Free Republic

California’s High-Speed Rail boondoggle is now estimated to cost taxpayers $231 billion, up from its original $33.5 billion price tag in 2008 when voters passed Proposition 1A. “Our country has never seen a fiscal disaster of this magnitude,” California Rep. Kevin Kiley said on X Monday. Voters were deceived by the original ballot summary and language in Proposition 1A from 2008, but the state’s lawmakers seem to find that fact inconvenient. And, the entire project is lacking in private, public and debt funding to complete even the most minor operating segment – nearly 20 years later. “If it is built,...

King Charles III is addressing a joint meeting of Congress, following meetings at the White House with President Trump and first lady Melania Trump.

SummaryMPs vote 335 to 223 against a Tory-led motion calling for a parliamentary investigation into claims Keir Starmer misled MPs about Lord Mandelson's appointment as US ambassadorDuring the lengthy debate, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch says it's "very obvious" Starmer told the Commons things that were "not correct"After the result, No 10 accuses the Conservatives of a "desperate political stunt" the week before key elections in Scotland, Wales and EnglandThe government's won the vote but there's still a lot disgruntlement, writes our correspondentThe debate came as Starmer's former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney told MPs he made a "serious mistake" in...

A superyacht linked to one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's key allies has sailed through the Strait of Hormuz, despite the ongoing blockade of the critical shipping channel. The 142m-long (465 ft) multi-deck luxury boat, named Nord, is linked to sanctioned Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov. It travelled from Dubai to Muscat, Oman, over the weekend - one of few private vessels to transit through the strait in recent months. Iran held high-level talks with Russia this week as its standoff with the US over the strait's re-opening continues. Approximately one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies normally pass through the...

Lame-duck Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz made a stunning about-face after the federal raids on Minnesota day care centers Tuesday — after previously denouncing fraud investigations as “white supremacy.” In a thread on X, Walz — the 2024 Democratic nominee for vice president — said he was putting criminals “on notice” and tried to take credit for the investigations. “If you commit fraud in Minnesota you’re going to get caught — and that’s exactly what we saw today. We catch criminals when state and federal agencies share information. Joint investigations work, and securing justice depends on it,” he wrote. “Today’s raids...

Dr. David M. Morens, a former top adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, was arrested and charged Tuesday with conspiracy and destruction of federal records in one of the first cases to allege a cover-up in the COVID-19 pandemic. The charges – brought by the FBI, Justice Department and the U.S. Health and Human Services inspector general – allege the former senior scientific adviser at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci led for 38 years, committed conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal or mutilation of records; and...

Explanation: They're like mountain peaks, but they are forming stars. Bright-rimmed, flowing shapes gather near the center of this rich starfield toward the borders of the nautical southern constellations Puppis and Vela. Composed of interstellar gas and dust, the grouping of light-year sized cometary globules is about 1300 light-years distant. Energetic ultraviolet light from nearby hot stars has molded the globules and ionized their bright rims. The globules also stream away from the Vela supernova remnant which may have influenced their swept-back shapes. Within them, cores of cold gas and dust are likely collapsing to form low mass stars whose...

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) is pushing back on a Republican proposal to spend up to $400 million in federal funds on President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom, citing the nation’s mounting debt and deficit spending. Scott’s comments came after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced legislation Monday that would help finance the ballroom project with federal dollars. Graham argued the facility would serve security and operational purposes beyond hosting events. “Underneath it will be a lot of military stuff. There will be a Secret Service annex, and we pay for it by offsetting it with customs fees,” Graham said at...

** DRUDGE POLL** WILL JIMMY KIMMEL BE FIRED BY ABC? •NO•YES

The Department of Justice indicted former FBI Director James Comey for the second time on Tuesday, CNN reported, citing "two sources familiar." The outlet did not identify the charges against Comey. The indictment follows a court dismissing a previous case against Comey, which was mired in legal scrutiny over the qualifications of acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan.

Charlie Weimers of the Sweden Democrats said other European Union countries should do the same. Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said on Friday that her government will no longer use the term ‘Islamophobia,’ describing the concept as “problematic”—not least because it “brings to mind the irrational fears of individuals.” The announcement was music to the ears of the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, whose MEP Charlie Weimers on Monday said “Islamists exploit ‘Islamophobia’ to advance their agenda and secure EU funding.” Weimers celebrated that the government was “FINALLY scrapping the made-up concept” for good, as well as the fact it...

A man who is running for Indiana Senate District 31 in the upcoming primary is facing charges after police allegedly found cocaine in his car in Fishers. Andrew Dezelan, 39, was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine and resisting law enforcement. The Fishers Police Department said officers responded to a person that was soliciting a neighborhood in the 13000 block of Ravenswood Trail, near East 136th Street and Atlantic Road in Fishers, around 8 p.m. on Sunday, April 26. Police said they found Dezelan in his vehicle at the neighborhood's clubhouse. When the responding officer asked Dezelan why he...

Teens who use marijuana may be at greater risk of permanent brain damage later in life, a study has revealed. About 18 million Americans report using marijuana daily or nearly every day, and use is on the rise, largely due to recent decriminalisation across the US. From 1992 to 2022, for example, daily and near-daily use saw a 15-fold increase. About one in seven of those users are teenagers, whose brains are still undergoing rapid changes in areas responsible for judgement, decision-making and memory. Now, the largest-ever study of American teenagers has found regular cannabis use restricted vital growth in...

Secretary Brooke Rollins @SecRollins In just ONE state, 14,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were driving LUXURY VEHICLES! 🚗 3 Bentleys 🚗 3 Ferraris 🚗 11 Lamborghinis 🚗 59 Maseratis 🚗 141 Porsches 🚗 244 Alfa Romeos 🚗 306 Land Rovers 🚗 2,098 Teslas And this is just in ONE STATE. We need to defend our nutrition programs for those most in need, not for scammers gaming the system. These individuals are taking advantage of the American taxpayer. And together with @VP’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, this ends NOW. 4.3M Americans have been moved off of SNAP — but more...

The Federal Communications Commission is moving toward a review of Disney’s broadcast licenses as the ABC owner faces backlash from the Trump administration over Jimmy Kimmel’s controversial monologue, according to a report. The FCC, which is led by chairman Brendan Carr, may choose not to trigger the process, known as early license review, according to Semafor, citing anonymous sources. Carr noted recently that the FCC has a number of investigations into a host of broadcasters, including NBC, ABC, PBS and National Public Radio.

🚨 JUST IN: The FCC is preparing to CHALLENGE the licenses of ABC affiliates following Jimmy Kimmel calling First Lady Melania Trump an "expectant widow" The review will begin as early as this afternoon. Kimmel seemed SPOOKED last night over this, going on defense and making up BS excuses for his rhetoric. This guy needs to be tossed off the air.

The shooting at the White House Correspondents’ dinner over the weekend was disturbed, deranged, twisted. In obligatory 2026 style, the fallout might have been weirder still. Ostensibly perpetrated by 31-year-old California teacher and self-styled “Friendly Federal Assassin” Cole Thomas Allen, the incident in the public consciousness quickly descended into false-flag, time-traveling, Mossad-agent bizarro land. A few conspiratorial theories already flying about the WHCA shooting: Cole Allen traveled through time. Yes, you read that right: an instantly viral theory described an elaborate “Timeline War” plot: An X account by the name of Henry Martinez made one post in 2023, reading only...

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, the panel rode to the defense of Jimmy Kimmel, embracing his claim that his “expectant widow” line about Melania Trump was merely an age-gap “joke”— then turning on Donald Trump and the First Lady for objecting. [snip] Kimmel insisted the remark was harmless: “It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am… It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination.” Morning Joe bought that framing wholesale. Co-host Willie Geist dismissed the backlash as “so much bad faith,” suggesting critics were...

A 37-year-old Coptic Christian researcher and YouTuber has filed an appeal to overturn his conviction for posting online videos about Christianity. He was sentenced in January to five years’ imprisonment with hard labor.Augustinos Samaan filed the appeal last week, according to ADF International, the international religious freedom legal advocacy organization representing him.He was arrested in the early hours of Oct. 1, 2025, by masked special forces officers who seized his laptop, phone, books and personal papers, reports Coptic Solidarity, a U.S.-based advocacy group for Egyptian Copts and persecuted minorities.Samaan runs a YouTube channel with more than 800,000 subscribers. His videos...

Once upon a time, a fellow named Carson dominated late night TV. It was more than a show. My father told me that men would be talking about his lines in the coffee break room. Even people who didn’t watch it knew about his one-liners, because that’s the way it was. Who is repeating Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes these days? Probably not a lot of people, unless you like a joke about an expectant widow or the current First Lady losing her husband, the president. Let’s check this out: Jimmy Kimmel mocking Melania Trump at his alternate universe parody WH correspondence...