Free Republic

A cross-party group of MPs is urging the government to stop using real bear pelts to make the hats worn by the King's Guard and use fake alternatives instead. In a letter to Defence Minister Luke Pollard, the group of 18 MPs and one peer across three parties - Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens - said the bearskin caps sourced from Canada should be replaced with fake fur to "meet today's ethical standards", adding that real bearskin is "impossible to justify". "We call on you to instruct the Ministry of Defence and its suppliers to work proactively with...

Threats to the Red Sea have shut the kingdom’s workaround DUBAI—Saudi Arabia spent months rerouting oil across the desert to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. Now, with its Red Sea bypass route disrupted by attacks, the world’s oil kingpin is having to return to the waterway it was trying to avoid in the first place.Saudi Aramco, the country’s state-controlled oil giant, is loading more oil onto tankers in the Persian Gulf and then taking its chances sending them through the Strait of Hormuz. The company has told several of its customers in Asia—its most important oil market—to pick up shipments...

~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Fort Sill, OklahomaFort Sill is a United States Army post north of Lawton, Oklahoma, about 85 mile southwest of Oklahoma City. It covers almost 94,000 acres. The fort was first built during the Indian Wars. It is designated as a National Historic Landmark, and serves as home of the United States Army Field Artillery School as well as the Marine Corps' site for Field Artillery MOS school, United States Army Air Defense Artillery School, the 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade, and the 75th Field Artillery Brigade. Fort Sill is also one of the...

Has anyone else noted Islam creeping its way into crossword puzzles? I've seen this occurring with increasing frequency over the last few months. Today I saw 3 clues in 3 puzzles: "Religion with five pillars (Islam)"; "Mosque prayer leader" (Imam); and "Muslim feast" (Eid).

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President Trump unveiled his new granite helipad on Monday, but none of the major TV networks carried the event as tensions between the media and the White House escalated. Trump used a pair of golden scissors to cut the red, white and blue ribbon on the project he dubbed “a work of art” while surrounded by construction workers who built the White House pad, which features the seal of the United States and is estimated to cost $6 million. The White House aired the event on its social media channels, but Marine One, sitting on the helipad behind the president...

Wealthy Chinese couples are implanting their embryos into American women so their children can be born as US citizens, The Post has learned. The service is provided by a surrogacy agency, Patriot Conceptions, which operates between China and the US and has been accused of hiding details of who the biological parents are from surrogates. Women who carry babies for the agency are recruited informally through social media and collect between $60,000 and $120,000 dollars for their services. The children are then swept off by their parents to be raised in China, where it is seen as a status symbol...

A new study has proposed the existence of a hidden solar system planet candidate that is smaller and closer to Earth than the infamous, hypothetical Planet X. This new world, dubbed "Planet Y," could be around the same size as Earth and may exist alongside another popular Planet Nine candidate; potentially bringing our solar system's planetary tally to 10, if both can be confirmed. Did the Sun Pull a Rogue Planet into the Solar System? | 10:19 Territory | 123K subscribers | 146,224 views | September 21, 2026 Narrated by Mathew McQuinn

A new Skid Row encampment popped up across the street from NYU dorms — with vagrants bragging that living on the streets of the Big Apple is “much better” under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The 30-foot-long shantytown at East Ninth Street and Third Avenue sits just outside Ukrainian Village Park, with a long blue tarp covering office chairs, luggage and bicycles on the sidewalk, in plain sight of both passersby and the college students who live across the street, The Post has learned. “Some people are nice, some people think we invade their space,” Raymond, 45, who lives in the shelter,...

Are data centers draining Arizona's water? Today, Project 48 officially launches a public information campaign to take on that question and the bigger debate over Arizona's growth. We're putting the facts where Arizonans can see them: on digital billboards across the Valley, online, and in your hands. Arizona has added millions of people and built a $600 billion economy while using less water statewide than it did in 1957. Data centers account for less than 1% of Arizona's total water use. Explore the research, see our sources, and send us the data center questions you want answered: 🔗 project48az.com/datacenters 📱...

The vast majority of Americans of every race, sex and political orientation support voter ID. It’s the most common sense and no brainer idea ever. And yet, Democrats oppose it because they claim that illegal voting isn’t a problem and voter ID will just ‘disenfranchise’ legal voters who can manage to get an ID when it comes to buying cough syrup, going on a plane, driving a car or entering a government building… but not for voting. But the thing that never happens just keeps right on happening. The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced charges against 16 people in multiple...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media.This is the confidence we have in approaching God: That if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14)Religion Forum threads labeled *Prayer* are closed to debate of any kind.1 John 5:20 "And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true...

James Talarico has gained ground in the closely watched Texas Senate race, with several prediction markets and election forecasters increasingly characterizing the contest as competitive, despite the state's long-standing Republican lean. Kalshi, a prediction market, currently gives the Democratic State Representative Talarico a 59 percent chance of winning the November election, compared with 41 percent for Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Another prediction market, Polymarket, similarly puts Talarico at 60 percent and Paxton at 41 percent; prediction market shares can occasionally sum to over 100 percent due to market spreads. Meanwhile, Fox News' latest Power Rankings forecast has shifted the...

The White House is set to launch Trump TV at 7 pm ET Monday night, two days after President Donald Trump banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. The news was announced on social media — after having been teased in numerous clips from the official White House account. The 60-second trailer touts Trump’s 2024 presidential win.

Nine protesters blocked access to Elbit Systems’ factory in Staffordshire by attaching themselves to five ‘lock-ons’ to launch the direct-action group ‘Silence Elbit Drones’. Al Jazeera spoke with spokesperson Audrey Corno, who said the group aims to disrupt Elbit’s operations over its supply of military equipment to Israel.

A veteran Chicago police dispatcher was pinned inside her wrecked car, with nine broken ribs and two fractured vertebrae, when a man climbed into the back seat and stole her driver’s license and credit cards, prosecutors say. The man’s girlfriend then got into the front seat and began patting the injured victim’s waistline, apparently looking for more valuables. Victoria Mesarina, a dispatcher with the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications for 26 years, was driving home in uniform when another vehicle slammed into the driver’s side of her car in the 3300 block of West Douglas Boulevard around 2:30...

The parish council chair of Piddington, an English village with a population of around 350, has told Newsweek they plan to formally ask to join the United States if the British government goes ahead with its plan to house 1,250 male asylum seekers at a site on the edge of the village. President Trump has made little secret of his desire to expand American territory, suggesting at various points that Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal could come under Washington’s authority. Speaking to Newsweek, Piddington chair Tim McNally said the parish council would proceed with plans to join the US...

[Catholic Caucus] No Response to Traditional Pilgrimage’s Papal Audience RequestPilgrims process towards St Peter’s Basilica during last year’s Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage in Rome, Oct. 25, 2025 (Photo: Edward Pentin)Is Pope Leo XIV missing an opportunity to heal wounds felt by traditional Catholics by not meeting with a large representative group of them next month?The Holy Father has so far not responded to a request for a papal audience from the leaders of an annual traditional Catholic pilgrimage to Rome — despite the request having been made nine months ago and the Pope saying last year he would like to...

Add it all up, and the future looks more expensive. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that if yields remain more than 80 basis points over baseline projections, the U.S. will spend $2.7 trillion on annual interest payments by the end of the decade—more than Medicare or Social Security retirement benefits. “The real threat is the debt spiral. If interest begets debt, and debt begets interest, eventually debt will spin out of control. A fiscal crisis, once unthinkable, is now a distinct possibility,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the CFRB, said on Monday. The budget watchdog and others have...

The Eighth Circuit ruled that Missouri must use its 2025 congressional map in November, holding that switching to the 2022 map after the August primary violates the Constitution. The court ordered entry of a permanent injunction, but paused it for one week. The court held that Article I, Section 2 protects voters’ ability to participate in the selection of congressional nominees. Switching maps after the primary would leave some voters choosing among nominees they had no opportunity to select. The court rejected arguments that the Supreme Court’s stay or approaching election deadlines made the appeal moot. It reached the constitutional...