Free Republic

When Donald Trump unveiled a $500bn plan to spearhead a cancer vaccine, many greeted it as another of his grandiose proposals. But not Anna Bochenski. The 53-year-old New Yorker is one of the few people in the world who knows how life-changing the shots can be. The administrative worker was told she had just months to live in January 2021 after her aggressive breast cancer returned and stopped responding to treatment. After a six-year battle with the disease, which included numerous surgeries and 32 brutal rounds of radiation, the cancer had spread to her ribs and spine, where it had...

Washington (PTI) -- The White House stenographers have a problem. Donald Trump is talking so much, the people responsible for transcribing his public remarks are struggling to keep up with all the words. There were more than 22,000 on Inauguration Day, then another 17,000 when Trump visited disaster sites in North Carolina and California. It’s enough to strain the ears and fingers of even the most dedicated stenographer, especially after four years of Joe Biden’s relative quiet. Now there are discussions about hiring additional staff to keep up with the workload, according to people with knowledge of the conversations who...

The victims of a crash between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter included teen figure skaters returning from a national meet with their mothers and coaches, an Ohio college student coming from her grandfather's funeral, two Chinese nationals and a group of hunters headed back from a guided trip in Kansas. They were among 60 travelers and four crew members on board the commercial flight late Wednesday when it collided with the Black Hawk helicopter, which was carrying three soldiers. Officials say there were no survivors. As the search for remains continued Thursday, communities grieved. Faith leaders held...

Plane crash near Roosevelt Mall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Sometimes history turns on a phrase. Patrick Henry had, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Ronald Reagan gave us, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” And now Vice President JD Vance has given us “I don’t really care, Margaret.” If you missed it, this new rallying cry emerged during an interview between CBS’s Margaret Brennan and Vance about illegal immigrants who weren’t vetted for terrorist connections. When Brennan insisted, “Yes, they were,” Vance cited an illegal immigrant who had planned a terrorist attack in Oklahoma on Election Day last November. Brennan, perhaps believing this was a gotcha moment, asked,...

Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Friday urged undocumented Colombians in the United States to quit their jobs “immediately” and return to Colombia. He added in a post on X that the Department of Social Prosperity would offer credits to returnees who enroll in its programs. Petro over the weekend averted an economic disaster after diplomats from his government and the U.S. reached a deal on deportation flights in a dispute that had led both countries to threaten tariffs and the U.S. to impose visa measures.

A “prolific anti-Trump FBI agent” allegedly broke protocol in order to open and push the FBI’s initial investigation into President Donald Trump and the 2020 election, according to whistleblower records released by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Jonson, R-Wis., Thursday. Former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) Timothy Thibault, who was fired for violating the Hatch Act after Grassley exposed his public anti-Trump statements, authored the initial language for “Arctic Frost,” the investigation that would become former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s lawfare case against Trump over the 2020 election. “Thibault took this action despite being unauthorized to open...

The Fulton County Board of Commissioners opted against allocating a substantial monetary increase for the county district attorney’s office when finalizing its 2025 fiscal year budget on Wednesday, perhaps bringing a monthslong standoff with DA Fani Willis into its next phase. The board allocated $39.3 million of its nearly $1 billion budget to the DA’s office, a figure that Willis has insisted will not allow her staff to properly carry out its duties. The adopted budget also fails to provide additional funding requested by other justice and safety partners, like the magistrate courts and the solicitor general. Capital B Atlanta...

Subtitle: A unanimous jury verdict was reversed by an Obama judge shortly after the Democratic administration apparently took interest in the case. Jeff Parker, the CEO of the small Florida-based technology company ParkerVision, explained to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck Thursday how tech giant Qualcomm allegedly stole one of the most revolutionary patented innovations in American history with the help of elements of the Obama administration — technology that was ultimately offshored to China, possibly giving America's pre-eminent adversary a competitive edge. "We are at the beginning of seeing corruption exposed like never before in America," said Beck. Long war...

One of NASA's stranded astronauts has revealed she has lost the ability to perform several basic tasks after being stranded in space for eight months. Sunita Williams admitted this week that she has forgotten what it's like to walk after spending 234 days in microgravity. 'I've been up here long enough, right now I've been trying to remember what it's like to walk. I haven't walked. I haven't sat down. I haven't laid down,' she said during a video call with students at Needham High School in Massachusetts on Monday. Williams, 59 and her crewmate, Barry Wilmore, 62, were supposed...

Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin announced Friday that the Department of Justice has indicted a former senior adviser for the Federal Reserve on espionage charges. Sixty-three-year-old John Harold Rogers of Virginia was arrested Friday and charged with conspiracy to commit economic espionage and with making false statements. Rogers allegedly conspired to steal FRB trade secrets in order to aid China. From the DOJ website: John Harold Rogers, 63, of Vienna, Virginia, a former Senior Adviser for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (FRB), was arrested today on charges that he conspired to steal Federal Reserve...

Washington (PTI) -- US President Donald Trump has signed a presidential memorandum to set up a 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay to detain “high-priority criminal aliens.” The Guantanamo Bay facility, which has so far been used to hold terrorists, will now also house illegal immigrants with criminal records. The signing took place on Wednesday, with Trump directing the Departments of Defence and Homeland Security to prepare the facility. According to the memorandum, he ordered the expansion of the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to accommodate “high-priority criminal aliens” and address related enforcement needs. “Most people don’t...

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...