Free Republic

On 21 November, at the end of the first shift at the Tyson Foods beef processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, all workers were called to the lunchroom and told they no longer had jobs.. And the move didn’t seem to make sense. Tyson is one of four beef producers – along with JBS, Cargill and National Beef, known collectively as “the Big Four” – that control 85% of the industry, and their profit margins are at their highest levels in years as consumer prices soar. Tyson had just announced that its profits were up 6.5% over the previous year. Why...

Just the News and America First Legal win access to 8,000 pages of documents after extensive open records litigation. The memos include revelations on how Joe Biden waived Trump's executive privilege specifically to aid Georgia prosecutors. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis coordinated extensively with the Biden Justice Department and White House as well as Democrats on the House Jan. 6 investigative committee as she built a failed criminal case against President Donald Trump and his allies related to their challenge to Georgia's 2020 election results, according to a trove of internal communications obtained by Just the News. The memos...

“We will ensure justice for your magnificent daughter, Iryna,” President Trump said during his 108-minute State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Among those in the audience was the mother of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee who was fatally stabbed on Charlotte’s Light Rail last August. Iryna’s mother, Anna Zarutska, was introduced as a woman who has “been through hell.” Her daughter’s killing, captured on camera in Charlotte, sparked intense criticism over why the suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., was on the street despite 14 prior criminal arrests. Trump, however, inaccurately claimed Brown was an illegal immigrant when he...

International Business Machines stock is getting slammed Monday, becoming the latest perceived victim of rapidly developing AI technology, after Anthropic said its Claude Code tool could be used to modernize legacy systems that run COBOL. Shares of IBM closed the day lower by nearly 13.2%, at $223.35 per share, after Anthropic on Monday said Claude Code could be used to automate the exploration and analysis work that drives most of the complexity in COBOL modernization, a key IBM business. IBM has long sold mainframe systems that are optimized for large-scale transaction processing, where COBOL has often been used. Short for...

Anthropic is accusing three Chinese artificial intelligence companies of "industrial-scale campaigns" to "illicitly extract" its technology using distillation attacks. Anthropic says these companies created 24,000 fraudulent accounts to hide these efforts. In a blog post detailing the attacks, Anthropic named three AI firms, including DeepSeek, the maker of the popular DeepSeek AI models. Anthropic explicitly framed the attack as an issue of national security. "We have identified industrial-scale campaigns by three AI laboratories—DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax—to illicitly extract Claude’s capabilities to improve their own models," reads the blog post. "These labs generated over 16 million exchanges with Claude through approximately...

An Illinois school district whose faculty members came under fire for “celebrating or justifying” the death of Charlie Kirk implemented expansive DEI and critical theory-driven programming, a new report revealed last week. One school even ran sessions that allegedly “segregated” students based on race. Anti-indoctrination watchdog Defending Education obtained multiple Freedom of Information Act requests exposing “extensive, taxpayer-funded DEI initiatives” in Illinois’ Oswego District 308, including “equity trainings for students and staff,” trainings where students were “separated based on racial background,” and “equity partnerships” with other groups. The obtained materials also exposed “district policies explicitly committing to anti-racism, marginalized identities,...

We're building long-term financial security for millions of children by creating tax-advantaged investment accounts for U.S. citizens under the age of 18. Fill out your Form 4547 below to make your election for the 2026 tax year. Who is eligible? All U.S. children under 18 with a valid Social Security Number are eligible to establish a Trump Account. Parents or legal guardians can open and manage accounts on behalf of their children. When can funds be used? Funds can be accessed without penalty when the child turns 18 for qualified expenses like education, a first home purchase, or starting a...

The Senate bill to swap the gas tax vote from a November General election to a May election has hit a Constitutional wall. As a result the bill is stalled. The petition itself on the front page in bold sets the election date. Politicians cannot just move the election date — if they could, they then could conceivably move it to 10 years in the future. Our legal commentators shared this analysis: “In 1902 the voters of Oregon voted the referendum into our Constitution by an 11 to 1 margin. They gave the legislature an explicit message: When you try...

A prolific waste criminal has been ordered to pay £1.2m in compensation for illegally dumping more than 4,000 tonnes of waste across England. A nationwide investigation by the Environment Agency (EA) uncovered a network of 16 illegal dumping sites, including a manor house in Surrey, a farm in Cambridgeshire and a warehouse in Kent. The total weight of the waste dumped was about 4,275 tonnes – roughly the weight of 600 African elephants. Varun Datta, 36, was handed a four-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months. He must also pay £1.1m, reflecting the financial benefit from his crimes, plus £100,000...

Former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland was reportedly hospitalized last week following a suicide attempt, days after he was charged with gross corruption linked to his relationship with late convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a media report Tuesday. The news was first broken by iNyheter which cited a “rock-solid source” confirming that Jagland’s condition remains serious. The specific medical facility treating the 75-year-old statesman has not been disclosed. The former Nobel Peace Prize Chairman is in critical condition after facing “gross corruption” charges linked to the Epstein case, according to iNyheter. Jagland is one of Norway’s most...

Ben Walker is a New Statesman data journalist who runs an election forecasting model Britain Predicts and he has had a go at forecasting the result in Gorton and Denton. The model is not a poll; it uses polling data, but then adjusts the figures on a constituency by constituency basis taking into account a range of factors. It has performed well in the past but, in his write-up of his final forecast, Walker says the result here is “anyone’s guess” because the Greens, Reform UK and Labour are so close. Walker thinks there could be just a few hundred...

'That's the first time I've ever seen them get up,' Trump says of congressional Democrats after introducing gold medal US hockey team

The Land of the Free is hot, but it’s not the only in vogue thing that graced Trump’s two-hour Tuesday night speech. t’s official, the United States of America is, as President Donald Trump declared during his 2026 State of the Union address, “the hottest country anywhere in the world.” The Land of the Free is hot, but it’s not the only in vogue thing that graced Trump’s two-hour Tuesday night speech. Here’s every significant moment from the late-night assembly ranked hot to not. HOT U.S. Men’s Hockey Team Jack Hughes’ broken winning smile and Connor Hellebuyck’s presidential medal of...

Bill Gates "took responsibility for his actions" over ties to late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a town hall meeting with employees of the Gates Foundation, a spokesperson for the philanthropic group told Reuters in a written statement on Tuesday. The spokesperson's comments came in response to a Wall Street Journal report, which said that Gates had apologized to staff during the town hall over his ties with Epstein. Documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have indicated that Gates and Epstein met repeatedly after Epstein's prison term to discuss expanding the Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new...

President Donald Trump’s 2026 State of the Union speech gave every American a front-row seat to see exactly who Democrats are — and more importantly, what they refuse to stand for. According to reports, more than 70 Democrats chose not to attend the speech, but most did, and several times over the course of the evening, they made a choice. They sat. They scowled. They heckled. While Republicans rose time and again in applause, the left side of the chamber looked like a group of children being punished. And Trump noticed. He called them out — repeatedly — for refusing...

Tuesday’s State of the Union address gives President Trump a big platform to tout the economy’s performance on his watch. He has already given himself a grade—“A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” he told Politico in December. The report card for the economy is a bit more mixed, however, after his first year back in office. Here are the grades for some key metrics. JobsNeeds improvement It is rough out there for job seekers, unless they are looking for work in healthcare. U.S. employers added only 181,000 jobs in 2025, down sharply from the prior year to the lowest figure outside of a recession in...

If China invades Taiwan and cuts off its chip exports to American companies, the tech industry and the U.S. economy would be crippled.Federal officials have for years tried to wean Silicon Valley from its dependence on Taiwan, an island democracy roughly the size of Maryland that makes 90 percent of the world’s high-end computer chips. In secret briefings held in Washington and Silicon Valley, national security officials warned executives from companies like Apple, Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm that China was making plans to retake Taiwan, which Beijing has long considered a breakaway territory. A Chinese blockade of Taiwan, the...

FedEx sued the U.S. government Monday, seeking a full refund of tariffs assessed under President Donald Trump’s order targeting imports. The lawsuit is one of the highest-profile moves by a major American company following the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling Friday, which determined that the president did not have the authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose such tariffs. The complaint, filed against the government and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Court of International Trade, alleges FedEx incurred costs to expedite shipments through customs and is entitled to a refund of duties with interest,...

Disruptive Rep. Al Green was ejected from the House chamber for the second year in a row during President Trump’s State of the Union on Tuesday. Green (D-Texas), 78, had waved around a sign that said “Black people aren’t apes” as he was escorted out of the chamber. He also declined to sit as Trump began speaking. The sign was in response to Trump posting a since-deleted video on his Truth Social that raised doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election and ended with a clip depicting former President Barack Obama as an ape. It appears that the post...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) melted down at the State of the Union after President Donald Trump said it is the American government’s duty to protect Americans and not illegal aliens. Trump challenged all lawmakers to stand if they agreed with his statement, but all Democrats appeared to remain seated. “I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” he said, prompting a lengthy applause from...