Free Republic

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is barreling forward with a Wednesday evening vote on a six-month spending bill despite its expected defeat. Johnson announced during the August recess that he would pair the six-month continuing resolution with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, in part to mollify conservatives — many of whom oppose continuing resolutions out of principle. However, once returning to Washington, DC, the speaker appears to have been caught off guard by opposition from multiple corners of the House Republican Conference, including conservatives, leading him to delay...

Secret Service agents didn’t sweep the outskirts of Donald Trump’s Florida golf course where his alleged would-be assassin was hiding because the former president’s visit was an “off-the-record” plan, the embattled agency’s acting director admitted. Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, allegedly set up a sniper’s nest on the edge of Trump International West Palm Beach and hid there undetected for nearly 12 hours before Trump, 78, teed off on Sunday afternoon, federal prosecutors said. Acting Secret Service head Ronald Rowe Jr. said Monday that agents didn’t mount an intense search of the perimeter because the 45th president’s round wasn’t on his...

I don't know where you all were hiding during the Trump Administration. For four years, conservatives had front row seats on C-Span as Kamala Harris in hearing after Senate committee hearing excoriated every single one of President Trump's nominees for federal office. Harris was brutal, rude, and discourteous, to say the least, treating every Trump nominee as though they were criminals. But she was never once reprimanded by any of her peers for her atrocious "prosecutorial" behavior. Fast forward to all of the ridiculous prognostications by alternate media and conservative bloggers showing up on this site in 2024 as to...

A bombshell report has found that Germany could have been more effective at reducing its carbon footprint while saving hundreds of billions of euros if it had invested in nuclear power rather than green energy projects. Leftist-run governments in Europe’s top economic powerhouse made a devastating error by transitioning away from nuclear power and focussing instead on so-called “renewable” sources of energy like wind and solar, industrial engineer Jan Emblemsvåg of the University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway has said according to German daily Welt. While nuclear energy accounted for around 30 per cent of Germany’s electricity in...

A female Secret Service agent on duty to protect former President Donald Trump at a North Carolina rally Wednesday left her post to breastfeed without permission, RealClearPolitics reported. Soon before Trump's arrival in Asheville, North Carolina, the Secret Service site agent conducted a final sweep of the walking route "and found the agent breast-feeding her child in a room that is supposed to be set aside for important Secret Service official work, i.e. a potential emergency related to the president," the outlet's Susan Crabtree posted Thursday on X. The woman agent, out of the Atlanta Field Office, and two family...

Tim Walz has embellished and selectively omitted facts and circumstances of his military career for years. We, retired Command Sergeants Major of the Minnesota National Guard, feel it is our duty and responsibility to bring forth the truth as we know it concerning his service record. So, we have put together a timeline of his service post 9/11. To the best of our knowledge, this information is completely true, having been verified by all those who served in positions with first hand knowledge of the facts and circumstances of his service and departure from the Minnesota National Guard. Many of...

"This is France!" France unveiled a decidedly family-unfriendly spectacle last Saturday for over 28.6 million viewers worldwide as the four-hour opening ceremony for the 2024 Olympics, which unfolded along a 4.5 mile stretch of the River Seine in Paris, turned into the world’s most-watched Pride Parade.Because Western cultural elites today are overwhelmingly cultural Marxists, the organizers of the 2800-year-old athletic competition decided to jettison any connection with sports, athletic excellence, or national pride, and instead promote the normalization of sexual perversion, gender ideology, and anti-Christian bigotry.As always with Pride parades, the celebration of sexual libertinism, masked as “love” and “tolerance,”...

No one clapped when Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) formally and emphatically offered his support — and that of fellow Democrats — for Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democrat nominee in place of President Joe Biden, and the awkward moment went viral following his announcement Tuesday in a press conference. “President Biden’s selfless decision has given the Democratic Party the opportunity to unite behind a new nominee. And boy, oh boy, are we enthusiastic,” Schumer said at the beginning of the press conference, asserting that Harris has successfully earned the support of Democrats for the nomination, bizarrely claiming that this...

1st video link: 3 women secret service agents' response during assassination attempt. These are supposed to be among the most elite, well trained, carefully selected police in the nation. A "zero fail mission". 2nd video link (in comments): CBS story in title, the director of the secret service focusing on diversity hires, women in particular

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it lost access to many world markets, including much of Europe. Countries like Germany, which for years had relied on Russian gas and oil, now turned sharply away and sought to rid themselves of any vestiges of Russian dependence. (Source) Into the breach stepped China. Always thirsty for new supplies of gas and oil, China quickly notified Russia that it was interested in receiving Russian gas and in developing a pipeline from Siberia for that gas. (Source). Recently, however, that lifeline looks more like a noose, at least for Russia. Beijing is taking...

Joe Biden has logged yet another foreign policy disaster under his belt after the Pentagon announced the "Gaza pier" will be dismantled due to damage. Some press reports describe the move as "temporary," though it's questionable whether the project will ever resume after being completely torn down and towed away. This marks the latest in a string of logistical issues involving the president's prized pier. For context, the pier has been in place for less than a month, and it's already suffered multiple shutdowns related to moderate seas overtaking it. Here's the full timeline illustrating just how absurd this idea...

(DCNF)—The United Nations (UN) World Food Program (WFP) said Sunday it was suspending aid deliveries from the Biden administration’s floating pier in Gaza. The WFP cited safety concerns on the ground in Gaza as the reason it was halting deliveries from the pier, the Associated Press reported. The pier had only been operational for roughly two days before the WFP announced its decision, after weather damage broke it apart and temporarily took it out of commission. “Right now we’re paused,” Cindy McCain, director of the WFP, told CBS on Sunday, according to the AP. “I’m concerned about the safety of...

Rafah isn’t just the last stand for Hamas, but for an entire foreign policy establishment. The desperate effort to keep Israeli soldiers from going into the last Gaza stronghold of the Islamic terrorist organization is about more than the sum of the geopolitical parts. After nation building failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and everywhere else it’s been tried, the radioactive ‘Palestinian’ nation building experiment from over 30 years ago is its last hope. Long before George W. Bush tackled nation building after 9/11, his father began the era of turning Muslim terrorist groups into countries with the project to give...

I’m all for raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but my favorite thing in the world is watching the smug fascists in the Never Trump movement deal with failure and despair. Oh, Jonah “Fauntleroy” Goldberg’s having a bad day? In the Nolte household, that piece of news ranks right up there with cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels. “‘Never Trumpers’ are close to giving up hope,” reads the Hill headline. Knowing Never Trumpers are giving up hope means you can keep your bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. It gets better, so much better…

Grade inflation is rampant and has been so for many years. Back in 2011, an in-depth study by three Ivy League economists looked at how the quality of individual teachers affects their students over the long term. The paper, by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia, tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years, and, using a value added approach, found that teachers who help students raise their standardized test scores have a lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates, greater college matriculation, and higher adult earnings....

Parts of Russian-annexed Crimea were left without electricity on Thursday after an emergency shutdown at a power plant, Russian-installed officials said. It was not clear what caused the shutdown.

everal cities in Minnesota, including Duluth and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, are facing challenges in transitioning their public transit systems to zero-emission electric buses due to operational difficulties in subzero temperatures, which significantly reduce the buses’ range. The efficiency of lithium-ion batteries decreases in cold weather, impacting the buses’ ability to hold a charge and provide adequate warmth for passengers during winter. Other factors such as increased rolling resistance and less effective regenerative braking system in cold temperatures also affect the buses’ performance. Metro Transit spokesperson, Drew Kerr, said, “Using garage chargers alone, electric buses can...

Moscow has been on a drive to replace the use of the US dollar in international trade, but there are barrels of Russian oil stuck at sea due to issues with paying in alternative currencies. Shipments of Russian Sokol grade crude oil to state-owned Indian Oil Corp, or IOC, have been delayed by payment issues, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing two sources familiar with the matter. The seller is the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft. The problem arose because Rosneft unit selling the oil hasn't been able to open a bank account in the United Arab Emirates to receive payments...

This two part series in the Washington Post is a must read because of what it tells the reader about the abysmal performance of the White House and the Department of Defense. I found it genuinely shocking. I knew that Biden, Austin and Milley were bad. I just did not appreciate how bad. On a scale of 1 to 10, with a 10 marking the biggest fuck up in history, these guys rate an 11. Part two, In Ukraine, a war of incremental gains as counteroffensive stalls, pushes the false narrative that what is happening on the ground in Ukraine...