Free Republic

Intraparty fighting is threatening to stall the Democratic Party’s efforts to rebuild seven months after President Trump’s sweeping general election victory. The party has also been roiled by revelations and questions about the last months of former President Biden’s administration and whether he was in the midst of a cognitive decline. They also will have to contend with a number of high-profile primaries in the year ahead. And ousted Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg has been at the center of controversy, using his political group to challenge incumbent House Democrats. History suggests Democrats have a chance to win...

President Donald Trump told ABC News on Sunday that he "may" call Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after a political assassination sent shockwaves through the state. The president, who condemned the violence, called the Democratic governor a "terrible governor" and "grossly incompetent" in an interview with ABC News' Rachel Scott. "Well, it's a terrible thing. I think he's a terrible governor. I think he's a grossly incompetent person. But I may, I may call him, I may call other people too," the president told Scott.

But even in an era when it was presumed that the starter could go eight or nine innings, this game by the late Jim Bunning stood alone. In 1964, the first day of summer was also Father’s Day. It also ended up being the day Bunning, himself a father of seven, would make history as the first modern pitcher to throw a no-hitter in both the American League and National League. And not only was it the first no-hitter by a Phillie since Johnny Lush in 1906, but it was also a perfect game. Bunning’s children were not present for...

A week of immigration sweeps across Southern California has left some communities eerily quiet, with some residents saying they are avoiding going out and attending to routine business out of fear of being stopped.Among the places where residents and merchants say foot traffic is way down include the normally bustling MacArthur Park area, downtown Downey and the Fashion District, which saw a large immigration raid June 6. Some car washes, which were a frequent target of agents last week, have also temporarily closed.Here is a sampling of how life is changing:South L.A.These were the sounds you didn’t hear coming from...

I arrived for the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary parade in Washington D.C. on a drizzly Saturday afternoon with considerable consternation and concern. I knew that President Donald Trump had been agitating for such a spectacle since 2017, but that his first secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, had refused, because he viewed this as something that occurred in dictatorships like Russia and North Korea. In private, Mattis reportedly said he would rather “swallow acid” than have troops parading through the capital. Now Trump has a far more accommodating, and far less qualified, secretary of defense in Pete Hegseth, thereby opening the...

An Iranian citizen claims the Islamic Republic didn’t build shelters for airstrikes because residents are expected to tough through the bombings and “enjoy martyrdom.” While Israelis have a plethora of public bomb shelters to help weather the storm of attacks from Tehran, Iranians claim that not only is their infrastructure lacking, but there is also a “culture of martyrdom” that keeps them from seeking refuge. “In this society, going to the shelters when there is a jet fighting or looming [airstrike] around it indicates you’re chicken-hearted,” an Iranian journalist told the BBC’s Global News Podcast. “So you should [be] brave...

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Sunday on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” that President Donald Trump is trying to push “far-right extremism” down the throats of the American people. Co-host Jonathan Capehart said, “As you noted a couple of times in that response, you just need a handful of Republicans to step forward and do the right thing. Why won’t they step forward? Is it because they are in fear of going against this president, and what that would mean in terms of their constituents and also some of the folks who maybe might go a little too far” Or...

“Recognize that God is present,” he said in a recorded video to a crowd gathered at the home stadium of the White Sox.When Pope Leo XIV was selected in May as the next leader of the Catholic Church, his hometown, Chicago, erupted in shocked delight. There were joyful newspaper headlines (“DA POPE!”), impromptu gatherings at parishes across the city, and a “Pope-A-Roni” pie marketed by a local pizza joint. On Saturday afternoon, the city had a chance to formally celebrate together for the first time. The occasion was a festive program and Mass organized by the Archdiocese of Chicago and...

Former top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and Alex Soros, son of billionaire left-wing donor George Soros, married in a lavish wedding in New York on Saturday that reportedly drew attendance from high-profile Democrats stretching from former Vice President Kamala Harris to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The couple married in Water Mill, N.Y., at a Soros family estate on Saturday, according to the New York Times, which reported the swank Hamptons wedding drew private jets, fleets of black SUVs "and Clinton aides galore in a rare concentration of wealth and power." Democrat heavyweights including Bill and Hillary...

WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli plan in recent days to kill Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Sunday."Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do we're not even talking about going after the political leadership," said one of the sources, a senior U.S. administration official.The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said top U.S. officials have been in constant communications with Israeli officials in the days since Israel launched a massive attack on Iran in a bid to halt its nuclear program.They said the Israelis...

President Trump rejected rightwing pundit Tucker Carlson’s criticism that he is abandoning America First principles with his support for Israel amid its military campaign against Iran. Carlson, an ardent Trump ally, fumed at Israel’s preemptive strike on Iran last week, dubbing the US “complicit in the act of war” and arguing that, “politicians purporting to be America First can’t now credibly turn around and say they had nothing to do with it.” Trump said he wasn’t familiar with Carlson’s critique but contended that, as a pioneer of the modern America First movement, he’s the final arbiter of what it means...

While ICE arrests and deportations have grabbed headlines, President Trump is also running a separate but complementary “mass deportation” program — one that encourages aliens here unlawfully to go home voluntarily. And if reports are correct, that plan is more successful than anyone could have imagined. Based on government data, my organization, the Center for Immigration Studies, has conservatively estimated there are about 15.4 million illegal aliens in the United States, a 50% increase over the four tumultuous years of the Biden administration. That’s no surprise, given how Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ignored congressional...

Explanation: How different does sunset appear from Mars than from Earth? For comparison, two images of our common star were taken at sunset, one from Earth and one from Mars. These images were scaled to have the same angular width and are featured here side-by-side. A quick inspection will reveal that the Sun appears slightly smaller from Mars than from Earth. This makes sense since Mars is 50% further from the Sun than Earth. More striking, perhaps, is that the Martian sunset is noticeably bluer near the Sun than the typically orange colors near the setting Sun from Earth. The...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — For the first time ever, parts of Alaska will be under a heat advisory — but you can put an asterisk at the end of that term. It's not the first instance of unusually high temperatures in what many consider the nation's coldest state, but the National Weather Service only recently allowed for heat advisories to be issued there. Information on similarly warm weather conditions previously came in the form of "special weather statements." Using the heat advisory label could help people better understand the weather's severity and potential danger, something a nondescript "special weather statement" didn't...

Sunday 15 June 2025 The Most Holy Trinity Solemnity St. Vitus Church, ClevelandReadings at MassLiturgical Colour: White. Year: C(I).First readingProverbs 8:22-31Before the earth came into being, Wisdom was bornThe Wisdom of God cries aloud:The Lord created me when his purpose first unfolded, before the oldest of his works.From everlasting I was firmly set, from the beginning, before earth came into being.The deep was not, when I was born, there were no springs to gush with water.Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I came to birth;before he made the earth, the countryside, or the first grains of the world’s...

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) broke its own distance record on Sunday with a strike on a refueling plane at the airfield at Mashhad in northeast Iran, at a distance of 2,300 kilometers (over 1,400 miles) from Israel. The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement: A short while ago, the IAF struck an Iranian aerial refueling aircraft at Mashhad Airport in eastern Iran, approximately 2,300 kilometers from Israel. The IAF is operating to establish aerial superiority over Iranian airspace. This marks the longest-range strike conducted since the beginning of the operation. The Times of Israel added: A large fire...

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has reportedly handed over personal information of foreign Medicaid enrollees to immigration enforcement authorities. The data transfer reportedly includes names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of individuals enrolled in Medicaid programs in sanctuary states such as California, Illinois, and Washington State, as well as Washington, D.C. Emails and an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press (AP) reveal that Medicaid officials attempted to block the transfer, citing legal and ethical objections. However, two senior advisers to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overruled their concerns, ordering the data to be...

President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in March that the intel community continues to assess that Iran has not resumed trying to build a nuclear weapon since the program was suspended by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2003. Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 27 to provide the Intelligence Community’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, Gabbard stated in no uncertain terms, the United States intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”“The...

Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that President Donald Trump has set a tone “of escalation and extreme enforcement actions.” Padilla said, “If all the Trump administration was doing was truly focusing on dangerous, violent criminals, as they suggest, there would be no debate, there would be no disagreement. But we’ve seen story after story after story of hardworking women and men, maybe undocumented, but otherwise law-abiding good people being subject to the terror that the this immigration enforcement operations is subjecting the people to. I needed to speak up. I needed to try...

This week, a statement announcing former Vice-President Kamala Harris' decision not to run for California governor turned out to be fake. The initial posting of the announcement created quite a stir, but Harris' spokesperson Kristen Allen moved quickly to intervene before it could gain much traction. Allen expressed surprise that "the formerly reliable AI that we have been using to generate content for Kamala to help keep her in the news apparently went rogue with a post we had not previously seen or approved. The triggering event appears to have been Kamala's recent characterization of the recent riots in Los...