Free Republic

Following her historic win in Tuesday night's Miami mayoral runoff election, Eileen Higgins outlined her agenda. “It feels heavy," Higgins said. "I know that people are expecting a lot from the City of Miami... On the issue of immigration, the city has previously signed the controversial 287g agreement with immigration officials Higgins gave her thoughts on that agreement. “The city should never entered into that agreement,” she said. “There is no reason in the city of Miami that...

The American Capitalist Party is beginning preparations for its first national convention. As part of general planning for 2026, the organization is also looking at establishing a state affiliate in Georgia. In its December newsletter, the party stated that it is looking to hold its national convention September 18–20 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, though details are still tentative. It would be the first national convention held by the organization since it announced its formation at LibertyCon earlier in 2025. The party plans to release additional information in the coming months. The email also outlined the agenda for the party’s December 20...

BENGALURU, India (AP) — Ocean temperatures warmed by human-caused climate change fed the intense rainfall that triggered deadly floods and landslides across Asia in recent weeks, according to an analysis released Wednesday. The rapid study by World Weather Attribution focused on heavy rainfall from cyclones Senyar and Ditwah in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka starting late last month. The analysis found that warmer sea surface temperatures over the North Indian Ocean added energy to the cyclones. “When the atmosphere warms, it can hold more moisture. As a result, it rains more in a warmer atmosphere as compared to a...

ATLANTA -- Democrat Eric Gisler claimed an upset victory Tuesday in a special election in a historically Republican Georgia state House district. Gisler said he was the winner of the contest, in which he was leading Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest by about 200 votes out of more than 11,000 in final unofficial returns. Robert Sinners, a spokesperson with the secretary of state's office, said there could be a few provisional ballots left before the tally is finalized. “I think we had the right message for the time,” Gisler told The Associated Press in a phone interview. He credited his win...

Miami’s mayoral election has been framed as a political earthquake, but those sweeping claims don’t hold water. They do, however, evince the ignorance of all too many, across party lines, about the actual power structure in the city, Miami-Dade County, and Florida. What happened in the mayoral runoff deserves attention, but it is hardly the warning siren some Democrat operatives want it to be, nor is it a reason for Republicans to panic. Miami politics simply don’t function the way national narratives assume. Let’s start with what this race actually was. The “nonpartisan” mayor of Miami holds a largely ceremonial...

New research suggests that chatbots have a greater sway on policy issues than video ads, and that spouting the most information—even if wrong—is the most persuasive strategyArtificial intelligence chatbots are changing the world, affecting everything from our brains to our mental health to how we do our work. Now, two new studies offer fresh insights into how they might also be shifting our political beliefs. In a new paper published December 4 in Nature, scientists describe how having a brief back-and-forth exchange with an A.I. chatbot shifted voters’ preferences on political candidates and policy issues. Another paper, published December 4...

The Treasury Department sent a letter last week to conservative influencer Erika Kirk with findings that contradict fraud allegations about the finances at Turning Point USA and could help her refute those claims, sources told CBS News. Questions were being raised on social media about the finances at Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA, and podcaster Candace Owens and others were urging donors to demand refunds. That led a few of its small-dollar donors to ask for their money back, one of the sources said. Erika Kirk runs the nationwide conservative college student organization co-founded by her late husband, Charlie Kirk....

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES — Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch dismantled a lawyer’s illogical arguments about a president’s executive power during a high-stakes Supreme Court hearing on Monday. The moment came during oral arguments for Trump v. Slaughter, a case centered around President Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat member of the Federal Trade Commission. As The Federalist previously reported, the high court will weigh the constitutionality of statutory limitations on a president’s ability to remove members of so-called “independent agencies” and whether to overturn longstanding precedent established in its 1935 Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S. decision. During his...

The Trump administration must stop deploying the California National Guard in Los Angeles and return control of the troops to the state, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction sought by California officials who opposed President Donald Trump’s extraordinary move to use state Guard troops without the governor’s approval to further his immigration enforcement efforts. But he also put the decision on hold until Monday. California argued that conditions in Los Angeles had changed since Trump first took command of the troops and deployed them in June. The administration initially...

The Environmental Protection Agency has removed references to human-caused climate change from its website - tweaking some pages to focus on the “natural processes” driving climate change and wiping other pages from the internet. In October, the EPA page on “Causes of Climate Change,” for example, included a statement from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that noted, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land.” That clear statement has been deleted from the page, which now mentions only climate changes from natural sources, such as volcanic activity and variations in solar activity. Another page,...

Incumbent Mayor Tim Keller won the runoff election and will lead Albuquerque for another four years, according to unofficial election results from Tuesday's municipal election. With 58% of the vote by 8 p.m. Tuesday, Keller — first elected in 2017 — bested challenger Darren White to become the city's first consecutive three-term mayor. The mayoral race focused largely on Albuquerque’s crime rate, homelessness, housing and economic development. Keller, a Democrat who has served as state auditor and in the state Legislature, defended his record and campaigned on the need for follow-through. White said he offered a changing of the guard...

A podcast clip from earlier this year featuring Tim Walz and Gavin Newsom is going viral again, and for good reason: it’s pure comedy gold. The two Democratic governors sat down for an episode of This Is Gavin Newsom back in March, and during their 50-minute conversation, they briefly shared their thoughts on masculinity. Yes, masculinity. The irony already writes itself. Because real men sit and talk about masculinity all the time. In the now-viral clip, Walz claimed that the critics who come after him aren’t upset about policy differences or leadership failures. No, Walz said it’s because they “feel...

A former TSA agent speaks out about what she saw and what she calls an obvious connection to billions of dollars of fraud. A former Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent, Liz Jaksa, joined Liz Collin on her podcast. She who worked at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport from 2016 to 2021. She explained to Collin, “I’ve seen a lot of things, but the most shocking is exactly that. I saw suitcases filled with millions of dollars of cash, and the couriers were always Somali men traveling in pairs.” While flying with cash isn’t illegal and must be declared, it still...

Democrats continued their run of successes in special elections by flipping a state House seat in Georgia Tuesday, according to a projection from the CNN Decision Desk. The Democratic victory, in a district that voted for President Donald Trump by about 12 percentage points last year, comes ahead of next year’s critical midterms, when Georgians will vote in closely watched races for Senate and governor. Eric Gisler, a Democrat who owns a local olive oil store, will defeat Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest in the 121st House District, in the northeastern part of the state, near the college town of Athens....

A lawsuit to be announced Wednesday alleges U.S.-made technologies were used in Russian missile and drone strikes that killed Ukrainian civilians, Newsmax has exclusively learned. Attorney Mikal C. Watts will lay out the sweeping lawsuit, to be filed in the morning, alleging that U.S.-made semiconductor and navigation technologies were embedded in Russian missiles and drones that killed and severely injured Ukrainian civilians. The announcement, which will be made in Washington, D.C., will center on claims that American-made components "were found inside Russian weapons systems used to carry out deadly strikes on Ukrainian cities, despite export bans and sanctions," according to...

Democrat Eileen Higgins has flipped the Miami mayor’s office, defeating Republican Emilio Gonzalez and marking the latest sign of the party’s momentum heading into next year’s midterms, according to Decision Desk HQ. Higgins is the first Democrat to become mayor of Miami since 1997. She bested Gonzalez, a former Miami city manager who served on President Trump’s Homeland Security Department transition team, to succeed incumbent Mayor Francis Suarez (R). The race is technically nonpartisan.

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge has permanently ordered Georgia’s prison system to keep providing some kinds of gender-affirming care for transgender prisoners, although the state plans to appeal. U.S. District Judge Victoria Marie Calvert last week ruled that a new state law denying hormone therapy to inmates violated their protection against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. She ordered the state to keep providing hormones to inmates who had been receiving therapy and to allow others medically diagnosed as needing hormone therapy to begin receiving treatment. “The court finds that there is no...

The Environmental Protection Agency has removed any mention of fossil fuels from its popular online page explaining the causes of climate change. Now it only mentions natural phenomena, even as many scientists calculate that nearly all of the warming is due to human activity. Sometime in the past few days or weeks, EPA altered some but not all of its climate change webpages, de-emphasizing and even deleting references to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. The website's causes of climate page mention changes in Earth’s orbit, solar activity, Earth's reflectivity, volcanoes and natural carbon dioxide changes, but not...

Justice Department lawyers said Tuesday that a recent ruling barring their access to key evidence has effectively crippled their efforts to reindict former FBI director James B. Comey, two weeks after their original case against him was dismissed. The concession came in a court filing urging a federal judge in Washington to lift a temporary order she imposed Saturday restricting the government’s ability to review or use emails and other electronic communications seized as part of an investigation more than five years ago involving Comey confidante Daniel Richman. Richman’s records had played a central role in the Justice Department’s effort...

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett launched a campaign Monday for the U.S. Senate in Texas, telling President Donald Trump, “I'm coming for you," and bringing a national profile to what could be a critical race for Democrats’ long-shot hopes of reclaiming a Senate majority in next year’s midterm elections. Crockett, one of Congress’ most outspoken Democrats, a frequent target of GOP attacks and a Trump target, jumped into the race on the final day of qualifying in Texas. She is seeking the Senate seat held by Republican John Cornyn, who is running for reelection in the GOP-dominated state. “As a candidate...