Free Republic

WASHINGTON — President Biden received a $200,000 check in 2018 from his younger brother James on the same day that he received the same amount from a US hospital chain by promising to secure a Mideast investor, bank records obtained by Congress show. “This summer, Joe Biden said: ‘Where’s the money?‘ Well, we found some,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a video posted Friday afternoon to X. Comer said James Biden wrote his check to his powerful brother as a “loan repayment,” without providing further context. “Even if this was a personal loan repayment, it’s still...

The Gateway Pundit reported earlier today Jordan lost a third bid to be Speaker of the House. After Jordan’s latest unsuccessful bid, the House GOP voted in a secret ballot at 1 PM regarding whether Jordan should remain the party’s nominee for Speaker. Jim Jordan lost a secret ballot to remain the GOP’s nominee for Speaker, according to Jake Sherman. And it was not close either. The final margin was 122-86. Of course, we will never know who betrayed the GOP base because these members were too scared to vote in public. The House GOP will now be heading home...

Curtis Bay Energy, LP, a Baltimore company, has been fined $1.7 million after pleading guilty to more than 40 environmental violations concerning the improper disposal of medical waste. Curtis Bay Energy is known for collecting medical waste from a Washington, D.C., abortion facility owned and operated by Cesare Santangelo. In March 2022, pro-life activists obtained a box from a Curtis Bay Energy driver which were later found to contain the bodies of 115 aborted children. Five of those children appeared to have been killed late in pregnancy at the Washington Surgi-Clinic, and their images shocked the nation. The investigation into...

SAN FRANCISCO — Campbell Brown, Facebook’s top news executive, left the company this month. Twitter, now known as X, removed headlines from the platform days later. The head of Instagram’s Threads app, an X competitor, reiterated that his social network would not amplify news.Even Google — the strongest partner to news organizations over the past 10 years — has become less dependable, making publishers more wary of their reliance on the search giant. The company has laid off news employees in two recent team reorganizations, and some publishers say traffic from Google has tapered off.If it wasn’t clear before, it’s...

The European Union (EU) sent formal requests to Meta and TikTok on Thursday for details about their handling of disinformation and illegal content, as the bloc ramps up pressure on social media companies to comply with its new online regulations. Both companies received warning letters from EU Commissioner Thierry Breton last week, following the outbreak of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas and a resulting deluge of misinformation and graphic content online. Neither company responded to a request for comment Friday. The formal request marks a more aggressive step by the EU, which noted in Thursday’s...

Rep. Kevin Hern, a Republican representing Oklahoma's 1st Congressional District, announced his campaign for the position on social media Friday afternoon.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a key ally of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), declared Friday that President Biden’s $100 billion foreign aid and national security funding request is “dead on arrival” on Capitol Hill. “President Biden’s slush fund proposal is dead on arrival, just like his budgets,” Cotton said in a statement. “We will not spend, for example, $3.5 billion to address the ‘potential needs of Gazans,” he added, arguing that humanitarian assistance to Gaza could inadvertently fund “a resupply line for Hamas terrorists.”

Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Friday on CNN’s “New Central” that Republicans were in a “very bad place” after Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) bid for the speakership failed a third time. Reporter Manu Raju said, “This went in the wrong direction for Jim Jordan. He clearly does not have the votes. Is it time for him to withdraw?” McCarthy said, “That’s a question for him. I think we’ll go to conference here shortly and see which direction we go in.”

Some members of the U.S. military, especially those serving at some of the most expensive duty assignments, are set to receive a cut in monthly allowance designed to offset the high costs of living. According to a report from Military.com, the Defense Department will make a second round of cuts to troops’ overseas cost-of-living allowances (OCOLA) next month, with the final cut coming on Nov. 15 and affecting members’ Dec. 1 paychecks. It seems a bit odd — unfair, even — that those who are already sacrificing to protect their country are being asked to take multiple cuts in pay...

Oregon high school students won’t have to prove basic mastery of reading, writing or math to graduate from high school until at least 2029, the state Board of Education decided unanimously on Thursday, extending the pause on the controversial graduation requirement that began in 2020.

Republicans dropped Rep. Jim Jordan on Friday as their nominee for House speaker, making the decision during a closed-door session after the hard-edged ally of Donald Trump failed badly on a third ballot for the gavel. The blocked-House impasse deepening, Republicans have no realistic or workable plan to unite the fractured GOP majority, elect a new speaker and return to the work of Congress that has been languishing since hard-liners ousted Kevin McCarthy at the start of the month. Majority Leader Steve Scalise said they’re going “come back and start over” on Monday. In all, Jordan lost 25 Republican colleagues...

An asylum official with the Department of Homeland Security has been put on leave after it was revealed that she once served as a spokeswoman for the Palestine Liberation Organization — and recently wrote “F–k Israel” in numerous posts supporting Hamas, according to reports. Nejwa Ali was hired at the USCIS in 2019 as an asylum officer and earlier this year was made an adjudication officer, according to her LinkedIn profile. The role includes vetting people before they enter the US. Ali has expressed her support for Palestinian causes for years — and recently posted inflammatory comments about Israel in...

Joe Biden once said, “Where’s the money?” Well, we found some. News coming at 2:30 pm.

A woman has been sentenced to two years in prison over a viral TikTok video she filmed herself eating pork while traveling in Bali, Indonesia. Lina Lutfiawati, who goes by the name Lina Mukherjee, had recited an Islamic phrase before eating crispy pork skin on camera. Eating pork is strictly forbidden in Islam and Islam is the dominant religion in Indonesia. The 33-year-old, who identifies as Muslim, has more than 2 million followers on the social media platform. Mukherjee said she tried pork out of curiosity, according to the BBC, which also reported she was traveling in Bali at the...

The 3-year-old son of a North Carolina pastor accidentally shot his 2-year-old brother in the head with their father’s gun in a church parking lot — and is miraculously expected to make a full recovery. The incident occurred around 8:30 p.m. Sunday outside River Valley Baptist Church in Morganton — a city about 75 miles northwest of Charlotte. The pastor of the church, Rev. Adam Vines, told WBTV that his older son had gotten hold of a gun in the side door of the family’s parked van and accidentally fired the weapon, injuring his younger brother, Daniel Vines. The Vines...

Around a third of the humanitarian aid intended for the armed forces did not reach the 200 or so military units for which it was intended after clearing customs, the State Customs Service of Ukraine has said.“During 9 months of 2023, as a result of the joint measures of the Department for Combating Smuggling and Customs Violations of the State Customs Service and the Department of Internal Audit of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, more than 9,000 instances of the movement of humanitarian aid goods intended for 200 military units were checked,” the agency said.In doing so they established...

Antiviral drugs are generally considered to be a 20th century invention. But recent research has uncovered an unexpected facet to your immune system: It can synthesize its own antiviral molecules in response to viral infections. My laboratory studies a protein that makes these natural antiviral molecules. Far from a modern human invention, nature evolved cells to make their own “drugs” as the earliest defense against viruses. How antivirals work Viruses have no independent life cycle – they are completely dependent on the cells they infect to supply all the chemical building blocks needed to replicate themselves. Once inside a cell,...

Former President Trump, who is wildly popular in West Virginia, on Wednesday endorsed Gov. Jim Justice in the state’s Senate Republican primary. Trump’s endorsement of Justice over Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.), whom the former president endorsed in a House race last year, is a major political development in a key Senate battleground. The winner would challenge Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) in the 2024 general election if Manchin decides to run for a fourth Senate term.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WTVO) — Legal gun owners who are in possession of firearms since banned by the State of Illinois have been slow to register the weapons under a new law.The Protect Illinois Communities Act banned 170 “assault-style” firearms.The guns are no longer available to purchase in Illinois, and current owners must register with the Illinois State Police by January 1st, 2024.However, in the first two weeks since the registrations opened, the Illinois State Police say only 0.07% of 2.4 million Firearm Owner’s Identification card holders have taken that step.According to police statistics, a total of 1,618 gun owners have...

An attorney serving in the Illinois state Comptroller’s Office has been fired for an antisemitic tirade in which she told a Jewish person that she wanted them to face the gas chamber and said, “Hitler should have eradicated all of you.” Sarah Chowdhury referred to Jews as “vermin” and said “all Zionists should pay” in private messages with an Instagram account called Big Law Boiz. Other messages, which the Instagram user screenshotted and were later posted to X, included, “Hopefully someone sends you anthrax or poison and you die a slow terrible death.” In the messages, she also said, “I’d...