Free Republic

Donald Trump’s attack dog Stephen Miller is tipped to become the next national security adviser. Mr Miller, the deputy chief of staff and the brain behind the administration’s immigration crackdown, is the top candidate to replace Mike Waltz, who was axed from the role on Thursday by Mr Trump. The US president announced Mr Waltz would be appointed to the role of UN ambassador following hours of media fanfare over his removal. Mr Miller’s name was floated as a possible contender shortly after Mr Trump made the announcement. A staunch loyalist to the president, he has been an aggressive defender...

ealth and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pushed discredited claims that the MMR vaccine contains "a lot of aborted fetus debris." He made the remarks during a town hall event on Newsnation on Wednesday, saying this "debris" was the reason many religious groups don't get vaccinated. Why It Matters The claim comes amid a serious measles outbreak in Texas that has already claimed the lives of two children in a Mennonite community with low vaccination rates. Kennedy Jr., who has long faced criticism over his comments about vaccines, has vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule. Despite...

College students don't work very hard these days, write Rick Hess and Greg Fournier of the Manhattan Institute. Full-time students say they average 20 to 25 hours of class time and studying each week, and some estimates are even lower. Thirty-five hours a week would be a reasonable amount of time, according to traditional measures. They're not more likely to have paying jobs than earlier generations, research shows. In 2024, the average first-year student reported spending 5.3 hours per week in campus activities and clubs, 9.3 hours working for pay and 11.9 hours relaxing and socializing. Yet most think they're...

Open source AI models are more likely to recommend men than women for jobs, particularly the high-paying ones, a new study has found. While bias in AI models is a well-established risk, the findings highlight the unresolved issue as the usage of AI proliferates among recruiters and corporate human resources departments. "We don't conclusively know which companies might be using these models," Rochana Chaturvedi, a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois in the US and a co-author of the study, told The Register. "The companies usually don't disclose this and our findings imply that such disclosures might be crucial...

Online fast-fashion retailer Shein has dropped Brunswick and FGS, two communications firms that were supporting its push for a London initial public offering (IPO), a source familiar with the matter confirmed on Friday, in the latest sign the flotation is not going to plan. Steep tariffs on Chinese goods imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, along with the removal of a duty exemption on low-value ecommerce packages, are challenging Shein's business model, which relies on shipping clothes from factories in China directly to customers around the world. Brunswick was assisting with media relations while FGS was tasked with government relations,...

The CIA plans to cut 1,200 positions, along with thousands more from other parts of the U.S. intelligence community.... The administration recently informed lawmakers on Capitol Hill that it intends to reduce the CIA’s workforce by about 1,200 personnel over several years and cut thousands more from other parts of the U.S. intelligence community, including at the National Security Agency...

Crime, defunding police, fear of uncertainty and unrest after natural disasters or another pandemic are fueling gun ownership and interest in gun schools. "There's a lot of things, a lot of chaos that happens, especially like big cities, and, you know, people don't want to be the victim anymore," says Eric Stieber, attending a week-long handgun class at Gunsite Academy, a massive gun training school near Prescott, Arizona. More than 40% of US households have a gun and Americans buy more guns every year than new cars. But owning a gun isn’t the same as knowing how to use it....

Temu on Friday said it has stopped shipments of cheap goods from China to the US as President Trump axed a trade loophole that allowed the fast-fashion giant to sidestep tariffs and customs checks. Its US website has shifted to offer only what it calls “local” items – or products that were shipped overseas in bulk and stored in US warehouses in a mad dash to beat Trump’s tariffs. “All sales in the US are now handled by locally based sellers, with orders fulfilled from within the country,” a Temu spokesperson told The Post in a statement. The end of...

The United States will no longer mediate peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia after Vladimir Putin refused to sign up to a ceasefire.The State Department said it is changing “the methodology of how we contribute” to the talks and will no longer “fly around the world at the drop of a hat” for meetings. “We will continue to help, but we will no longer fly around the world as mediators in meetings,” said Tammy Bruce, a spokesperson.She added that Kyiv and Moscow must now present “concrete” proposals for ending the war and should meet directly to resolve the conflict.Washington withdrawing...

Harvard University has come under fire for training officials of a Chinese paramilitary organization, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) on two occasions after the US government sanctioned the group. The first Trump administration had sanctioned XPCC in 2020 for its alleged role in human rights abuses, including mass detention and forced labor in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Tim Walz’s daughter goes on a bizarre rant about ‘running,’says her dad told her “running is a privilege” and it’s causing climate change and destroying the planet.

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...