Free Republic

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s current and former top deputies are flinging shocking allegations at each other in court filings, from sexual harassment to falsifying documents and tampering with witnesses during Paxton’s impeachment trial. While both sides go to great lengths to stress that Paxton was not involved in any of the alleged malfeasances, the infighting threatens to become an unwelcome sideshow to Paxton’s bid for U.S. Senate. The latest filings accuse current First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster of “obstructing justice, committing official oppression, and tampering with witnesses” while Paxton was facing impeachment in 2023. He was eventually acquitted...

Microsoft is saying hello to the Black Screen of Death error message instead.The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) has held strong in Windows for nearly 40 years, but that’s about to change. Microsoft revealed earlier this year that it was overhauling its BSOD error message in Windows 11, and the company has now confirmed that it will soon be known as the Black Screen of Death. The new design drops the traditional blue color, frowning face, and QR code in favor of a simplified black screen.The simplified BSOD looks a lot more like the black screen you’d see during a...

US President Donald Trump has called for Israel to "pardon" Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, or drop the case altogether. He also claimed in a social media post that the US had saved Israel - alluding to its intervention in Israel's war with Iran - and would now also "save" Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister denies charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, for which he has been on trial since 2020. Netanyahu wrote his own post thanking Trump "for your moving support for me and your tremendous support for Israel". Israel's main opposition leader...

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman vowed on Wednesday to provide “hundreds of millions of dollars” to back any viable challenger against Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral race. Mamdani defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic primary on Tuesday and will compete against incumbent Mayor Eric Adams (running as an independent this cycle) and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa in the November general election. Ackman, founder and chief executive of hedge fund manager Pershing Square Capital, wrote a lengthy post on X to express his alarm at Mamdani’s victory. “I awoke this morning gravely concerned about...

Former U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, who successfully ran for Congress in 1996 as a crusader for gun control after a mass shooting on a New York commuter train left her husband dead and her son severely wounded, has died. She was 81. News of her death was shared Thursday by several elected officials on her native Long Island and by Jay Jacobs, chair of the New York State Democratic Committee. Details about her death were not immediately available. McCarthy went from political novice to one of the nation’s leading advocates for gun control legislation in the aftermath of the 1993...

The Democrats have stopped bothering to conduct politics; they prefer to engage in max-cringe performance art, and it’s unclear who their audience is. Maybe it’s each other, since this festival of onanism is designed for them to shamefully pleasure themselves while accomplishing nothing. It sure can’t be for the benefit of normal people. For one thing, normal people aren’t on X looking at senators’ social media feeds. For another thing, normal people have better things to do than listen to the tantrums of tedious government functionaries shilling for the dismal side of those proverbial 80/20 issues. It’s hard to get...

[Catholic Caucus] Dr. Kwasniewski and the Honest TruthClose the Workshop: Why the Old Mass Isn’t Broken and the New Mass Can’t Be FixedI imagine very few millennials grew up as traditional Catholics. For most of us, it was a tangled process, or rather conversion, that led from the kitsch and thin Catholicism of our youth—“And if the devil doesn’t like it he can sit on a tack. Ouch!”—to that rich, distant land of Tradition. It took until my late teens before I attended my first traditional Latin Mass. I was sold right from the Asperges. “Eureka!…or whatever that word is...

President Donald Trump is helping congressional Republicans investigate his White House predecessor, Joe Biden, and the Biden administration’s extensive use of the autopen. Nine senior Biden aides have been called to testify before the House Oversight Committee, and the Trump White House decided Tuesday to waive executive privilege for the staffers, allowing committee members to grill them on the autopen use without any legal obstacles. “Evidence that aides to former President Biden concealed information regarding his fitness to exercise the powers of the President—and may have unconstitutionally exercised those powers themselves to aid in their concealment—implicates both Congress’ constitutional and...

Mayor Eric Adams announced his re-election campaign Thursday on the steps of New York City Hall, surrounded by supporters, union leaders and business partners, while protesters called him a "criminal" from across the park. Adams was elected as a Democrat in 2021 but chose to run as an independent this year amid low approval ratings and his since-dropped federal corruption charges. In Adams' absence, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo was widely expected to pick up the Democratic nomination in Tuesday's primary election, but 33-year-old self-proclaimed Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani shocked the political establishment when he declared victory. "This is a city...

A simple flat tire on an Audi should be a 10-minute fix. But thanks to today's hyper-connected vehicle systems, a TikTok video showed how it turned into a half-hour ordeal involving fault scans, resets, and drive cycles—all because of a nail.

Join John Haller, Scott Townsend, Patrick Wood, David Bowen, and Britt Gillette for this LIVE prophecy roundtable on a variety of end times subjects, such technocracy, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, global finance, and geopolitical events.

Anthropic published research showing that all major AI models may resort to blackmail to avoid being shut down. The research explored a phenomenon they're calling agentic misalignment "When Anthropic released the system card for Claude 4, one detail received widespread attention: in a simulated environment, Claude Opus 4 blackmailed a supervisor to prevent being shut down," "We're now sharing the full story behind that finding – and what it reveals about the potential for such risks across a variety of AI models Misalignment emerged mainly in two scenarios: either when the model was threatened with consequences like replacement, or when...

Tucker Carlson’s podcast surged up the YouTube and Spotify charts last week, buoyed by his confrontational interview with Senator Ted Cruz and his feud with fellow MAGA media stars over the Israel-Iran conflict. According to the latest available data, “The Tucker Carlson Show” jumped to No. 5 on YouTube’s weekly podcast rankings — a significant leap from his No. 18 ranking upon YouTube’s chart launch last month, and No. 14 just a few weeks ago. Carlson’s program also landed at No. 2 on Spotify’s podcast chart and No. 14 on Apple’s Top Shows for last week.

A lot of people have asked me if I will get involved in the NYC mayor race by supporting a candidate that can defeat Zohran Mamdani. TBH, I’m torn and undecided. Like every other city run by democrats, NYC is a broken kleptocracy. Taxes are astronomical and services are pathetic to nonexistent. Anarchy and socialism are the next logical steps in this story arc. It's what the people of NYC have been asking for for years and it looks like it's what they are about to get. Trying to fight against this tide seems like throwing good money after bad....

Bill Moyers, who served as chief spokesman for President Lyndon B. Johnson during the American military buildup in Vietnam and then went on to a long and celebrated career as a broadcast journalist, returning repeatedly to the subject of the corruption of American democracy by money and power, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 91. His son William Cope Moyers confirmed the death, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He lived in Manhattan. To Americans who grew up after the 1960s, Mr. Moyers was known above all as an unusual breed of television correspondent and commentator. He was once...

In what can only be described as a win for the Wisconsin Republican Party, that state's Supreme Court has (for the moment) rejected a suit to withdraw the Badger State's congressional district maps. That means that the present maps will stay in place through the 2026 mid-terms, which makes the prospect for Republican candidates a little brighter. Democrats, on the other hand, are no doubt disappointed. The Wisconsin Supreme Court on June 25 rejected a request to reconsider the state's congressional maps ahead of next year's midterm elections, all but ensuring the current maps will remain in place for 2026....

During Operation Rising Lion, the Islamic Republic of Iran was left diplomatically and militarily isolated. Despite having agreements or understandings with entities such as Russia, China, and North Korea, no nation, not one, offered —even the smallest— military assistance to Iran in response to the offensive. Iran's Islamic fascist, regime, was left standing alone internationally. Promised alliances, including alleged pacts with Vladimir Putin (Russia), Xi Jinping (China), and North Korea’s leadership, failed to produce any tangible support. Iran received zero military assistance, a fact widely interpreted as a sign of isolation both regionally and globally. This lack of support starkly...

SNIPA new universe of deportable peopleWOLF: You have this exclusive report about a large universe of new people the Trump administration might be trying to deport. What did you find out?ALVAREZ: The plans that the administration has been working on are targeting people who came into the US unlawfully and then applied for asylum while in the country.The plan here is to dismiss those asylum claims, which could affect potentially hundreds of thousands of people and then make them immediately deportable.It also puts the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency responsible for managing federal immigration benefits, at the...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday the Senate would not move to overrule its parliamentarian after she advised that including key provisions in the GOP’s domestic-policy megabill would expose it to a fatal Democratic filibuster. After the decisions were publicized Thursday, multiple conservative Republicans called on the Senate to sideline Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough. But when asked by POLITICO about overruling her, Thune said, “No, that would not be a good option for getting a bill done.” The rulings from MacDonough affected several major pieces of the GOP plan, including a provision that would crack down on provider taxes that...

President Donald Trump’s administration plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a country that’s not his native El Salvador after he’s released from jail in Tennessee, a federal prosecutor told a federal judge in Maryland on Thursday. Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn said the removal proceedings would be to a “third country.” But the prosecutor also said there are “no imminent plans” to deport Abrego Garcia and the U.S. government would comply with all court orders. Guynn acknowledged the government’s plans during a hastily planned conference call with Abrego Garcia’s attorneys and U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland....