Free Republic

Vice President Kamala Harris will virtually attend the historic Al Smith dinner on Thursday evening, the Archdiocese of New York confirmed to Fox News Digital. "VP Harris will appear via a pre-recorded message," the communications director for the Archdiocese of New York, Joseph Zwilling, told Fox News Digital on Thursday. Harris will be the first presidential candidate in 40 years to not physically attend the Catholic charity event – since 1984 when failed presidential Democratic candidate Walter Mondale skipped. Former President Trump will attend and address the sold-out audience during the event Thursday. Harris' snub of the historic Catholic charity...

Former President Donald Trump received a boost from polling guru Nate Silver, whose presidential model, which tracks polling data and electoral trends, now favors the Republican to win the election. The latest projections from the Silver Bulletin model show Trump holding a slight edge in the Electoral College, with a 50.2 percent chance of winning compared to Vice President Kamala Harris' 49.5 percent, despite Harris leading significantly in the popular vote probability at 75 percent. It is Trump's first lead in the model since September 19. The slight edge in the Electoral College probability means that in more simulations, Trump...

"For many Bay Area residents who lived through it, the Loma Prieta earthquake was an unforgettable moment. The magnitude 6.9 temblor killed 63 people, 42 of them on the Cypress Freeway in Oakland when a large section of it collapsed. The quake injured 3,757 people and caused billions of dollars in damage. Dozens of buildings were destroyed in Santa Cruz, about 10 miles from the quake’s epicenter. A portion of the Bay Bridge collapsed, and in San Francisco, a fire broke out in the Marina district and several buildings collapsed. Approximately 16,000 homes were left uninhabitable. Game 3 of the...

A coalition of 24 states, led by Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers, have signed a brief against a federal electric truck mandate. On March 29, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rolled out a new electric truck mandate to increase sales of electric semitrucks from 2027 through 2032. EPA will require electric models to account for 60% of new urban delivery trucks and 25% of long-haul tractor sales by 2032. The cost of electric trucks are typically two to three times more expensive than diesel trucks, according to the Institute for Energy Research. Truckers will also have to invest $620 billion...

Russia is warning Israel to not even consider striking Iranian nuclear facilities, state news agency TASS quotes Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying. -snip- “We have repeatedly warned and continue to warn, to caution (Israel) against even hypothetically considering the possibility of a strike on (Iranian) nuclear facilities and nuclear infrastructure,” Ryabkov is quoted by TASS as saying. “This would be a catastrophic development and a complete negation of all existing principles in the area of ​​ensuring nuclear safety.”

William Jacob Parsons, the North Carolina man who was arrested over threats he made to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has spoken out after being released on bond. The 44-year-old was charged with "going armed to the terror of the public" on Saturday afternoon after he called for people to "overtake" the FEMA site in the town of Lake Lure amid ongoing misinformation about the federal response to hurricanes that recently struck the southeast. When Parsons got to the FEMA site at Lake Lure, he ended up volunteering. However, the police had already been made aware of his threat...

Hamas could seek an “eye for an eye” and slaughter the remaining hostages being held captive in Gaza, experts fear — after the Israel Defense Forces confirmed Thursday that the bloodthirsty terror group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, had been killed.

Explanation: NASA's Europa Clipper is now headed toward an ocean world beyond Earth. The large spacecraft is tucked into the payload fairing atop the Falcon Heavy rocket in this photo, taken at Kennedy Space Center the day before the mission's successful October 14 launch. Europa Clipper's interplanetary voyage will first take it to Mars, then back to Earth, and then on to Jupiter on gravity assist trajectories that will allow it to enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030. Once orbiting Jupiter, the spacecraft will fly past Europa 49 times, exploring a Jovian moon with a global subsurface ocean that...

Former president Donald Trump has surged since September and now leads Vice President Kamala Harris 50 percent to 48 percent nationally, according to a Fox News poll. The survey, published Wednesday, finds that Trump has taken the lead on Harris among likely voters and registered voters after trailing her in Fox News’s September poll. In that survey, Harris registered at 50 percent, and Trump garnered 48 percent with both groups. Harris’s two-point decline and Trump’s two-point boost translate into a net-four-point swing in the former president’s direction. Trump is winning a substantial 29 percent of registered black voters to Harris’s...

The RealClearPolitics (RCP) average polls of swing states currently show former President Trump leading in all seven. And by “all seven,” I mean the seven states commonly regarded as the ones still up for grabs that will decide who becomes our next president: Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If memory serves, this is the first time either candidate has led in all seven. On Thursday afternoon, the seventh and final state fell into place when Wisconsin moved into Trump’s column.

Republcian Bernie Moreno has jumped ahead of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, according to a poll. The Morning Consult survey, published Thursday, finds Morneo at 47 percent of support among likely voter respondents, while Brown follows at 46 percent. The poll sampled 1,243 likely voters from October 6-15, polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight notes. FiveThirtyEight did not list Morning Consult’s margin of error. Moreno is trending in a positive direction, while Brown appears to be stuck at a 46 percent ceiling. Moreno is up three points from the September 9-18 Morning Consult poll, which showed him at 44...

A new study by Dr. Ismail Saafi from the Aix-Marseille Université provides details on the discovery of cooked snail remains at Kef Ezzahi in northern Tunisia. The snail remains, dating back approximately 7710 years, are the only known cases of snail remains in northern Africa with their epiphragms (temporary closing membrane) intact.The findings raise questions and shed light on snail consumption and the antiquity of culinary traditions in Tunisian societies. The findings are published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.The site of Kef Ezzahi is one of a handful of sites that contain a rammadiyet (massive accumulations of shell...

The owner of the Kansas City Chiefs said Wednesday that he has no issue with kicker Harrison Butker forming a political action committee designed to encourage Christians to vote for what the PAC describes as "traditional values." Butker announced his Upright PAC last weekend, during the Chiefs' bye, in a series of postings on social media. "One of the things I talk to the players every year about at training camp is using their platform to make a difference," Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said. "We have players on both sides of the political spectrum, both sides of whatever controversial issue...

Embedded video, no link to You Tube. IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari published on Thursday drone footage showing mass murderer Yahya Sinwar's final moments before his elimination. According to a preliminary investigation, on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m., a soldier from the 450th Battalion noticed a suspicious individual leaving and entering a building in Rafah. The forces opened fire on the building. At 3:00 p.m., the forces identified, using a drone, three individuals leaving and walking between the buildings. Two of them were covered with blankets, they apparently walked in front of Sinwar to ensure the area was clear. The soldiers fired...

The typically mild-mannered and tight-lipped Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell privately laced into former President Donald Trump and sobbed during the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol, an upcoming book claims. McConnell (R-Ky.), 82, slammed Trump, 78, as “stupid,” “ill-tempered,” a “narcissist” and a “despicable human being” behind closed doors toward the end of his administration, according to a preview of the book “The Price of Power” from the Associated Press.“It’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump’s White House departure, McConnell told associates in confidence, per the AP. “[Trump’s conduct] only...

Former President Donald Trump is edging out Vice President Kamala Harris in the swing state of Wisconsin, according to a Napolitan News survey conducted by RMG Research. The survey found half, 50 percent, of likely voters in the Badger State supporting Trump. Harris follows closely behind, garnering 49 percent support. The outlet noted that September’s poll had the figures swapped, with Harris leading with 50 percent support to Trump’s 49. The survey was taken October 10-16, 2024, among 787 likely Wisconsin voters. It has a +/- 3.5 percent margin of error:x As of Thursday afternoon, Trump has the slightest edge...

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday he has told former President Donald Trump that Kyiv will pursue nuclear weapons for defense if it doesn’t gain entry to NATO. “In a conversation with Donald Trump, I told him it comes to this,” Zelensky said in Ukrainian while speaking to the European Council in Brussels. “The outcome is either Ukraine will be a nuclear power — and that will be our protection — or we should have some kind of alliance. Other than NATO, today we don’t know of any effective alliances.” Zelensky, 46, emphasized that Ukraine is choosing to pursue membership...

The annual cost of cybercrime is expected to reach $10 trillion dollars next year. To put that figure into context, in terms of GDP it would be the third biggest economy in the world after the US and China. That’s why countries from Australia to China, the UK and US are racing to tighten up their cybersecurity laws – and why the UN is expected to pass a landmark cyber treaty in the next few weeks. For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app. From deep-fakes and disinformation to hacks and attacks on...

“I smell cigarette smoke,” one of my travel companions noted. That was the moment I knew that we should not linger any longer. We had been warned twice on the way up the hillside not to come here. In one instance, it was claimed that two treasure hunters had been arrested by the police a week or two earlier. In the other case, we were told that if the military or police caught us there, we would be arrested. Such is the experience of interrupting the destruction of Armenian cultural sites in Turkey. There are few photographs of the monastery...

President Joe Biden told former President Barack Obama that Vice President Kamala Harris is “not as strong as me,” to which Obama agreed, “That is true,” according to a professional lipreader, who deciphered the off-mic conversation at Ethel Kennedy’s Wednesday funeral. The comments suggest Biden and Obama perhaps have doubts about Harris’s electability with less than three weeks to go until Election Day. The comments also indicate that Biden hopes Harris beats former President Donald Trump, a point debated among Republicans, who cite instances of Biden undercutting Harris’s campaign narratives as evidence to the contrary.