Free Republic

Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor just laid it out plain. Noncitizens are already voting in California’s midterms, the state has confirmed it will count those ballots, and that will corrupt the election. Bill Essayli, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District, said it after an emergency Sunday hearing that ended without a ruling. The Department of Justice is fighting to sequester roughly 20,000 ballots from people federal investigators have identified as noncitizens. California’s answer, in essence, is that citizenship is irrelevant once the envelopes are open. Mail ballots started processing on Saturday ahead of the November 3 election. Los...

The 2026 midterms aren’t even over yet, and Vice President JD Vance has already dropped a bomb into the 2028 presidential election cycle: he might not run. Vance told the audience at a Michigan town hall that he had not yet made a decision about whether or not he would seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2028 — and said it was certainly a possibility that he would sit the election out. Host Tony Dokoupil started the ball rolling by jumping on a comment Vance had made earlier in the evening — namely that he might be “out of a...

Investors had hoped for friendly overhauls such as spending cuts and deregulation Brazilian financial assets were swept by a historic rout Monday after the surprise election victory of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrong-footed investors who had bet on his defeat.The Brazilian real slid more than 10% against the U.S. dollar while the country’s benchmark stock index fell nearly 17%, which would mark a record daily loss. The index’s plunge triggered a circuit breaker, leading Brazil’s stock-exchange operator to temporarily halt trading.Global investors had piled into Brazilian markets in recent weeks after Flávio Bolsonaro—the eldest son of former President...

A report by Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) president John Lott shows armed citizens stopped a third of all “active shooter incidents” from 2014 through 2025.Lott then presented the CPRC data as a correction to FBI reports which claim armed citizens only topped 3.9 percent of the incidents.He noted that during his time in the Department of Justice during President Trump’s first term, his duties “included evaluating the FBI’s active-shooter reports.” In so doing, he “discovered that the reports omitted or misclassified numerous cases in which armed civilians stopped attacks.”Lott noted the FBI identified 418 “active shooter incidents” from 2014...

Italy’s Catholic bishops promote Koran as ‘revealed Word of God’ in schools Cdl. Matteo Zuppi presented the Islamic education program for state-school religion teachers, saying Catholic religion classes should serve as a ‘laboratory of culture and dialogue.’Italy’s Catholic bishops are promoting a new Islamic education program that describes the Koran as the “revealed Word of God,” while Cardinal Matteo Zuppi has said Catholic religion classes should be treated as a “laboratory of culture and dialogue.”On October 21, Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), presented the new educational initiative, “Factsheets for Understanding Islam,” at an...

Sheila McDonald, 46, of Pittsburgh, worked at the Lehigh County Assistance Office in Allentown, where she was responsible for safeguarding EBT cards. Prosecutors accuse her of taking 48 of the cards and carrying out more than 270 unauthorized transactions that drained $20,558.61 in benefits ... An unidentified man told investigators he repeatedly received EBT cards and their PINs from McDonald as payment for crack cocaine, authorities said. He suspected McDonald had gotten the cards through her work at the welfare office, authorities said. In two years, McDonald allegedly used her job as supervisor to steal $20k by posing as food...

Another day, another Omar scandal, another piece of evidence indicating foreign loyalties and domestic betrayal. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) father participated in genocide in Somaliland, and Omar herself has connections to top Somali thugs, so unsurprisingly there is a natural antipathy between Omar and Somaliland. The latest (resurrected) accusation from the breakaway African republic against Omar is that she leaked classified information to Somali leaders. Ali Hassan Mohamed, former Somaliland minister of information, originally posted his accusation against Omar in 2024, but the Republic of Somaliland is highlighting the accusation again to emphasize why Omar is a threat to American...

FBI statistics reveal which states lead in violent and property crime, while Washington, D.C., outpaces them all. In August of this year, the FBI released its final state and local crime statistics for 2025. I was unable to find any online articles ranking states by violent crime and property crime based on the new numbers, so I did it myself in hopes that some AT readers might find it interesting or useful. All the information can be accessed at the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer site, then “Documents and Downloads,” then “Crime in the U.S. Annual Reports,” then “2025 CIUS Estimations,”...

Watch this full podcast episode where Anthony Delany and Maddy Pelling talk with Irving Finkel about the first ghost, going all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest evidence of human belief in ghosts comes from 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Who were these first ghosts? What was the underworld they lived in like? What do these most ancient ghosts tell us about today? Maddy and Anthony's guest today, Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper [ASSISTANT?] of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum and author of 'The First Ghosts: Most...

A fighter jet used a "headbutt maneuver" to intercept a civilian plane that had entered restricted airspace near President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday, U.S. military officials said. Mr. Trump was in West Palm Beach that day to vote in Florida's midterm election. The interception took place at around 12:20 p.m. ET, when an F-16 deployed by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, flew closely in front of the plane in order to gain the pilot's attention, NORAD said. That tactic, called the "headbutt maneuver," is considered standard, according to the command. In this...

David Beamer, the father of Todd Beamer, the Flight 93 passenger who helped take down the aircraft and thwart the terrorists' plan back on September 11, 2001, spoke to a rally in Michigan about the upcoming midterms, including the candidacy of Abdul El-Sayed and the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America. "What about now? What has changed? One thing is, 9/11 was a surprise attack," Beamer said. "What's going on right now in our country and here in Michigan, it's not a surprise. We can see the attack coming; it culminates in this battleground state on Tuesday, November 3rd....

House Democrats are laying the groundwork for a renewed investigation into President Donald Trump's past relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein if they regain control of the House in next month's midterm elections. A 53-page report released Monday by Democrat staff on the House Judiciary Committee calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate allegations that Trump participated in Epstein's sexual abuse of young women in the 1990s, Politico reported. The report, titled "The Case Against Donald Trump Emerging in the Epstein Files and DOJ's Desperate Efforts to Cover It Up," alleges that the Justice Department withheld...

So ex-Special Counsel Jack “the Ripper” Smith obtained personal information on at least 639,000 Republican donors, voters and supporters, including some who contributed as little as $1 or bought “red MAGA hats,” according to subpoena returns obtained by a Senate Republican committee. That checks out. Smith was appointed by Merrick “Parents Are Terrorists” Garland as an independent Special Counsel to oversee two utterly bogus and agenda-driven “investigations” into President Trump. Incredibly, from 2005 to 2021, Smith also dutifully obtained the dates of birth, home addresses, email addresses, credit card info, employment histories, and Republican Party registration, as directed by the...

MILWAUKEE, WI — Milwaukee Archbishop Jeffrey Grob apologized Sunday after video circulated on social media showing him and other bishops praying with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Oct. 22. Grob said he was invited in mid-September to join a group of 12 bishops for discussions about matters important to the Catholic Church, including human dignity and immigration enforcement. He said he had not been invited to an earlier gathering arranged by the Heritage Foundation in June. The bishops were told the October meeting would be private and that several Catholic members of the Cabinet might attend, Grob...

U.S. President Donald Trump has said he was deciding whether to “make a deal” with Iran or “finish it off” as investors weigh heightened tensions across the Middle East. “Do I finish it off, which would be very easy to do, or do I make a deal? It’s getting to be decision time,” Trump said in a Fox News interview on Sunday. Mediators from Qatar, which has played a key role in efforts to negotiate an agreement between Washington and Tehran, visited Tehran on Sunday, per Reuters. It comes as attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants on Saudi Arabia continued over...

In my part of Texas, oil, gas, and timber drives the economy. I made an observation in a family meeting yesterday that it's really starting to break loose here. The local RV parks that are usually empty during the week, are filling up with oilfield workers. The oil and gas personnel that I know who are involved in site prep are working overtime. My son-in-law is one, and he is now working 36 hour shifts. I've been holding off doing a thinning cutting on one of my timber tracts because the price has been so low. But, last week my...

On Friday, The New York Times reported military review boards are defying orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to discharge transgender service members, with Navy and Marine Corps boards frequently voting to retain them.President Donald Trump's administration created three-person separation boards with narrow instructions mandating dismissal of the estimated 4,250 transgender personnel currently serving in the military.Navy and Marine Corps boards have voted to retain trans members in nine of 12 cases. Marine Staff Sgt. Damien Contreras saw board members cross out instructions regarding "a history of cross sex hormone therapy" and circle "remains qualified."The Army and Air Force have...

PORT HURON, Michigan, Oct 25 (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump on Sunday escalated ​his invective against Norway, calling it a "shit house country" and ‌saying Norwegian immigrants were not welcome in the United States because the Nobel committee, based in the capital Oslo, had not awarded him a Peace ​Prize. Trump made the comments at a political rally in Port ​Huron, Michigan, ahead of next week's midterm elections Attributing recent unrest in ⁠France to immigration, Trump said he would welcome immigrants from some ​countries but not from Norway "because I didn't get the Nobel Prize ... ​So I don't...

Because of the DOJ's crackdown on non-citizen voting in California, some are claiming this can swing 2-5 U.S. House seats in favor of the GOP.

The Archdiocese of New York has agreed to pay $800 million to settle the claims brought against the church by some 1,300 people who say they faced sexual abuse from clergy members and lay workers. Jeff Anderson, a lawyer whose firm represents more than 250 of the plaintiffs, said the settlement was finalized, pending signed paperwork, and that all plaintiffs had agreed to the settlement. In an email sent to priests of the archdiocese on Saturday afternoon and shared with NPR, Archbishop Ronald Hicks also said the deal had not yet been signed but that an agreement had been reached...