Free Republic

SpaceX launched 21 Starlink satellites into orbit from a Falcon 9 rocket Saturday morning in clear skies from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, one day after the mission was scrubbed because of poor booster recovery conditions. The 230-foot rocket lifted off at 8:50 a.m. from pad 40. It was Space X's 52nd launch this year from Florida. Eight minutes later, the booster landed on Read the Instructions offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. That was the 21st time the booster landed on the drone ship and the 88th overall on the droneship. About an hour after liftoff, the satellites went into...

Jordan Chiles has been stripped of the Olympic bronze medal she won in the women's floor final after a bombshell ruling from the Court of Arbitration of Sport on Saturday. The 23-year-old US gymnast came third in the event, behind gold medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil and silver medalist and fellow teammate Simone Biles. But this was only after Chiles' score of 13.666, which had initially placed her fifth, was bumped up by 0.1 following an appeal from her coach. The change to her score meant that Romania's Ana Barbosu and her teammate Sabrina Maneca-Voinea were pushed down to fourth...

SAN RAMON, Calif. (KGO) -- A 72-year-old former Bay Area Home Depot employee is suing the retailer for age discrimination and wrongful termination after she was fired for failing to stop $5,000 worth of fraudulent transactions. The incident happened at the San Ramon Home Depot three months after a loss prevention officer was shot and killed at a Pleasanton Home Depot while trying to stop a theft attempt. Carleen Acevedo was fired from Home Depot last July for "creating a security or loss prevention risk" according to her termination letter. She says she felt scared and intimidated by the person...

Former President Trump is setting off alarms among critics as he pushes the claim that Vice President Harris’s ascent to become the Democratic nominee is somehow unconstitutional, with some warning he could be laying the groundwork to contest an electoral defeat as he did in 2020. Trump has repeatedly sought to cast Harris replacing President Biden as the Democratic nominee as nefarious, likening it to a “coup” and in recent days claiming it may be unconstitutional because she was not atop the ballot in the primary process. Biden and other Democrats, as well as some Republican Trump critics, have suggested...

We had to chuckle at the liberal commentariat’s portrayal of Tim Walz as a political balance to Kamala Harris. Have they examined his record as Minnesota Governor? On taxes and spending, he has sought to outdo California progressives and is making Illinois look like a model of fiscal discipline. Ms. Harris is slipstreaming behind the Biden Administration policies and refusing to lay out her own policy agenda. This makes Mr. Walz’s record as Governor over the last six years all the more revealing as a window on the duo’s plans for the country. Minnesota has long boasted the highest taxes...

Apti Alaudinov, the commander of the Chechen Akhmat unit fighting for Russia, said in a video on Aug. 8 that Ukrainian forces had advanced around 10 kilometers into Kursk Oblast as of Aug. 7 in a rare admission. "The situation is not irreversible, nothing supernatural happened... Yes, our people died, that's a fact. The enemy has entered several settlements," said Alaudinov, a close ally of Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov and an official at the Russian Defense Ministry, in a video published by the Russian independent outlet Agentstvo. Alaudinov became the first Russian commander to acknowledge losses since Ukraine launched a...

VP Kamala Harris' presidential running-mate Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz last year signed into law a string of progressive bills across an array of policy issues. As Harris narrowed her choice for a running mate, Walz emerged as the favorite of their Democratic Party's progressive wing, due in part to his legislative record. Harris officially announced Walz on Tuesday as her pick for vice president, and the pair appeared at a rally in Philadelphia that evening at which Harris touted Walz’s credentials. Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, said Harris “bent the knee to the far left...

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach faced more questions about the gender eligibility controversy involving two boxers competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics in what was his final press conference before the Games conclude this weekend. Bach, who was first elected in 2013, did not sway from the IOC's stance on the eligibility concerns surrounding boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan when speaking to the media Friday.

According to a recent Politico article, on July 22nd they began receiving leaked documents from the account of a “senior official” within the Trump campaign. [Datapoint – That is a total of 19 days ago] The Trump campaign said the documents were “hacked” likely as an outcome of a foreign actor, intending to influence the 2024 election. Actually, that’s a pretty smart move by the Trump campaign. I’ll explain why.

The Washington Examiner reported that Kamala Harris's running mate, Tim Walz, maintained close ties and even donated money to an organization headed by an antisemitic Muslim Imam. According to the report, Walz maintained close friendship ties with Imam Assad Zaman, who heads the "American-Islamic Association in Minnesota." In recent years, Imam Zaman used his Facebook page to share official Hamas press releases, shared posts from antisemitic blog sites, and in 2015 even shared a link to the propaganda film, "The Greatest Story Never Told," which praises Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and was released in 2013. As Governor of Minnesota, Walz...

Marriott International has filed a $2.6 million federal lawsuit against a hotel in Queens for becoming a migrant shelter in violation of its franchise agreement. The hotel chain claims the owners of the Pride Hotel in Jamaica had a 2015 deal with Marriott to operate a dual-branded Aloft and Element hotel at 149-03 Archer Avenue, according to the complaint filed last week in the Southern District of New York. Marriott alleged the hotel’s owner, Pride Hospitality Group, made a “lucrative” agreement with the city to house migrants and asylum seekers “just months before” its slated Nov. 1 opening, after eight...

The Kremlin scrambled to evacuate residents from a border town Saturday, as Ukrainian troops quickly advanced toward a nuclear plant, four days after gaining a foothold in Russia’s southwestern Kursk region. On Friday, Ukraine knocked out an entire Russian reinforcement convoy, as fighters caught Russian troops off-guard. Video of the aftermath showing smoldering Russian trucks was shared online. Ukrainian soldiers continued to move further into Russia, reaching at least six miles into Russian territory, the deepest advance since Moscow invaded the neighboring nation in February 2022....

On August 9, during a brazen raid on the Kinburn spit occupied by the Russian invasion troops, Ukraine’s defense intelligence (GUR) operatives eliminated 30 enemy personnel and destroyed armored hardware, also planting the GUR battle flag on one of the enemy positions.

This morning the Defendants in The 134 PAC's voter intimidation lawsuit in Fort Worth, added Jane Nelson, the Texas Secretary of State, as a Cross-Defendant. These local activists, sued Secretary Nelson to keep Kamala Harris and Nicole Shanahan off the Presidential ballot in Texas because, they claim, neither of them are "natural born citizens" and therefore cannot appear on any state's ballot for the Presidential election. If Secretary Nelson does not remove them from the ballot, they also seek Secretary Nelson's removal from office, criminal prosecution and damages.

It’s been 55 years since Barbra Streisand won an Oscar for Funny Girl but apparently she’s still into comedy based on her latest political narrative. According to the aged actress and singer, corporate media is not getting their questions answered by a presidential candidate.Despite Kamala Harris failing to have a press conference for three weeks, Streisand believes it’s Donald Trump who is ducking the press.“Why does the press let Donald Trump get away with not answering their questions?”

The brother-in-law of fallen San Francisco cop Isaac Espinoza said he’s voting for Donald Trump – and that his own family’s tragedy makes this personal. Speaking exclusively with DailyMail.com, Edgar Mendez said District Attorney Kamala Harris is the reason Espinoza’s killer was not prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Despite pressure from several California Democrats to bring the death penalty, Harris held firm to a campaign pledge and secured a sentence of life without parole for 22-year-old gang member David Hill, who gunned down the 29-year-old with an AK-47 during a routine traffic stop. Harris, who was just...

A federal judge has ordered Democrat President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) to respond to wrongful death charges from the family of Ashli Babbitt.Babbitt is the 35-year-old Air Force Veteran who was shot dead by a Capitol Police officer on January 6th, 2021.She was the only person who died during the Jan. 6 protests at the U.S. Capitol.Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, gave the DOJ until September 6 to answer charges of assault and battery, negligence, and wrongful death in the $30 million case.The officer who killed Babbitt, Michael Byrd, was not charged by the DOJ.Byrd has faced...

If there were any doubt whether Vice President Kamala Harris has transformed this year’s presidential election, Saturday morning’s latest New York Times/Siena College polls put it to rest. In the first Times/Siena College swing state polls since her entry into the race, Harris leads former President Donald Trump by 4 points each in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin among likely voters. It’s a major shift from previous Times/Siena polls, which found Trump leading Harris and President Joe Biden by an average of 1 or 2 points each across the same three states. Sometimes, it can be hard to explain why polls...

Explanation: Messier 20, popularly known as the Trifid Nebula, lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region in the plane of our galaxy, the Trifid does illustrate three different types of astronomical nebulae; red emission nebulae dominated by light from hydrogen atoms, blue reflection nebulae produced by dust reflecting starlight, and dark nebulae where dense dust clouds appear in silhouette. The reddish emission region, roughly separated into three parts by obscuring dust lanes, is what lends the Trifid its popular name. The cosmic cloud complex is over 40 light-years across and would cover...

People around the former and would-be president see a candidate knocked off his bearings, disoriented by his new contest with Kamala Harris and unsure of how to take her on. The Aug. 2 dinner at the Bridgehampton, N.Y., home of Howard Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive, was a high-powered affair. Among the roughly 130 people who dined under an air-conditioned tent were some of Donald Trump’s wealthiest supporters, including the billionaire hedge-fund financier Bill Ackman, who sat next to the former president, and Omeed Malik, the president of another fund, 1789 Capital. Some guests hoped Mr. Trump would signal...