Free Republic

…Smuggled into popular playlists and hidden in plain sight among authentic, well-known tracks, AI-generated artists with fake photos, ChatGPT-generated biographies and no genuine fans to speak of are picking up hundreds of thousands of streams. One such artist is The Velvet Sundown, a band with almost 350,000 monthly Spotify listeners but no discernible online presence or social media accounts. ("There's not a shred of evidence on the internet that this band has ever existed," as one Redditor put it.) While we can't confirm that the band's music is AI-generated, a glance at their artist image and bio should be enough...

Jaguar’s European sales collapsed by 97.5% in April 2025, registering just 49 vehicles, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (AECA). That’s a steep drop from 1,961 units sold in the same month last year. Year-to-date sales from January to April were down 75.1%, totaling only 2,665 units. Globally, Jaguar sold just 26,862 vehicles in FY24/25 — an 85% drop compared to 2018.

A federal judge in New York has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to strip immigration protections from Haitians fleeing instability in their country. The ruling Friday from U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan preserves, for now, the Biden administration’s 2024 extension of the protections, known as “temporary protected status,” for up to 500,000 Haitians living in the United States. Cogan’s 23-page decision is the latest legal development in the administration’s efforts to roll back TPS designations and other immigration programs that allow immigrants from countries facing humanitarian crises to live and work here legally. In a separate case, the Supreme Court...

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that despite much speculation, FBI headquarters will remain in the nation's capital, the Washington Post reported. President Donald Trump had long opposed moving the FBI out of Washington, D.C., saying the FBI and the DOJ should be near each other. While the FBI will move out of the aging J. Edgar Hoover Building, it won't relocate to a Maryland suburb, as was proposed earlier this year. The FBI will now head three blocks west of its current location into the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. The precise timing of the move and how...

On Tuesday Senator Chuck Grassley released new information from declassified documents that reveal the FBI blocked an investigation into the allegations that the Chinese Communist Party manufactured thousands of fake driver’s licenses and shipped them to the US in a scheme to help Joe Biden win the election by fraudulent mail-in votes. The FBI hid the investigation in order to protect dirty FBI Director Chris Wray who had lied to Congress about the election. Senator Chuck Grassley reported this earlier today.

A Siberian cult leader who claims to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ was sentenced to 12 years in a Russian prison camp after his conviction for physically and financially harming his followers. Sergei Torop, a former traffic policeman known to his followers as "Vissarion," meaning "he who gives new life," and two aides used psychological pressure to extract money from his followers and cause serious harm to their mental and physical health, Reuters reported. Torop, 64, set up the Church of the Last Testament in a remote part of Siberia's Krasnoyarsk region in 1991, the year the Soviet Union...

A CBS News documentary blasted America’s supposed transition to a so-called “Gilded Age” of oligarchs to attack President Trump and the tech leaders who stood with him at his inauguration. As if CBS stood for Channeling Bernie Sanders. The problem: The documentary conveniently excluded any mention about the most notorious left-wing billionaires in U.S. politics that have used their cash to either try to buy elections or drastically overhaul U.S. policy over the years. Coincidence? We think not.

While Mamdani’s Israel stance alienates many, his focus on affordability and social justice resonates with a growing subset of Jewish voters who see local issues as paramount. “Should we really care about what the mayor of a city thinks about foreign politics?” asked voter Seinuk, a Jewish civil engineer. In the bustling, diverse landscape of New York City’s 2025 mayoral race, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Democratic Socialist and New York State Assembly member from Queens, has emerged as a strong mayoral candidate. Known for his unapologetic criticism of Israel, support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and advocacy...

Central India’s Madhya Pradesh Government recently suspended seven engineers for the faulty design of a 200 million rupee ($2.3 million) bridge with a 90-degree turn. The new Rail Over Bridge in Bhopal was announced 10 years ago and cost the state of Madhya Pradesh over 200 million rupees to complete. It was supposed to improve connectivity between Mahamai Ka Bagh, Pushpa Nagar, and the station area with New Bhopal, but all it has managed to do so far is spark controversy over a major blunder in its design – a nearly 90-degree turn built into the bridge. Photos of the...

No, this column is not asserting that Colin Powell, who stands as one of the worst mistakes of the Bush Republican era, has any relevance. Quite the contrary, but what I will argue here is that one of the chief benefits of President Trump’s successful airstrikes, which have done grievous damage to the Iranian nuclear program, if not particularly laying waste to the Iranian regime itself, is to make clear that Powell can be discarded once and for all.Powell was a terrible Secretary of State for many reasons. The most flagrant of those being that he utterly, and consequentially, failed...

A man in Texas is now in custody after allegedly posing as a U.S. Marshal during an attempted robbery outside a liquor store last month, according to the Houston Police Department. Jonathan Prince, 39, was arrested on Saturday after he allegedly tackled and attempted to rob the owner of La Sultana Liquor Store on June 15, the Houston Police Department confirmed to ABC News. The owner of the store was taking out the trash when police say the suspect approached him, identified himself as a police officer and "told the victim to get on the ground."

Democrats are rushing to portray Vice President JD Vance as the central figure behind the passage of the GOP’s megabill, with potential 2028 rivals arguing it will come back to haunt the MAGA heir apparent.After 27 hours of debate in the Senate, Vance’s Tuesday vote brought the megabill one step closer to President Donald Trump’s desk. Democrats’ rush to tie the bill so closely to the vice president illustrates their belief that it could be toxic for the GOP in the midterms and 2028 — and that it could hurt Vance if he runs for president once Trump leaves the...

The Senate, with the help of Vice President J.D. Vance’s tiebreaking vote, voted on Tuesday to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, effectively defunding abortion giant Planned Parenthood for one year.The House version of President Donald Trump’s legislative package promised that no Medicaid dollars “shall be used to make payments to a prohibited entity for items and services furnished during [a] 10-year period.” The Senate version, however, cut that provision down to prohibit only twelve months of taxpayer-funded abortion.In a last-ditch effort to protect Planned Parenthood’s flow of federal funding, Democrats tried to add a pro-abortion amendment to the...

New Yorkers faced the choice of a miscreant former governor and a radical Democrat socialist for the position of mayor in the Democrat primary. Prior to Zohran Mamdani’s election in the primary, his absurd and speculative plans to provide all kinds of freebies to the citizenry were the talk of the town:Mamdani’s platform focused on a number of issues that have animated socialists in the Democratic Party, including raising the minimum wage, hiking taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans, cracking down on delivery apps, as well as investing in affordable housing and creating city-owned grocery stores.His campaign proposes a new...

Judicial elections are not what they seem.On June 1, 2025, Mexicans were called to vote for judges, magistrates, and Supreme Court justices. It was the first major implementation of a sweeping judicial reform passed in the twilight of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration. The change was framed as a democratization of justice, but it was a masterclass in judicial capture.People should be alarmed. Mexico is undergoing a transformation that compromises the separation of powers, individual rights, and the very conditions that allow for sustained prosperity.From Republic to Mob RuleGiovanni Sartori, the Italian political theorist, warned that when democracy...

The No Masks for ICE Act would make it illegal for federal agents to cover their faces while conducting immigration enforcement unless the masks were required for their safety or their health. The No Masks for ICE Act would make it illegal for fedThe bill has no Republican co-sponsors, meaning its chances of passing the GOP-controlled House are relatively slim. Following a surge in arrests by armed, masked federal immigration agents in unmarked cars, some California Democrats are backing a new bill in Congress that would bar officials from covering their faces while conducting raids. The No Masks for...

Leo XIV: The Bishops’ Testing GroundBurke, along with Dolan, was one of the key popemakers of the last Conclave. The US Catholic traditionalist and the conservative wings joined forces and, in utmost secrecy, pulled the name Prevost out of the hat—a name which, as is now well known, immediately attracted convergence even from the more progressive cardinals.Christocentric homilies, the stole and mozzetta, full-signature documents, references to natural law, legal certainty, canon law training, a sober and methodical style, and attentiveness to the liturgy (although the master of ceremonies belongs to a liturgical school that is far from commendable): these are...

Americans increasingly disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies, but the issue energizes his core supporters.OCHOPEE, Florida — As President Donald Trump visited a new immigration detention center in the Everglades, the White House celebrated the local alligators as a new kind of security force.“There is only one road leading in and … the only way out is a one-way flight,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday, previewing the facility for reporters and describing the local reptiles as a feature to discourage detainees from attempting escapes.When asked Tuesday whether the intent was for the alligators to eat escaping detainees, Trump...

Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers scaled back a law that was vilified for its role in California’s housing shortage and homelessness crisis.California leaders on Monday rolled back a landmark law that was a national symbol of environmental protection before it came to be vilified as a primary reason for the state’s severe housing shortage and homelessness crisis. For more than half a century, the law, the California Environmental Quality Act, has allowed environmentalists to slow suburban growth as well as given neighbors and disaffected parties a powerful tool to stop projects they found objectionable. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two...

Okay Freepers, you are a magnificent resource to draw upon. I'm hoping that among you are some who have already broken the ground I now seek to tread, and maybe you can give me some advice. Perhaps even tell me if I'm doing something wrong and could change up my approach.A lot of people have told me over the years that they wanted me to write my life story. It took ten years of on and off labor (and there came to be even more things to write about in that time) but in the end this past November I...