Free Republic

For all the griping we hear about our state — healthcare, education, crime, economic opportunity — there sure has been a lot of talk lately about ownership of our assets. (Turn the page for opinions about the Sandia Mountains.) Last week, Texas lawmakers met to study the possibility of the Lone Star State annexing “one or more contiguous counties” in southeastern New Mexico because of the region’s conservative leanings and oil production. It’s been a fantastical debate for several years, as southeastern New Mexico residents on paper align more closely to the culture of West Texas than Santa Fe. While...

Early Sunday morning gunfire at a Dooly County homecoming block party left two people dead and approximately 35 others wounded. Emergency crews rushed victims to four area hospitals after chaotic crowds and traffic delayed first responders. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has taken over the crime scene while authorities search for suspects.

Senator Flavio Bolsonaro took an early lead as Brazil began reporting results Sunday afternoon in the first round of a tight presidential election, after a campaign dominated by corruption scandals, economic anxiety, and accusations of U.S. meddling. The field of 13 candidates has been led by two clear frontrunners — leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 80, who is seeking a fourth term, and Flavio, the 45-year-old son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who hopes to return his father's right-wing movement to power. With about 11% of votes reported, Flavio led Lula with 51.09% to the president's 40.67%. The...

Newly released public records obtained by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) reveal that the fetal organ-harvesting company Cercle Allocation Services billed a UCLA research laboratory $765 each for individual fetal body parts harvested from late-term abortion facilities. Peer-reviewed research confirms that Cercle, which has previously harvested organs under the name Advanced Bioscience Research (ABR), has been a source of human fetal tissue for researchers. ABR and its partners at Planned Parenthood were the subject of Congressional criminal referrals in 2016 prompted by CMP’s undercover video reporting in 2015 by David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt who exposed Planned Parenthood’s aborted...

“The United States has decided to remove all of its B-1 bombers from an air base in the United Kingdom following a suspected terror plot in the country. Around a dozen American bombers were stationed at the RAF Fairford air base, located northwest of London, until the Pentagon made the move on Sunday. The air base was used as a hub for launching bomber strikes in Iran. The Pentagon said in a statement on Sunday: 'While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all U.S. bombers that...

Rejoining the European Union could increase net migration by more than 200,000, according to analysis by Reform UK. Modelling by Nigel Farage’s party suggests that the restoration of free movement from the EU could push net migration over 500,000, more than 200,000 above the official estimates by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Net migration, the number entering the UK minus those leaving, stood at 171,000 at the end of last year, down from a peak of 944,000 for the year ending December 2023. Reform’s analysis claimed that increases in migration from the EU if the UK were to rejoin...

A California traffic stop took a massive turn when a police K-9 sniffed out approximately 200 kilos, or roughly 440 pounds, of cocaine allegedly packed inside an SUV filled with cardboard boxes, authorities said. The Alhambra Police Department said the incident began after officers conducted a traffic stop along Valley Boulevard near the 710 Freeway. Although authorities did not say what prompted the initial stop, they noticed the driver appeared to have an unusual amount of cargo in his vehicle. "The driver was transporting more cardboard boxes than Amazon on Prime Day," police said in a social media post. That's...

As the midterms approach, Democrats are working to ensure his aggressive approach to executive power doesn’t outlast him. Democratic House members are writing bills to rein in a president’s emergency powers. Lawyers are strategizing about how to insulate the Justice Department from presidential influence. A House measure would block a president from unilaterally remodeling the White House. Ethicists are writing rules to prevent a future first family from self-dealing. Throughout Washington and beyond, President Donald Trump’s opponents are scrambling to ensure that after he leaves office, the changes he has imposed on the presidency, and the country, will fade with...

New details from the interrogation of Hamam al-Hammami, the Flydubai co-pilot who attempted to hijack a flight from Dubai to Israel, indicate that the terrorist intended to crash the plane into Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, causing mass casualties, Israeli officials said on Sunday. According to the officials, for this reason, al-Hamami only began his hijacking attempt over Jordan. The plan was to continue flying toward Israel to make it appear as a routine flight to Ben Gurion. .....

A former Texas Southern University adjunct professor will serve 78 months in federal prison for a student financial aid fraud scheme that obtained more than $921,000 and left victims with debt in their names, federal prosecutors announced Friday. Emmanuel Olugbaike Finnih, 43, of Richmond, is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Nigeria. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen imposed the prison sentence and three years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas said in a news release. Finnih pleaded guilty March 20 to theft of government funds, fraud, unlawful use or transfer of identity documents,...

A federal judge in Manhattan has largely blocked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests at immigration courthouses in New York City and across the country, ruling the Trump administration policy authorizing the arrests was invalid. The decision indefinitely extends a temporary judicial stay issued in May that mostly paused ICE arrests at the city’s immigration courthouses. It also follows a similar ruling by a federal district court in California that largely banned such arrests across the country. District Judge P. Kevin Castel said federal officials were “arbitrary and capricious” in widely permitting ICE arrests at immigration courthouses...

A 7-year-old girl was fatally stabbed in the back while walking along the sidewalk with her older sister on Saturday, Oct. 3 Bystanders detained the suspect, who was a stranger to the child, until police arrived “For a 7-year-old like that to be getting stabbed, I never thought it would come to this point,” a nearby resident said

The second Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit (CGEB) payment for the fiscal year, and the last of 2026, will arrive in bank accounts and mailboxes of qualifying Canadians as of Monday. The benefit replaced the former GST credit in July of this year, and featured a bigger payment from the federal government designed to help millions of low and modest-income households keep up with the heightened cost of living, including to buy food and other essentials. Payments are issued by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) every quarter, or every three months in a year, and are tax-free. The final payment...

A day at a truck stop in Texas shows an industry essential to the U.S. economy under tremendous pressure ORANGE, Texas—Across the 12 fuel lanes at the Flying J Travel Center off Interstate 10—where rigs carrying soft drinks, steel, Mexican produce and Mississippi-bound car parts rumble to a stop—the economics of trucking have broken down.Diesel prices have been climbing most of the year, recently hitting a record national average retail price of $6.53 a gallon, up nearly $3 from the average a year ago. President Trump floated an export ban on diesel, but on Friday that threat seemed to fade...

Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed has built his campaign around a promise to get money out of politics, but a recent fundraiser in West Hollywood has put the Democratic nominee’s own donor network under scrutiny. Jeffrey Soros, a Hollywood producer and nephew of billionaire philanthropist George Soros, hosted El-Sayed on Monday night alongside his wife, Catherine Soros. During the event, Soros said he has known El-Sayed since 2012, when he interviewed him as a finalist for his parents’ fellowship for immigrants and their children. Footage from the event later emerged, prompting the campaign of Republican rival Mike Rogers to call...

Lots of footage of riots. Story's already in the news, but this is great footage.

President Donald Trump on Saturday called on Congress to impose mandatory prison sentences on people convicted of defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and proposed holding state and local politicians personally liable if they knowingly allow such fraud to continue. "Today, I'm calling on Congress to pass legislation to address fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security programs," Trump said in a video posted on Truth Social. Trump said the first part of his proposal would establish mandatory minimum sentences for people who steal from federal benefit programs, eliminating probation as an option. "If you steal from the American people,...

Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who sued ExxonMobil over climate change, is pressing the Trump administration to speed approval of a gas pipeline expansion. Healey asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a letter Thursday to ensure that federal reviews and permits for Enbridge’s Algonquin Reliable Affordable Resilient Enhancement (RARE) project “move without delay,” CommonWealth Beacon reported. She also asked that “sufficient staff and resources are dedicated to completing the required reviews in time to preserve the project’s planned 2028 in-service date,” according to the outlet. Marcellus Shale Coalition President Jim Welty said in a statement to the Daily Caller News...

New details from the interrogation of Hamam al-Hammami, the Flydubai co-pilot who attempted to hijack a flight from Dubai to Israel, indicate that the terrorist intended to crash the plane into Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, causing mass casualties, Israeli officials said on Sunday. According to the officials, for this reason, al-Hamami only began his hijacking attempt over Jordan. The plan was to continue flying toward Israel to make it appear as a routine flight to Ben Gurion. The terrorist is suspected of having planned to approach landing as usual, and only in the final seconds, once it was impossible to...

Nearly three-dozen countries have either "extreme" or "severe" restrictions on accessing the Bible, preventing millions of believers from reading God's Word, according to a new report from a Christian missions resource initiative. The Bible Access Initiative, founded by Open Doors International and Digital Bible Society, released the findings of its "Bible Access List" on Thursday. The project examines restrictions on Bible access in 88 countries, due to issues such as persecution, high illiteracy rates, printing limitations or a lack of economic resources. "A modern famine persists, not due to apathy, but because of barriers that prevent people from accessing the...