Free Republic

* FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried and Ryan Salame pumped millions into super PACs and campaigns. * The company could deem the gifts "fraudulent transfers" and sue for refunds. It's happened before. * It's also possible the money is gone. "You can't get blood from a turnip," an election lawyer said. … But in bankruptcy, nothing is sacred. The same politicians and groups that happily received FTX's donations and welcomed SBF as an influencer in Washington, including Democratic PACs like the House Majority PAC and Women Vote and lawmakers like Debbie Stabenow, could soon find themselves forced to return those funds —...

Klaus Schwab says China is a "role model for many countries" and proclaims a "systemic transformation of the world" on Chinese state television. (video at link)

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who just won reelection by nearly 8 percentage points, has cut a new ad for Senate candidate Herschel Walker that will begin airing throughout his state on Thanksgiving Day. The ad is part of a $14.2 million television, radio and digital advertising campaign funded by the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC linked to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), seeking to boost Walker after his race against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) went to a Dec. 6 runoff.

Earlier this year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned that Democrats would re-impose mask mandates after the midterm elections if there was a winter Covid-19 spike. In the leadup to the midterms, Democrats denied that they ever supported lockdowns or an authoritarian response to Covid-19. Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist accused DeSantis of being a ‘Lockdown Governor’ after he briefly joined most of the country to lock down the state, but opened it up faster than most states. Now, just two weeks after the midterms, the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is recommending that state government’s ‘encourage’...

Celebrated filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is facing criticism for candid comments he made about actors in Marvel movies not being legitimate stars. [snip] “I don’t love them,” Tarantino said of Marvel films. “No, I don’t. I don’t hate them. But I don’t love them. I mean, look, I used to collect Marvel comics like crazy when I was a kid.” “There’s an aspect that if these movies were coming out when I was in my twenties, I would totally be f***king happy and totally love them. [But] they wouldn’t be the only movies being made, they would be those movies amongst...

Found in closet at Twitter HQ fr 🤣🤣

CNN is asking a judge in Florida to toss a lawsuit filed by former President Trump against the network earlier this fall on First Amendment grounds. The cable news network and Trump’s lawyers have battled in court in recent weeks over the former president’s lawsuit accusing CNN of defamation over its coverage of his 2020 election claims. In the lawsuit filed in October, Trump’s attorneys argued CNN “has sought to use its massive influence — purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source — to defame the Plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia soldier killed during World War II has been accounted for, the military said. Army Cpl. Joseph H. Gunnoe, 21, of Charleston, was reported missing in action in November 1944 in Germany. He was declared killed in action after the war, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Tuesday. Gunnoe was assigned to Company G, 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division. His unit captured the town of Vossenack, Germany, in the Hürtgen Forest, on Nov. 2 but was forced to withdraw four days later. Scientists used DNA, anthropological evidence and circumstantial evidence to identify the...

Rapper Ice Cube confirmed on Monday that he lost out on a multi-million dollar acting gig because he did not want to get the COVID-19 vaccine. On a new episode of the “Million Dollaz Worth of Game” podcast, Ice Cube confirmed he wasn’t offered a $9 million acting job for refusing the shot, confirming previous reports that he was set to co-star in the comedy, “Oh Hell No,” with Jack Black. The singer and actor was supposed to star opposite Jack Black in the comedy "Oh Hell No." However, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, he decided he...

A mass shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia Tuesday night that left six people dead was carried out by one of the store's employees before he took his own life by turning the gun on himself, the Chesapeake Police Department says. Chesapeake Police Chief Mark Solesky told reporters Wednesday morning that the male employee used a pistol in the attack, which also left four other people hospitalized. Their conditions are currently unknown, and following a search by a SWAT team at the individual’s home, police believe there is "no risk to the public at this time," Solesky added. The...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is sending another $400 million in weapons, ammunition and generators to Ukraine, the White House announced Wednesday, and is pulling the gear from its own stockpiles to get the support to Kyiv as fast as possible as Russia continues to target Ukraine’s energy sources and winter sets in. Including the latest aid, the U.S. has committed more than $19 billion in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine since Russia attacked on Feb. 24. The new package of aid will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to take weapons from its own...

In September 2022, three researchers published the provocatively titled article, “Do Introductory Courses Disproportionately Drive Minoritized Students Out of STEM Pathways?” That article got loads of social media publicity for its conclusion that unequal withdrawal rates from STEM degree tracks are due to systemic racism. Co-authors Chad Topaz (“Data scientist/mathematician and activist” and co-founder of the Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity) and Nate Brown (“Math faculty like me can be a major barrier to diversifying STEM fields”) added to their scholarly research an opinion article that provides a guide for “How STEM Faculty Can Fight...

House Republicans Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and James Comer are requesting that TikTok's top executive provide them with more information about business practices including data sharing – following a recent Capitol Hill briefing in which they say some of the info provided to them "appears to untrue or misleading." The request follows a request of documents in mid July to which TikTok responded and the Sept. 7 bipartisan staff briefing, according to the letter sent Tuesday to the executive, Shou Zi Chew."We still have unanswered questions, and you failed to provide responsive documents requested by the committee," the letter also...

Colorado gay club shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich previously changed their name and now identifies as non-binary, using they/them pronouns. Aldrich, 22, is suspected of murdering five people and injuring others at Club Q on Saturday - meanwhile, it was revealed that their dad is a porn star who goes by the name 'Dick Delaware.' The suspect's original name is Nicholas Franklin Brink. They changed it to Anderson Lee Aldrich in 2016 in a petition signed by their mother, biological grandmother and step-grandfather. In a court filing, Aldrich's public defenders said that their client is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, referring...

Many in traditional news media have suggested the Biden Justice Department's appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate Donald Trump is an ominous sign for the former president. But famed television journalist and best-selling author Bill O'Reilly has a different take, predicting it will boomerang on Democrats.O'Reilly told the "Just the News, Not Noise" television show that Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointee will have to probe what the FBI knew in advance of the Jan. 6 riot, whether law enforcement could have done more to prevent the tragedy, and why a reported eight bureau assets were embedded among the...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WREG) — Memphis Police released surveillance video Tuesday after more than 20 shoplifters stormed Walmart and got away with some expensive items. Surveillance video shows the suspects pulling into the parking lot of the business around 8:50 p.m. Sunday. According to police, the armed shoplifters entered the store through the automotive section after allegedly throwing a four-way tire iron through a window in the section. In the video that was released Tuesday, you can see dozens of people running into the store and leaving with their arms full of various items.

Observations of Exoplanet WASP-39b show fingerprints of atoms and molecules, as well as signs of active chemistry and clouds. WASP-39 b is a planet unlike any in our solar system – a Saturn-sized behemoth that orbits its star closer than Mercury is to our Sun. When NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope initially began regular science operations, this exoplanet was one of the first to be examined. The exoplanet science community is buzzing with excitement over the results. Webb’s incredibly sensitive instruments have provided a profile of WASP-39 b’s atmospheric constituents and identified a plethora of contents, including water, sulfur dioxide,...

Italians who refuse job offers will lose their social benefits, the country’s hard-Right government announced, arguing that the country’s welfare system is too often abused. Giorgia Meloni, Italy's new prime minister, is to clamp down on a poverty relief scheme called the citizens’ income, arguing that it encourages idleness and has been widely abused, including by convicted mafia criminals. The initiative was introduced in 2019 by the Five Star Movement, a populist party that was part of a previous government but is now in opposition. More than 3.5 million Italians receive the €780 a month payment, with more than 2.3...

The shooter who is suspected of gunning down five people at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub Saturday identifies as “non-binary” and uses “they/them” pronouns, attorneys said Tuesday according to a court filing obtained by The New York Times. Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, faces several informal charges of murder and hate crimes after he allegedly stormed a nightclub, spraying bullets into the crowd before two club patrons confronted him and wrenched the firearm away, the NYT reported. The revelation that the suspect identifies as “non-binary,” one of several categories contained under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, comes amid popular narratives that animosity toward...

It’s no longer a pandemic of the unvaccinated. For the first time, a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine. Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. It’s a continuation of a troubling trend that has emerged over the past year. As vaccination rates have increased and new variants appeared, the share of deaths of people who were vaccinated has been steadily rising. Being unvaccinated...