Free Republic

Target's quarterly sales declined for the first time in six years, with one company executive blaming the drop on the "strong reaction" to its Pride merchandise. Target faced a backlash against its LGBTQ+ merchandise earlier this year, with some conservative shoppers vowing to boycott the store. The retailer's sales at stores open at the same time a year ago declined 5.4% in the second quarter, the company said on Wednesday. On a conference call to discuss the results, executives, including CEO Brian Cornell, primarily blamed wider economic issues for the drop, such as pinched consumers who are cutting back on...

By now, it’s become quite evident that the western half of the U.S. is facing one of the worst megadroughts in decades. We’ve spoken about fallow land and drying up reservoirs, but the question remains what happens next? Well, it’s not great, and it’s straight out of the playbook from the 1930s Great Depression when the same parts of the U.S. were transformed into a desert, triggering a grasshopper plague. A.P. News said federal agriculture officials are set to launch one of the largest grasshopper-killing campaigns in three decades amid an outbreak. The insects belong to the suborder Caelifera family...

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed legislation ensuring state schools teach the role and contributions of LGBT people in American history. Pritzker signed off on House Bill 346, which was recently passed by state House earlier this year, on Friday. The law requires all schools in the state include "the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this State" in official textbooks.

Kentucky clerk Kim Davis has obeyed orders to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the months since she spent five nights in jail for refusing to do so, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. United States District Judge David Bunning denied the American Civil Liberties Union's request to order Davis to reissue licenses she had altered to remove her name and title or face the possibility of further punishment. He found that Davis has allowed her deputies to issue licenses to anyone eligible since September and that the altered licenses are likely valid under Kentucky law. ...

Gov. Jerry Brown’s plans for massive water tunnels have yet to win approval, but a report shows California already is planning to take up to 300 farms to acquire land for the project. A 160-page report prepared by state contractors lays out plans to move rapidly to eminent domain to acquire land for two 30-mile-long tunnels. The tunnels would help ferry water from Northern and Central California to Southern California. …

A group called Rabbis from the Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel sent a letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry this Sunday, warning him to end his “antagonism” towards Israel. […] Drawing on Jewish history, the letters declares to Kerry: “If you continue on this destructive path, you will ensure your everlasting disgrace in Jewish history for bringing calamity upon the Jewish people—like Nebuchadnezer and Titus who destroyed, respectively, the first and second great Temples and the entire Holy City of Jerusalem, and who, by Heavenly punishment, brought eventual disaster upon themselves, too.” “By the...