Free Republic

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) declared on Thursday that he “WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED” following a report suggesting an aide committed suicide after an alleged affair with the congressman. “I WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED. Disgusting to see people profit politically and financially off a tragic death. The public should IMMEDIATELY have full access to the Uvalde Police report,” Gonzales wrote on X. The congressman included a message from a lawyer offering a non-disclosure agreement and settlement. I WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED. Disgusting to see people profit politically and financially off a tragic death. The public should IMMEDIATELY have full access to...

Two more people have been detained by French authorities investigating the killing of a far-right student activist by suspected radical left militants in Lyon, bringing the total in custody to 11. Quentin Deranque, 23, suffered a fatal brain injury when he was beaten and kicked during a protest last week on the sidelines of a conference held by Rima Hassan, a member of the European Parliament for hard-left party France Unbowed (LFI). The wave of arrests began on Wednesday and included two parliamentary aides to LFI politician Raphaël Arnault. Arnault said one, Jacques-Elie Favrot, had halted his work in parliament...

Explanation: Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In fact, dwarf galaxy IC 2574 shows clear evidence of intense star forming activity in its telltale reddish regions of glowing hydrogen gas. Just as in spiral galaxies, the turbulent star-forming regions in IC 2574 are churned by stellar winds and supernova explosions spewing material into the galaxy's interstellar medium and triggering further star formation. A mere 12 million light-years distant, IC 2574 is part of the M81 group of...

Imports to the U.S. grew to a record high in 2025, leaving the trade deficit little changed despite steep Trump administration tariffs aimed at closing trade gaps. The nation’s trade deficit—the gap between imports and exports in both goods and services—was $901.5 billion last year, slightly smaller than the $903.5 billion deficit recorded in 2024, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The small change shows America’s role as a heavy net importer remains intact, at least thus far, despite seismic policy shifts during the year. There were big swings in trade patterns along the way, however, including an early-year surge in...

For the first time in three decades, ESPN will no longer have the rights to Sunday Night Baseball this season. That's right. No more Jon Miller and Joe Morgan! Well, to be fair, they've been gone for a decade now, but still, you get the point. It was a staple in households across America for 30 years. It's now gone forever. Last year, NBC acquired the rights to SNB in a landmark deal that will shake up how – and where – we watch Major League Baseball this season. Good luck trying to figure that out, by the way. Regular...

NEW YORK CITY (WJW) – Officials have revealed a cause of death for “Pulp Fiction” actor Peter Greene, who was found dead in his New York City home late last year. According to reports from People and other news outlets, the New York City Chief Medical Examiner office confirmed on Wednesday that the 60-year-old character actor died from a “gunshot wound of left axilla with injury of brachial artery.” On Dec. 13, Greene’s manager, Gregg Edwards, confirmed that the actor died the day prior in his New York City home, adding that “He was just a terrific guy,” as The...

Washington — A commission that advises the federal government on architecture and the arts voted Thursday to approve President Trump's overhaul of the White House East Wing, clearing a key hurdle before above-ground construction can begin on a new ballroom. Six members of the Commission of Fine Arts voted to give final approval of the project after discussing the plans at a virtual meeting. One member, the original architect of the ballroom, recused himself. All of the members were appointed by the president after he fired the previous members in October.

Deranged transgender gunman Robert Dorgan was cousins with his ex-wife, Rhonda Dorgan, whom he gunned down along with their son at a high school hockey game. The twisted relationship emerged after records showed the killer had the same name as his murdered ex and her parents, who were also seriously injured in his rampage Monday, according to the Providence Journal. A deep dive then showed that he and Rhonda were first cousins once removed when they tied the knot in 1992. The twisted relationship emerged after records showed the killer had the same name as his murdered ex and her...

NASA continues to press ahead through the Artemis II wet dress rehearsal countdown – a fueling test of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket. Early this morning, at approximately 3 a.m. EST, teams powered up the rocket’s core stage, which will be loaded with more than 700,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen during the tanking phase of the countdown. This will occur over a series of different propellant loading milestones to fill, top off, and replenish the tanks. The interim cryogenic propulsion stage also was powered up overnight. Around 11 a.m., or L-33 hours, 30 minutes in the...

A judge with the San Diego County Superior Court has ruled that Rady Children’s Hospital must continue offering so-called “gender affirming care” to minors, even after the hospital announced it would stop providing such services. Judge Matthew Braner ruled last week that the hospital must continue to offer transgender procedures, including things such as puberty-blockers and other hormone treatments, to patients under 19. The hospital had previously announced in January that it would stop offering the procedures. This prompted the California Attorney General’s Office to sue, arguing that ending these procedures violated state law.

For Ashley Garley, the past year has been “messy, challenging and heartbreaking.” Garley, a former contractor and malaria expert with the US Agency for International Development, was among the first people impacted by the Department of Government Efficiency’s massive shrinking of the federal workforce last year, led by billionaire Elon Musk, which began almost immediately after President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Garley, who lost her job after the US froze all foreign aid in late January 2025, is struggling to find a full-time job with benefits more than a year later. To contribute to the bills, she...

Like many people in the Twin Cities, Jess has been observing ICE officers: following them in her car and documenting their actions. Earlier this month, she was in North Minneapolis, when immigration agents told her and another observer they were impeding a federal investigation. "We followed at a distance. We never got in front of them. We never honked our horns. We never made any sort of noise. We were just keeping an eye on them," said Jess, who requested NPR only use her first name because she fears retaliation from the federal government. She says she kept tracking the...

Most Reverend Eminence, First of all, I thank you for receiving me on 12 February, and for making public the content of our meeting, which promotes perfect transparency in communication. I can only welcome the opening of a doctrinal discussion, as signalled today by the Holy See, for the simple reason that I myself proposed it exactly seven years ago, in a letter dated 17 January 2019.1 At that time, the Dicastery did not truly express interest in such a discussion, on the grounds—presented orally—that a doctrinal agreement between the Holy See and the Society of Saint Pius X was...

The Land of Make Believe will eventually come to an end, and sobriety and rationality will be restored. Let’s pray the correction doesn’t come in the form of a hot war or a natural disaster.In a recent viral video, an angry mob (composed almost entirely of white women) hurled expletives at the staff of a Minneapolis CorePower yoga studio, berating them because they reportedly removed anti-ICE signage. While their verbal onslaught apparently worked in this case, these females revealed just how many women live in a Land of Make Believe where everyone magically bends to their will. This tiny glimpse...

On Feb. 17, students skipping class from Winters High School in Winters, Calif. to engage in an anti-American pro-open borders protest, surrounded and attacked women

Islamists try to show dominance, and the left is going along, except that they picked the wrong issue. ell, that escalated quickly. Islamists are trying to show dominance, and the left is going along, except that they picked the wrong issue. These days, events happen so quickly, it's hard to keep up, but you would have to be living under a rock not to have heard of the left in their red/green alliance stumble into one of the worst 90/10 issues of all time. Along with blaring the call to prayer (noise ordinances, what noise ordinances?), one of New York...

This is one of those stories that sounds made up until you read the federal release yourself. A Liberian national who federal authorities say had no legal status in the United States was allegedly working as a Minnesota corrections officer, posing as a U.S. citizen, and at one point serving in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard before going AWOL. According to USCIS, the case was uncovered through “Operation Twin Shield,” a DHS enforcement effort targeting immigration fraud in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. If the allegations are accurate, this was not a clerical error. It was a years-long chain of deception...

Rep Ted Lieu has ignited a fresh political storm after alleging that Donald Trump is repeatedly named in the unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act in January 2026. Lieu claimed that members of Congress who reviewed the fuller set of documents encountered disturbing allegations tied to the former president. His remarks, delivered during a forceful exchange on Capitol Hill, have triggered sharp partisan reactions and renewed scrutiny of the Epstein records. According to Lieu, the unredacted files viewed by a select group of lawmakers mention Trump “thousands and thousands of times”. He further asserted that...

Grammy-winning US songwriter Billy Steinberg, a key figure behind a string of chart-topping hits including Madonna's Like a Virgin, has died at the age of 75. Steinberg's family described him as a "visionary lyricist, devoted husband, loving father, and one of the most influential songwriters of his era". With Tom Kelly, he also wrote classic 1980s and 90s songs like Cyndi Lauper's True Colors, Whitney Houston's So Emotional, The Bangles' Eternal Flame, Lauper and Roy Orbison's I Drove All Night, and the Pretenders' I'll Stand By You.

In 2010, I was a roughneck on a drilling rig in West Texas. These were the early days of the American shale revolution, before we truly understood what horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing would mean for the country. The work was brutal: 12-hour shifts, covered in drilling mud, wrestling pipe in 110-degree heat. But even then, you could feel something shifting. Rigs were popping up across the Permian Basin. Engineers were figuring out how to crack open formations and produce oil from rock that had been written off as uneconomic for decades. I watched that technological revolution unfold from the...