Free Republic

Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., who won a special election to replace national security adviser Mike Waltz in Florida's 6th Congressional District, ripped Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Wednesday for working with Democrats on a Senate resolution designed to rein in President Donald Trump's proposed tariffs.The Senate was poised Wednesday to vote on the resolution, which would end the national emergency Trump declared in an executive order to implement the tariffs on foreign imports. Paul and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who sponsored the resolution, used a special legislative procedure to force a vote. The resolution prompted House Republicans to add a...

The U.S. Justice Department Thursday said it had filed a complaint against three of the country's biggest health insurance companies, Aetna Inc. and affiliates, Elevance Health and Humana, under the False Claims Act.The action also affects three large insurance broker organizations: eHealth, GoHealth and SelectQuote, it said."The United States alleges that from 2016 through at least 2021, the defendant insurers paid hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to the defendant brokers in exchange for enrollments into the insurers’ Medicare Advantage plans," the Justice Department said in its release.The DOJ also said that Aetna and Humana conspired with the...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the much-anticipated deal with the United States involving rare-earth minerals on Thursday, saying the agreement is "now truly an equal partnership." "All our representatives did a good job. The agreement has changed significantly during the preparation process. It is now truly an equal partnership - one that creates opportunities for substantial investment in Ukraine, as well as significant modernisation of Ukraine's industries and, equally importantly, its legal practices," Zelenskyy posted on X. The fundamentals of the agreement are said to give the U.S. preferential access to new minerals deals in Ukraine, which will also be...

Workers throughout China are flooding the streets in revolt as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs slam the fragile Chinese export economy. From the cramped streets of Sichuan in the southwest to the cold outskirts of Inner Mongolia in the northeast, furious workers are demanding back pay and protesting mass layoffs as factories shutter under pressure from Trump’s tariffs. Outside a LED light manufacturing plant near Shanghai, thousands of unpaid workers shouted furiously at company managers over wages that haven’t been paid since January. In central China’s Dao County, a similar scene unfolded outside a sporting goods store after the company...

The moves are part of the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign on Iran to help weaken its terrorist activities in the Middle East, including through its use of proxy forces. President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the United States will impose secondary sanctions on all countries or individuals that purchase oil or petrochemicals from Iran. The announcement comes a day after the State Department sanctioned seven entities it accused of trading Iranian oil and petrochemical products. The president confirmed the new secondary sanctions in a post on Truth Social, warning countries they would not be allowed to do business with...

Information Processing: An Unnatural Attribute of LifeResearchers have long recognized information (CSI) as a prime descriptor of living systems, in comparison to the low levels of information in non-living systems. Skeptics, however, seem to have remained convinced that natural processes can gradually ratchet up information, even in opposition to established laws of physics and observable operations of nature.Recently, researchers have put forward a corollary attribute of living systems, namely that living organisms process and manipulate information. Decision-making based on information processing appears as a ubiquitous biosignature.Unlike non-living systems, living systems actively acquire, process, and use information about their environments to...

A business in Illinois, owned by a vocal critic of controversial Democratic mayor Tiffany Henyard, was destroyed in a fire deemed “suspicious” by authorities earlier this week. “The fire is suspicious in nature,” Dolton Deputy Fire Chief John Calhoun told WGN. “We do have the fire marshal out here currently with our [mutual aid] arson team.” The blaze erupted around 6 a.m. Tuesday, escalating to a three-alarm fire. No injuries were reported, but the building was a total loss, according to FOX 32 Chicago. A smaller fire occurred at the same site the previous week, WGN noted. The property, owned...

Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas has started pitching fellow Democrats on a run for the party’s top Oversight Committee position, according to two people familiar with the situation. Crockett’s entreaties — playing out in phone calls, text messages and floor conversations — mark the beginning of a contested race to succeed Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) as Oversight’s ranking member. Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts is also seeking the job, though Connolly — who announced plans to step aside after suffering a recurrence of esophageal cancer — has not yet formally done so. Crockett has told other lawmakers that she’s “made...

A growing number of transgender musicians have cancelled events in the U.S. over President Donald Trump’s transgender policies even as the U.K. Supreme Court rules that transgender women are not legally biological women. Over the last few weeks, two Canadian singers have cancelled concert appearances in the U.S. claiming that they fear being “targeted” due to the president’s policies. Last month, Halifax trans non-binary pop artist T. Thomason announced that he was pulling out of All Roads Festival in Belfast, Maine, scheduled for May 16, because he is upset over the Trump administration’s policy that the U.S. government will only...

Republicans are trying to lock in Trump’s tax cuts and Democrats are resisting. We now know that DOGE is trying to end the wasteful spending in DC. But I would really like to see tax rates on the middle class fall. The wealth gap between the top 1% of taxpayers and the bottom 50% of taxpayers is enormous. And has gotten worse since 1990. Meanwhile. to fight off the temporary effects of the tariff war, Trump is urging Fed Chair Powell to cut rates. Powell will likely NOT cut rates. But what does “Lunatic Liz” Warren say about rate cuts??

President Trump announced a major shakeup in his national security team on Thursday, tapping Mike Waltz to be his United Nations ambassador while Secretary of State Marco Rubio will fill the national security adviser post on an acting basis. “I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the...

Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that the signing of a minerals deal between Ukraine and the United States meant President Donald Trump had forced Kyiv to pay for future U.S. military aid. The deal, signed in Washington on Wednesday, will give the United States preferential access to new Ukrainian minerals deals and fund investment in Ukraine's reconstruction. .... Trump has broken the Kyiv regime to the point where they will have to pay for U.S. aid with mineral resources," Medvedev, a former Russian president who is now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, wrote on Telegram....

If we don’t insist on the total assimilation and Americanization of our immigrants, we’ll cease to be America and become something else.. If you want to know what mass immigration without assimilation produces in a country, look no further than Scotland. Immigrants from Pakistan now constitute an ethno-religious voting bloc in that country with their very own politicians advocating for nakedly sectarian interests. Recently, a video clip from 2022 resurfaced on social media of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar standing in front of the flag of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan claiming that “change is coming” and forthrightly calling for...

A trio of House Democrats asked to be removed as co-sponsors of a resolution to impeach President Trump, a sign that many in the party do not want to go down the path of trying to remove the president from office — at least at the current moment. Reps. Kweisi Mfume (Md.), Robin Kelly (Ill.) and Jerry Nadler (N.Y.) had signed on as co-sponsors of Rep. Shri Thanedar’s (D-Mich.) impeachment resolution — which includes seven articles of impeachment — but Tuesday afternoon, they went to the House floor and asked for their names to be taken off the legislation. The...

The Democratic Party is confronting a collapse in favorability ratings in Georgia at a pivotal time, as liberal voters outraged by President Donald Trump’s comeback demand a more confrontational pushback to the Republican’s norm-shattering agenda.The latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows just 35% of registered Georgia voters have a favorable view of the Democratic Party after Trump swept the state and other political battlegrounds in his 2024 return to power. That’s the lowest level of support in nine years of AJC polling. The party’s dismal ratings come as Democratic activists prepare to vote for a new party chair on Saturday amid...

DNI (Director of National Intelligence) Tulsi Gabbard dropped a bombshell during an interview this week with Megyn Kelly, and former NIH Director Anthony Fauci should be worried. Gabbard appeared with Kelly to discuss a variety of issues on investigating leaks from within the administration, whether she would run for president (she did not rule it out), and the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the issue regarding COVID-19 came up, Gabbard had plenty of interesting news to share. Gabbard told Kelly that she, along with others, were investigating whether the United States funded gain-of-function research which caused the COVID-19 pandemic....

The Traveller Collection, thought to be the most expensive coin collection to ever come to auction, will be sold off over the next three years - with the first sale taking place on May 20...When they were finally retrieved by the collector's heirs, the coins were stored in a bank vault and later presented to the auction house for sale. Unfortunately, no further details have been made available about the hiding or discovery of the coins, due to the family's request for privacy.The collector's detailed records made it easier for the team at the auction house to research the provenance...

Even his enemies were struck with his heroic bearing. A zealous papist, describing the martyrdom of Huss, and of Jerome, who died soon after, said: “Both bore themselves with constant mind when their last hour approached. They prepared for the fire as if they were going to a marriage feast. They uttered no cry of pain. When the flames rose, they began to sing hymns; and scarce could the vehemency of the fire stop their singing.”—Ibid., b. 3, ch. 7. When the body of Huss had been wholly consumed, his ashes, with the soil upon which they rested, were gathered...

Poplar trees are some of the fastest-growing, most popular shade trees in America. They encompass some 35 species, not including a massive number of hybrids, and can be found in zones 3 through 9. One question many homeowners want to know is, are poplar roots invasive? Poplar trees are invasive because they have an extensive, fast growing, and shallow root system (up to three times wider than the tree is tall) which can lift sidewalks, retaining walls, and clog pipes. Poplar roots send up suckers 100ft away from the base of the tree while spreading seeds rapidly.

Contractors for the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue have been summoned to appear before Congress amid a sweeping probe into potentially fraudulent — and even foreign-sourced — donations during the 2024 election, according to a pair of letters exclusively obtained by The Post. The House Oversight, Judiciary and Administration Committees fired off letters to two employees of the AI-powered fraud prevention software firm Sift who worked with ActBlue — and reportedly know “critical” information about how the lead Dem funding portal adopted a “more lenient” standard for suspicious donations. “The Committees are concerned that ActBlue has maintained poor anti-fraud practices that...