Free Republic

President Donald Trump announced late on Thursday his first judicial nomination since returning to the White House as he moved to appoint a lawyer serving under Tennessee's Republican attorney general to a seat on a federal appeals court. Trump .. is nominating Whitney Hermandorfer, who has clerked for three members of the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority, to fill a vacancy on the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. ... Whitney is a Fighter who will inspire confidence in our Legal System," Trump wrote .. The nomination was the first of what is expected to be more than 100...

The Supreme Court justice said it was time to address “the elephant in the room": the “threats and harassment” that judges have received from Trump and his allies. RIO GRANDE, Puerto Rico — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson forcefully condemned attacks by President Donald Trump and his allies on judges who have blocked Trump administration policies, warning Thursday that the increasingly hostile rhetoric poses a dire threat to the country’s political fabric. “The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity,” Jackson told a judges’ conference in Puerto Rico. “The threats...

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, disgraced by a corruption scandal that landed him in prison yet heralded by some for clearing the state’s death row, has died. He was 91. Kankakee County Coroner Robert Gessner, a family friend, said Ryan died Friday afternoon at his home in Kankakee, where he was receiving hospice care. Ryan started out a small-town pharmacist but wound up running one of the country’s largest states. Along the way, the tough-on-crime Republican experienced a conversion on the death penalty and won international praise by halting executions as governor and, eventually, emptying death row.

Elon Musk said DOGE “should definitely” investigate after The Post’s exposé of the Fed’s $2.5 billion revamp of its Washington, DC, headquarters — a lavish project that the Tesla titan called an “eyebrow raiser.” The Post exclusively reported earlier this week how the Fed’s top brass were pushing ahead with the pricey renovations despite mounting losses on its balance sheet, catching the eye of President Trump’s austerity axman-in-chief. “Since at the end of the day, this is all taxpayer money, I think we certainly — we should definitely — look to see if indeed the Federal Reserve is spending two...

Boy: It has been one month since my last confession and these are my sins. I missed Mass on Sunday twice. I Lied about witnessing a murder once. I ate meat on Friday once Priest: wait a minute can you back up a little bit and say that again Boy: I ate meat on Friday once Priest: no not that one back up a little more Boy: I lied about witnessing a murder Priest: yeah that's the one do you realize what you said Boy: it was only once father Priest: do you know what the fifth is? Boy: yes...

Farage claims these elections mark 'beginning of the end of the Conservative party' Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has claimed that these elections mark “the beginning of the end of the Conservative party”. Speaking at a rally in Consett in Country Durham, he said: [This is] the beginning of the end of the Conservative party. They may well have been around since 1832 and the Great Reform Act, but they’ve been wiped out in the shires of England, wiped out in those West Midlands, southern, south-western areas where they’ve got their members, they’ve got their councillors, they’ve got their...

Britain’s populist, anti-immigration party Reform UK has beaten Labour by a tiny margin in a by-election, dealing the government a mid-term setback and ruffling the country’s historically resilient two-party hegemony. Reform, led by the United Kingdom’s disruptor-in-chief Nigel Farage, claimed its fifth Member of Parliament (MP) by winning the industrial northwestern town of Runcorn by just six votes, following a recount. It marked a stunning reversal in fortunes for center-left Labour, which comfortably claimed the seat on its way to a landslide victory in a general election just 10 months ago. “It’s been a huge night for Reform,” Farage told...

Some 17,000 homes, businesses and other structures burned to the ground in the Jan. 7 fires. It’s uncertain how much will be rebuilt. Many homeowners will not be able to afford it, even those with insurance. Some are still trying to figure out whether it’s safe to return to their properties, given limited data on the degree to which toxins from the fires, including lead and asbestos, may have permeated their land. Roughly 400 land parcels are already for sale in the fire-ravaged areas. Facing overwhelming loss and the chaos that comes with sudden displacement, those looking to rebuild must...

After years of harassment, violent threats, and an assassination attempt being leveled at her conservative colleagues by radical leftists, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has finally cracked the code on who she believes poses the biggest danger to the judicial branch: President Donald Trump. While speaking at a judicial conference in Puerto Rico on Thursday, Jackson reportedly discussed Americans’ growing criticisms of activist lower court judges unilaterally usurping the constitutional powers of the president to execute existing laws — an issue she characterized as “the elephant in the room.” Without mentioning Trump by name, the Biden appointee claimed...

[Catholic Caucus] The Next Pope Needs a Better China Policyeforming the Vatican’s policy on China should be a priority of the next papacy. The current approach is defined by the Vatican’s controversial 2018 agreement with China to share power with Beijing in the appointment of Catholic bishops. It severely compromises the Catholic Church in China and erodes papal religious and moral authority.Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Cardinal Parolin is the architect of the China deal and its chief enthusiast. Beijing has not-so-subtly signaled that he is China’s top pick for the next pope. At a press conference on April 22—one...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is officially launching his digital ID and cryptocurrency project, Worldcoin, in the United States. Worldcoin uses eye-scanning technology to confirm a person’s identity in a system called World ID. World ID is a digital ID that uses biometric verification to confirm payments and prove a person’s identity. Altman is hoping that Worldcoin will create a global identity and digital cash payment system.

Gun violence in New York City has spiked along with the mercury, with shootings up more than 50% last week compared to the same time last year — indicating that the Big Apple could be in for a bloody summer. A total of 23 shootings were reported across the five boroughs in the week starting April 21, according to new NYPD statistics — an increase of 53% from the 15 shootings tallied over the same period in 2024. Temperatures in Gotham hit a high of 82 degrees last Tuesday, making it the second-warmest day in April, according to Accuweather. Last...

Explanation: The most massive young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud is NGC 346, embedded in our small satellite galaxy's largest star forming region some 210,000 light-years distant. Of course the massive stars of NGC 346 are short lived, but very energetic. Their winds and radiation sculpt the edges of the region's dusty molecular cloud triggering star-formation within. The star forming region also appears to contain a large population of infant stars. A mere 3 to 5 million years old and not yet burning hydrogen in their cores, the infant stars are strewn about the embedded star cluster. This...

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at the Governor's Ball - February 22, 2025

Late on Thursday night, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to cut taxpayer funds to PBS and NPR through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The text was posted on the Trump team’s “Rapid Response 47” account on X.It said: “@POTUS just signed an executive order ENDING the taxpayer subsidization of NPR and PBS — which receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’” The executive order includes this argument:Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options. Government funding of news media in...

The Washington Examiner reports that the suit was filed on behalf of Babbitt’s estate and her husband, Aaron Babbitt, and claims the officer who shot Babbitt was “incompetent” and “dangerous” and should have recognized Babbitt posed no threat to Congress when she entered the House speaker’s lobby. Kyle Cheney from Politico posted the news on X this Friday afternoon. UPDATE: The radical leftist judge on the case, Ana Reyes, is SCREAMING at both sides in the courtroom. Insane! Via Julie Kelly:

The church's claim to the right to pardon leads the Romanist to feel at liberty to sin; and the ordinance of confession, without which her pardon is not granted, tends also to give license to evil. He who kneels before fallen man, and opens in confession the secret thoughts and imaginations of his heart, is debasing his manhood and degrading every noble instinct of his soul. In unfolding the sins of his life to a priest,—an erring, sinful mortal, and too often corrupted with wine and licentiousness,—his standard of character is lowered, and he is defiled in consequence. His thought...

Neil Young is facing criticism for a new song he wrote about “fascists” buying Teslas. The 79-year-old singer-songwriter debuted the song, reportedly titled “Let’s Roll Again,” at the Light Up the Blue charity concert in Los Angeles over the weekend. “If you’re a fascist, get a Tesla / It’s electric, it doesn’t matter / If you’re a Democrat, taste your freedom / Get whatever you want, taste your freedom,” Young could be heard singing in clips circulating on social media. “Come on Ford, come on GM / Come on Chrysler, let’s roll again,” the song continued. “Build something special that...

Internet sleuths have already discovered the stunning truth behind a 'UFO' image shared on Capitol Hill yesterday by a Pentagon whistleblower. Former military intelligence official Luis Elizondo spoke before Congress Thursday morning, revealing a never-before-seen image of a cruise ship–sized craft he claimed was spotted hovering 21,000 feet in the air over the western US. The image quickly flooded social media and was debunked in less than 24 hours. Users analyzed the photo and located the object, discovering it was actually a snapshot of two irrigation circles in rural Colorado. Mick West, a British-American science writer and conspiracy theory investigator,...

A massive crowd gathered at City Hall in Philadelphia Thursday for a May Day rally and to see Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders speak. The "For Workers, Not Billionaires" rally on the north side of City Hall drew a large crowd and shut down streets in the area. Sanders laid into the Trump administration's policies on taxes, immigration, federal cuts and more. He also pointed out the billionaires President Trump has put into cabinet positions and surrounded himself with — including the world's wealthiest man, Elon Musk. Sanders says he came to the event with a call to workers and Pennsylvania...