Free Republic

An employee at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) who was involved in targeting conservative groups during the Obama administration is now leading the same IRS division, according to a new memo from the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Robert Choi served as the director of the IRS’s Tax-Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements division in 2010, when the agency began applying heightened scrutiny to organizations associated with the Tea Party movement seeking tax-exempt status, the AAF found. Despite this history, Choi was reportedly recently promoted to acting commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government...

Trump Media and Technology (DJT) took a key step toward launching a publicly traded crypto investment product Thursday morning. The newly formed Truth Social Bitcoin ETF business trust filed its S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to register the new exchange-traded fund licensing Trump Media's social media brand. The ETF will trade on the NYSE Arca.Thursday's filing is a significant step for Trump Media's move into the cryptocurrency space.The media company, of which President Trump is a majority stakeholder, announced in January it was expanding into financial services and would offer investment products through a newly created fintech...

Ozzy Osbourne's final ever gig as Black Sabbath's frontman will be streamed worldwide after fans snapped up tickets for the hometown show, starring the original line-up, in just 16 minutes, the band said Friday.Osbourne, who revealed in 2020 that he has Parkinson's disease, will join Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward for the all-day "Back To The Beginning" show in Birmingham, central England, where the heavy metal giants formed in 1968.The July 5 gig at Aston Villa Football Club's Villa Park stadium will also feature sets by US rockers Metallica, Guns N'Roses, Tool and Slayer among others, as well...

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich reacted to the ongoing dust-up between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. He called it the “soap opera phase of American politics,” suggesting there were more important issues facing the globe than Musk’s “temper tantrum.” “I’m beginning to think that they are mad at each other,” he said. “I don’t want to get into much. Look, this is the soap opera phase of American politics. Everybody can understand it. Everybody can pay attention to it. But in the long run, what’s happening with China, what’s happening with Russia,...

LEOPOLD, Ind. — On the ceiling of Abbie Brockman’s middle school English classroom in Perry County, the fluorescent lights are covered with images of a bright blue sky, a few clouds floating by.Outside, the real sky isn’t always blue. Sometimes it’s hazy, with pollution drifting from coal-fired power plants in this part of southwest Indiana. Knowing exactly how much, and what it may be doing to the people who live there, is why Brockman got involved with a local environmental organization that’s installing air and water quality monitors in her community.“Industry and government is very, very, very powerful. It’s more...

Allies of the two men expressed hope they would make peace, or at least ease the tensions that broke out Thursday.Republicans appeared to rally to President Donald Trump’s side Friday as his feud with Elon Musk continued to consume the party, disrupting the president’s legislative agenda at a key moment.While many expressed hope that the two would reconcile, they also made clear they continue to regard Trump as the leader of the party and defended the “big, beautiful bill” central to a dramatic blow-up Thursday between the two men. Musk this week had urged lawmakers to kill it.“I don’t argue...

Another day, another black-robed tyrant subverting President Trump’s constitutional authority and the rule of law. As CNN reported, a U.S. District Court Judge in Boston on Thursday stepped in and blocked the Trump Administration from preventing foreign nationals from entering Harvard University to study. On Thursday, President Trump issued a proclamation suspending the visas of new students seeking to study at Harvard University for an initial six months, but allows extensions beyond that time. The order also instructs the State Department to consider revoking the academic visas of current Harvard students. Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee, issued a two-page ‘temporary’...

For all the insults that Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump traded on Thursday, don’t be surprised if they make up again days from now. In the meantime, they both benefit.Elon Musk was once known for doing things. The entrepreneur reached a new peak of fame on Thursday for saying things. It was mostly bad things about President Trump.The spat was revelatory, it was epic, it was historic, at least according to the thousands of earnest and excited commentaries that were instantly published.It was also a well-timed outburst.Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump did not have a feud five days ago and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As transgender service members face a deadline to leave the U.S. military, hundreds are taking the financial bonus to depart voluntarily. But others say they will stay and fight.For many, it is a wrenching decision to end a career they love, and leave units they have led or worked with for years. And they are angry they are being forced out by the Trump administration’s renewed ban on transgender troops.Active duty service members had until Friday to identify themselves and begin to leave the military voluntarily, while the National Guard and Reserve have until July 7. Then...

SummaryTrump campaigned on eliminating Education Department Judge blocked mass firings and bid to close department The Justice Department said the lower court lacked jurisdiction to "second-guess the Executive’s internal management decisions," referring to the federal government's executive branch."The government has been crystal clear in acknowledging that only Congress can eliminate the Department of Education. And the government has acknowledged the need to retain sufficient staff to continue fulfilling statutorily mandated functions and has kept the personnel that, in its judgment, are necessary for those tasks. The challenged (reduction in force) is fully consistent with that approach," the filing said.The department,...

I just noticed something about Liberals from their various opinions regarding the Trump v. Musk feud. The Liberals tend to create conspiracies around what their behavior would be under the same circumstances. I assume many have observed this phenomenon before from previous examples.

The Supreme Court handed down three blockbuster rulings Thursday focused on hot-button cultural issues, and all three of them went in the conservative direction. That’s not exactly a surprise—the court has a conservative majority, after all. The first real surprise was that the rulings were unanimous. The second real surprise? Each of the court’s three liberal justices wrote one of the opinions. Justice Elena Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote the opinion in Smith & Wesson v. Mexico, upholding the rights of U.S. gun manufacturers from Mexico’s attempt to sue them, blaming them for abetting cartel violence. ... Justice Sonia...

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer isn’t concerned about the GOP megabill’s fate in the Senate, despite a raft of current policy disputes in need of speedy resolution. He’s also not worried about Elon Musk. “I’m not watching what Elon is posting. I’ve heard about it, but sorry, he’s not on my phone,” said the Minnesota Republican in an exclusive interview Thursday, as the freshly-departed DOGE chief raged against the massive tax and spending package Republicans want to send to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4. “What I’m thinking about is this: I get the bill that’s ... the largest...

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...