Free Republic

Dear community member, Hate has no place in our communities, and least of all on our school campuses. Every student deserves to feel safe, respected, and valued for who they are. That commitment is at the heart of United Against Hate Week, taking place October 18-24. Each year, the Santa Cruz County Office of Education joins school districts across our county in recognizing this week and reaffirming our shared responsibility to confront hate, bullying, and bias in all forms.

Election officials say they worry the administration could use its own unsubstantiated claims to contest the vote in November. President Trump has warned that the country’s election systems are vulnerable to foreign meddling. Federal agents are scouring state rolls and federal databases to try to find noncitizen voters. And the homeland security chief has asked the Justice Department to examine whether a commonly used voting machine can be trusted.Just weeks away from the midterm elections, Mr. Trump’s longstanding attacks on the integrity of voting systems are crystallizing into what many election officials and Democrats fear is an attempt to lay...

Is there anything better than weird baseball? Not necessarily those 3 a.m. extra-inning marathons (though sometimes those), but just the inherent understanding that anything can happen.

That’s rich. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s re-election campaign has spent big bucks on posh hotels — shelling out nearly $50,000 on upscale stays in the past seven months — as the democratic socialist darling rallies against the wealthy, The Post has learned. The New York Democrat’s campaign forked over $47,000 on 45 hotel charges across the country since April, including a $5,044 bill at The Memphian — a bougie boutique hotel in Memphis, with spa services and an extravagant, animal-themed rooftop bar, filings show. The campaign also racked up bills for $1,599 and $2,694 bill at the 4-star The Candler Hotel...

Brent crude oil rose to a six-month high on Friday, as investors increasingly expect the U.S. to resume strikes on Iran in the coming weeks. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. was not negotiating with Iran and something would happen “fairly soon.” His cryptic remarks came as U.S. officials told The New York Times that the U.S. and Israel have plans for fresh strikes on Iran after the midterm elections.

Officials have a plan to whittle down the institution’s projected deficit to $3 million through expense shaving and revenue increases. ... Dive Brief: University of Maine’s senior leadership outlined a plan that would slash the public institution’s expected fiscal 2028 nonacademic budget deficit from $9 million down to $3 million. The plan relies on expense cuts including an unspecified number of layoffs, along with some combination of shorter employee appointments and vacancy eliminations in several units — athletics, student life, strategic partnerships and the president’s office. Leaders are also looking at consolidating UMaine’s research centers. At the same time, they...

NASA Confirms SpaceX's Starship Refueling Estimate! | 17:21 Ellie in Space | 232K subscribers | 1,683 views | October 23, 2026

Zillow and Thumbtack found property taxes, maintenance and insurance now add $1,380 a month beyond mortgage payments ... The hidden costs of homeownership are rising and have increased by nearly one-third in the last five years as expenses like insurance, maintenance and property taxes take a bite out of homeowners' budgets. A new report by Zillow and Thumbtack found those costs amount to about $16,566 per year, which amounts to roughly $1,380 a month in addition to a mortgage payment. Within the $16,566 total cost, the typical U.S. homeowner faces about $11,171 in annual maintenance, $2,266 for homeowners insurance and...

A federal appeals court has struck down an Indiana law meant to protect pregnant teen girls and keep their parents involved, clearing the way for Planned Parenthood to take minors out of state for secret abortions without parental consent or a judicial waiver. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that Indiana’s 2017 “aid-or-assist” statute violated the First Amendment. The law barred anyone from knowingly helping a teen girl obtain an abortion unless the state’s parental consent requirements were met or a court granted a bypass. Planned Parenthood sued before the measure could take effect, arguing it...

🚨 BOOM: The New York Times just had to pull 15 midterm polls after the "pollster" behind them ADMITTED almost all of it was FAKE. The firm is called Wedgewood Polls. It pumped out made-up numbers from June to October, and the Times put them right on its official poll tracking pages. The Times says it vetted them first. Wedgewood's own words on how easy it was to fool the media: "Far too easy." This is the same paper telling you which polls to trust. Trump has been saying it from day one. Now they're proving it for him.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says 9.5 million Ukrainians out of its population of almost 40 million are abroad since the war started. "This war pushed them out of Ukraine, 9.5 million. Can you imagine?" he says. "If the population of your country is 40 million, can you imagine that 20% to 25% are abroad from the beginning of this full-scale invasion?" he adds.

PHILADELPHIA, PA — NBA officials believe they've finally found a way to get LeBron James to stand at attention during the national anthem and show some respect by giving him a Chinese flag to look at. James, in his first game for the 76ers, was seen practicing his golf swing during the national anthem at this year's season opener at Madison Square Garden. The NBA received hundreds of complaints as a result, forcing league officials to figure out the best way to get the veteran player to sit still like an adult. Then it hit them: China. A Chinese flag,...

Durban Father Takes on 3 Would-Be Hijackers and Saves the Day A father in Durban faces a terrifying hijacking attempt but turns the tables on three would-be hijackers, shooting and killing all three.

We don’t watch a lot of television in our home anymore. Especially Disney. And there’s a good reason. The entire entertainment industry has departed from its seemingly harmless mission of turning us into couch potatoes and making us laugh. It has now become our primary catechism for moral and spiritual formation. And Disney has become the high priest of this secular humanistic self-worship religion masquerading as innocent entertainment for children. “Coven Academy,” produced by Disney Kids & Family, opens October 1 and will reportedly follow teenage witches, warlocks, and a vampire at an elite magical boarding school. Disney’s “First Look”...

Rep. Ilhan Omar insisted she’ll keep voting in Minnesota as feds probe her immigration history, brushing off questions about whether the investigation could threaten her US citizenship. Omar spoke briefly after casting her ballot in Minnesota, where she’s up for reelection amid a federal immigration probe into whether she married her brother, lied about her birthday and has been living under an alias. Asked by reporters whether this would be her last time being able to vote, Omar defiantly shot back: “No, and I’ll continue to vote.” The congresswoman then hurried away from reporters and said federal officials haven’t told...

Disgraced Max Factor heir Andrew Luster has been banned for life from the California county where he carried out multiple rapes in the late 90s, the Daily Mail has exclusively learned. Pervert Luster, now 62, was sprung from prison last week and is living in a modest $700,000 bungalow in the small city of Glendora – 25 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. But while the serial predator has been cut loose, the Daily Mail has learned that his freedom has come with severe conditions, including three years on parole, a life ban from Ventura County and an ankle monitor...

A new critical Internet security vulnerability has been announced, and it’s really, really bad. The PHP Foundation has revealed two serious vulnerabilities that could impact millions of websites. Security experts warn that failure to quickly patch the flaws could have dire consequences. Internet security and web administration teams around the world are scrambling to prevent widespread disaster. On Wednesday, the developers behind the much-used PHP programming language released emergency security updates designed to fix critical flaws that could be exploited to allow attackers to gain dangerous remote control of victim systems. The PHP Foundation detailed the two critical vulnerabilities—CVE-2026-109618 and...

Explanation: Looking toward the north from Mullion, New South Wales, Australia, the Andromeda Galaxy never gets more than a few degrees above the horizon. During the southern hemisphere spring, Andromeda is highest in the sky around midnight though. And in this telephoto scene from October 10/11, multiple exposures were used to reveal the spiral galaxy in tantalizing detail as it climbed above rolling Australian hills. Also known as M31, the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the brightest objects in the Messier catalog, but is only visible to the unaided eye as a small, faint, fuzzy patch. Digitally tracked and stacked...

(The Center Square) - Colorado voters will decide in less than two weeks whether to ban surgeries that change the genders of minors. If Proposition 135 passes on Nov. 3, doctors across the state will be prohibited from performing procedures to alter minors’ sex characteristics. Prop. 135’s description says a “Yes” vote would prohibit surgeries on minors that would “alter their biological sex characteristics as a treatment in response to a minor’s perception of sex or gender, and prohibits the use of government funds or health insurance to pay for the surgeries.” The bluebook ballot guide provided by the Colorado...

Congressman Keith Self (TX-03) introduced a bill to repeal the Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery. The Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery program offers permanent residence to up to 55,000 applicants annually from countries with historically lower levels of immigration to the US, many of them in Africa. A California judge ruled the U.S. State Department must reinstate the program after the Trump administration had suspended it last December after a Portuguese national who received a visa through the program was suspected of killing four people in two separate shootings in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. “We cannot allow activist judges to dictate our...