Free Republic

YXDMGCX ROVW D YOBCSYXVXC. YDCN ROVW BWDEN. BGV ROVW DP DLX.— CDI'M CGEX SU ACXBOMOSP

New York City mayor Eric Adams’s former chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, was indicted Thursday on charges of conspiracy, bribery, and money laundering. Lewis-Martin is accused of giving special treatment to two real estate developers when their construction project faced government roadblocks. The developers rewarded Lewis-Martin for her assistance by gifting her and her son over $100,000 in checks and cash, which her son used to purchase a Porsche, according to the indictment filed by District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Lewis-Martin, who abruptly resigned on Sunday, is the latest New York official to face charges in the mayor’s administration, which has been...

A bill to avert a partial government shutdown that was backed by President-elect Trump failed to pass the House of Representatives on Thursday night. Congress is inching closer to the possibility of a partial shutdown, with the deadline coming at the end of Friday. The bill needed two-thirds of the House chamber to pass, but failed to even net a majority. Two Democrats voted with the majority of Republicans to pass the bill, while 38 GOP lawmakers bucked Trump to oppose it. The margin fell to 174 to 235. It comes after two days of chaos in Congress as lawmakers...

McDonald's may be facing one of the worst backlashes after an employee made a move that landed the fast food chain in the middle of one of the year's biggest controversies. The CEO of American health carrier UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was gunned down and killed outside of a hotel in New York City by a masked suspect during the early hours of the morning last Wednesday. According to the police, the suspect was captured on security footage heading to Manhattan's Central Park on an electric bike immediately after the crime and then taking a taxi to a bus station to...

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s reputation has long polarized public opinion. Whereas some view him as a scientific beacon guiding the world through a pandemic, others criticize his perceived inconsistency, advocacy for extreme policies, and support for ethically questionable research.Fauci’s recent article in Clinical Infectious Diseases, subtitled “Shared Lessons from Two Pandemics,” further deepens the divide. Despite being framed as a “viewpoint” piece, the article raises serious concerns about Fauci’s injection of political bias and selective presentation of facts. By leveraging the credibility of a respected medical journal, Fauci transforms a platform intended for impartial scientific discourse into a tool for advancing...

The knives have come out — and so has the truth. Having been lied to for years by the Democratic Party machine and most of the mainstream media — who insisted Joe Biden was not diminished by his age but energized by it — well, it turns out we skeptics were right all along. And what we're learning is terrifying. Infuriating. An unacceptable abuse of power, a usurpation of the presidency itself by a nameless, faceless cohort. Will we ever know who these conspirators are? Two bombshell reports out this week, in the New York Times and the Wall Street...

The United States doubled the number of forces in Syria to fight the Islamic State group before the overthrow of President Bashar Assad’s government, the Pentagon said Thursday. The U.S. has previously said 900 troops were in Syria, but Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, announced that 2,000 were there and had been for a while. He told reporters that the increase in forces was temporary and they are there to augment the U.S. operations against the Islamic State group. The Pentagon has been asked repeatedly in recent days and weeks about the U.S. presence in Syria and...

A coalition of Democratic senators on Wednesday night sent a letter to federal agencies about an investigation that found that a "faulty" transfer of student loan accounts in 2023 resulted in “millions of consumer credit reporting errors." The error occurred when the student loan provider NelNet transferred student loan accounts to MOHELA last year. The change resulted in nearly 2 million duplicate student loan records appearing on borrowers’ credit reports, and negatively impacted hundreds of thousands of borrowers’ credit scores, which were incorrectly reported for up to a year and a half, per CNBC. The senators, led by Massachusetts Sen....

MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he is ready for a conversation with US President-elect Donald Trump at any time and agrees to meet with him. "I am ready for this [conversation], of course, at any time. And I will also be ready for a meeting, if he wants it," Putin said at the combined Direct Line Q&A and year-end press conference, when asked by an American journalist about a possible meeting with Trump. Putin noted that he did not know when he would meet with Trump. "First of all, I don't know when we...

Stephanopoulos was repeatedly warned by his producer not to use the word “rape” in that interview, but then Stephanopulous used the word “rape” TEN times in that interview. Stephanopoulos was so determined to destroy Trump out of pure hatred no matter the consequences. Despite the fact that Trump had never even met E Jeane Carroll in his life and the jury clearly found Trump NOT GUILTY of rape only for the “judge” to declare he must be guilty of rape somehow. Lets not forget than Carroll couldn't even correctly give the year it happened and the dress she claimed she...

Democrats are trying to insulate their Jan 6. probe from scrutiny because they know they destroyed and suppressed evidence.House Speaker Mike Johnson’s scrapped omnibus spending bill would have made it nearly impossible for congressional investigators to expose what the corrupt Jan. 6 Select Committee was trying to cover up at a time when new facts are coming to light about the extent of the Select Committee’s censorship and destruction of records.A section in the bloated omnibus spending bill, which would have funded the government through March 2025, allowed lawmakers to block subpoenas that demand information from the House — a...

<p>House Democrats were skeptical of an emerging Republican-led funding deal as they walked into a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday afternoon, meaning it's almost certainly doomed on the House floor, with less than 36 hours to go until a shutdown deadline.</p>

Yaoning ‘Mike’ Sun of Chino Hills is charged with acting as an illegal agent of a foreign power and conspiring to advance China-friendly policies in local government. The Chinese government allegedly used a Chino Hills man in an effort to advance policies favorable to the People's Republic of China in Southern California local government, according to a criminal complaint released Thursday. Yaoning "Mike" Sun, 64, was charged with acting as an illegal agent of a foreign power and conspiring with another man — John Chen — who had been plotting to target U.S.-based practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice...

For years, scientists have debated whether humans or the climate have caused the population of large mammals to decline dramatically over the past several thousand years. A new study from Aarhus University confirms that climate cannot be the explanation. About 100,000 years ago, the first modern humans migrated out of Africa in large numbers. They were eminent at adapting to new habitats, and they settled in virtually every kind of landscape—from deserts to jungles to the icy taiga in the far north. Part of the success was human's ability to hunt large animals. With clever hunting techniques and specially built...

Hezbollah -- or what's left of it -- sued for peace. Hamas -- or what's left of it -- will shortly blink out of existence if it doesn't do the same. Bsshar al-Assad has fled the region, and with it Iran's last connections to two of its three proxy terror groups in the region. That leaves the Houthis in Yemen, who have the same sense of impeccable timing as their fellow terrorists. Just as Israel began consolidating its positions on their borders with Syria and Lebanon and considered what to do about the Houthis, the Yemen group lobbed two ballistic...

To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, they told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan. Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic...

A credit rating agency has dropped San Francisco's rating because of the city's deficit spending and economic outlook. S&P Global Ratings lowered its long-term rating and underlying rating to 'AA+' from 'AAA' on the City and County of San Francisco's existing general obligation debt and lowered its long-term rating and SPUR to 'AA' from 'AA+' on the city's appropriation obligations outstanding. "The downgrade reflects our view of the city and county's continued weakening economic trends and deficit spending based on audited fiscal 2024 figures and further revenue deterioration compared with previous forecasts that heightens the size of the budget gap...

From where have the drones come? What is their purpose? Is it possible the U.S. Government would lie to the American people? The answer to the first two questions is that we in the public cannot be sure, nor can Congress. The answer to the third is an unqualified “Yes!” Whether they come from another country like Iran, Russia, China, North Korea or somewhere else is a possibility. Much more likely, though, they are U.S. government drones searching desperately for something. There has been vast speculation on what that might be. We are told that there is radioactive material missing...

Sometimes, the FBI gets it right. After an investigation that apparently has been ongoing for some months, the FBI has arrested an Egyptian national, one Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, for plotting an attack on the Israeli Embassy in New York City.The FBI has arrested a Virginia man, Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, for allegedly sending information on how to build a bomb that would target the Israeli consulate in New York. Charging documents say that Hassan worked closely with an FBI informant.In May, local police got a tip of an ISIS supporting account on Twitter. A review of his...

An elderly Greek woman on the island of Crete outsmarted telephone scammers and led police to their arrests. Credit: Asurnipal, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 A Greek, elderly woman on the island of Crete, outsmarted the telephone scammers who tried to steal thousands of euros from her and led police to their arrest. According to the police statement, on Tuesday, December 17, unknown scammers called the 86-year-old woman and asked her for 10,000 euros ($10,394) in order to settle legal disputes and cover hospitalization fees for her brother who, the scammers told her, supposedly had an accident. The elderly woman...