Free Republic

How bad are things for the Democrats right now? They're embracing extremist politicians, illegal aliens, and even demonizing law enforcement. They are in chaos, with no real leaders. Now, there are multiple investigations into the cover-up of the cognitive decline of the "leader" they did have - Joe Biden. But they're Democrats. So they can always go lower. And they just did, in a new Quinnipiac poll. "The job approval rating for congressional Democrats has plunged to another all-time low, with fewer than 2 in 10 Americans happy with their work on Capitol Hill." "Only 19% of registered voters approve...

Spartacus has returned! An enraged Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) shouted over Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for eight straight minutes Thursday before joining his fellow Democrats in storming out of a business meeting to consider President Trump’s nominees — including his former personal attorney, Emil Bove. Booker threw a fit after Grassley spurned his request to debate Bove’s nomination to the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit Court of Appeals and proceeded with a vote to report the nominee to the Senate floor after Democrats vacated the meeting room. “I don’t understand this,” Booker raged. “What are you afraid of, about...

OPINION: The First Amendment exists to protect dissent and divergent opinions, not just ideas that align with rigid campus orthodoxy The University of Oregon just learned a very costly lesson about free speech. This cautionary tale began in June 2022, when Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley responded to a University of Oregon Division of Equity and Inclusion “racism interrupter” post on Twitter by retweeting it with the comment “all men are created equal.” Ironically, it seems that UO’s definition of “inclusion” didn’t include tolerance for the principle of colorblindness. Rather than recognizing that Gilley’s quote from the Declaration of...

Maurene Comey lashed out at Trump in a message to colleagues after she was fired. Maurene Comey, daughter of James Comey, was fired as a federal prosecutor in the Manhattan US Attorney’s office on Wednesday. “There was no specific reason given for her firing from the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, according to one of the people who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters,” the AP reported. Maurene Comey didn’t call out Trump by name, but she attacked the president and his administration in a message after being...

Its parish priest, the Rev. Gabriel Romanelli of the Holy Family Church, became well known after it was revealed that Pope Francis used to call him every evening during the war in Gaza. A man and a woman who were seriously injured in the midmorning strike died in surgery at the nearby al-Ahly Hospital, according to the hospital’s director of surgery, Mostafa Naim. The patriarchate later confirmed the death of a third person, Najwa Abu Daoud. Naim identified two of the dead as Foomya Ayad and Saad Eissa Salama. They were Orthodox Christians but were sheltering at the church, according...

President Donald Trump has a Texas-sized conundrum on his hands as Republicans prepare for a Senate primary in the state, with GOP Sen. John Cornyn making his case for the White House to get involved as he tries to fend off a challenge from state Attorney General Ken Paxton. But, so far, Trump is staying on the sidelines. “I’ve talked to him about it a number of times. He is not ready to make that endorsement,” Cornyn told NBC News on Tuesday. “I think as we start advertising and closing the gap in the polls, hopefully he’ll see fit to...

President Trump has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a blood circulation issue, after noticing “mild swelling in his lower legs,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed Thursday. Leavitt made the surprise disclosure while addressing conjecture about recent bruising on Trump’s hands, which she said was assessed to be “minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin” as a preventative heart-health measure. “In the effort of transparency, the president wanted me to share a note from his physician with all of you today,” Leavitt said. “In recent weeks, President Trump noted mild swelling in his...

The method, pioneered by UK scientists, combines the egg and sperm from a mum and dad with a second egg from a donor woman. Children born through the three-person technique inherit most of their DNA, their genetic blueprint, from their parents, but also get a tiny amount, about 0.1%, from the second woman. This is a change that is passed down the generations. About one in 5,000 babies are born with mitochondrial disease. The team in Newcastle anticipate there is demand for 20 to 30 babies born through the three-person method each year. Some parents have faced the agony of...

A Monday poll by Data for Progress gives new insight into the 2025 New York City mayoral election as the field of candidates for the November general election remains in flux. The Data for Progress poll shows Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic primary winner, leading the field with 40% of polled individuals marking the 33-year-old as their top choice for mayor. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who appears to be nearing a decision on an independent campaign after losing to Mamdani and is expected to commit to the race in the coming days, is polling in second place with...

Astronomers using the Gemini North telescope at NSF’s International Gemini Observatory have captured 3I/ATLAS as it makes its temporary passage through our cosmic neighborhood ============================================================== This image from the Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS-N) at the Gemini North telescope shows the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Image credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / K. Meech, IfA & U. Hawaii / Jen Miller & Mahdi Zamani, NOIRLab. Interstellar objects are objects that originate outside of, and are observed passing through, our Solar System. Ranging from tens of meters to a few kilometers in size, these objects are pieces of cosmic...

There are several reasons why Jerome Powell should be fired or forced to resign:Powell pretends he cares about budget deficits and inflation, but the cost for the Federal Reserve building renovations surged $700 million past the initial budget, or almost 40%:The Federal Reserve has defended itself from White House criticism that ongoing, costly renovations at the central bank’s headquarters in Washington are the result of mismanagement.Last week, Russel Vought, the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, said the Fed was turning its headquarters into a ‘palace.’ The cost of the renovation has risen to $2.5 billion,...

While headlines chase shadows and social media churns with conspiracies about Jeffrey Epstein, something far more serious—yet underreported—is unfolding: America just ran a budget surplus in June.That’s right — the U.S. government, long buried under record-breaking deficits, posted a $27 billion surplus, the first for that month in eight years. And it wasn’t a fluke. It was driven largely by one policy move: tariffs.Back in April, critics warned that Donald Trump’s newly announced “Liberation Day” tariffs would tank the economy.Instead, those tariffs have proven to be a financial engine.Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to declare a...

The developers behind the FFmpeg project are again claiming major performance uplifts delivered by wielding the art of handwritten assembly code. With the latest patch applied, users should see a “100x speedup” in the cross-platform open-source media transcoding application. However, the developers were soon to clarify that the 100x claim applies to just a single function, “not the whole of FFmpeg.”BREAKING: FFmpeg 100x speedup from handwritten assembly13:55:30 <•haasn> rangedetect8_avx512: 121.2 (100.18x) that may be the biggest speedup I've seen so farJuly 16, 2025“The biggest speedup I've seen so far”Last November, we reported on an FFmpeg performance boost that could speed...

CBS News Capitol Hill correspondent Scott MacFarlane told podcaster Chuck Todd on Wednesday about how traumatized he was by Trump rallygoers blaming the media for the assassination attempt against President Donald Trump in 2024. MacFarlane said he had personal trauma from the crowd’s immediate rage in response. "For those of us there, it was such a horror because you saw an emerging America," MacFarlane told Todd on his podcast. "And it wasn't the shooting, Chuck. This was – I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours. I got put on trauma leave, not because, I think, of the shooting, but...

On a daily basis, ICE officers battle protesters who oppose the enforcement of immigration law. These attacks are coming from multiple sources, and challenge not only the effectiveness of ICE, but endanger the agents’ lives. June 9 was the onset of the protests in Los Angeles, which are actually being funded by our tax dollars:Los Angeles descended into turmoil this weekend as left-leaning activist organizations, funded by taxpayer dollars, are believed to have intensified protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). What started as a relatively small demonstration opposing the Trump administration’s crackdown on criminal illegal immigrants rapidly escalated into...

A Harvard sophomore, Alex Bronzini-Vender, had a NYT op-ed published Tuesday morning lamenting the changing fashions in college application essay questions. Even though he’s already in, young Mr. Bronzini-Vender has evidently heard from incoming freshmen what they had to endure to get in. What changed? Well, evidently the essay question is no longer on DEI, which he, a self-described “white” kid, apparently knew how to “game.” (His word.) Now? Now the essay question is to describe a conflict you once had and how you resolved it.It’s known as the disagreement question, and since the student encampments of spring 2024 and...

Yes, president Trump was right when he proclaimed he'd be a good Pope. He wasn't joking. What does Trump have in common with the Pope? The ability to sweep pedophile under the rug, deny the obvious, and allow those who engage in pedophilia to continue with no fear of Justice, especially those at the highest levels who maintain power and authority. Shame.

Nebraska state leaders filed a lawsuit against Colorado on Wednesday seeking to have the U.S. Supreme Court assert the Cornhusker State’s century-old water rights to the South Platte River that crosses state lines. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, announcing the legal action at a news conference with Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers and other state and local officials, said, “Every drop of water matters.” Pillen and Hilgers accused Colorado officials of siphoning off more and more water every day, even as Nebraska had been “nice” with Colorado, which has seen increases in housing, agricultural and business development along the waterway. “We’re...

Astronomers at the Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory (PVOL) are appealing for help, after an image taken by NASA's Mario Rana appears to show an object slamming into Saturn.Saturn, like Jupiter, is a gas giant. With their impressive masses, you would expect these giants to attract their share of asteroid impacts. Unlike terrestrial planets, which are usually left with an obvious crater after impact, on gas giants, it is not entirely obvious. With outer layers primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, any trace of an impact can disappear.Astronomers have attempted to model how many impacts take place on the gas...

This insidious slogan is once again being used by Republicans to justify another amnesty bill. A group of congressional Republicans have joined Democrats in an effort to push through an amnesty bill by performing two cheap tricks: repeat the tired trope that we’re a “nation of immigrants” and redefine “amnesty” as “dignity.”The bipartisan bill, dubbed the DIGNITY Act, was introduced this week by Republican Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, who has lately been on a media tour to promote what she calls, falsely, “a revolutionary bill that offers the solution to our immigration crisis.”But of course Salazar’s bill isn’t “revolutionary,”...