Free Republic

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is a task force created by the Trump administration to root out waste and corruption in the federal government. To promote its mission and celebrate its accomplishments, Leo Zacky (foreground, left), a candidate for the Republican Party's nomination for governor of California teamed up with Shiva Bagheri (foreground, right), a fitness and dance instructor, community organizer and activist to perform the DOGE Dance, a lively dance set to the music of Brian Coyne's dance tune “DOGE.” The performance took place at a rally in Beverly Gardens Park in Beverly Hills, Calif. sponsored by the...

The bulk of the mammoth $254 billion state budget deal was unveiled Wednesday with some last minute self-serving quietly slipped into the batter before Albany lawmakers were set to finally vote on it. The spending plan documents — nicknamed “The Big Ugly” in capital lingo — provide a last-minute, warts-and-all look at much-anticipated legislation focused on New York City’s mental health crisis, recidivism problems and more. Gov. Kathy Hochul ran a victory lap Wednesday after a deal to revamp the state’s discovery laws — a move to combat a slew of criminal cases that have been getting dismissed on technicalities....

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) provided an update to one of the biggest scams uncovered by Elon Musk’s team on Wednesday evening. DOGE says it has saved approximately $105 billion in a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings,” and other workforce reductions. The Democrats are angry that DOGE is saving American taxpayers money, so they devised a scheme to stop Elon Musk and his team. There are currently nearly a dozen lawsuits challenging DOGE over its authority, data access, and privacy laws. There is also a secret resistance...

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis just made it crystal clear whose side he’s really on, and it is not ours. But that’s probably not a surprise. He’s always been a RINO. Tillis is the GOP senator who voted to confirm Merrick Garland, one of the most politically weaponized attorneys general we’ve ever seen. Look: https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1919791630409699400 Now, this same guy is refusing to support Ed Martin, a tried and true proven America First fighter who has worked tirelessly to defend the January 6 political prisoners and expose the truth about what really happened that day, and who has vowed to clean...

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem 🇮🇱(5/8/25)[Prayer]Water, Rivers, and Streams in the BibleGenesis 7:1-87 The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain...

Special Dispatches to the New-York Times. WASHINGTON, Sunday, May 7 -- 10 P.M. The correspondent of the Philadelphia Inquirer, writing from Raleigh under date of the 3d Inst., gives the following particulars of the final surrender of JOHNSTON's army: RALEIGH, Wednesday, May 3. When Gen. JOHNSTON signified his intention of accepting the modified decrees of surrender, hostilities ceased, this time without a doubt as to their finality. Preparations were immediately made to move northward the corps that have marched from Atlanta to the sea, and from the metropolis of Georgia to the capital of North Carolina. The details of capitulation...

A new poll shows that 54% of registered voters believe that Governor Gavin Newsom is focused on his own presidential ambitions, versus 26% who believe he is focused on his job and the state — a two-to-one margin. The University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) poll, conducted in April among 6,201 voters, with a 2% margin of error, also found that Newsom’s approval and disapproval are at 46%. A release accompanying the poll explained: The survey … finds that Californians continue to hold very mixed and highly partisan views of the job Gavin Newsom is doing as...

The leftist elites always hate Republicans, but there is something much deeper going on with their hatred for Donald Trump. The desire to destroy him has an almost religious element to it. They say there are no atheists in foxholes. The basic premise is that when facing an existential threat, particularly when lives are on the line, people will look for something stronger than themselves, often God, to pull them through. The opposite might be when things are good. Then, atheism, or at least an indifference to God, grows. Sadly, in this context, the last 75 years have been very...

Within weeks of the embarrassment of the 2022 red trickle midterm elections, Tillis thought it would be a good idea to get into bed with the Democrats on a hideous amnesty bill that was an homage to Barack. The timing was almost as bad as the bill itself. ... Now Tillis is throwing his second hissy fit of the year — opposing Pete Hegseth's confirmation as Secretary of Defense — and has become a fly in the ointment regarding Ed Martin’s nomination as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Tillis takes umbrage with Martin's support of J6 defendants, especially...

The left broke norms, erased borders, and weaponized justice—not to govern, but to crush Trump and cling to power by any means necessary. Somewhere between 10 and 12 million illegal aliens were invited into the United States by the Biden administration. As far as logistics go, Biden could not flee Afghanistan without getting 13 Marines killed and abandoning to the terrorist Taliban $50 billion in munitions, a billion-dollar embassy, and a $300 million retrofitted huge airbase. But Biden and his handlers proved far more logistically capable when their target was fellow Americans. After all, they somehow managed to stop the...

It used to be the case that people had limited amounts of stuff, and when whatever stuff they did have broke, they fixed it. Then the postwar economic boom and the "Mad Men" era of advertising, and voilà, stuff-palooza. Unlimited amounts of things now surround us, allowing us to take an on-to-the-next-one approach to consumption. When our phones, washing machines, or jeans show even a remote sign of wear, the path of least resistance is to replace them. Now, with President Donald Trump's tariffs threatening to increase prices and continuing concerns about inflation, that calculation may not be so straightforward....

I never invested in stocks. I've been putting my money in CDs, 4-5%. It just keeps growing without even trying. It's just amazing that I have so much because I didn't plan for it. I have about $750,000 in cash, and my home is worth $600,000. I'm from El Salvador and moved in 1946. My first long-term job was working in a bowling alley in 1958. I didn't go to college. For 17 years, I worked in the bowling industry. ..My next job of 27 years was as a scale technician, which I trained myself to do because I knew...

The Sledge Patrol, by David Howarth, 233 pages, published by Macmillan in 1957. $10 in mass market paperback from Amazon. First editions available as used copies. The Sledge Patrol is a one of those fascinating glimpses of WWII which show the conflict through an unexpected and unusual lens. It is the story of the East Coast of Greenland and how a few men can affect a much larger conflict, in ways of which they are unaware. As a bonus, there is the description of a conflict between a polar bear and a man alone on the ice. The polar bear...

UPDATE — May 8, 2025, 3:30 AM This is a corrected and expanded version of an article originally published at 1:08 PM on May 7, 2025. It includes critical factual updates and new findings resulting from an ongoing investigation. I am being fully transparent about an error I made at the outset of the investigation, how that error occurred, and how correcting it led to the discovery of something even more significant.. Building a Real Estate Empire, One Undisclosed Deed at a Time The initial confusion was driven by a seemingly impossible coincidence: Senator Thom R. Tillis has a brother—also...

The co-founder of the open-source company Nextcloud reminds us that the free software philosophy that’s the foundation of open source is much more than a software development model.Installfest hosted by the Rutgers University Student Linux Users’ Group in 2005.Open Source has won. Seriously. The Linux Foundation found in a study in 2022 that 70-90% of all code bases are made up of open source. Black Duck reported in 2023 that 96% of all software projects contain at least some open source. So we’re everywhere, we’re done.Cue the famous XKCD dependency comic.This picture is sadly very realistic. The median open source...

A report in Israel’s Israel Hayom says that President Donald Trump is “disappointed” in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has decided to make his next moves in the Middle East without him. The report, published in Hebrew and citing two sources close to Trump, would seem to corroborate the observation that Trump has cut Netanyahu out of his decision-making process on major policy steps. Last month, Trump surprised Netanyahu by announcing that the U.S. would begin “direct” talks with the Iranian regime over a new nuclear deal. And this week, he surprised Israel again by announcing that the U.S....

IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna has stated that replacing human resources (HR) staff with artificial intelligence (AI) tools has not led to job losses overall—in fact, it has enabled the company to expand hiring in more strategic and revenue-generating roles such as programming and sales. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Krishna explained that IBM’s internal use of AI and automation allowed it to restructure certain enterprise functions, starting with HR. By deploying AI bots capable of analysing data, conducting research and generating routine communications, the company reduced its reliance on traditional HR personnel—eliminating a few hundred roles. However, the savings...

It’s no secret Joe Biden’s team spent its final days shoveling money out the door, and in ways designed to limit Donald Trump’s ability to claw it back. Officials working under Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright have now completed a review of the Loan Programs Office (LPO)—the government entity that brought you Solyndra— and the extent of the shenanigans is remarkable. Figures and documents provided to me show a loan free-for-all: More than $90 billion showered on entities in a matter of months, a lot of it to companies of questionable taxpayer value. The highlights of DOE’s review: Unprecedented...

At the invitation of President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, President of Mongolia Khurelsukh Ukhnaa is attending the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. On May 8, 2025, President of Mongolia Khurelsukh Ukhnaa and President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin held an official meeting. At the Meeting, on behalf of the State, Government, and people of Mongolia, President of Mongolia Khurelsukh Ukhnaa extended congratulations to President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and the people of the Russian Federation on the historic occasion of the 80th anniversary of the...

The interview infuriated the Democratic Party and its media allies. Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Special Counsel Robert Hur to investigate whether Joe Biden mishandled classified information. This comes after such sensitive materials were found unsecured in multiple locations. Special Counsel Hur interviewed the aging, dementia-ridden president, and he came away with this damning conclusion, where he described Joe as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” We know those tapes are probably a doozy, and Trump is considering releasing them.