Free Republic

President Donald Trump’s inauguration festivities were still underway as prominent leaders of the Democratic Party accused him of selling out the country to a cadre of tech billionaires who received premium seating at the swearing-in ceremony.At the swearing-in ceremony inside the Capitol rotunda, Trump gave better seats to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai than he did to the people the president had nominated to fill his Cabinet.It was a stunning visual. The richest men in the world,...

The U.S. Army has identified the third pilot of the H-60 Black Hawk Helicopter that collided with an American Airline CRJ-700 passenger jet on Wednesday as it was on approach to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, killing 67 people. Captain Rebecca M. Lobach, 28, from Durham, North Carolina was one of three soldiers aboard the chopper that crashed into the jet just as it was coming into land. The Army had initially refused to identify Lobach at the request of her family but the decision to release her name came 'at the request of and in coordination with...

GERMAN DEMISE: Unless Germany takes an additional credit of 12-15 billion Euros, due to Ukraine, the government will have to cut: - Pensions - Road maintenance and construction - Railway maintenance and construction - Health spending - Health insurance spending ...

The U.S. Army has identified the female soldier in the doomed Black Hawk helicopter which crashed into an American Airlines flight this week, killing more than 60 people. Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, of Durham, North Carolina, was assigned to the 12th Aviation Battalion in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, who served since July 2019, the Army said in a statement. The Army had initially refused to identify Lobach at the request of her family. The decision to release her name came “at the request of and in coordination with the family,” according to the statement. “We are devastated by the loss of...

Shocking new video footage captured debris from the blast striking a nearby restaurant, where at least one customer suffered a head injury after being hit by flying debris. Inside the diner, patrons were seen ducking for cover amidst the chaos.

One of three soldiers aboard an Army Black Hawk helicopter that was involved in the deadly midair collision with an American Airlines flight Wednesday near Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., was identified Saturday by the Army as 28-year-old Capt. Rebecca Lobach, who had worked as a White House aide in the Biden administration. The Army said Lobach had served as an aviation officer in the Army from July 2019 until January 2025. She had been awarded the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal and Army Service Ribbon. Her family in a statement released through the...

Durham, NC — The U.S. Army has officially identified Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach of Durham, North Carolina, as the third soldier killed in Wednesday night’s tragic military aviation accident in Washington, D.C. Capt. Lobach, a distinguished alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was aboard a Black Hawk helicopter that collided with an American Airlines passenger jet before both aircraft plunged into the icy waters of the Potomac River. The Army’s announcement comes amid an ongoing investigation led by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that excluding his country from talks between the U.S. and Russia about the war in Ukraine would be "very dangerous" and asked for more discussions between Kyiv and Washington to develop a plan for a ceasefire. Speaking in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Zelenskyy said Russia does not want to engage in ceasefire talks or to discuss any kind of concessions, which the Kremlin interprets as losing at a time when its troops have the upper hand on the battlefield.

The Trump administration is moving to strip a slimmed-down U.S. Agency for International Development of its independence and put it under State Department control, two sources familiar with the discussions said on Friday, in what would be a significant overhaul of how Washington allocates U.S. foreign aid. The National Security Council hosted discussions this week on the topic, a person familiar with the matter said. A U.S. official confirmed there have been discussions about such a move but said no final decisions had been made. The administration last week froze U.S. foreign aid, saying it is conducting a review to...

A former Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office deputy in South Texas will spend almost four years in prison for his role in staging fake drug busts as a way to steal drugs from drug cartel members. This week, 39-year-old Baldemar Cardenas went before U.S. Chief District Judge Randy Crane at a federal courthouse in McAllen, Texas, where he received a sentence of three years and ten months in prison for cocaine possession and distribution conspiracy. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, Cardenas pleaded guilty to the charge in April 2022. Breitbart Texas had initially reported...

A Phoenix couple has pleaded guilty to a health care fraud scheme that prosecutors say conned Medicare and other insurance providers out of more than a billion dollars in less than two years. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the couple made false and fraudulent claims for expensive, medically unnecessary treatment that were applied to elderly and terminally ill patients. Federal officials identified the couple on Friday as Alexandra Gehrke, 39, and her husband, Jeffrey King, 46, Prosecutors say Gehrke ran two companies, Apex Medical LLC and Viking Medical Consultants LLC, with untrained sales representatives who would locate older...

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson admitted that his government has lost control over a burgeoning wave of violence sweeping the country, amid escalating public concern. The acknowledgment came during an emergency meeting where Kristersson announced the acceleration of new legislation targeting juvenile involvement in criminal activities. The beginning of 2025 has seen bombings carried out at an average of one per day, leading to 27 bombings by January 27 – including several in residential communities, the Nordic Times reported. "Sweden is in the midst of a new wave of violence; it's primarily the bombings that are increasing, with almost one...

You love to see it.President Trump fired Rohit Chopra, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Saturday.Rohit Chopra received an email Saturday morning informing him that he had been terminated, CNN reported. On Saturday Chopra announced he was leaving the post. “This letter confirms that my term as CFPB Director has concluded. I know the CFPB is ready to work with you and the next confirmed Director, and we have a great deal of energy to ensure continued success,” Rohit Chopra said.It's been an honor serving as your @CFPB Director.Every day, Americans from across the country shared their...

David Lebryk, the top-ranking career U.S. Treasury Department official, will leave his post where he has been a top official for years.Elon Musk and the DOGE team are currently examining the treasury payment systems.Lebryk clashed with Musk over access to a “sensitive system” used to pay over $6 trillion a year in Social Security and Medicare benefits.The results of the audit may not bode well for David Lebryk.According to Elon Musk, the payment approval officers were told to ALWAYS approve payments, even to fraudulent groups or terrorist organizations!“The DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury...

President Donald Trump’s offer to most federal employees to resign now and be paid through September stunned the workers who received it – angering some, confusing many and raising questions about whether the offer is even legal. When a US Department of Agriculture staffer based in Mississippi received the deferred resignation offer on Tuesday, they read through it, laughing because it was just “nonsensical,” and then deleted it. “I’ve got my whole entire life invested in the federal government,” said the staffer, who also spent time in the military. “I’m not going to throw everything away.” Across the United States,...

A suspect was arrested in his nursing home last week for the unsolved murder of a 16-year-old student nearly half a century ago.Nearly five decades after her partially clothed body was discovered on the second floor of her Honolulu high school, modern DNA testing has led to an arrest that could solve the cold case murder of 16-year-old Dawn Momohara. Momohara, discovered with an orange cloth wound tightly around her neck, was found on the second floor of the English building at McKinley High School in Honolulu on March 21, 1977. She was a sophomore at the school at the...

The Department of Defense ordered a handful of news media outlets to vacate their offices inside the Pentagon so that they may be replaced by some conservative press organizations. In a memo issued on Friday, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense John Ullyot said the Pentagon wanted to “broaden access to the limited space of the Correspondents Corridor to outlets that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and journalistic value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon.”

The message Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries’ chose to convey in his press conference on 22 January, two days into Donald Trump’s second administration, was that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) were “American values”. When I asked him how that could be true when half the country had voted against the party touting DEI programmes, his answer epitomised the Democrats’ post-election confusion. “It’s not my understanding, based on anything that I’ve seen, that support for diversity, equity and inclusion had anything to do with the results in November,” he began, blaming the “high cost of living” and the “[failure] of...

There was a heavy focus on systemic racism and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs during the final debate among the eight candidates vying to chair the Democratic National Committee (DNC), as the party aims to exit the political wilderness. The forum, moderated and carried live on MSNBC and held at Georgetown University in the nation's capital city, develed into chaos early on as a wave of left-wing protesters repeatedly interrupted the primetime event, heckling over concerns of climate change and billionaires' influence in America's elections before they were forcibly removed by security. Thanks in part to their repeated targeting...

[Catholic Caucus] The Inspector Arrives: FSSP Starts a NovenaThe Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) is renewing its novena and consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the midst of the Vatican's Apostolic Visitation.In a January 18 press release, the Superior General Father John Berg called on Catholics to pray with them, beginning on February 2 through the eve of the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.Three years ago, the FSSP invoked the Immaculate Heart of Mary "in a moment of deep uncertainty" because of Francis' 'Traditionis Custodes' and is now repeating that prayer during the visitation.Copies of the...