Free Republic

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is making a marathon last stand against President Donald Trump's major tax cut and spending bill. Jeffries took to the House floor just after 5 a.m. on Thursday and has now been speaking for more than six hours, delaying a final vote in the chamber on the domestic policy bill at the heart of Trump's second term agenda. Jeffries has stacks of binders next to him at the podium as he picks apart the bill and some of the Republicans who voted for it.

BYD, Chery and other Chinese car makers have reshaped global competition through their unprecedented agility. They have found ways to develop new models in less than half the time it takes their foreign rivals, helping to drive explosive growth. SHENZHEN - In October 2023, Chinese automaker Chery ordered engineers and suppliers to travel on short notice to proving grounds in Zhaoyuan, Shandong Province. Over a weekend, they planned an overhaul of the suspension and steering on the Chinese version of Chery’s Omoda 5 SUV for Europe, a key market in its global expansion. The problem: The car had been designed...

The city of Amarna was built by the pharaoh Akhenaten in 1370 b.c. to be the new capital of Egypt. His decision to move the royal court from Thebes and impose worship of a single deity, the sun god Aten, is one of the most controversial episodes in Egyptian history. When Akhenaten's son Tutankhamun reversed his father's polices, it was thought that the site of Amarna was abandoned forever. According to a La Brújula Verde report, however, new evidence suggests that parts of the site were reinhabited by Christian populations in the fifth and sixth century a.d. Rather than reoccupy...

It's birthday time once again for the greatest nation on earth: America. Everybody likes to celebrate 'Murica a little differently - here are how nine famous politicians are planning to mark the 4th of July this year: Chuck Schumer: Murdering 26 people with undercooked beef. Tradition is tradition. AOC: Weeping outside of Alligator Alcatraz: Heroic. Ron DeSantis: Turning loose highly trained alligators armed with lasers to hunt down anyone who comes near Alligator Alcatraz: Uh-oh. JD Vance: Killing off a rival world leader: U-S-A! U-S-A! Joe Biden: Hanging Christmas decorations: Aw, Joe. Thomas Massie: Going to some super-secret meeting...

Former President George W. Bush joined up with former President Barack Obama and U2 singer Bono to comfort United States Agency for International Development employees Monday, while also taking shots at President Donald Trump and his administration for shuttering the agency plagued by accusations of fraud and abuse. “Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy,” Obama said in a video that was shown to departing USAID employees Monday, according to the Associated Press. “Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world.” Obama summed up the decision to shutter the agency as “a colossal...

A colossal marble head was uncovered beneath Rome's Via Alessandrina, according to a report by the Greek Reporter. The discovery was made during archaeological work near the heart of the ancient city that is aimed at removing a modern section of road separating the forums of Augustus, Trajan, and Nerva. The statue head was embedded in a layer of medieval brick and mortar, which suggests that it had been reused as building material centuries after the fall of Rome. Archaeologists believe that the sculpture dates to the reign of Trajan (a.d. 98–117) and may have once stood in his forum...

Italian archaeologists working in the city of Ugento uncovered sections of an extensive ancient defensive network intended to protect the city and its inhabitants from an advancing Roman army, The Kansas City Star reports. The wall was originally built in the fourth century b.c. but was significantly enhanced a century later, when its thickness grew to 20 feet wide. Near one of the corner bastions, the team encountered a destruction layer that contained 450 lead sling bullets and nine iron bolts fired from Roman scorpio machines, weapons that resembled large stationary crossbows. Researchers believe these are evidence of a Roman...

Archaeologists searching for a lost tower at the site of Diocletian's Palace in Split were unable to locate the ancient structure, but they did find a secret tunnel that had been hidden for 500 years, according to Croatia Week. The Roman emperor Diocletian built his massive estate in the third century a.d. as a retirement retreat and today it lies at the heart of Croatia's second largest city. Almost every inch of the fortress is known to archaeologists, so they were surprised to find the hidden passageway, which was located in the eastern rampart of the palace wall. It would...

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump told him he would attend potential peace talks between the leaders of Ukraine and Russia in Turkey, if Russian President Vladimir Putin also agreed to take part. On his return flight from the NATO summit, where he met Trump for the first time since he returned to office, Erdogan said he told the U.S. president Ankara aims to bring the Russian and Ukrainian leaders together in Turkey for peace talks. "He (Trump) said, 'if Russian President Vladimir Putin comes to Istanbul or Ankara for a solution, then I will also...

BBC News reports that Museum of London Archaeology Senior Building Material Specialist Han Li has painstakingly reassembled thousands of pieces of 1,800-year-old painted wall plaster recovered in 2021 from a development site in Southwark along the Thames. The fragments, which had been dumped into a pit in antiquity, once adorned some 20 walls of a high-status Roman building that was demolished sometime before a.d. 200. "It's one of the biggest -- if not the biggest -- assemblages of Roman wall plaster and paintings we've ever found in Roman London," Li said. He found that the structure's walls were decorated with...

Daily Readings from the USCCB“Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” John 20:27–29Thomas the Apostle, in many ways, represents each and every one of us in this exchange with Jesus. We’d like to believe that we always believe and are not unbelieving. But it’s important to admit...

Tennis courts now mark the spot where 4 of John Wilkes Booth's comrades died 150 years ago. The crowd watches on as Mary Surratt (left), Lewis Powell, David Herold and George Atzerodt hang from the gallows at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary. Photograph by Alexander Gardner/via Library of Congress. ======================================================================= On July 7, 1865, shortly after 1 PM, three men and one woman were lead to the gallows in the prison yard of the Old Arsenal Penitentiary, on the shores of where the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers meet. It was hot that day, reportedly a hundred degrees. Sweat surely dripped down...

Russia and Ukraine continue to coordinate dates for a new round of negotiations in Istanbul and are awaiting proposals on timelines from each other, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. There are no difficulties in the process, he asserted during a press briefing in Moscow. "There are no 'blockages'; we just need to complete all procedures for coordination. Each side is waiting for timeline proposals," explained the official. As for the memorandum in which both parties outlined their visions for a peace treaty, Moscow does not publicly talk about its contents because it has yet to be discussed with...

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This July 4, some Americans are planning to retire their Independence Day barbecues and instead head to the streets in protest against President Donald Trump and his Administration. The collective demonstrations will be the latest in a long line of protests that have taken place since Trump returned to the White House for a second term. On June 14, as Trump held a national military parade in Washington, D.C.,–the largest the capital city has seen in decades—people across the U.S. gathered for counter-action, attending "No Kings" protests to publicly “reject authoritarianism.” Ahead of the big day, Trump had warned that...

...Not a coincidence that the DNC announces they’re broke just weeks after USAID was defunded and ActBlue investigated You’re telling me Trump is in power, the Democrats’ arch-nemesis, and they can’t fundraise? Just shows how rigged everything has been for many years Democrat fundraising was a money laundering scam and soon their vote rigging will be exposed too America is a 60-40 country, not 50-50 .

To the media’s feigned horror, President Trump has called New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani a “pure, true communist,” not to mention a “total nut job.” As shall be seen, Trump knows something about communists in government. Google AI’s program Gemini takes a more gentle approach than the president. “Mamdani describes himself as a ‘democratic socialist,’" Gemini assures us in its charmingly anodyne way. “He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.” While conceding that Mamdani promises “free city buses, free childcare, government-run grocery stores, and rent freezes,” Gemini’s “experts in political science “ insist these policies...

Star Wars actor Kenneth Colley has died at the age of 87 after contracting Covid and developing pneumonia. The English film and television actor is best known for starring in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as Admiral Piett, an imperial officer in command of Darth Vader's flagship. His agent of 10 years, Julian Owen issued a statement which said that he died 'peacefully' on Monday, June 30, in Ashford, Kent. After injuring his arm after a fall, he was taken to hospital where he caught Covid, which developed into pneumonia. The statement from his agent said:...

Moments after the Supreme Court issued its majority opinion in Trump v CASA, leftwing Redditors were apoplectic. One of my favorites: Amy Coney Barrett is another racist Supreme Court justice giving Trump the power to be a fascist. It never ceases to entertain me that the same movement that has for decades delighted itself in persistently demeaning Clarence Thomas solely along racial lines, thinks it has the moral credibility to accuse anyone of being a racist. A safe rule to live by is when the log in your own eye permits you to castigate a black man as "Uncle Tom"...

...In February 2025, DHS launched a national child welfare initiative aimed at locating and protecting migrant children at risk of exploitation. The initiative has already uncovered troubling patterns of abuse, including instances of forced labor, sexual abuse, and placement with adults convicted of serious crimes .