Free Republic

In Tuesday’s special election in Michigan, Democrats won both House seats on the line, reclaiming control of the Michigan House. Both candidates who won, Mai Xiong of the 13th District and Peter Herzberg of the 25th District, were in areas that heavily favored Democrats. Democrats are now in control of both chambers of the state legislature as well as the office of the governor, giving them control of the entire state’s government. “I am incredibly humbled for the overwhelming support of the voters of the 13th House District, who have chosen me to represent our community as the next State...

Like communities around the country, Chicago is hemorrhaging cash to deal with the devastating consequences of Joe Biden’s border disaster. On Monday, the Budget and Government Operations Committee of the Chicago City Council voted 20-8 to send Mayor Brandon Johnson’s request for $70 million in additional City funding to care for illegals to the full Council. CBS News reports that the request is part of a spending plan announced by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle in February. The State of Illinois and Cook County pledged a combined $250 million to help fund the crisis,...

Democratic candidates Peter Herzberg and Mai Xiong are projected to win their special elections in two Michigan state House races, allowing the party to regain full control of the state Legislature, according to Decision Desk HQ. Xiong defeated Republican Ronald Singer in District 13, which includes parts of Detroit, Center Line and Warren in Macomb and Wayne counties, according to the Detroit Free Press. Meanwhile, Herzberg defeated Republican Josh Powell in District 25, which includes parts of Wayne, Canton and Westland in Wayne County, according to the news outlet. Xiong is a former refugee from Thailand who most recently served...

The Michigan Senate has approved legislation that mandates kindergarten attendance in Michigan.The bill, which supporters say will improve early education, passed with a vote of 21-15, with Republicans in the Democratic-controlled Senate largely opposed. It must now go to the Michigan House for consideration.Beginning with the 2025-26 school year, a child who is five years old on Sept. 1 would be required to enroll in kindergarten, whether in a traditional public school, charter school, private school, or if their parents are homeschooling them.Michigan is one of more than a dozen states that do not require kindergarten. Despite this, the state...

Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that abortion “is on the ballot in all 50 states’ because of a potential national abortion ban. Host Kristen Welker said, “Former President Trump held a rally last night. He did not mention the issue of abortion, but earlier this week he noted that abortion laws are left up to the states. he said he wouldn’t support a national ban. How concerned are you that his efforts to straddle the line could effectively weaken this issue for Democrats?”

Two brothers from Nigeria pleaded guilty Wednesday in connection with an international sextortion ring, in which they threatened to release a nude photo of a 17-year-old Michigan boy, driving him to commit suicide inside his home. Samuel Ogoshi, 22, and Samson Ogoshi, 20, each pleaded guilty to conspiring to sexually exploit teenage boys, US Attorney Mark Totten said in a statement. The Ogoshi brothers await sentencing later this year, and we are still pursuing the extradition of the third defendant, Ezekiel Robert,” Totten added. DeMay, 17, was found dead in his home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound March 25, 2022,...

Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) on Thursday refused to condemn “death to America” chants that featured prominently at a rally in the district she represents. Last week, at an anti-Israel demonstration in Dearborn, Michigan, local activist Tarek Bazzi led a crowd in chants of “death to America” and “death to Israel,” saying the Jewish state “does not deserve to exist” and celebrating former Iranian ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Fox Business reporter Hillary Vaughn approached Tlaib in the halls of the United States Capitol Complex and asked whether the Michigan congresswoman would condemn the chants. Rather than answer Vaughn’s question, Tlaib said...

It was Al-Quds Day last Friday. To celebrate the occasion, protesters in Dearborn, Mich., chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” while a speaker named Tarek Bazzi declared the United States — a place that’s afforded him the liberty to openly support rapists, murderers and terrorists — one of the “rottenest countries” on the planet. “It’s the entire system that has to go,” he explained to cheers of, what I assume, were American citizens. As commentator Seth Mandel noted on X, there’s Charlottesville every other day in America, and barely anyone on the left cares. Most progressives, let’s face...

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, the city’s first Muslim and Arab American mayor, is being mocked online over attempts to engage in “damage control” after the city’s residents were seen at a rally chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” On Sunday, a video of anti-Israel protesters in Dearborn, Michigan, closing out Ramadan by chanting, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” during an International Al-Quds Day rally, went viral on social media.

Ethan Crumbley’s parents were sentenced to between 10 and 15 years behind bars Tuesday for their son’s 2021 massacre that left four students dead — the first parents convicted in a US mass school shooting. James and Jennifer Crumbley were handed the prison time by Judge Cheryl Matthews in a Pontiac, Mich., courtroom after they were found guilty on involuntary manslaughter charges at separate trials in March and February, respectively. The duo are the first parents in the nation’s history to be convicted in relation to a school shooting carried out by their child. The parents faced prison for failing...

Old Joe Biden has stabbed Israel in the back in order to try to ensure that he carries Michigan in November, but at least some of the Muslims in the Great Lake State don’t exactly seem grateful. Friday was International Al-Quds Day, an orgy of global victimhood posturing and rage over Israel’s refusal to surrender to the Palestinian jihad, and in Dearborn, rallygoers observing the day demonstrated that if Biden actually cared about the wellbeing of the American people, he would have bigger things to think about in Michigan than the presidential election. Dearborn’s International Al-Quds Day rally was streamed...

Sadly, not by drinking it—the government just lost a fifth of the state’s inventory.It's been a rough couple of years for government-controlled liquor systems. In 2022, news broke of an inside job at the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority (ABC), in which a former state employee tipped off private collectors about which state-run liquor stores were expecting deliveries of rare and sought-after bourbons. Last year, Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission officials were busted for siphoning off hard-to-obtain bourbons for their personal use. Now, Michigan is writing the latest chapter in the government's century-long saga of alcohol control embarrassments. According to...

One of the Catholic Church’s most infamously dissident prelates, Archbishop Thomas Gumbleton, died April 4 at age 94. In many ways, Gumbleton’s life was emblematic of the direction the Catholic Church took after Vatican II. He was born in 1930 and was one of nine children – a Catholic family size now rare outside of Traditional Latin Mass circles. Gumbleton and several of his siblings pursued religious vocations. He was ordained a priest in 1956, shortly before the Second Vatican Council and its use as justification to radically change Catholic worship. In 1968, Pope Paul VI appointed Gumbleton an auxiliary...

Donald Trump holds a slight lead over Joe Biden in the critical battleground state of Michigan, according to the Wolverine State Poll for April 2024.

The largest producer of fresh eggs in the U.S. said Tuesday it had temporarily halted production at a Texas plant after bird flu was found in chickens, and officials said the virus had also been detected at a poultry facility in Michigan. In Texas, Ridgeland, Mississippi-based Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. said in a statement that approximately 1.6 million laying hens and 337,000 pullets, about 3.6% of its total flock, were destroyed after the infection, avian influenza, was found at the facility in Parmer County, Texas. The plant is on the Texas-New Mexico border in the Texas Panhandle about 85 miles southwest...

CHICAGO — A Chicago man on parole for residential burglary and on electronic monitoring for three more residential burglaries he allegedly committed while on that parole is back in custody, accused of burglarizing yet another home while wearing his ankle monitor. Let’s start at the beginning, though: May 2019. That’s when prosecutors charged Kevin Purdis with burglarizing a Lincoln Park home while he was on electronic monitoring for allegedly using credit cards that were taken during burglaries. He sat in jail until a judge agreed to let him out due to concerns about the dangers of the COVID pandemic. Four...

Newcomer is the new word for illegal aliens. In Biden's America, there is a new word for everything. In Michigan, Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer has gone so far as to name a rent assistance program the Newcomer Rental Subsidy program. It offers landlords $500 for each illegal alien. The program "provides Refugees and other Newcomer population-eligible households with rental assistance up to $500 per month for up to 12 months, with eligibility based on immigration status and household income."Program applicants must have eligible immigration status, which includes refugees, asylum-seekers, special immigration visa holders, victims of human trafficking, Cubans, Haitians, Afghan...

One of Michigan’s wealthiest counties, which voted heavily for Joe Biden in 2020, has become the target of organized migrant gangs of home invaders, according to the county sheriff. Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard is warning residents that the gangs of illegals are targeting high-end homes, especially of those who are out of town on spring breakvacations, according to WXYZ-TV Detroit. This is not the first time the area has been beset by a spree of home invasions by migrants. A similar wave of break-ins occurred last spring and Bouchard’s office launched a special task force that netted several arrests....

James Albert Maierle was a well-known educator and sportsman born in 1942 in Calumet, Michigan. He was an enthusiastic hunter, fisherman, and woodsman. He is well known in his local area and published a few stories in hunting magazines. He died in 2022. His son related the circumstances of his father’s shooting of a black bear in self-defense in the early 1960s on the Montreal River in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The location is only a few miles from where Maierle grew up. The area was pretty wild in the early 1960s. After the major copper mine shut down...

Former President Donald Trump and presumed candidate for the Republican party in the upcoming 2024 election will hold a rally centered around "Biden's Border Bloodbath" next Tuesday. The rally comes on the heels corporate media outlets spread his comments taken out of context to fuel what has now been dubbed the "bloodbath hoax" and the hashtag #BidensBorderBloodbath trending on social media.