Free Republic

Despite only spending a few years in the classroom, taxpayers could end up shelling out over $200,000 in a public pension for AFT president Randi Weingarten.Randi Weingarten has spent only a small portion of her career in the classroom despite leading the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest national teachers union in the United States. Trained as a lawyer, Weingarten taught full-time for just three years and was a substitute teacher for three more. However, according to a report by Freedom Foundation, a think tank, she will collect over 15 years' worth of public pension when she retires. That...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the deadline to raise the debt ceiling is almost certainly in early June as lawmakers attempt to reach a deal to increase the limit before the country goes into default. Yellen said on Wednesday at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit that the country must not be allowed to default, and continuing to be able to pay U.S. debts is critical to continued U.S. leadership in the global economy and the role of the U.S. dollar in the world. “It seems almost certain that we will not be able to get past early June,”...

May 24 (Reuters) - Singer Tina Turner has died aged 83, one of her representatives said on Wednesday. Turner, often called the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", was one of the biggest recording artists of all time, known for hits such as "What's Love Got to Do with It" and "(Simply) The Best".

A Texas mom on MSNBC argued that her child "socially transitioned" at age five and would be negatively affected by a recent Texas bill banning hormone therapies.

Explanation: Sometimes we witness the Moon moving directly in front of -- called occulting -- one of the planets in our Solar System. Earlier this month that planet was Jupiter. Captured here was the moment when Jupiter re-appeared from behind the surface of our Moon. The Moon was in its third quarter, two days before the dark New Moon. Now, our Moon is continuously half lit by the Sun, but when in its third quarter, relatively little of that half can be seen from the Earth. Pictured, the Moon itself was aligned behind the famous Lick Observatory in California, USA,...

In a recent online presentation, editors and researchers working on a first-of-its-kind dictionary of African American English gave a status update on the project. As academics explained their various methodologies, slides displayed behind them showed words that are more often associated with Twitter than Oxford: “Bussin,” virtual attendees were told, means impressive or tasty, while a “boo” is a lover. Those were two of the first 100 words that the Oxford University Press said it had prepared to include in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, the hopeful result of the three-year research project announced last spring.

GOP presidential candidate and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley said Wednesday she would sign a federal abortion ban into law if she were president, but dismissed the possibility of such a ban materializing, noting it was unlikely to get the necessary 60 votes to pass the Senate. Haley’s comments are the clearest answer she has provided her abortion position since she launched her campaign in February, becoming the only woman in the primary field so far. “No one has been honest” about how difficult a ban would be to achieve, Haley said at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H.,...

T The official Black Lives Matter organization lost millions of dollars in 2022, according to recently unearthed tax returns. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation Network saw a deficit of $8.5 million in 2022, and also lost $10 million from its investment accounts. In addition, the group recorded a loss of $961,000 on a securities sale of $172,000, amounting to a roughly 85 percent loss as a result of the transaction. Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders of the group, had previously criticized the idea of so-called charities being forced to disclose their finances,...

Gov. Kathy Hochul refused to confirm whether the state is backing Mayor Eric Adams’ push to rescind New York City’s right to shelter rule on Wednesday, as she also dodged questions about SUNY campuses and went back on her previous work papers stance. During a brief press conference following her appearance at the MTA Headquarters in Lower Manhattan, Hochul said Adams’ move to suspend the city’s “right to shelter” rule in the wake of a deluge of migrant arrivals involved “very complicated legal issues.” “We’ll see how it unfolds in the courts,” she stated, while noting that her team was...

Whoopi Goldberg told her co-hosts Wednesday on ABC’s “The View” that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) presidential bid will have to deal with “gay folks” rising up and fighting for what they need. Discussing DeSantis’ presidential announcement, Goldberg said, “He has to work on, be articulate, so we know what you’re talking about. I don’t understand. I didn’t know what he was saying. Look, you know what, this idea of announcing on Twitter. I’m old and I’m okay being old, do that on television. Okay? I want to see you do it on television. I want to see you actually take...

NN announced that Jake Tapper will moderate a Republican presidential town hall event with former South Carolina governor-turned-2024 candidate Nikki Haley. The event is scheduled to take place in Iowa on June 4 at 8:00 p.m. ET. CNN’s press release on the event states that Haley “will take questions from Tapper and a live audience which is comprised of Iowa Republicans and Iowa voters, who say they will pre-register to participate in the Republican caucuses by the deadline set by the Republican Party of Iowa.” The event follows the raucous town hall CNN just had with Haley’s old boss and...

A man is dead and a woman was taken to the hospital after they were shot while allegedly trying to steal a truck from a hotel in Lynnwood early Tuesday morning.According to the Lynnwood Police Department (LPD), officers responded to the Best Western Alderwood around 2:35 a.m. Tuesday after a man in his late 20s called 911 saying he shot a man and a woman who were “in the act of stealing his truck” in the parking lot. The hotel is located on the 19300 block of 36th Avenue West, which is a couple blocks north of the Lynnwood Event...

The alleged neo-Nazi man accused of ramming a rented U-Haul truck into White House security barriers will be held in federal jail pending a detention hearing next week, according to reports. Sai Varsith Kandula, 19, appeared in a Washington D.C. federal court Wednesday, where Magistrate Judge Robin M. Meriweather ordered he be jailed until a hearing next Tuesday, CBS News reported. Kandula, from Missouri, careened the box truck into barriers along Lafayette Square just steps from the White House late Monday night, US Park Police officials said. He had allegedly planned the attack for six months with his goal being...

VIDEO

Ford is reversing course on AM radio. In a tweet today, CEO Jim Farley announced the company was backing off its decision to release new vehicles without AM radio broadcast capabilities. Instead, all 2024 Ford and Lincoln models will be able to tune in to AM radio. And for the two electric vehicles released without AM radio capabilities, a software update would be pushed to restore it. The announcement came after Farley said he spoke with policy leaders on the “importance of AM broadcast radio as a part of the emergency alert system.” A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation...

"Good morning to every one but Roger Waters," tweeted the Israeli Foreign Ministry.Roger Waters dressed up as an SS officer and compared Anne Frank to Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during a concert at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin last week. At the beginning of the show, an announcement was displayed on a screen reading “on a matter of public interest: a court in Frankfurt has ruled that I am not an antisemite," sparking applause from the crowd. "Just to be clear, I condemn antisemitism unreservedly," continued the announcement. Waters, the former bassist and vocalist of the band Pink Floyd,...

Love her or hate her, Rosie O'Donnell is out here spittin' facts. Rosie recently joined the Bialik Breakdown podcast hosted by Mayim Bialik (who you may know from The Big Bang Theory and Jeopardy!), where they discussed mental health. Rosie is a lesbian, leftist Hollywood star, but that hasn't knocked out ALL her common sense... and the trans activists are NOT happy about it. Rosie O'Donnell is being canceled by trans rights activists for speaking common sense. Check out what she has to say about the "non-binary" identity: VIDEO AT LINK.......... When Rosie's kid told her that her stuffed animals...

The New York judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s criminal case on Tuesday scheduled a trial date on March 25, 2024, just weeks after the Republican presidential primary’s “Super Tuesday,”Trump appeared virtually before Judge Juan Merchan, seated beside his attorney, Todd Blanche.During the hearing, Merchan reviewed the terms of a protective order prohibiting Trump from sharing any evidence the prosecutor exchanges with his attorneys on social media.The protective order said evidence may not be shared or posted to “any news or social media platforms, including, but not limited, to Truth Social, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, or YouTube, without...

Batten down the hatches, y’all: Pride Month is coming. And much like “Christmas creep,” the Pride celebrations tend to start earlier and earlier every year. We can’t escape Pride Month no matter how hard we try. Back in January, I wrote, “It’s no secret that, over the past few years, the left has moved from expecting tolerance for every part of the LGBTQ (and sometimes Y) movement to demanding that everyone celebrate it. We’ve come a long way from people having to say, “Yeah, yeah, sure. Gay people can marry and do all the things that straight people can do”...

Hillary Clinton said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D. Calif.) should not resign from her seat in the Senate, despite the 89-year-old’s recent health problems and growing calls from some Democratic lawmakers for her to step down. Clinton, a former New York senator, stressed the political reality that if Feinstein resigned, Republicans likely not allow a Democratic replacement to join the Senate Judiciary Committee, effectively preventing Democrats from confirming any judicial appointments. “Here’s the dilemma: The Republicans will not agree to add someone else to the Judiciary Committee if she retires,” Clinton told Time magazine in an interview published Tuesday.