Free Republic

A San Francisco school board member apologized Tuesday after she made a racist statement, saying one of the biggest challenges in educating Black and brown students was their “unstable family environments” and “lack of parental encouragement to focus on learning.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Elections officials announced Tuesday that a recall election against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin will appear on the ballot in June, giving residents of the politically liberal city a chance to keep or oust a polarizing figure and former public defender who has been a prosecutor for less than two years. Critics say Boudin, 41, has failed to prosecute repeat offenders, allowing them to commit more crimes that have contributed to the deterioration of the city's quality of life. His supporters say his progressive policies of ending mass incarceration and promoting restorative justice are what San...

mily Wilder, a journalist and 2020 graduate of Stanford University, started a new job as an Associated Press news associate based in Maricopa County, Arizona, on May 3. Two weeks later, she was unceremoniously fired by the news outlet after conservatives resurfaced old social media posts that drew attention from Republicans as prominent as Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. In Wilder's eyes, her firing is the latest example of right-wing cancel culture. "There's no question I was just canceled," Wilder told SFGATE by phone Thursday afternoon. "This is exactly the issue with the rhetoric around 'cancel culture.' To Republicans, cancel culture...

A plodding, months-long review kicks off Wednesday to confirm what appears inevitable: California Gov. Gavin Newsom will face a recall election that could oust the Democrat before his first term ends. Recall organizers believe Newsom and leaders in the Democratic-run Legislature will do everything possible to delay the election, hoping that his fortunes turn as virus cases fall, vaccinations increase and schools and businesses reopen. “They can’t win at the ballot box. The only way they can win is to delay the system and delay the process,” said recall senior adviser Randy Economy. Newsom’s popularity has tumbled in recent months...

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is "worried" about the recall effort against him that might have collected enough signatures to go to a vote, he said Tuesday. "I want to know, as a former Californian person, what is this really about?" The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked. "Because I think you've done a pretty damn good job in this gigantic state of keeping it together in circumstances where you didn't get a lot of help." "Am I worried about it? Of course, I'm worried about it," he said. "The nature of these things. The up-or-down question. The zero-sum nature of...

The San Francisco school board is accused of basing its decision to strip the historical names of 44 public schools off of "casual Google searches". ...The report links directly to the Zoom meetings of the renaming committee, and to its spreadsheet, where the Wikipedia entries justifying the committee’s actions are cited. ...James Lick, the wealthiest man in California when he died in 1876, got the boot because the committee disliked his funding of a sculpture depicting a prostrate Indian at the feet of white men. Nobody apparently read the article, however, because it clearly noted that Lick underwrote the sculpture...

Lamar Jackson vs. Nick Bosa. The NFL’s most dynamic offense against one of its stingiest defenses. A rematch of a Super Bowl played seven years ago and a possible preview of another. The game Sunday between the San Francisco 49ers (10-1) and the Baltimore Ravens (9-2) is one of the premier matchups of the entire season, even if it won’t get the national television exposure it deserves. The game will be played in the early window after the league opted to flex the Oakland-Kansas City game into the doubleheader slot and kept the matchup between New England and Houston in...

San Francisco small business owners say their ability to keep the doors open is being threatened by the city’s high level of crime. Earlier this month there was a break in at a tea shop called Boba Guys. The owner published a photo of his smashed front glass on Instagram along with a message saying he’d seen the city “transform into Gotham” and suggesting it was time for small business owners to “take our city back.” We just had our third break-in in SF this year. Another broken window which we will board up immediately. Seems like we’ve seen...

February 16, 2019: "Three people were injured Friday night when panicked audience members “self-evacuated” during a performance of the musical “Hamilton” in San Francisco, police said. A woman in the audience had a medical emergency during the scene in which the title character, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, is shot on stage, said Joseph Tomlinson, public information officer for the San Francisco police. Audience members mistakenly thought there was a real-life shooting and rushed the exits, he said. CNN affiliate KPIX reported the someone in the audience shouted, “Gun!”...."

The closing campaign strategy of President Donald Trump and Republicans is often depicted as mainly an effort to galvanize the GOP's blue-collar white base through fear-mongering about immigrants and incitement of racial-cultural tensions around imagery of angry Democratic mobs and protesting African American athletes. But there's a second piece to the strategy that's also crucial: Trump and Republicans want college-educated white voters, particularly suburban women, to ignore all that unpleasant racial and cultural demagoguery entirely - and focus only on the economy. It is widely observed that Democrats are favored to take back the House because of a backlash against...

A robot patrolling a street in San Francisco to ward off homeless people has been removed after complaints from locals, who also knocked it over and smeared it with feces. The Knightscope K5 security robot was deployed by the San Francisco branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) to deter homeless people from sleeping and loitering near its building.

In San Francisco, autonomous crime-fighting robots that are used to patrol parking lots, sports arenas, and tech company campuses are now being deployed to keep away homeless people. The San Francisco Business Times reported last week that the San Francisco SPCA, an animal advocacy and pet adoption group, put a security robot to work outside its facilities in the gentrifying Mission neighborhood. The robot's presence is meant to deter homeless people from setting up camps along the sidewalks. Last week, the City of San Francisco ordered the SF SPCA to keep its robot off the streets or be fined...

Let's be clear: Radical Islam doesn't have a monopoly on anti-#LGBT violence. Radical Christianity more than holds its own. #PulseNightclub

REGIONAL BREAKDOWNS: SoCal is head over heels for Trump (Trump 49 percent; Cruz 34, Kasich 13) , Central Valley leans Trump (Trump 39, Cruz 26, Kasich 18), and Inland Empire for Cruz (Cruz, 43, Trump 30, Kasich, 9). Silicon Valley and the Bay Area? Kasich trounces Trump 43-36, with Cruz at 14.

KGO which is basically the affiliated liberal side of the same KSFO – KGO radio family (“sister stations”) is in the middle of massive firings and shakeups. KGO changed their format a long while back, the stalwart of liberal talk didn’t work and their ratings dropped, with the exception of course of the longtime KGO talk host Ronn Owens who does have a dedicated audience and instead he has now moved over to KSFO taking Mark Levin’s slot. Mark Levin has been taken off his current live 3pm to 6pm slot, and instead for now put into a “red hear”...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday called on the House to take up legislation to ban guns from terrorist suspects, and said Congress needs to take this step to fulfill its duty to protect all Americans from violence. "We cannot remain silent," the California Democrat said at a hearing of the Democrats' Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. "For us to honor the responsibilities that we have to protect and defend the American people, we must not only have moments of silence, we must have days of action." "To start, we can and must bring up the bipartisan Deny Firearms...

An article declaring the death of hipsters in San Francisco managed to crash 48 Hills, a donation based website from former Bay Guardian editor Tim Redmond and publisher Marke Bieschke. Bieschke, who now serves as the publisher of 48 Hills, penned a post on Tuesday called "The San Francisco hipster is dead, y'all," naming the imminent closure of Mission District restaurant Boogaloos as the "locally sourced, hand-wrought nail in the neon coffin of a once inescapable lifestyle caricature." "Not even a robust gap-year trust fund can withstand the skyrocketing rents here," he wrote. "And who can afford anymore to launch...

Aldon Smith’s turbulent career with the 49ers ended Friday morning, shortly after his fifth arrest since 2012 and third instance of alleged drunk driving. The 49ers announced Smith’s release three hours after he posted bail, following Thursday night’s arrest by Santa Clara police for drunken driving, hit-and-run and vandalism. “This organization has tried very hard to help Aldon fight his issues,” an unattributed statement from the 49ers said. “Although he is no longer a member of this team, our support and concern for him will continue.”

In a court filing Tuesday, Chow’s legal team alleged that this time around, he was being “selectively prosecuted” by federal authorities ... FBI reports and wiretap evidence that suggest San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and others participated in public corruption schemes but were spared prosecution “due to their political affiliations.”

Just last month, Apple chief executive Tim Cook made headlines when he wrote a piece in The Washington Post, panning Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act as "very dangerous." Apple, Cook wrote, does not believe in discrimination and strives to "do business in a way that is just and fair." This month, the San Francisco Chronicle's Wendy Lee reported, Apple fired some construction workers at Apple Campus 2 in January because they had been convicted of felonies or face felony charges. Just and fair? Hardly. Apple would not respond on the record, but someone familiar with the matter said the Apple...