Free Republic

On the left is Madeleine McCann, and Eugenea Collins, who claims to be the missing girl, is on the right. Family of Madeleine McCann/ Eugenea Collins / Facebook An American woman from Arkansas is claiming that she is the real Madeleine McCann, a British girl who disappeared in 2007 while on a family vacation in Portugal. Eugenea Collins, 22, began posting her claims on Instagram in September 2024 with the username TheOfficialMadeleineMcCann, and the account features numerous side-by-side photos of Collins and McCann. In her most recent post, Collins shared an ancestry DNA test that shows she is 68 per...

Update! We're about to "Maduro" Castro. I didn't know I was voting for this, but it is in fact what I voted for. Florida's top prosecutor announced an arrest warrant Monday for former Cuban president Raul Castro under state murder charges that echo a federal indictment unveiled earlier this year. Raul Castro, 95, is wanted on murder charges connected to the February 24, 1996, shooting down of two civilian aircraft from 'Brothers to the Rescue,' an organization assisting Cubans fleeing to Florida by sea. 'Raul Castro ordered the murder of four Floridians in cold blood, and Florida will never stop...

One moment he was refusing the COVID vaccine, the next, Marine Cruz Marquis suddenly found himself placed in a “penal platoon” for his commitment to individual liberty. “This isn’t a story about me,” Marquis told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an exclusive interview. “This isn’t a story about any particular individuals who defied a government order. In my mind, this is about a slice of life, a slice of what the state was able to do and what they were able to get away with during the pandemic. This story, though it may be reported, is just the tip...

Bikers for Trump Alaska has endorsed Republican Bernadette Wilson for governor, adding another grassroots group to her roster of supporters as Alaska enters the final stretch before the Nov. 3 election. The endorsement follows President Donald Trump’s backing of Wilson at his Oct. 13 rally in Wasilla. Trump’s endorsement placed the president squarely behind Wilson in Alaska’s contest for governor. He said he had asked Dave Bronson to suspend his campaign and that Bronson agreed to suspend, but then went back on his word. Bikers for Trump is a national political organization composed primarily of motorcycle enthusiasts who support Trump....

The Biden administration wasn't just trying to police COVID posts. It wanted broader control over health information, and newly released internal documents show former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's office was actively strategizing how to make it happen. The documents Protect the Public's Trust obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) date back to 2021, when the Biden administration was already pushing Facebook and other technology companies to remove content it labeled misinformation. One exchange from May 2021 is particularly revealing. Murthy's policy adviser, Daniel Tartakovsky, suggested that the administration's efforts should reach considerably further than COVID. "May be worth...

Residents of Alberta voted on Monday to remain part of Canada, rejecting a campaign to try to separate the oil-rich western province from the rest of the country. Voters in a referendum endorsed remaining in Canada over the option of holding a second vote on whether to secede. With just over a third of votes counted, 76 percent of voters chose to remain part of Canada with 23 percent seeking another vote. Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed the result. “Albertans chose Canada,” he said in a statement. “All Canadians will move forward together with renewed purpose and high ambition.” In...

The midterms are a fundamental choice over America’s economic future, national identity, immigration, energy, and Western civilization. There are two ways of looking at the midterms, now less than three weeks away. One is as a simple referendum on the issues and politicians of the day. The other involves a far deeper conflict of visions (as Thomas Sowell puts it): socialism versus capitalism, intrusive versus limited government, and the destruction of time-honored institutions and traditions versus their preservation and renewal. Rarely in American history have the two parties been so far apart or the choice between them so stark. In...

* Idaho prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Andrea Shaw, who faces first-degree murder charges in the May 2025 suffocations of her twin toddlers. * Idaho’s primary execution method is now firing squad under a July 2026 state law. * Shaw has pleaded not guilty, denying the charges and alleging her children became severely ill and died following a “post-immunization reaction” from routine vaccinations received days earlier. *Shaw’s attorney called the capital punishment filing “outrageous,” noting that core prosecution evidence remains unreleased while grand jury indictments and coroner reports are sealed. * Children’s Health Defense (CHD) outside counsel Rick...

Richard Riehle, a prolific character actor best known for memorable turns in Office Space, Bridesmaids, Glory, and Casino, has died, Variety reports. He was 78. A cause of death was not immediately available. Riehle worked extensively across film and television, amassing more than 400 credits during his career, according to IMDB (with the database noting he has 10 additional upcoming projects). Though he scored his first screen roles in the Seventies, Riehle spent the early part of his career doing regional theater around the U.S., especially in the Pacific Northwest. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that his onscreen career...

"To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability." It ends in bankruptcy every time! When immigration enforcement ramped up in Minneapolis earlier this year, owner Dylan Alverson rebranded the restaurant as "Post Modern Times." He took prices off the menu and declared he would feed anyone who walked in the door, whether they could pay or not. Well, almost anyone. Federal agents were explicitly unwelcome. The stunt made national news. Donations poured in from around the world. For six months, the restaurant operated as a pay-what-you-can (or pay-nothing-at-all) sanctuary in Minneapolis. But as it turns out,...

Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s (D) mother called her a “liar” in a new ad, as her brother labelled the video “a despicable low” on Tuesday ahead of the state’s battleground elections in November. “I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent. It is not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar,” Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, appeared to say in the ad. “She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire...

Here is what happened to me when I told Britain’s truth for American Thinker. .......SNIP..... I used to regard such climates of fear as distant foreign realities. That distance narrowed hugely when I found myself facing anonymous reporting and ideological scrutiny here at home. I never expected to encounter the pressures of self-censorship, or the prospect of anonymous informants, in my own country — least of all within England’s university-led teacher-training. It is this kind of pressure that makes the language of V for Vendetta resonate beyond fiction. Where British subjects once held the freedom to object, to think and...

Earlier this month, a man walked into a West Side grocery store, according to a police report, and tried to walk out of the shop with two concealed cans of an alcoholic beverage. Even though the cost of the alleged theft was around $13, the 29-year-old man, who the report notes is a U.S. veteran, is facing a felony retail theft charge due to a criminal background that includes a retail theft conviction and a stint in prison for armed robbery. “Do not go back to that Food for Less,” Cook County Judge Luciano Panici Jr. warned as he set...

You cannot make this up. A viral video from the chaotic streets of Milan captures a liberal Italian woman furiously lecturing police officers for using force against third-world migrant rioters. “What are you doing?! Why are you grabbing them by force like that?” she said. She demands they treat the thugs “like civilians” and simply “ask them for ID.” Seconds later, one of the very rioters she was defending throws an explosive. The clip, posted by Matt Van Swol, shows the woman in the midst of the weekend’s violent unrest, arguing with officers in riot gear as the crowd surges...

Two weeks out from the November 3 election, the Democratic Socialists of America are turning on one of their own. Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, the DSA-backed challenger to Mayor Karen Bass, now faces a push from hardline Marxist caucuses that could strip her endorsement or even expel her from the organization. The New York Post reported that Reform & Revolution and Bread & Roses have joined forces to demand Raman answer for her positions on Israel and Palestine. They introduced a resolution to the National Political Committee calling for a members-only meeting by October 25, preferably with Raman...

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Tehran this week. This comes as the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday that Moscow would honor its economic agreements with Iran despite the “challenging situation.” Moscow is reaffirming its commitment to cooperation with Iran. Lavrov met with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi. This comes as the relationship between Ukraine and the United States is facing a crisis. US President Donald Trump has been more critical of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. The US apparently wants Ukraine to stop attacks on Russian energy sites. The US has also...

Woke 1 died out in the early 2020s when people got sick of the nags, scolds, and harpies trying to pester their way into power. But now these weirdos, losers, and mutations are back, trying to make "Woke 2: Wine Woman Boogaloo" happen. But it’s not going quite the way they want. It’s not happening quite the way they envisioned. Yeah, they’re whining and complaining like the shrill shrews they are, but people have finally figured out how best to deal with these yakking malcontents. You either mock them or ignore them, and when you do, they’ve got nothing. Understand...

A recent report from the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC) in the Treasury Department shows that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was a driving force behind the debanking of conservative groups prior to its indictment. The SPLC is a left-wing anti-racism advocacy group that has faced scrutiny from conservatives for years over its alleged bias against them and penchant for labeling mainstream political figures on the right as “extremists.” The group has also faced withering criticism from the left, such as Ken Silverstein, who followed its expelled founder Morris Dees for years for Harper's and The New...

Specimen: Western, educated, well-meaning. Habitat: universities, NGOs, quality newspapers, dinner parties where the wine is good and the opinions are better. Status: abundant.The useful idiot is not exactly stupid. This is the first and most important thing to understand. Stupidity would be a defense. The more precise diagnosis is what we in Poland call pół-inteligent – the half-wit. Not the bottom of the intelligence distribution, which is too obviously lost to be useful. Not the genuine top, which tends to develop the inconvenient habit of following arguments wherever they actually lead. The sweet spot: smart enough to absorb a complex...

A powerful new synthetic opioid said to be more potent than fentanyl has been linked to dozens of recent deaths in the U.S., prompting warnings from health officials. Tennessee was an early hotspot, with the state’s health department announcing in March that more than 30 fatal overdoses had been associated with cychlorphine since October 2025. An April 2026 notice from the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy cited at least 41 Tennessee deaths between July 2025 and February 2026 and at least 55 deaths nationally. Fatal overdoses have also been reported in Illinois, California and Oklahoma, according to...