Free Republic

A former top advisor to ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., suggested House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is not meeting the moment in the current Trump era. “Trump is just giving us all this incredible red meat. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s like the biggest gift any party has been given by the opposition, and we’re just squandering it, to a degree,” former Pelosi advisor Ashley Etienne told Politico’s Deep Dive podcast. Etienne helped Pelosi oversee Democrats’ messaging during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment. She also previously worked for former Vice President Kamala Harris and former...

It's been a whirlwind couple of days for Reform UK after the party won 677 seats out of around 1,600 in local elections in pockets of England. But while party leader Nigel Farage is setting off fireworks and basking in the post-election success, both the Labour and Conservative parties are taking time to reflect. Both main parties suffered significant losses at the polling booths. The Tories shed 676 seats, most of which were scooped up by Reform or the Liberal Democrats. Meanwhile, Labour claimed just 99 seats - though the party has held on to three mayoralties.

A federal appeals court on Saturday blocked a ruling that had ordered the Trump administration to allow Voice of America (VOA) to go back on air. The publicly funded broadcaster fell silent in March after an executive order by US President Donald Trump effectively gutted the network. The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the network's parent agency, placed over 1,000 employees on leave and terminated 600 contractors following Trump's directive. The broadcaster has been off air for almost two months. Trump's executive order was, however, challenged in court, and US District Judge Royce Lamberth on April 22 ordered the...

An MS-13 gangbanger will spend the next 17 years behind bars for orchestrating a transnational fentanyl trafficking ring while incarcerated at a Florida prison, according to federal prosecutors. Mario Clifford Rivera, 32, whose alias is “Chuky,” was sentenced Wednesday for using the US Postal Service to smuggle more than three kilograms of the deadly drug across the border from Mexico into the Sunshine State, according to the the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. Rivera’s legal status was not immediately clear. “Rivera’s 17-year federal prison sentence should serve as a warning to MS-13 and other terrorist gangs...

ALBAWABA - Two people were slightly injured after a missile was fired from Yemen targeting Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Sunday morning, Israeli media confirmed. Israel's The Jerusalem Post mentioned that a Houthi missile crashed in the area of Ben-Gurion Airport's Terminal 3 on Sunday morning after the Israeli defense forces failed to intercept it. Siren sounds were heard after the missile from Yemen, the IDF revealed on Sunday morning. The army attempted several times to intercept the missile, but it fell in the area of Ben Gurion Airport.

The endowment told arts organizations that it was withdrawing or canceling current grants just hours after President Trump proposed eliminating the agency in the next fiscal year.The National Endowment for the Arts withdrew and canceled grant offers to numerous arts organizations around the country on Friday night, sending a round of email notifications out just hours after President Trump proposed eliminating the agency in his next budget.SNIPIn Oregon, Portland Playhouse received an email from the endowment just 24 hours before opening a production of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” an acclaimed work that is part of the playwright’s...

Newsdump Update: Labor Party Wins Australian Election By A Wide Margin... C.S. Lewis wrote a commentary back in 1948 that published as part of a book called "Arthurian Torso" here is a portion of that. "When race is separated from rave and 'grace is prized in schism', when all pleasure is to be inside some partial and arbitrary group, then of course, we must have 'outsiders' to despise and denounce--"... Well, there's that and it's not gay the "Village People" say but the guy that wrote that song well he ultimately died of AIDS... Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene setting the...

Sneak Peek

Keir Starmer is reportedly plotting a tougher crackdown on migrants crossing the English Channel in a bid to see off the growing threat of Nigel Farage's Reform UK. Labour is at risk of losing the next general election if the Government doesn't succeed in stopping asylum seekers arriving on Britain's shores by small boat from France, according to a senior party figure. The unnamed source told Bloomberg that ministers will have to look at how the European Convention on Human Rights is applied in asylum cases. They said the outcome of such a consideration would have to ensure the UK...

"Part of the reason why US President Donald Trump dismissed National Security Adviser Michael Waltz was due to behind-the-scenes coordination with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on possible military action against Iran, without the president’s full knowledge or approval, The Washington Post reported on Saturday. According to the report, which cited multiple senior administration officials, tensions between Waltz and Trump had been mounting for weeks. Waltz allegedly worked closely with Netanyahu to prepare military options in advance of a February Oval Office meeting — a move he reportedly made without informing the president. ..."

How the Church’s Enemies Have Exploited Mistaken Views of Heresy to Essentially Guarantee Another Heretical Claimant to the PapacyDays away from the conclave to elect Francis’s successor, serious Catholics fear that it would take a miracle for the white smoke to signal the election of a pope who is Catholic. We offer our prayers and sacrifices for the most favorable outcome, but as we study the list of those cardinals most likely to receive serious consideration, it is evident that very few of them would have been recognized as Catholic by Pope Pius XII or any of his predecessors.Some sincere...

...scientists have uncovered a hidden feature underneath a medieval castle in Milan, Italy, that researchers once could only speculate about based on a sketch of Leonardo's from around 1495 and references in other historical sources — underground passageways that were likely intended for soldiers to use in the event that the castle's defenses had been breached.The discovery, which the Politecnico di Milano announced in January, came about through a series of surveys that aimed to digitize the 15th century Sforza Castle's underground structures through nondestructive methods such as ground-penetrating radar and laser scanning...Biolo and her team originally intended to digitize...

India signing a deal with France to receive 26 French Rafale fighter jets for use by India's navy. India already using Rafale fighters... May Day a day of protest and events on the streets of France. The CGT trade union saying 300,000 participated with 157,000 involved according to the ministry of the interior... The suspect in the killing caught in Italy and awaiting extradition to France... The father apologizing to the family of Aboubacar Cissi. A judicial investigation is underway to determine if Cissi's murder was based on race or religion. On Friday evening the prosecutor handling the case describing...

Seven Georgia students — some as young as 5 — were arrested for allegedly attacking their 7-year-old classmate during an early morning bus ride to school, according to police. The alleged attackers, who range in age from 5 to 14, were slapped with battery charges for the vicious beatdown that erupted while their bus was en route to Mattie Lively Elementary School in Statesboro on April 18, the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday. Police said they were notified of the heinous assault roughly a week later and identified the troubled students after reviewing the transport’s security footage, which captured...

A bit of a surprise for you as you enter your weekend: somewhere around 20% to 30% of Microsoft’s code in “repos”, according to CEO Satya Nadella, is written by artificial intelligence (AI). This is, perhaps, not quite as surprising as it could be—at Meta Platforms , it is actually closer to half—but it still made investors take notice. Shares of Microsoft gained nearly 2.5% in the closing minutes of Friday’s trading. While at LlamaCon, Nadella noted the figure in question, and noted that that number was not standing still, either. In fact, the proportion of code written by AI...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is obsessed with America’s falling birth rate. In 2019, he predicted that “the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse.” Just last month, he told Fox News it’s the main thing that “keeps him up at night.” And according to an April 15 report in the Wall Street Journal, Musk is personally using in vitro fertilization (IVF) to sire what he has described as a “legion” of children — at least 14 so far, with four different women — “before the apocalypse.” “Low birth rates will end civilization,” the billionaire warned...

Join us as we travel to Pyongyang, North Korea and explore one of the most secretive and isolated countries on Earth 🇰🇵

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 🚨Epic. Secretary Doug Burgum gets a tour of an oil rig in the Gulf of America: "Biden banned the possibility of even developing acres of the Gulf of America. He banned all of that. Trump unbanned that... we're back in business again." From Rapid Response 47 9:31 AM · May 3, 2025

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Portugal’s caretaker government plans to expel some 18,000 foreigners living in the country without authorization, a minister said Saturday in the buildup to a national election.Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro said the center-right government will issue approximately 18,000 notifications to people in the country illegally to leave. The minister said officials will begin next week by asking some 4,500 foreigners to leave voluntarily within 20 days.Portugal will hold an early general election on May 18. Prime Minister Luis Montenegro called the snap ballot in March after his minority government led by his conservative Social...

UK police have arrested five men, including four Iranian nationals, on suspicion of “terrorism offences”, police have said. The arrests were carried out in London, Swindon and the Greater Manchester area and were related to “a suspected plot to target a specific premises”, London’s Metropolitan police said in a statement. The men, aged between 29 and 46, were arrested on suspicion of “preparation of a terrorist act” and remain in custody, the police said. The nationality of one of the men was still being established, they said. Counter-terrorism police had been in contact with the site allegedly targeted to make...