Free Republic

A full decade after his entry into politics, to what extent will his influence carry on when he leaves the White House? Even Donald Trump will become a lame duck one of these days. Despite the 45th and 47th president’s undeniable transformation of American politics, there will come a day when his towering presence starts to shrink. History has repeatedly demonstrated that this happens without fail following the midterm elections in a president’s second term. That is when the agenda of a chief executive not up for re-election will inevitably be subsumed by an ever-sharpening focus on the many contenders...

The stylish woman who allegedly flew into a Britney Spears-level paparazzi rage and stabbed an amateur photographer who accidentally captured a picture of her in the West Village was busted this week, cops said. Magdalene Lyngdoh, 43 — seen on video wearing a black dress, sunglasses and heels — was arrested on Thursday and charged with second-degree assault in connection to the unhinged, broad-daylight May 5 attack on a 36-year-old man, police said. It was not immediately clear how cops caught up to Lyngdoh, but she is a neighborhood resident who lives less than a mile from the scene, authorities...

When Thomas Fugate graduated from college last year with a degree in politics, he celebrated in a social media post about the exciting opportunities that lay beyond campus life in Texas. “Onward and upward!” he wrote, with an emoji of a rocket shooting into space. His career blastoff came quickly. A year after graduation, the 22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism. The White House appointed Fugate, a former Trump campaign...

The libertarian tech bros creating neo-eugenics startups seem totally unaware of the moral monstrosities they are conjuring up.Most people are familiar with eugenics as a disturbing and morally repugnant artifact from the past, something we associate with Nazi experiments and racial pseudo-science. But it’s making a comeback in our time thanks to new branding and new technology. Call it neo-eugenics, coming soon to an IVF clinic near you.The old eugenics was of course the study and practice of shaping a population through selective breeding based on heritable traits deemed desirable, and the sterilization or prohibition on reproduction for those deemed...

The U.S. House has passed legislation barring all noncitizens, except permanent residents from acquiring Small Business Administration loans. The American Entrepreneurs First Act of 2025, which passed in a 217-190 vote Friday, would require the SBA to verify the citizenship status and age of every applicant, codifying reforms recently implemented by the agency. If the bill passes the Senate and becomes law, the SBA will permanently exclude illegal immigrants, refugees and asylees, visa holders, DACA recipients or nonimmigrants from obtaining taxpayer-funded SBA loans. It would also disqualify companies partially or completely owned by such individuals. Co-sponsor of the bill, Rep....

The recent firebomb attack in Boulder, Colorado, against people demonstrating in favor of Israel has set in motion a policy process that is long overdue and provides a timely vehicle for a discussion the USA should have engaged in years ago regarding the intentions of Muslims toward non-Muslims.Step One is determining the firebomber’s motive. That’s easy, because he told us:“Allah is greater than the Zionists,” declared fire-bomber Mohamed Sabry Soliman in a video testimonial prior to the June 1 fire bomb attack that injured several Americans.Accepting Sabry’s religious view as sincere, we need to learn how he segues from that...

Reshaping the economy in Imperial China.For 4,000 years, from 2070 BC to 1911 AD, one imperial family after another ruled China. The longest period in which a single family exercised power was 790 years, while the average tenure was 228 years. Most Westerners are familiar with the Tudors, Stuarts, and Windsors of England, or the Romanovs of Russia, but few are aware of the names of Chinese dynasties such as the Zhou, Han, or Ming, let alone the notable figures associated with them.In this essay, I acquaint the reader with a man named Wang Anshi 王安石. He lived from 1021...

A tipster brought MRC Business’s attention to some damning information about one of website traffic cop NewsGuard’s senior editors, which begs the question of why she was even hired in the first place. Dina Contini, who had previously served in various editorial roles at liberal outlet Reuters, currently serves as the senior managing editor of NewsGuard. However, it appears that Contini has a sordid history of being accused of creating hostile work environments and engaging in harassment. “In a ‘Management Conduct Notice’ that the journalists’ union sent on Sept. 21 [to Reuters’s top brass], it claimed Dina Kyriakidou Contini, the...

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the removal of Harvey Milk's name from a Navy replenishment ship, and the move stirred up the inevitable controversy. It was intended to, just as the original naming of the ship was meant to be a poke in the eye of opponents of DEI. The choice to name the ship after Milk was meant to send a signal that the Navy was honoring Harvey Milk for being a gay rights icon, and the choice to remove it was meant to tell people that Trump's Navy doesn't honor people for how they deploy their...

The Justice Department has charged a Homeland Security Investigations special agent in Minnesota with producing child pornography. Special Agent Timothy Ryan Gregg, 51, who is also a task force officer with the FBI, was charged Wednesday with the production of child pornography, according to Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph H. Thompson, according to local TV station KSTP. Gregg, of Eagan, Minn., is accused of attempting, coercing and enticing a minor to take part in sexually explicit conduct with the intention of producing child pornography, according to court filings. The minor's father reportedly found sexually-explicit photos and...

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos issued an order preserving a previous preliminary injunction blocking the Department of Education (DOE) from canceling extensions to states that allowed school districts to continue to access COVID-19-related funds. The far-left Obama appointed Ramos originally issued his injunction on May 6. In March, Education Secretary Linda McMahon informed the states that extensions previously granted were being rescinded. The extension directs the DOE to continue to process current and future funding requests “without delay.”

Massive security breach reveals over two million sensitive documents exposing Russia’s entire nuclear weapons modernization plan and underground tunnels.A catastrophic security breach has exposed Russia’s nuclear weapons infrastructure blueprints, revealing extensive modernization and expansion efforts at multiple strategic missile sites.Over two million sensitive documents containing architectural plans, security system details, and internal layouts of nuclear facilities were discovered in publicly accessible databases.The leaked information includes details of the Avangard hypersonic missile system sites and underground tunnels, representing what experts call “a huge breach of security.” • • Western materials from companies like Knauf were used in modernizing Soviet-era nuclear facilities,...

NATIONAL DOUGHNUT (DONUT) DAY Each year on the first Friday in June, people participate in National Doughnut or Donut Day. This food holiday celebrates the delicious doughnut and honors the Salvation Army Lassies. In case you didn't know, the Salvation Army Lassies are the women who served doughnuts to soldiers during WWI. #NationalDoughnutDay National Doughnut Day origins begin during WWI, which is also referred to as the First World War. Over 4 million U.S. men and women served during the war, with almost 3 million of those serving overseas. With conflicts taking place in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa...

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been conducting immigration enforcement operations at courthouses across the nation. Illegal immigrants are being apprehended during routine court appearances for mandatory immigration check-ins. This comes as the Trump administration works to increase the number of daily arrests. On Wednesday, several migrants were seen in dramatic videos being escorted out of courthouses in Manhattan, New York, and Chicago, Illinois, by plainclothes ICE agents. Many of the targets are migrants with final removal orders or are trying to gain legal status, the New York Daily News reported. "Secretary Noem is reversing Biden's catch and...

New evidence shows a widescale coverup regarding the dangers of chemical abortion pills. A new peer-reviewed study by Charlotte Lozier Institute examined nearly 29,000 visits to emergency rooms by women who within 30 days had undergone either a surgical or chemical abortion. The research revealed widespread miscoding of these ER visits. Women who were suffering serious effects of chemical abortion were often coded as having a miscarriage. This in itself is not surprising but the sheer scale of deceit is stunning. * The study revealed 79% of abortion pill ER visits were likely to be miscoded as miscarriages comparted with...

North Korea continues to advance its nuclear weapons and missile programs despite UN Security Council sanctions and high-level diplomatic efforts. The country’s ballistic missile testing, military parades, and policy statements suggest that North Korea is continuing to build a nuclear warfighting capability designed to evade regional ballistic missile defenses.North Korea has tested a nuclear explosive device six times since 2006. Each test produced underground blasts progressively higher in magnitude and estimated yield. North Korea conducted its most recent test on September 3, 2017. A North Korean press release stated it had tested a hydrogen bomb (or two-stage thermonuclear warhead) that...

‘The American people overwhelmingly rejected these soft-on-crime, defund-the-police policies in the last election because they undermined the safety and security of their communities.’ Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released a report “exposing the disastrous consequences” of Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) awarding millions in taxpayer-funded grants to two non-governmental organizations with “radical” agendas. The report showcases how, as Grassley noted in a statement, the tax dollars Biden’s DOJ gave to the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) and Impact Justice funded “left-leaning agendas that ultimately put lives at risk.” “This is just a small sampling of the grant programs...

Despite the advantages of a larger recruitment base and defense industrial capacity, the Russian military has not been able to decisively defeat the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.As of April 2025, U.S. officials estimate Russia has suffered over 790,000 killed and wounded. Other estimates place Russian casualties as high as 900,000. These rates arguably reflect Russia’s continued use of high-casualty tactics—including a reliance on massed personnel attacks and massed artillery fire—and limited operational-level flexibility.Russian law prohibits the combat deployment of conscripts, leading the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to prioritize recruitment of contract soldiers....

Two brothers who were among 35 people deported from Ireland this week were described as “really popular” and fully integrated into their Dublin primary school. Thirty-five people, including five children, were deported from Ireland to Nigeria on Wednesday night. The 21 men, nine women and five children were refused International Protection and left on a chartered flight which departed Dublin Airport for Lagos. Principal of St. James’ Primary School, Ciarán Cronin, said the boys’ mother had an immigration appointment scheduled for next month. “So, for this to be sprung on them, if they thought that they were awaiting a further...

“‘The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!’” (Matthew 6:22–23). Expanding on the previous three verses, Jesus uses the eye as an illustration of the heart. The lamp, or lens, of the body is the eye; that’s how we receive light. The heart is the eye of the soul, and it is through our hearts that...