Free Republic

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has yet to say that former President Donald Trump can attend his son Barron Trump’s high school graduation, refusing to rule on the former president’s request to not attend the trial that specific day for that event. Monday was the start of the criminal trial at the hands of Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who charged Trump with 34 felonies, accusing him of falsifying business records in relation to payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. As Breitbart News pointed out, Trump is not being accused of “covering up a sex scandal.”...

Self-described anti-war activists in Chicago cheered after learning that Iran had launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel on Saturday. Earlier in the day at that same event, before the Iran attacks, one agitator led chants in Farsi translating to "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," according to a Free Press reporter there. Iran launched a barrage of more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel in an apparent response to Israel’s reported role in an airstrike that killed a senior Iranian official in the country’s embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus last week. On Saturday, a...

We could wake up tomorrow in a totally different world, reports are breaking of Israel is preparing an imminent attack on Iran, Here a are on some of the highlights I've seen posted. Middle East braces for Israeli 'retaliation' attack on Iran after Israel War Cabinet meets Israeli Air Force says it has completed 'preparation' and that an attack is 'imminent' US officials tell WSJ they believe Israel will launch an anti-Iran operation today IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi: Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel “will be met with a response.” Netanyahu orders military: draw up...

PORTLAND, Oregon — A group of protesters temporarily blocked all southbound lanes of Interstate 5 Monday morning, about a mile north of the intersection with Beltline Highway, between Eugene and Springfield. Photos show people were locking arms in a line across the interstate, some holding Palestinian flags, and law enforcement personnel were at the scene.

Explanation: Something strange happened to this galaxy, but what? Known as the Cigar Galaxy and cataloged as M82, red glowing gas and dust are being cast out from the center. Although this starburst galaxy was surely stirred up by a recent pass near its neighbor, large spiral galaxy M81, this doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas and dust. Evidence indicates that this material is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind. In the featured images, a Hubble Space Telescope image in visible light is shown...

“Iran is a nation that endorses terrorism, and the world should have curtailed it much earlier," a member of the royal family told Hebrew media.. Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of instigating the conflict in Gaza to undermine progress in reaching a normalization agreement between Riyadh and Jerusalem. In an interview with Israeli public broadcaster Kan News on Sunday, a source from the royal family also said that Tehran promotes terrorism and suggested that Riyadh played a role in thwarting Saturday night’s drone and missile attack against Israel by the Islamic Republic and its proxies. Notably, a recap of the...

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed on Monday that Republican Donald Trump’s campaign team asked him to consider being the former president’s running mate. A Trump senior advisor has since denied the claim. In an X post on Monday, Kennedy asserted that Trump’s “emissaries” approached him to serve in the position, which he then “respectfully declined.” Kennedy did not elaborate further on who these emissaries were or what role they played in the campaign.” The X post came as a response to Trump calling Kennedy an “ultra-left radical.” “President Trump calls me an ultra-left radical. I’m soooo liberal...

The last time Persians attacked the Holy Land, they had the Jewish forces on their side. According to Antiochus, the Sasanian capture of Jerusalem resulted in the death of around 60,000 Byzantine Christians. Nearly 1,400 years later, retaliatory Iranian missiles struck Israel in a conflict where Persians and Jews are on opposing sides and the world’s still predominantly Christian hegemon is on the margins as a helpless bystander. It is too fluid a situation to comment in detail, but it appears the Iranians wanted to keep the attack within that goldilocks threshold with ample warnings ahead. They had backchannels open...

Beloved FRiends, my dear husband is having a rectal bleeding event again. I am awaiting his gastroenterologist’s callback as to go ahead and bring him to hospital to be evaluated. It is best that his doctor send word to the ED to expect him, it will keep them from setting him aside in the waiting area instead of taking him straight back into triage / bed. He is at the moment exhaustedly sleeping and I am keeping a close eye on him. Asking that The Lord Jesus Heal my husband of this malady that I think is now peptic in...

CHICAGO (AP) — Pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked a freeway leading to three Chicago O'Hare International Airport terminals Monday morning, temporarily stopping vehicle traffic into one of the nation's busiest airports and causing headaches for travelers. Protesters linked arms and blocked lanes of Interstate 190 around 7 a.m., a demonstration they said was part of a global “economic blockade to free Palestine,” according to Rifqa Falaneh, one of the organizers. Traffic in the San Francisco Bay Area was also snarled for hours Monday morning as pro-Palestinian demonstrators shut down both directions of the Golden Gate Bridge and stalled a 17-mile (27-kilometer) stretch...

WASHINGTON—Hudson Institute today announced that Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and US ambassador to the United Nations, will be the next Walter P. Stern Chair. “When our policymakers fail to call out our enemies or acknowledge the importance of our alliances, the world is less safe. That is why Hudson’s work is so critical,” Haley said. “They believe the American people should have the facts and policymakers should have the solutions to support a secure, free, and prosperous future. I look forward to partnering with them to defend the principles that make America the greatest country in...

Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley said Monday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” that former President Donald Trump’s New York trial for allegedly falsifying business records related to payments to porn star Stormy Daniel is “absurd.” Host Dana Perino said, “Jonathan, you wrote about Cicero saying ‘the more laws, the less justice,’ and that you seem the same here. How so?” Turley said, “Well, the more cases against Trump, the less justice we receive as a people. You know, the opponents of Trump would have been far better off with just one case, the Mar-a-Lago case. That’s based on...

AFP — President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that France would help do everything to avoid an escalation in the Middle East after an unprecedented Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel. Iran launched its first-ever direct assault on Israeli territory late Saturday in retaliation for a deadly April 1 air strike on Tehran’s consulate building in Syria’s capital Damascus that was widely blamed on Israel. “We will do everything to avoid a conflagration — that is to say an escalation,” Macron told the BFMTV news channel.

"No person shall serve as President more than 2 consecutive terms (plus less than the final 2 years of the preceding president's term due to death, incapacitation or resignation for a total of 10 consecutive years.) AND ....no person shall serve as president more than 4 terms."

Suffolk OTB will break ground on a $210 million expansion of Jake’s 58 Casino Hotel ahead of its competitors vying for the coveted NYC casino licenses. “We’re not vying for one of the licenses, and as a matter of fact, I think that wherever those casinos are located, we are going to be able to compete very well,” Suffolk OTB CEO Phil Boyle told the Post. The expansion — the first since the casino opened in 2017 — is expected to increase annual revenue by as much as 42% and double terminals to 2,000 and increase parking from 600 spaces...

The leading possibilities are all problematic in one way or another.As jury selection begins this week in the New York criminal case against Donald Trump, we should revisit the question of exactly how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg plans to transform the former president's alleged falsification of business records into 34 felonies. Bragg, who is pursuing the first-ever prosecution of a former president, has cited several possible legal theories, and all of them are problematic in one way or another. "The heart of the case," Bragg says, is Trump's attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election by...

"Rust" armorer Hannah Gutierrez was given the maximum sentence of 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Gutierrez's attorneys asked for probation in a sentencing memorandum filed last week, citing her "complete lack of prior criminal history" and "relative youth." Prosecutors meanwhile requested a sentence of 18 months with the designation of serious violent offender due to her "extreme recklessness" while working as an armorer on the "Rust" set in New Mexico. "You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon," Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said. Gutierrez said to the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was absent from the court Monday with no explanation. Thomas, 75, also was not participating remotely in arguments, as justices sometimes do when they are ill or otherwise can’t be there in person. Chief Justice John Roberts announced Thomas’ absence, saying that his colleague would still participate in the day’s cases, based on the briefs and transcripts of the arguments. The court sometimes, but not always, says when a justice is out sick. .... He took part in the cases then, too.

Is there anyone left who doesn’t see that Joe Biden is not the president? Joe Biden isn’t running the show. Everyone in Washington DC knows Joe Biden is for all intents and purposes brain-dead. Everyone knows he should be in a nursing home with a sign around his neck listing his name and phone number in case he wanders off. Everyone knows he wears diapers. Everyone knows he doesn’t know what year it is, or most of the time, where he is, what he’s reading on the teleprompter, or what he’s signing. This is the worst kept secret in history:...

Conan O’Brien had some lavish praise for late comic Norm Macdonald following the news of O.J. Simpson’s death — and why Macdonald was fired from “Saturday Night Live.” O’Brien, 60 — who was promoting his Max series, “Conan O’Brien Must Go” — appeared on CNN with Jake Tapper in the hours after news broke on April 11 that Simpson died at the age of 76 from cancer. When the conversation turned to Simpson, O’Brien wasted no time in remembering how Macdonald mercilessly ripped Simpson on “Saturday Night Live” in his “Weekend Update” segments after Simpson was arrested in the 1994...