Free Republic

A second group of asylum seekers arrived in Washington, D.C., Thursday on a charter bus after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to transport migrants from Texas to D.C. This comes just one day after the first bus of undocumented migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, was transported to the nation’s capital. Abbott said the order is a direct response to President Joe Biden's plans to end Title 42 expulsions on May 23. The controversial policy, which the Trump administration implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, restricts migrants from coming into the country under the...

Shocked beach-goers have spotted large weedy sea dragons far away from home and splurged across beaches in Australia - the fish have been found lifeless at the city’s northern beachesDozens of bizarre and vibrant creatures have washed up on Australian beaches following weeks of record rainfall. Experts have been left stunned by the dead marine fish as pictures emerge of their unusual presence across seafronts in New South Wales. The weedy seadragons have been spotted in Cronulla, Malabar and the Central Coast and they are thought to be 10 times the amount of normal wash-ups to hit the beaches. Dr...

The relatives of the doomed crew of Russia's Black Sea flagship Moskva defied Russian censors to hold an unofficial memorial today, as Ukraine claimed that all 510 servicemen onboard died - including the ship's captain. -snip- As a result 'all the crew of the cruiser Moskva died'. This included the ship's captain, Anton Kuprin, Gerashchenko said. The battleship had a usual crew number of 510 sailors. He claimed: 'The leadership of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation have deliberately hidden the truth from relatives and friends of the crew members.' His account contradicts other earlier versions, including that...

Russia sent a formal diplomatic note to the US this week calling on Washington and NATO to stop arming Ukraine. The note, which was obtained by The Washington Post, said the Western campaign to pour weapons into Ukraine was “adding fuel” to the conflict and could lead to “unpredictable consequences.” The diplomatic note was sent Tuesday, when news broke of a new massive US military aid package for Ukraine. President Biden announced the new aid on Wednesday, which is worth $800 million and includes howitzers for the first time. The package also includes helicopters, armed Switchblade drones, coastal defense drones,...

The United States now believes that the Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of President Vladimir Putin's Black Sea fleet, was hit by two Ukrainian missiles before sinking, according to a senior U.S. official. The official told reporters on Friday that the vessel had been hit by Neptune anti-ship missiles. Russia claimed that she sank when being towed in stormy seas after a fire triggered explosions in an ammunition store. But the official's account backs Ukraine's Operational Command South which claimed that the Moskva began to sink after being hit by Neptune missiles. Mykhailo Samus, director of a Lviv-based military...

Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, reports from Washington’s Union Station, where Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott sent migrants who crossed the border into his state. A social worker from the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington told The Star News Network that she and other staffers from Catholic Charities, including Monsignor John Enzler, the local president provided the migrants with food, clothing, diapers and toys – and tickets to their requested destinations. Some of the migrants went to New York City, others went to Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Miami.

Explanation: Wind-sharpened rocks known as ventifacts cover this broad sloping plain in the foot hills of Mount Sharp, Gale crater, Mars. Dubbed gator-back rocks their rugged, scaly appearance is captured in these digitally stitched Mastcam frames from the Curiosity rover on mission sol 3,415 (March 15, 2022). Driving over gator-back rocks before has resulted in damage to the rover's wheels, so Curiosity team members decided to turn around and take another path to continue the rover's climb. Curiosity has been on an ascent of Gale crater's central 5.5 kilometer high mountain since 2014. As it climbs, the durable rover has...

Former President Donald Trump has endorsed best-selling author J.D. Vance, a vocal national populist, in the Ohio Republican Senate primary race. [cut] This is not an easy endorsement for me to make because I like and respect some of the other candidates in the race — they’ve said great things about “Trump” and, like me, they love Ohio and love our Country. I’ve studied this race closely and I think J.D. is the most likely to take out the weak, but dangerous, Democrat opponent — dangerous because they will have so much money to spend. [Emphasis added] However, J.D. will...

Listen to this article 0:00 / 2:31 1X BeyondWords Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., paid her daughter another $24,000 in campaign cash during the most recent quarter, Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Fox News Digital show. Karen Waters, who has been organizing slate-mailing operations to bolster her mother's re-election for nearly two decades, and her company, Progressive Connections, have received more than $1.2 million since 2003 for campaign services, including "slate mailer management" fees and "campaign managing services." A "Citizens for Waters" campaign committee filing from earlier this week shows that the younger Waters received $24,000 from the committee between...

“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the motto of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. It may sound like a warning, but more and more it seems like a summary of the left’s aspirations to control debate and shut down any opposition. A recent example of those aspirations appeared in a column by former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s big buy of Twitter stock. The original headline — changed after widespread mockery — was this: “Elon Musk’s vision for the Internet is dangerous nonsense: Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet. That’s also...

Nothing was more predictable about this most predictable of wars than the certain failure of Putin’s Coup de Main invasion to seize Kyiv and conquer Ukraine in one fell swoop. And yet its success was confidently predicted by Russia’s FSB domestic security service, which, instead of the SVR foreign intelligence, was given the task of sustaining the fiction that Ukraine is Russian. Perhaps it is not strange that Putin, himself a former FSB officer, did not question this reckless optimism. He knew that the CIA fully agreed with the FSB estimate, as did the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BDN) and the French...

In One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture (LSU Press, 1982), sociologist John Shelton Reed wrote convincingly of what he called "regional racism." The accepted definition of "racism" is "prejudice against members of a different ethnic group," with "ethnic" defined as a "subgroup ... with a common national or cultural tradition." By this definition, the South and the West, with their distinctive cultural traditions, may constitute "ethnic groups," and there is a great deal of prejudice in our national culture against both. The relationship of these ethnicities, and particularly of the South, with the nation as a whole, has...

Incumbent Republican Ken Paxton has established a large lead over Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush in the upcoming runoff for attorney general, according to a new poll released this week. According to a new poll from the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation, Paxton is leading the race for attorney general with 65 percent of support among “likely” voters, against Bush’s 23 percent. When the survey respondents are filtered to just be “almost certain voters,” Paxton’s lead grows to 71 percent versus 20 percent for Bush.

The updated quarantine order, which went into effect Friday, removes the quarantine requirement for members of the general public who come in close contact with an infected person and don’t have COVID-19 symptoms. The new rules come after the California Department of Public Health earlier this month updated its own quarantine guidelines, eliminating the requirement for asymptomatic people. L.A. County is aligning with the state in easing requirements, but with a few exceptions. County residents who know they were exposed to the virus no longer have to quarantine, even if they haven’t been vaccinated. But they are required to mask...

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden made a combined income of $610,702 last year while Vice President Harris and her husband made more than $1.65 million, according to documents published by the White House on Friday based on the couples’ 2021 tax returns. The president and his wife paid an effective federal income tax rate of 24.6 percent, the documents showed. Those figures are comparable to 2020, when the Bidens earned $607,336 with an effective federal income tax rate of 25.9 percent before taking office.

KYIV. April 15 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Ukraine has enough supplies of staple food products and stocks for producing animal feed for several years, and no problems with food should be anticipated in the country in the near future, Ukrainian Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Mykola Solsky said in an interview published in Economichna Pravda (Economic Truth). "We have supplies of staple foods for several years. We have enough vegetable oil even for ten years. It should also be added that, since we have a lot of grain and some of it serves as animal feed, we certainly have meat and dairy...

The prime ministers of Sweden and Finland, Magdalena Andersson and Sanna Marin, both signaled Wednesday that they will likely be applying for membership in NATO. The “prospect” is most “welcome,” says The Washington Post: “Finland and Sweden Should Join NATO.” The editorial was titled “A Way to Punish Putin.” Before joining the rejoicing in NATO capitals, we might inspect what NATO membership for these two Nordic nations would mean for the United States. Finland is a nation the size of Germany, but with a population only 4% of that of Russia and a border with Russia that is 830 miles...

Los Angeles police called the incident 'random and unprovoked' ... Los Angeles detectives are seeking information Friday following the unprovoked stabbing of a man who was killed while talking to his brother on a FaceTime call. The police have called the incident, which occurred on April 8, "random and unprovoked" when 34-year-old Sergio Santay was attacked while walking on Bonnie Brae Street. ... Police say the suspect has been described as male and wearing a black fisherman hat with marijuana leaves, a turquoise t-shirt, light-colored shorts with dark shoes.

Archaeologists in Guatemala have discovered the oldest evidence of the Maya calendar on record: two mural fragments that, when pieced together, reveal a notation known as "7 deer," a new study finds. The two "7 deer" fragments date to between 300 B.C. and 200 B.C., according to radiocarbon dating done by the research team. This early date indicates that this Maya divination calendar, which was also used by other pre-Columbian cultures in Mesoamerica, such as the Aztecs, has been in continuous use for at least 2,300 years, as it is still followed today by modern Maya, the researchers said. (Notably,...

Ukraine's use of drones to counter Russia's invasion is changing the nature of war. The United States has sent 600 more AeroVironment Switchblade drones to help the Ukrainian military counter Russia's invasion, the US Defense Department revealed Thursday. That's a major increase from the 100 drones the US sent in March. The drones are "loitering munitions" that can circle above a battlefield before in effect becoming missiles that attack specific targets. They're included in the Pentagon's new $800 million in military aid to Ukraine, a package that brings the country's total contributions to $2.6 billion in security assistance. The US...