Free Republic

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Four people are in custody after crowds of thieves descended freight train tracks on Chicago's West Side Friday and went into stalled freight train cars—stealing whatever they could grab. The looting happened on the Union Pacific train tracks between Kinzie and Lake streets. The train the thieves targeted was parked near the overpass at Cicero Avenue, and extended for several blocks west. The number of people seen stealing TVs and other electronics, and air fryers during the hours-long theft was enough to make one question how so many people were able to pull it off and escape....

In 2015, Barack Obama submitted to interviews with three YouTube stars, one of whom was notable for eating cereal out of a bathtub. It was a moment that opened a window into the media landscape of the future, after the mainstream media as we have known it — while also making that future seem basically absurd. A year later Donald Trump won the White House, and there was a rush to find the sources of his victory in the darker reaches of the internet, in misinformation factories and troll farms. It was another window into the media future — but...

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is hitting back at the slew of Democratic billionaires calling for a potential Kamala Harris Administration to fire the sitting chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)./i> “Let me make this clear, since billionaires have been trying to play footsie with the ticket,” the New York Democrat wrote in a post on X on Wednesday. “Anyone goes near [FTC Chair] Lina Khan and there will be an out and out brawl. And that is a promise.”Her comments came after billionaire investor Mark Cuban criticized Khan during an event on Tuesday, telling Semafor that “If it were me,...

Former CBS News staffers are demanding an independent investigation into “60 Minutes” over the brewing Kamala Harris interview scandal — even as the network digs in its heels and refuses to release the full, unedited transcript, ... The long-running news show has come under fire after cleaning up the Democratic presidential candidate’s answer to a question from “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker about Israel that aired during a special episode on Monday. Her reply was starkly different from the “word salad” the vice president served up in a clip to promote the interview shown by “Face the Nation” the day...

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, is pulling ahead in Pennsylvania, a pivotal battleground state, according to a recent poll from The New York Times/Siena College, which is ranked by FiveThirtyEight as the most reliable pollster in the United States. The winner of Pennsylvania and its 19 Electoral votes—more than any other swing state—could determine the outcome of the 2024 election. A New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College poll of 857 likely voters in the Keystone State found Harris leading former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, by 3 percentage points. The poll, conducted between October 7 and 10 and...

Most neurons in the human brain last a lifetime, and for good reason. Intricate, long-term information is preserved in the complex structural relationships between their synapses. To lose the neurons would be to lose that critical information—that is, to forget. Intriguingly, some new neurons are still produced in the adult brain by a population of cells called neural stem cells. As brains age, however, they become less and less adept at making these new neurons. A new study sheds hopeful new light on how and why neural stem cells, the cells behind the generation of new neurons in the adult...

[Catholic Caucus] BREAKING: Pope urged to approve ‘sex changes’ during meeting with New Ways MinistryFrancis met with a group of self-professed 'LGBT', 'transgender' and intersex people at the Vatican today, who urged him to approve 'sex-change' surgeries.(L - R) with Francis. Dr. Cynthia Herrick sex-change doctor; Laurie Dever, Deacon Ray Dever; Michael Sennett "transgender man"; and Nicole Santamaria "intersex"Pope Francis met privately with a group of “transgender, intersex, and ally Catholics” today, in an event organized by dissident LGBT group New Ways Ministry, whose longstanding official censure by the Vatican remains in place though Francis has repeatedly signaled support for...

Goodell's radical proposals have fans wondering what happens next.Hold onto your helmets-NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell just shook the football world with jaw-dropping news! During a fan forum in London, Goodell hinted at what could be the most radical change to the league's history: the first-ever Super Bowl outside the U.S. That's right-America's biggest sports spectacle might go global. Goodell had previously dismissed the idea of moving the Super Bowl overseas. But this time, the commish changed his tune, saying, "Things change." The shift is part of a bold strategy to expand the NFL's international footprint, including up to 16...

People keep asking me why Arab American citizens are moving toward voting for Trump. My answer? They are already Trump supporters – and enthusiastic ones. But they aren’t registered to vote and keep telling us they don’t know where or how to vote. My husband and I started the Conservative American Middle Eastern PAC – or CAM PAC – in October 2024 after a Trump supporting friend told us how much he was hurting financially but that he still wasn’t registered to vote. Seeing this gap in Republican outreach to register Middle Eastern Americans, we couldn’t wait for someone else...

Researchers propose using “wood vaults” to store carbon by burying wood to prevent decomposition, potentially sequestering up to 10 gigatons of CO2 annually. Further study is needed to assess the method’s environmental impacts and scalability. Inspired by the discovery of an ancient buried log, researchers have developed a new method to capture and store atmospheric carbon for centuries. The technique involves sealing woody biomass in “wood vaults,” offering a potentially cost-effective way to combat climate change. Achieving net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is crucial for combating climate change, yet reducing fossil fuel emissions alone is insufficient to meet the Paris...

“Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20) even in the heart and soul of a sinner like Donald Trump. It is that which he has in common with most of us. Everyone else is just pretending. Pious Christians often cringe when Donald Trump talks about religion. Earlier this year the former president got into the Bible business, hawking a $60 “God Bless the USA” version that includes the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, correcting that long-lamented lacuna in the New Testament. Yet a pleasant surprise came on Sept. 29, the feast day of St. Michael the...

Aloha spirit be damned, the Hawaii Supreme Court has deemed the oil industry unwelcome in the state. In a ruling late last year, the court affirmed that the city of Honolulu could file a lawsuit alleging that Sunoco, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, and an assortment of other companies have caused it injury via their products’ greenhouse gas emissions. Now it may be up to the US Supreme Court to set the matter straight: Is climate change an area of special federal interest or can states give Big Oil the boot? If the latter, the outcome from 50 new sets of legal hoops...

A Democrat candidate for the North Carolina House was arrested and charged after being seen removing campaign signs for former President Donald Trump. Lowell Simon, who serves as the head of the Democrat Party in Moore County, admitted he had “removed” the Trump signs on Thursday evening, and acknowledged that he “shouldn’t have done that,” according to WRAL News. “My worse angels got the better of me and I removed the signs,” Simon admitted in a statement. “I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t do it in the stealth of night or anything. I did it when it was five...

At least thirty US school children whose parents were told the COVID mRNA shots were “safe and effective” died suddenly and unexpectedly in the US this week as the death toll continues surging among the vaccinated and boosted.Many of the children died of medical emergencies including cardiac arrest and strokes as doctors warn they are now regularly witnessing “once-in-a-lifetime” disorders in children.“This is the new normal… turbo cancers, died suddenly. My friend lost three friends in one week! Turbo cancers like this were virtually non-existent before the COVID shots,” explained MIT scientist and vaccine researcher, Steve Kirsch.How long before we...

Move over Mr. Met, there’s a new king of Queens. The Amazin’ run of success for this year’s New York Mets — in which the team went from summer cellar dwellers to a berth in next week’s NCLS — has fans of the blue and orange crediting one unlikely purple figure. Grimace. The famous McDonald’s advertising mascot has won the hearts of Mets fans since he threw out the first pitch at a June game and the team’s early season bad fortune quickly turned around. “With every win from the team, we started to see more and more people connecting...

Why would the Department of Homeland Security be so concerned about Tim Walz’s China ties that his name repeatedly comes up in internal communications and classified documents? According to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, whistleblowers have revealed “serious concerns among DHS personnel regarding a longstanding connection between the Chinese Communist Party and Minnesota Governor Timothy James Walz.” Those concerns could not be more obvious to me, a China hand of long-standing: Tim Walz has long had a special relationship with the CCP. It’s all there in his record: The initial approach,...

A teacher at the center of a longstanding dispute over recognizing a student's transgender pronoun has been jailed for a third time for violating a court order to keep him away from a school. Christian evangelist Enoch Burke,... has been objecting to using the student's preferred pronouns and new name, arguing that using their preferred pronoun violates his religious rights. Following his suspension, he continued to show up to the school in an attempt to teach lessons, resulting in a court injunction that barred him from the school grounds. He has twice previously been incarcerated at Mountjoy Prison...for breaching the...

This is the race Democrats feared. Less than a month before the US election, Donald Trump is regaining the slight edge he held before Democrats convened in Chicago to nominate Kamala Harris. According to the RealClearPoliticspolling average in battleground states, Trump trailed Harris from late August until late September. Now, though, he’s back on top at 48.4 to 48.1. His lead may be fractional — and Harris is up two points in the popular vote — but the numbers have Kellyanne Conway feeling good. Alongside a picture of the RCP numbers, the pollster argued this week that Trump is “in...

Tapper served up an opportunity for Johnson to characterize Trump as a Russian stooge. He did the exact opposite. CNN talking head Jake Tapper gave former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson an opportunity this week to help the American media establishment advance its latest Trump-Russia smear. Johnson, whose time as prime minister and foreign secretary overlapped Trump's first four years in the White House, not only proved unwilling to cosign the narrative but highlighted President Donald Trump's historic efforts to keep Russia in check — something the Biden-Harris administration has alternatively had difficulty with. Johnson went on CNN to promote...

Comparison of early vote by mail stats from NC: 2024: 331,940 (D 35.4%; R 25.3%) 2020: 1,386,380 (D 46.7%; R 19.3%) The Republican deficit in vote by mail has narrowed from 27% in 2020 to 10% today. The trend favoring R continues 24 days from the election.