Free Republic

In his famous 20th century novel "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway’s character, Mike Campbell, was asked by a friend how his financial ruin had happened. Campbell replied to the question simply, "Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly." Just a cursory look at today’s headlines and one can see this very idea of "gradually and then suddenly" playing out in the fiscal health of many blue states. California, the poster child for a state heading down the road to financial ruin, is slated to lose four congressional seats in the 2030 census due to population loss. Moreover, major companies such...

KEY POINTS $20 billion investment: Elon Musk’s xAI will build the MACROHARDRR data center in Southaven, Mississippi — the largest private investment in the state — as part of a Memphis-area cluster the company says will house the world’s largest supercomputer with 2 gigawatts of computing power. Environmental and community opposition: the NAACP, the Southern Environmental Law Center and local groups have raised air-pollution and environmental-justice concerns tied to xAI’s Memphis-area facilities, and a Southaven petition against the developments has more than 900 signatures. Generous incentives: under a 2024 data-center law Mississippi will waive state sales, corporate income and franchise...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ Ooh Rah! Semper Fi! U.S. Marine Corps Private First Class Selena Serrano, a Marine with Golf Company, 2nd Recruit Training Battalion, poses for a photo with her eagle, globe and anchor on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California. Serrano just completed the crucible – a 54-hour event that challenges all the skills a recruit has learned throughout recruit training. Serrano was recruited out of Los Angeles, C with Recruiting Station Montebello. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Christopher A. Madero) Canteen Mission StatementShowing support and boosting the morale...

Aside from Damon, who leads the proceedings as King Odysseus, The Odyssey boasts a star-studded supporting cast. The additional lineup features Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Himesh Patel, Mia Goth, and Travis Scott, among others. Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated fantasy epic, The Odyssey, may be months away from its theatrical release date, but the movie’s first review has already come out. In a recent discussion, Jonathan Nolan, the brother and frequent collaborator of The Dark Knight director, provided his assessment of the upcoming Matt Damon-led drama, stating that...

President Donald Trump spent years promising to make Mexico pay for a wall at the US southern border. Mexico did not. In a strange twist, Trump is now threatening to block the opening of a bridge at the northern border that Canada actually already paid for. This is either next-level negotiation or a misunderstanding of the facts, or both, but an ultimatum Trump made on social media is the latest in a string of erratic moves that have confused his fellow world leaders. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is basically completed Trump should have previously known that the brand-new Gordie...

Video Transcript SummaryThe transcript discusses suspicions of code words in Jeffrey Epstein's emails and communications, focusing on unusual or repeated food references that appear out of context.Pizza and grape soda:Multiple examples cited where "pizza" is paired with "grape soda" in emails, such as "Let's go for pizza and grape soda again. No one else can understand," or "This is better than a Chinese cookie... let's go for pizza and grape soda again."One instance describes a pregnant woman in a photo as "radiating a soft glow with the look of bliss and excitement," followed by "Yeah, that's the pizza."A neurologist allegedly...

The House of Representatives passed a massive election integrity overhaul bill on Wednesday despite opposition from the vast majority of Democrats. The House passed Rep. Chip Roy's SAVE America Act, legislation that's aimed at keeping non-citizens from voting in U.S. federal elections. All but one House Democrat — Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas — voted against the bill. It passed 218 to 213. It is an updated version of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, also led by Roy, R-Texas, which passed the House in April 2025 but was never taken up in the Senate. Whereas the SAVE Act would...

California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom has unloaded on reporters at a Sacramento press conference about Planned Parenthood — accusing the mostly female journalists of inflicting a “horrific war on women” by not asking on-topic questions. The rant was part of a Siebel Newsom press blitz Wednesday after the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom was featured in a glossy Marie Claire profile that discussed her marriage, activist documentaries, as well as her husband saying she’d be an ”extraordinary” First Lady, as he continues. “I think she’d be extraordinary in that role, even if she married someone else and they...

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The United States is sending troops to Nigeria to help train the West African nation's military in fighting extremism, Nigerian authorities said Wednesday, as a multifaceted security crisis spreads in the north of the country.The American personnel won't engage in combat or have a direct operational role, and Nigerian forces will have complete command authority, Maj. Gen. Samaila Uba, spokesman for Nigeria’s Defense Headquarters, said in a statement.“At the invitation of the Government of Nigeria and in continuation of our longstanding security cooperation and military-to-military partnership with the United States, Nigeria will host a contingent of...

Defying doomcasters who predicted that AI plus tariffs mean disaster for American workers, the January employment news blew past expectations, with 130,000 new jobs. Revised 2025 data show that the nation added only 81,000 jobs all last year, as the economy struggled to escape the Biden-era doldrums — so 2026’s solid start suggests President Donald Trump’s pro-growth policies are finally kicking in. Plus, the net gains come despite a decline of 42,000 government jobs, including 34,000 from the federal workforce: A shrinking public sector and growing private sector is exactly the right path for America. Yes, the nation needs a...

Think back to February 2020. If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us weren't paying close attention. The stock market was doing great, your kids were in school, you were going to restaurants and shaking hands and planning trips. If someone told you they were stockpiling toilet paper you would have thought they'd been spending too much time on a weird corner of the internet. Then, over the course of about three weeks, the entire world changed. Your office closed, your kids came home, and...

In a vote that GOP leaders fought hard to avoid, a half dozen Republicans sent a blunt message to President Donald Trump that they do not support the tariff regime that he has made the centerpiece of his second term. Six Republicans joined with Democrats in a vote to effectively repeal the president’s tariffs on Canada, the culmination of months of consternation in the GOP over the president’s trade war that has quietly rattled even some of his staunchest loyalists in Congress. And it won’t be the last tough tariffs vote for Trump: Democrats have successfully unlocked a procedural power...

Casey Wasserman's job as chair of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee is safe after the LA28 board's executive committee met Wednesday to discuss his appearance in recently released government files on Jeffrey Epstein. Wasserman has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, but documents released by the Justice Department revealed that in 2003 he exchanged flirtatious emails with Ghislaine Maxwell, who years later would be accused of helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse his victims. IOC won't pressure L.A. Games chair Wasserman LA28 said that, with help from an outside legal firm, it conducted a...

An 18-year-old has been named as the suspect in a shooting that killed eight people and injured dozens more in British Columbia, Canada.Police said Jesse Van Rootselaar was found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot injury. The motive for the attack is not yet known.Six people were killed and at least 25 others were injured at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. Two others - the suspect's mother, 39, and step-brother, 11 - were found dead at a nearby home. Authorities said Van Rootselaar was born a biological male but identified as a woman. "I can say that Jesse was...

The Pebble Beach Pro-Am starts Thursday, and the official professional and amateur pairings sheet has been released. These pairings will be played on Thursday and Friday. The event uses a pro-am format, meaning each professional golfer is paired with an amateur partner. Two pro-am teams are grouped to form each tee time group, so fans will see four players at a time on the course: two pros and two amateurs. Below are the full group pairings, along with their Thursday and Friday starting courses and tee times: (The asterisks (*) mark groups that start on the 10th tee (hole 10)...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans rushed to approve legislation on Wednesday that would impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements ahead of the midterm elections, a long shot Trump administration priority that faces sharp blowback in the Senate.The bill, called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, would require Americans to prove they are citizens when they register to vote, mostly through a valid U.S. passport or birth certificate. It would also require a valid photo identification before voters can cast ballots, which some states already demand. It was approved on a mostly party-line vote, 218-213.Republicans said the legislation is...

WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled House voted Wednesday to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election bill that President Donald Trump is pushing Congress to enact. The vote was 218-213, with Republicans unanimously voting in favor and all but one Democrat voting against it. The one Democrat voting yes was Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas. The 32-page legislation would require states to obtain documentary proof-of-citizenship “in person,” such as an American passport or birth certificate, from someone in order to register them to vote in a federal election. The bill, which was revised from an earlier version to include new demands...

On X there are a great many genuine posts and truth be known, the news tends to show up on X before it does on television. The problem is you need to sort out the truth from the nonsense, and there is a great deal of nonsense. In vetting with that nonsense, Grok is a treasure. Liberals, AWFULs in particular, are well known for their trafficking in untruths. For example- In her profile Suzie Rizzio describes herself this wayI’m a small town beach girl that loves politics & fostering animals! She posted this yesterday: Fact Check by Mike NetterThe incident...

All those many many months focused on one primary task at Politico. Get Trump via the Epstein files. It is hard to underestimate the insane lengths Politico employed to somehow implicate President Donald Trump with the foibles of Jeffrey Epstein via the Epstein files. Politico acted if they just kept focusing on those files, damaging material just had to be found about Trump. The pathetic spectacle of Politico madly pursuing their political White Whale culminated last July when Politico was flooded with SIX Epstein stories in just one 24 hour period.So what was the end result of Politico's absurd Epstein-Trump...

Bad Bunny’s halftime performance at Super Bowl LX is the subject of many hot takes on Monday. Despite appearances from Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, many fans online were upset about the predominantly Spanish performance. This ongoing social media outrage is why Roc Nation, who books the Super Bowl halftime show, has to do something more universally beloved next season. Listen, Bad Bunny’s performance objectively was not awful. Even if you couldn’t understand the lyrics, the stagework, choreography, and overall video production was first class. The special guests and Easter eggs were able to be identified by fans that weren’t...