Free Republic

“ Venezuela's authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro would be open to leaving power in exchange for amnesty for him and his lieutenants, the lifting of the bounties on his head and a comfortable exile, according to a new report. In this context, one of the people who have dealings with Caracas opened the door to the negotiated exit: "If there is enough pressure, and if there is enough candy in the dish," the person said. "Everything is on the table with Maduro."

Higher education institutions are confronting surging health plan rates and costs that erode revenues and exacerbate tuition pressures. Colleges and universities allocate billions of dollars annually to student and employee coverage, often mired in inefficiency and unchecked inflation. Projections for 2026 forecast premium escalations of close to 10 percent nationally for employer-sponsored plans, while some carriers issue renewal quotes exceeding 18 percent. This means that a mid-sized university insuring 400 full-time employees, and averaging $27,000 annually per family, will now face costs exceeding $10.8 million for employee coverage alone. Proven alternatives and strategies to combat these cost escalations include direct...

It’s not too late for Ballerini or the countless other women dealing with the same dilemma to get hitched, settle down in the suburbs, and start a family. Doing so, however, requires sacrifice. Kelsea Ballerini is suffering from a broken heart. The 32-year-old’s troubles do not necessarily stem from an off-again, on-again relationship with beau Chase Stokes, though that probably plays a role. Rather, Ballerini’s obvious emotional ache comes from a deep longing to be a wife and mother.Ballerini’s real-time struggle between the girl boss identity she bought into at just 19 years-old and the reality that it’s left her...

Ukraine's energy and justice ministers have resigned in the wake of a major investigation into corruption in the country's energy sector. President Volodymyr Zelensky called for Energy Minister Svitlana Grynchuk and Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko's removal on Wednesday. On Monday anti-corruption bodies accused several people of orchestrating a embezzlement scheme in the energy sector worth about $100m (£76m), including at the national nuclear operator Enerhoatom. Some of those implicated in the scandal are - or have been - close associates of Zelensky's. The allegation is that Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko and other key ministers and officials received payments from contractors...

If Good News had a patron saint, it would be the Swedish professor of global health Hans Rosling.Rosling, who died in 2017, was a wizard at using data and storytelling to challenge misconceptions around global development and progress. With statistics in hand, Rosling could convince the most determined pessimist that the world was, on balance, getting better. And there’s no better example of the Rosling touch than a TED talk he gave in 2010 called “The Magic Washing Machine.” “Laundry day” used to actually mean an entire day of soaking clothes, heating water, hauling, scrubbing, rinsing, wringing, and hanging. But...

Milei faces a daunting challenge: to lead profound change while maintaining public support. Only time will tell whether he is up to the task.‍On Sunday, October 26th, President Javier Milei received a resounding show of support from the Argentine people. Nobody — not even Milei’s inner circle — thought a win was possible. Despite the restored macroeconomic order, falling inflation, and a stronger peso, ordinary people continue to struggle in their daily lives. The warning signs were there: just a month earlier, on September 7th, Milei’s party La Libertad Avanza suffered a disastrous loss in Buenos Aires Province, trailing Axel...

Andrew Kolvet, the executive producer of The Charlie Kirk Show, described a chaotic scene at Monday night's "Turning Point USA" event in Berkeley, California. "They say our words are violence, but their actual violence is mostly peaceful," Kolvet told FNC's Jesse Waters. "They said in their flyers that we were inciting violence just by being on campus and hosting an event with Rob Schneider, a comedian and actor." ANDREW KOLVET: It seems like it was a coordinated attack on a peaceful event. And you can’t make this stuff up. As you said in your lead-up, they said in their flyers...

Never mind preserving a cultural treasure like the story of Robin Hood. Never mind entertaining the audience by letting it suspend disbelief. Where moonbats have control, all other objectives are subordinated to the liberal agenda. This prominently includes the progressive eradication of Europeans from not only the future but the past: video on link That there were virtually no blacks in Britain until liberals recently started importing them is a fact currently undergoing erasure.

“We are losing Pokrovsk,” came the warning call of a Ukrainian MP on Tuesday morning. “The Russians have broken into the city,” Oleksiy Goncharenko, wrote on Telegram alongside an unverified video showing Russian forces under the cover of the fog entering the city piled on an odd assortment of motorcycles, buggies and cars. It followed days of Russian claims that its forces were advancing on the city’s centre in a pincer movement, encircling the Ukrainian troops inside; their defences finally crumbling. Ukraine has repeatedly denied such reports, characterising the fighting as “difficult”, but far from over. Yet, the footage only...

Stymied from firing most of the staff, Vought hit upon a new idea: He’s not allowed to seek any funding. A legal office in the White House, at the behest of Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, has decided to redefine the word “earnings” in order to bankrupt the largely dormant Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The continuing resolution to fund the government would bar the White House from firing any workers at CFPB, however, despite this new claim that it cannot legally obtain any money to pay them.In a notice filed in the...

Based on CAMERA watchdog: https://www.camera.org/article/poynter-politifact-fact-check-misleads-on-beheadings/ and moreHamas Beheading of Israeli Babies During October 7 MassacreDate:October 7, 2023Location:Southern Israel (Kfar Aza, Be'eri, and others)Type:Terrorist atrocity, massacre, decapitationPerpetrators:Hamas terrorists from GazaOutcome:Confirmed beheadings of babies and children by Israeli eyewitnesses, first responders, and forensic experts. Poynter/PolitiFact fact-checks later retracted after CAMERA critique.Hamas Beheading of Israeli Babies During the October 7 Massacre During the barbaric October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, Hamas terrorists beheaded Israeli babies and children — acts verified by multiple Israeli officials, emergency responders, journalists, and forensic pathologists. While hostile media voices fixated on disputing a specific number (“40”), the...

According to an IFL Science report, traces of opium have been detected in an ancient Egyptian alabaster vase held in Yale University's Peabody Museum. A team of researchers led by Andrew J. Koh of Yale University used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze the sticky, dark-brown residue with a distinct odor that was found in the jar. Noscapine, hydrocotarnine, morphine, thebaine, and papaverine -- all diagnostic biomarkers for opium -- were identified. The alabastron bears inscriptions written in Akkadian, Elamite, Persian, and Egyptian, and names “Great King” Xerxes I, who ruled Persia in the fifth century B.C. It had been previously...

It is understandable that many Democrats are furious with the senators who voted to end the government shutdown. There is a feeling that, finally, Democrats had leverage over Donald Trump as SNAP benefits were cut and Americans largely blamed Republicans, not the Democratic Party, for the resulting chaos. The overwhelming electoral victories last week across the country only seemed to strengthen the Democratic position. Why cave now? Especially when the stated goal — saving Obamacare subsidies — won’t actually be achieved? These questions highlight the ultimate Democratic dilemma and why their Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, who gave cover for enough...

The sabotage of K-12 education is easily implemented by rejecting methods that work, while simultaneously forcing phony substitutes into classrooms. QED: the experts embraced a far-left ideology that prefers control and leveling. Weirdly enough, our Education Establishment ends up promoting anti-education agenda. Here are the five most egregious examples of this totalitarian strategy in action. 1) Sight-Words Versus Phonics. All the main European languages are phonetic. You first learn the alphabet, then the sounds represented by the letters; and then the blends of those sounds. This approach has always worked. It's the method used in Hebrew, Arabic, Phoenician, Greek, and...

@RepThomasMassie 🏆 In spite of a last ditch effort by the President to foil the motion, and @SpeakerJohnson’s propaganda, the discharge petition I have been leading just succeeded! In December, the entire House of Representatives will vote on releasing the Epstein files.

For the last several months, Democrats have been trying furiously to tie Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein. Aside from the fact that this media campaign is obviously not organic, it’s utterly bizarre and disingenuous. Democrats simply don’t care about ties to Epstein, and never have. They only care that these allegations can be used to possibly harm Trump. For instance, the evidence tying Bill Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein is far stronger than that involving Donald Trump, and Clinton spoke in primetime at the Democratic National Convention last year and is hardly persona non grata. Similarly, LinkedIn’s billionaire founder Reid Hoffman...

Can you imagine that? They don't care. "I just made a motion to bring it straight to the dadgum floor and they blocked it. They blocked it!" "I tried to do unanimous consent, tried to get the Epstein files, get it straight to the floor to cut out all this nonsense. And, you know, and the Democrats blocked it oddly enough!" "Now here they've had it for four years and they, obviously, if there was something there about Trump, they would have released it." "This is politics. It has nothing to do with doing what's right!" "And it's Washington DC...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff was arrested Wednesday and charged with plotting with accomplices to swipe $225,000 from an inactive political campaign and funnel it straight into a friend’s pocket, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday. Dana Williamson, 53, is now facing a sweeping 23-count federal indictment charging her with conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, defrauding the United States, obstructing justice, filing false tax returns, and lying to authorities, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California. “Today’s charges are the result of three years of relentless investigative work, in partnership with IRS...

Top Trump administration officials met Wednesday with a key GOP lawmaker about an effort in the US House to force a vote on releasing Justice Department case files related to Jeffrey Epstein, according to multiple sources familiar with the meeting. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged the meeting later Wednesday when asked about reporting that administration officials were huddling with GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert. A source familiar confirmed the meeting in the Situation Room included Boebert, who has wanted the Justice Department to release its trove of Epstein files and has signed onto the effort in the House to...

On Wednesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said the Trump administration’s military strikes on alleged drug boats were a “catastrophic blunder” policy-wise. Host Wolf Blitzer said, “You’re a key member of the Armed Services Committee so I want to ask you about what’s going on with Venezuela right now. Venezuela says it’s launching a massive military mobilization in response to a very significant U.S. military buildup of warships and troops in the Caribbean. As I said, you’re on the Armed Services Committee. You’re also on the foreign relations committee. Just how much latitude does the U.S....