became the center of many headlines around the world, with Twitter users comparing the blast to Democrat Representative Eric Swalwell’s fart live on CNN several years ago. See a clip of Swalwell’s infamous gas blast below… For all the talk of carbon emissions, it appears...

Suzanne Somers, best known for her roles on Three's Company and Step by Step, has died. Somers died on Sunday morning, PEOPLE confirms. She was 76. “Suzanne Somers passed away peacefully at home in the early morning hours of October 15th. She survived an aggressive form of breast cancer for over 23 years,” Somers’ longtime publicist R. Couri Hay wrote in a statement shared on behalf of the actress’ family. “Suzanne was surrounded by her loving husband Alan, her son Bruce, and her immediate family,” the statement continued. “Her family was gathered to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16th....

Talk about being too close for comfort. The 2024 presidential race is all tied up, according to the latest NBC News poll. This survey (unlike some polls), is no outlier. The race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has been effectively tied for months. Looks like we’re in for another nail-biter. On one hand, this stalemate makes perfect sense. As Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter reminds us, Trump won the 2016 Electoral College by about 79,000 votes in three states, Biden won in 2020 by less than 45,000 in three states, and Republicans won the House by a very narrow...

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were denied a request to hitch a ride back to the United States with the Bidens on Air Force One after Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral in September. The White House worried that such escorting the estranged royals back across the pond would cause a “commotion,” sources told the Daily Mail. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex had been on the outs with the royal family following their bombshell 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey when the Queen died at age 96 on Sept. 8. The couple had been in the United Kingdom for charity events...

Three years ago, while the nation’s attention was on the 2020 presidential election, voters in Oregon took a dramatic step back from America’s long-running War on Drugs. By a 17-point margin, Oregonians approved Ballot Measure 110, which eliminated criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of any drug, including cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. When the policy went into effect early the next year, it lifted the fear of prosecution for the state’s drug users and launched Oregon on an experiment to determine whether a long-sought goal of the drug-policy reform movement—decriminalization—could help solve America’s drug problems. Early results of this reform...

The U.K. on Wednesday said Kyiv should show appreciation for the donations of weapons in order to convince Western politicians to provide further support in its fight against Russia. What Happened: The U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, speaking on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Lithuania, said he had warned Kyiv that its Western allies were “not Amazon," Reuters reported. Wallace said Ukraine had to persuade U.S. lawmakers and “doubting politicians in other countries that it’s worth it,” adding that “whether we like it or not, people want to see gratitude.” Wallace’s comments came in response to media queries...

PITTSBURGH — The district attorney’s office said a former employee at Highmark hacked into several customers’ accounts, including a school district and stole thousands of dollars. “You put your money in and it’s up to them to safeguard your money and when that doesn’t happen and you lose its detrimental,” said Lori Hickman. Lori Hickman of Butler County is one of eight victims in Highmark’s major data breach. Allegheny County District Attorney’s office charged Zakayah Scott who worked remotely from South Carolina for Highmark Health. Authorities said Scott had access to customers’ personal information including birthdays, addresses and phone numbers....