Free Republic

While Donald Trump is not a politician known for his message discipline, he took the world by storm in 2016 with a well-articulated diagnosis of what ailed the nation. “Make America Great Again” managed in four words to assert that America had been great, that it no longer was, and that he would do something about it. His current campaign, by contrast, has devolved into the litigation of personal vendettas, crass promotion of niche issues like cryptocurrency, and pandering to the donor class on tax cuts and temporary labor. The rallying cry to “Make America Great Again” has become the...

Ansarallah, the Shiite jihadist terror organization commonly known as the Houthis, published a video on Thursday that it claimed showed its members boarding the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion and planting bombs while chanting, “Allahu akbar.” The Houthis, who control the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and launched a terrorist campaign to disrupt commercial shipping in the Red Sea late in 2023, attacked the Sounion on August 21, reportedly using projectiles and a private attack at sea. The attack necessitated the evacuation of the ship’s crew, leaving the oil tanker and its cargo of 150,000 tons of crude oil abandoned, a floating...

The Deputy PM was seen partying away in front of a huge crowd ahead of Parliament's return from summer recess next week. A clip, shared by actress Denise van Outen, shows Ms Rayner dressed in red as she dances to a remix of Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know. She described it as a "surprise booth rave up with Angela Rayner". Ms Rayner is believed to have flown to Ibiza following her meeting with mayors, regulators and fire chiefs about unsafe cladding on Wednesday. It is not the first time she has enjoyed a rave, with the minister having...

Former President Trump’s campaign is attacking Fox News after the network released polling this week showing him trailing Vice President Harris in several key battleground states ahead of November. “It’s that time of year again. Fox is releasing atrocious polling,” the campaign said in a statement Thursday. “President Trump continues to outperform polling from past cycles.” “President Trump is 10 points ahead of where he was in Arizona at this point in 2020, according to Fox. Likewise, he is running 8 points ahead of his 2020 polling in Nevada and 5 points ahead of his 2020 polling in North Carolina,”...

This week, South Korea's intelligence services offered a glimpse of the upgraded alliance between Russia and North Korea in action. North Korea has been sending vast shipments of artillery ammunition to Russia, a lifeline in the invasion of Ukraine that has isolated it from much of the world. Citing an intelligence report, a South Korean lawmaker said that since 2022 North Korea had sent more than 13,000 shipping containers to Russia that may contain up to 6 million shells. .... A new use for old gunsOld-fashioned munitions have become vital once more in Ukraine, where fighting often resembles the grueling...

The task force responsible for seizing the fentanyl has focused on points of entry along the southern border. Newsom doubled down on the program in June, increasing the California National Guard Deployment by 152% at the San Ysidro, Otay Mesa, Tecate, and Calexico Ports of Entry.

Shake Shack plans to close multiple "underperforming" restaurants in several U.S. states, according to a document filed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday (August 27). The popular chain plans to close nine stores located in California, Ohio and Texas, however, no other stores are expected to be affected and the plan won't impact expansion in the three states, according to the filing. All Shake Shack management affected by the closures will be offered positions at neighboring locations and hourly employees will be eligible for rehire. Six of the nine Shake Shacks scheduled to close are in California...

Even though the petition deadlines for minor party and independent presidential candidates have not yet passed in most states, already eight minor party and independent presidential candidates are facing challenges to their ballot access. This is the highest number of such candidates in history. “Challenge” means an outside individual or group initiated an administrative action or a lawsuit to keep someone off the ballot. It does not mean that the state election office itself kept a candidate off the ballot. Generally, when challenges are mounted to a minor party or independent presidential candidate, only one such candidate is the target,...

Prosecutors have indicted Matthew Farwell, a former Stoughton police detective, on charges that he killed 23-year-old Sandra Birchmore. Birchmore was pregnant at the time of her death in February 2021. After being told that he was the father of the child, Farwell strangled Birchmore to death and staged the scene to appear as if she took her own life, according to documents filed by federal authorities Tuesday in U.S. District Court... Farwell befriended Birchmore, going to the library with her and contacting her on social media. He “essentially groomed her,” Acting United States Attorney Joshua Levy said at the press...

Lucy Letby has become arguably the most notorious serial killer of modern times. Convicted of killing seven babies in her care and attempting to kill seven others – the former neonatal nurse will die in prison. But for some time now, a growing number of experts have been raising concerns about her trials, claiming that vital evidence may have been misinterpreted. Others insist that much of the debate is misguided and there is no evidence to show that the trial was in any way unfair or unreliable. An inquiry into the Countess of Chester Hospital and the NHS’s handling of...

An amateur Australian soccer team has stirred controversy after the squad, which includes five transgender women, dominated a women-only tournament and claimed the $1,000 prize, according to a report. The Sydney-based Flying Bats FC went undefeated during the four-week tournament, including one game in which one of the transgender women scored six goals en route to a 10-0 beatdown, the Daily Telegraph reported. Some parents pulled their daughters from matches over safety concerns, officials from other soccer clubs in the North West Sydney League told the paper. They believe the Flying Bats, who are backed by Pride Football Australia, should...

Pavel Durov, the CEO and co-founder of the news and messaging app Telegram, has been charged in France with enabling various forms of criminality in the app, French prosecutors said Wednesday.One of the charges — complicity in administering an online platform permitting illicit transactions by an organized group — carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 euros ($555,750), prosecutors said. (snip) On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the outrage, writing in a post on X that “The arrest of the head of Telegram on French territory took place in the context of...

CV NEWS FEED // Americans United for Life (AUL), a leading pro-life advocacy group, has published a report on the importance of federal rules regulating mail-order abortions. The Biden Administration wants to eliminate those rules. AUL states that the Aug. 26 report “provides an overview and statutory history of federal mail-order abortion rules,” addressing misconceptions about the rules. Litigation Counsel Carolyn McDonnell, the report’s author, explains that 18 U.S.C. §§ 1461–1462, part of the federal Comstock Act, restricts the US Postal Service from mailing abortifacients. Express companies, common carriers, or interactive computer services are also restricted from mailing abortifacients. Moreover,...

Two astronauts who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will return to Earth next year on a SpaceX vehicle in yet another humiliating blow to Boeing's reputation.NASA's Plan B: Why SpaceX Is Completing Boeing's Starliner Mission | 6:40The Wall Street Journal | 5.53M subscribers | 389,477 views | August 24, 2024

(Aug. 27, 2024) — Well, whatta ya know. Yet another source – this time an established, tax-exempt IRS “527 Organization” rather than an individual human being – raises the issue of the likely compromised “natural born Citizen” (“nbC”) bona fides of Kamala Devi Harris. The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (“NFRA”) has brought the issue back into the public square with its 39-page “Platform and Policy Document” directly questioning Harris’s constitutional eligibility. As a preliminary matter, the story of the NFRA Platform and Policy Document appears in the online version of “The Independent,” a left-leaning media outlet based in London….,...

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More than 200 former aides to the three GOP presidential nominees who preceded former President Trump in 2016 — former President George W. Bush, former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) — endorsed Vice President Harris on Monday. The majority of the group also endorsed President Biden in 2020. The group wrote a letter announcing the endorsement, USA Today first reported. The letter said it was a reunion of sorts from 2020, though it added that additional Bush alumni in particular were added to the group this cycle that are opposing Trump and backing Harris. “Of course,...

Former Congresswoman and Democratic Party politician Tulis Gabbard is endorsing former President Donald J. Trump’s bid to retake the White House in the November 2024 presidential election.Speaking alongside Trump at the 2024 National Guard Association of the United States General Conference & Exhibition before 4,000 attendees, Gabbard—a United States Army Reserve officer who represented Hawaii in Congress from 2013 to 2021—announced she is bucking the partisan divide and backing Trump over Kamala Harris.

When Belle got a call last September that her 10-year-old had been sent to the vice principal’s office, she rushed over to the school. Her son Lee looked on anxiously as the vice principal explained the situation: The fifth grader had angrily pointed his finger in the shape of a gun. Belle scolded him for not thinking before he acted, agreeing with administrators at the East Tennessee public elementary school who felt that he had misbehaved. While Lee sat at home for a few days serving a suspension, the principal called Belle. The school had conducted an investigation and determined...

Sens. Rand Paul and Chuck Grassley are raising concerns that the Transportation Security Administration may be improperly using watchlists and screening procedures to target individuals for their political views. In a letter sent Wednesday to Transportation Security Administrator David P. Pekoske, Mr. Paul cited two examples of concern as he asked for documents related to the agency’s management of passenger watchlists and screening programs. “Among the troubling allegations is the claim that former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard was subjected to heightened surveillance after she was added to the Quiet Skies list following her public criticism of the current administration,” wrote...