Free Republic

Donald Trump is pleading with Republicans not to release the Epstein files. The president called at least two of his congressional allies on Tuesday in an effort to get them to remove their names from a discharge petition that will force a vote on releasing details of the investigation into the pedophilic sex trafficker and his associates. That included a “very early wakeup call” to Representative Lauren Boebert, and phone tag with Representative Nancy Mace, The New York Times’s Annie Karni reported Wednesday. Trump has since met with Boebert, a White House official confirmed to CNN, though the meeting did...

LONDON -- Ukraine is being shaken by one of the biggest wartime corruption scandals since Russia's invasion three years ago, after investigators raided the homes of top officials and a former business partner of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as part of an investigation into an alleged sprawling corruption scheme in the country's energy sector. Ukraine's main anti-corruption agencies on Monday announced they had uncovered the "high-level" scheme that included corruption at Ukraine's state nuclear energy company Energoatom. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau said it has proof that the scheme had elicited kickbacks worth $100 million from contractors hired to build defenses for...

UC San Diego said there is a 30% surge in new entrants who can’t do basic math. Want to bet they know how to protest though? We are being dumbed down. According to Inside Higher Ed, the number of first-year students at the University of California, San Diego, whose math skills fall below a middle school level has increased nearly 30-fold over the past five years, according to a new report from the university’s Senate–Administration Working Group on Admissions. One in eight students are below a MIDDLE SCHOOL LEVEL despite having a solid math GPA. It sounds like they are...

Discredited author Michael Wolff once encouraged Jeffrey Epstein to blackmail then-presidential candidate Donald Trump — insisting the convicted pedophile could generate a “debt” from him. The Trump-obsessed writer’s email exchanges with Epstein were among the trove of documents released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. In one email, Wolff floated the possibility of intimidating Trump for his own benefit — as he warned Epstein that the then-GOP candidate could be asked about their alleged ties while on the campaign trail. “I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in...

The latest tranche of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents released by the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday included emails in which the convicted sex offender said former President Bill Clinton never visited his infamous private island, the site where many of Epstein’s underage victims were sexually abused. In a 2011 email addressed to “The Duke”—whose email address has been redacted—Esptein first asks if the recipient is okay and adds: “these stories are complete and utter fantasy, I don't know and have never met Al Gore, Clinton was never on the island,” (sic). In a 2015 email sent to former...

Math professors are ringing alarm bells about the rapid and disastrous decline in students' ability to do even basic math. Almost 15% of incoming students cannot perform math at the 1st-grade level, and fewer than one out of five can perform math at the 8th-grade level. These are college students at a fairly prestigious university, many of whom have achieved very good grades in math prior to graduation. They have been awarded good to great grades without being able to do the most basic math. We're not talking about students having trouble dealing with calculus or Algebra II. Many students...

The Trump Organization requested 184 foreign workers to work across various company properties, a record number that has increased over the years. The company sought to hire workers through H-2A and H-2B visas for temporary positions at Mar-a-Lago, two golf clubs and at Trump Vineyard Estates in Charlottesville, Va., according to data from the Department of Labor.

Sara Sharif was tortured to death by her father after a catalogue of blunders by authorities who missed bruises under her hijab as they feared causing offence, a report reveals today. The ten-year-old was beaten to death by Urfan Sharif after the risk posed by the serial domestic abuser was ‘overlooked, not acted on and underestimated by almost all professionals’ despite his 16-year history of attacking women and children, according to a damning safeguarding review. In acts of brutality described by a judge as the worst crime he had ever encountered, Sara suffered over 100 injuries when she was tied...

Jasmine Crockett was fact-checked by CNN anchors while flaming Donald Trump over his connections to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released bombshell emails from the deceased billionaire Wednesday morning where he claims Trump 'spent hours at my house' with one of his victims. In the initial release of emails, Democrats redacted the name of the victim that Epstein claims spent time with Trump. House Republicans later revealed that the victim was Virginia Giuffre who claimed in her memoir that Trump never did anything wrong. Crockett clashed with CNN anchor Pamela Brown over Giuffre's name being concealed...

Rapists will no longer be allowed to self-identify as women, Scotland’s top police officer has said in a major U-turn. Jo Farrell, the Police Scotland chief constable, said on Wednesday that her force would back a long-standing campaign to “accurately” record the sex of alleged rapists, instead of allowing a situation in which they could theoretically have been formally classified as women. Under Scottish law, only men can commit rape. However, the national force had previously said the sex of anyone who comes “into contact” with it, including suspects, would be based “on how they present or how they self-declare”....

Two companies in Ukraine have been supplying an Iranian state-owned military manufacturer with key parts for drones, the US Treasury Department said on Wednesday.The Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a statement that it was placing sanctions on GK Imperativ and Ekofera, two Ukraine-based companies.The firms are accused of being fronts for Iranian procurement agents who were supplying aerospace parts to the Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company, or HESA.HESA manufactures the Shahed-136, which Russia has been using to hammer Ukraine, and the Ababil UAV.

Ellis Island built a nation through law and order; Biden’s border chaos dismantled it with lawlessness, division, and the greatest illegal influx in U.S. history. Between 1892 and 1954, approximately 12 million immigrants arrived at the now-iconic Ellis Island to enter the U.S.—or nearly 200,000 legal entries per year. All were registered, documented, and given rudimentary health exams. They arrived as rich and poor, white and non-white, and, without exception, legally. With the gradual decline of such great influxes, Ellis Island finally ceased operating roughly 71 years ago. Yet Ellis Island’s successful tenure offers a sharp contrast to the failures...

As in his first term, Donald Trump now presides over a visibly sinking ship as his approval ratings slide. MAGA, a movement built around the personality of one man, never amounted to a coherent political force or even a workable coalition. Claims that Trump and his lieutenants won a mandate in 2024 and then ‘saved’ the country were always delusional. After all, his margin was thin, as was that of his party in Congress. Three forces are killing MAGA, perhaps even pushing the US in a distinctly socialist direction. The first are the internal divisions, which are growing ever-more pronounced...

*** On Wednesday, Swedish automaker Polestar announced plans for a reverse stock split in a bid to avoid being delisted from the exchange — a move that slashes the number of shares in circulation but boosts their per-share value. For example, a one-for-ten split would turn ten shares trading at $1 into a single share worth $10. Companies typically attempt these reverse splits when their stock has fallen so low that they risk losing their stock-market listing — it’s a cosmetic fix that can buy time, but rarely changes the underlying problems. Wall Street wasn't impressed. The stock plunged nearly...

BREAKING: In a jaw-dropping revelation, Sec. Brooke Rollins found 5,000 DEAD PEOPLE getting SNAP, and 500,000 PEOPLE getting SNAP "2 times under the same name." And that's just what they've confirmed... "This light has now been shined one of the most CORRUPT, DISFUNCTIONAL programs in American history!" "80% of able-bodied Americans - they can work, don't have small children, taking care of an elderly parent. They can work, they choose not to work, because they're getting significant benefits from the taxpayer!" "VERY big announcements coming next week on this...we have a plan to fix it!" WTF? That is blatant, rampant...

There is a worrying new trend foreshadowing a housing market crash. Foreclosures — when a bank or lender takes back a home after missed mortgage payments — are once again on the rise in the US. *** In October alone, there were 36,766 foreclosure filings — the first step in the process, when a lender warns a borrower they're in default. That's up three percent from September and 19 percent from a year ago.'Foreclosure activity continued its steady upward trend in October — the eighth straight month of year-over-year increases,' said ATTOM CEO Rob Barber. *** Today's homeowners have safer...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — For each of the past several years, scientists, analysts and officials have been hoping that it would be the year when emissions from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas would stop going up. They’ll have to wait another year. For the second straight year, emissions from fossil fuels rose 1.1% in 2025, scientists reported Wednesday at United Nations climate negotiations. “It’s disappointing that we haven’t brought down carbon dioxide emissions,” said University of Exeter scientist Stephen Sitch, a member of the Global Carbon Project, which uses data from around the world to calculate the...

BOSTON (AP) — After years of living on the street and crashing on friends’ couches, Quantavia Smith was given the keys to a studio apartment in Los Angeles that came with an important perk — easy access to public transit. The 38-year-old feels like she went from a life where “no one cares” to one where she has a safe place to begin rebuilding her life. And the metro station the apartment complex was literally built upon is a lifeline as she searches for work without a car. “It is more a sense of relief, a sense of independence,” said...

Democrats are back in Congress after their shutdown to launch another anti-Trump hoax. On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Democrats selectively released three emails among 23,000 handed over by the estate of the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In the first email, Epstein writes to his now-jailed pimp Ghislaine Maxwell on April 2, 2011: “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [Redacted name of victim] spent hours at my house with him , he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.”The Epstein victim whose name the Democrats gratuitously left out was...

The state’s core program to close its psychiatric hospitals and shift care to less-restrictive community programs — the centerpiece of its legal obligation to people with severe mental illness — has instead been used for the past decade to do the opposite, a Spotlight PA investigation has found. Created more than 30 years ago, the Community Hospital Integration Project Program, or CHIPP, was designed to get people and dollars out of restrictive and expensive state-run psychiatric hospitals and into more effective, community-based care. The money saved by closing hospital beds would be sent to counties. Former state officials told Spotlight...