Free Republic

Even before officially launching his widely anticipated Ohio gubernatorial bid, former biotech entrepreneur and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy already enjoys an enormous lead over many of his prospective primary opponents, according to a new survey of Republican primary voters conducted by longtime Trump polling firm Fabrizio, Lee & Associates. Ramaswamy, who recently parted ways with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he was slated to lead with Elon Musk, has the support of more than half of Buckeye State GOP primary voters in a gubernatorial match-up against potential opponents Dave Yost, Robert Sprague, and Jeremiah Workman, according to...

New research from the University of Minnesota and Boston University School of Public Health shows that death rates for early adults, or adults aged 25-44, rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic and remain higher than expected post-pandemic.Heightened death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic intensified an already negative trend for early adults, which began around 2010. As a result, early adult death rates in 2023 were about 70 percent higher than they might have been if death rates had not begun to rise about a decade before the pandemic.

John Harold Rogers, was arrested on charges he conspired to steal Fed trade secrets for the benefit of the People's Republic of China, the Justice Department announced Friday. Rogers, who worked as a senior adviser in the Fed's division of international finance from 2010 until 2021, allegedly shared confidential information with Chinese co-conspirators.

An employee with the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services in Connecticut is accused of altering voter registration cards just weeks before the 2024 election. On September 17, officials hosted a national voting event at the Western Connecticut Mental Health Network in Torrington, a city of about 35,000 residents in the northwestern corner of the state. By October, the Detective Division of the Torrington Police Department received a complaint about alleged voter registration fraud in connection with the event. According to the complaint, a series of voter registration cards submitted to the Torrington Registrar of Voters Office clerk appeared...

Government workers are reeling after President Donald Trump’s administration presented a “payout” to federal employees refusing to return to the office on a full-time basis. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent an email to millions of government employees on Tuesday, offering eight months of pay if they resigned by Feb. 6. In response, federal employees and Democratic representatives have lodged anonymous complaints to media outlets. This followed Trump’s executive order forcing government workers to return to the office on a full-time basis on Jan. 20. “It was the batshit craziest email I’ve ever read,” one anonymous employee told...

The Army has identified two of the three soldiers killed in Wednesday's crash outside a busy Washington, D.C. airport. The three-person crew was on board a Black Hawk helicopter that collided with an American Airlines passenger jet carrying 64 people. The soldiers identified are Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O'Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Ga. and Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Md. The third crew member on the helicopter was a female pilot with 500 hours of flying experience, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation. The Army is...

Republicans in the House and Senate are finalizing legislation that would formally recognize the West Bank as "Judea and Samaria," applying Israel’s official term for the region to all American government communications, according to a copy of the bill obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Led by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.), the Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act would prohibit government use of "West Bank" when referencing the territories around Jerusalem. Israel, which annexed the area in 1967, refers to it as the biblical Judea and Samaria, though the United States and international community...

You are directed to take all steps necessary to effectuate the termination of the employees identified in Appendix A, effective immediately. It is my understanding based on information provided by EOUSA and JMD that these employees are still within the probationary period associated with their hiring processes, and that they were initially hired as term employees at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia to support casework relating to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. In an Executive Order issued on January 20, 2025, President Trump appropriately characterized that work...

WASHINGTON — Americans who earn tips, overtime or Social Security benefits may not have to wait long for federal taxes on that income to end, the White House says. President Trump wants all three of those major tax cuts to be included in a looming budget reconciliation bill that can pass with bare majorities in both the Republican-led House and Senate, press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Friday. “The president has made it very clear to our allies on Capitol Hill that is a critical piece of this reconciliation package,” Leavitt said in response to a question from The Post,...

State lawmaker Kate Sanchez says 'it's an uphill battle in Sacramento' for new bill.... ...While legislators in the Democratic trifecta are trying to pass bills to "Trump-proof" the state, California Republican Kate Sanchez plans to introduce a bill that would crack down on what may be a "sanctuary state" loophole protecting criminal illegal immigrants involved in sex-trafficking minors. "It would eliminate all of the unnecessary restrictions for local law enforcement to cooperate with federal law enforcement in order to go after those that have been accused or convicted of sex trafficking of minors, and currently there is a clause that...

President Donald J. Trump says he is considering imposing tariffs on goods imported from the European Union. The move would mark a significant escalation in his government’s efforts to end unfair trade imbalances around the globe. “Am I going to impose tariffs on the European Union?” Trump posited during a press event in the Oval Office while signing a new series of executive orders. He continued: “Do you want a truthful answer or do you want me to give you a political answer?” “Absolutely,” he said regarding the possible foreign trade measures, adding: “The European Union has treated us so...

Reporter: Do you have a plan to go visit the [crash] site? Trump: What's the site? The water? Do you want me to go swimming?!

President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration has already had “very serious” discussions with Russia about its war in Ukraine and that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin could soon take “significant” action toward ending the grinding conflict. “We will be speaking, and I think will perhaps do something that’ll be significant,” Trump said in exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. “We want to end that war. That war would have not started if I was president.” Trump did not say who from his administration has been in contact with the Russians but insisted the two sides were...

FBI Director nominee Kash Patel would not play along when Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff tried to pull a stunt Thursday during Patel's confirmation hearing. Schiff tried to make hay on a song Patel helped promote called "Justice for All" featuring the J6 Prison Choir, made up of those who had been accused of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, protests.

WASHINGTON — Tennessee Valley Authority CEO Jeff Lyash — the highest-paid federal employee with a compensation package of $10.5 million per year — abruptly announced Friday that he was retiring 11 days after the return to office of President Trump, who during his first term slammed Lyash’s “ridiculous” pay and vowed to fire him. “Sounds like Lyash got DOGE’d,” a senior administration official told The Post, referring to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative to rein in allegedly wasteful federal spending. A TVA rep denied that Lyash was departing either in response to or to get ahead of pressure...

Mandy Damari, mother of Emily Damari who was freed after 470 days in captivity earlier this month, revealed on Friday that her daughter was held in UNRWA facilities in Gaza during her captivity. Damari made the revelation during a conversation with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Mandy and Emily are British citizens. The mother posted to X a picture of she and Emily speaking to Starmer and wrote, “Thank you Keir Starmer for calling us today and all your support in getting Emily home. Hamas held Emily in UNRWA facilities and denied her access to medical treatment after shooting her...

Defending the destructive spending plaguing the federal government appears to be what The New York Times does best, which explains its nervous breakdown over President Donald Trump taking scissors to Washington D.C.’s credit cards. The Upshot staff over at The Times were up in arms over the Office of Budget and Management’s January 28 memo ordering a temporary freeze on funding for federal programs across the government. The Times railed that the order “caused widespread confusion among agency officials and organizations that rely on federal support, including states, schools, hospitals and other nonprofits.” They listed 2,600 programs that were under...

The best and worst movies of 2024The Oscar race is, it seems, coming down to a contest between what is unquestionably the worst movie of 2024—Emilia Perez—and what might be the best movie of 2024. That would be Anora, an uncategorizable and unclassifiable story of a lost soul, a 23-year-old stripper in Brooklyn who also trades sexual favors for money. She hits the financial and emotional jackpot when the son of a Russian oligarch falls for her.So it’s a love story, albeit an entirely transactional one—beautifully and precisely observed and unsentimental by its writer-director, Sean Baker. He neither condescends to...

I can’t believe this is real This woman is out in Salt Lake City, Utah “patrolling” for ICE Shes on “ICE Watch” to alert illegals on social media where ICE is so they can avoid the area That’s not all, she wants to film ICE arresting illegals to help the illegals case, “I do want to be out and about, because if I can catch them filming it has the potential to help someone's legal case.” “it's what, day six of this for me and a little bit longer for everybody else. I think we're in it for the long...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada “won’t back down” from President Trump’s threat to impose a 25 percent tariff and that Ottawa will respond accordingly until they are removed. “We’re showing the new American administration that they have a strong partner in Canada when it comes to upholding border security, all while simultaneously underscoring that we won’t back down, that if tariffs are implemented against Canada, we will respond,” Trudeau said Friday while addressing the advisory council on Canada-U.S. relations. “We won’t relent until tariffs are removed and, of course, everything is on the table,” he added. Trump has once...