Free Republic

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A parent of a Linda Vista Elementary School student was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday afternoon, the San Diego Unified School District confirmed. According to the district, the incident happened after 3 p.m. near the school while the parent was waiting to pick up their child. SDUSD says several families witnessed the detainment, but students did not see it. ...

Video obtained by Local 4 shows what appears to be a current Hamtramck councilmember dropping off stacks of absentee ballots at a city drop box days before the August primary election. Michigan State Police confirmed the video is part of an ongoing investigation into the residency of two city council members. The video captures two men in a black vehicle approaching the city’s official ballot drop box. The passenger, identified by sources as current City Council Member Abu Musa, hands several large bundles of what appear to be absentee ballots to the driver, who then deposits them into the box....

Donald Trump's White House will purge around 300,000 federal workers this year as part of his ambitious bid to streamline the civil service. The massive cull represents a 12.5 percent cut to the workforce, which Trump has complained is bloated and inefficient. Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor said 80 percent of those workers would leave voluntarily and only 20 percent would be fired. The figure is almost double the amount of workers reported to have taken buyouts last month. Upon taking office in January, President Donald Trump launched a massive campaign to downsize the 2.4-million strong federal civilian...

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Alaska on Friday for a high-stakes summit on ending the war in Ukraine, but the talks failed to produce the ceasefire that Mr. Trump had sought. The two leaders, along with a pair of top aides each, met for nearly three hours at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage after a carefully choreographed welcome that included a red carpet and military flyover. In brief remarks afterward, Putin alluded to unspecified "agreements," while Mr. Trump called the meeting "extremely productive." Neither leader, however, mentioned a halt to the fighting in Ukraine. The talks...

From Stylophones to pool balls, the world of music is full of weird and strange instruments. Here are just a few.Weird instruments? Why bother? Indeed, Lou Reed once wrote “you can’t beat two guitars, bass, and drums,” in the liner notes of his 1989 album, New York. Sorry, Lou, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes it takes a weird instrument to push a record into greatness – and Reed ought to know, since The Velvet Underground was probably the first rock band with a viola player. Obviously “strange” or “weird” is a relative term. The viola, by itself,...

John Fogerty, whose classic track “Fortunate Son” criticized Richard Nixon’s administration in the 1970s, compared the former president with current incumbent Donald Trump. The 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival song, released during the Vietnam War, explored the subject of rich people profiting from war while poorer people died in conflict, while the sons of those rich people avoided the draft and didn’t have to fight. The track’s relevance has been re-evaluated in recent years, with Nixon’s controversial presidency compared to that of Trump’s. In a new interview with the Guardian, Fogerty said he could handle having MAGA believers as fans of...

The Best Of Oscar Peterson: Classics From The Legendary Jazz PianistFrom Count Basie’s plinky minimalism to bebopper Bud Powell’s high-velocity fusillades and the lush romantic reveries of Bill Evans, the pages of jazz history contain a multitude of influential piano players who cultivated a distinctive sound. But no list of historically important jazz pianists would be complete without the mighty Oscar Peterson, a formidable Canadian musician who in terms of sheer technique set an impossibly high bar that few could match. An early disciple of the jazz piano trio format pioneered by his idol Nat King Cole, Peterson blended ultra-speedy...

A decade and a half after California voters stripped lawmakers of the ability to draw the boundaries of congressional districts, Gov. Gavin Newsom and fellow Democrats are pushing to take that partisan power back. The redistricting plan taking shape in Sacramento and headed toward voters in November could shift the Golden State’s political landscape for at least six years, if not longer, and sway which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections — which will be pivotal to the fate of President Trump’s political agenda.What Golden State voters choose to do will reverberate nationwide, killing...

For all the tedium of American political debates, at least we don’t have to defend air-conditioning. Not so in France, where “air-conditioning has become part of the political tug of war” amid a summer heat wave, writes The New York Times (NYT). On the side of air-conditioning, and reason, is Marine Le Pen. Le Pen is variously described as “far-right” (as by the NYT), “right-wing,” or “conservative,” depending on the author’s politics. She’s promised to deploy a “major air-conditioning equipment plan” if her party gains national control, according to the NYT. Le Pen is a former leader of the National...

In addition to ordering a comprehensive review of the Smithsonian museums to root out "wokeness," President Donald Trump has reportedly provided the institutions with a list of new items to display instead. The Babylon Bee has obtained an exclusive copy of the list of artifacts Trump wants preserved and displayed for their historical significance: The gold Trump statue from CPAC 2021: Every bit as culturally significant as a giant Olmec head. A rare laserdisc copy of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York: Featuring an extended, director's cut version of Trump's cameo. A display of the Obama years titled...

In a targeted airstrike last week, the IDF killed five armed fighters who were near a vehicle marked with the emblem of the international humanitarian aid organization World Central Kitchen (WCK) last week, the military announced on Tuesday. It said that the WCK confirmed that it had no affiliation with the international organization and had posed a threat to troops. It added that they "deliberately affixed the emblem and wore yellow vests in an attempt to conceal their activity and avoid being targeted, cynically exploiting the status and trust afforded to aid organizations."

Looters are plundering DC's business community, yet the mayor of DC has left the city to head to martha's vineyard. Meanwhile radical progressives accuse Trump of taking over, yet locals see things differently. More show notes: Yes Boo Boo it's them. All up in Lululemon stealing everything. Stores closing in these towns. Crime abounds. One citizen says "they wanted the troops to come out for years". Plus some liberal nonsense in this video.

And so, now, in Alaska, Mr. Trump sits down with Vlad Putin to attempt a settling of Ukraine’s hash. This war has been a three-year bloody grind, millions killed, mostly Ukrainians, provoked underhandedly by US State Dept / CIA neocons, Britain’s MI6 apparatus, and the girl-bosses of the EU, for no good reason, namely, to weaken and possibly break-up Russia so as to get at its vast mineral and energy resources. This has been tried before in history, always to the grief of the triers. From our country’s point of view, the dynamics in play at this moment are delicate...

The Russiagate Releases Were Organized in Advance of this Summit August 15, 2025 | Sundance While it may be frustrating to many people to realize most of the Russiagate declassification and releases of information are not intended to generate indictments or legal accountability, on the strategic upside the view of the public toward the U.S. Intelligence Community propaganda provides major breathing room for a U.S-Russia reset. Arguably, the Russiagate releases can be looked upon as intentionally strategic, or just surreptitiously timed. The opposition to this discussion, meeting, peace effort and potential strategic realignment, includes: The CIA, NATO, the U.K, British...

Peak 80's.

Some residents and local politicians in New Hampshire have sounded the alarm about national security concerns after a Chinese company purchased a large property near a small town's water system. Earlier this year, Nongfu Spring, one of China's largest bottled water and soft beverages companies, quietly purchased a 337,391-square-foot industrial building on 23 acres in Nashua. Nongfu Spring, owned by China's richest man, Zhong Shanshan, paid $67 million, four times the assessed value of the property, after it sat vacant for over a decade. The company's limited market in the U.S., the inflated sales price, and the building's proximity to...

The annualized U.S. inflation rate for the month of July remained unchanged from last month at 2.7 percent, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released Tuesday. Lower gasoline prices helped to hold costs for Americans down, while car parts, used cars, and dairy products saw significant price hikes. Core inflation, which strips out price fluctuations from the volatile food and energy categories, ticked up to 3.1 percent, an effect that some economists argue is due to businesses passing on price increases from President Donald Trump’s new tariffs. The inflation rate has been a major flashpoint between the Federal...

If you ever find yourself in trouble with the law, just bring up Jan. 6, 2021. At the very least, it might get your bond lowered. Court proceedings are unfolding for the suspects involved in the viral Cincinnati attack that took place July 26. Judge Alan Triggs had originally set the bond for two individuals at a $200,000 secure bond and a $300,000 secure bond. These were for 24-year-old Dekyra Vernon and 25-year-old Aisha Devaughn, respectively according to WCPO. Triggs has now lowered both bonds for these women to $25,000, of which each must pay 10 percent. Vernon’s defense attorney,...

Socialism (communism), as is being packaged in New York City, can...work? For a season. The appeal to “affordability” and “free stuff” has a strong draw. The glossy brochure presents free transportation, state-run grocery stores, rent freezes, and the confiscation of unused housing. Of course, long-term, these ideas have been tried before andhave failed miserably, as the Kansas City–run grocery store just failed, and as state-run stores failed in the Soviet Union. Seizing the means of production and price controls, as Zohran Mamdani has proposed, are responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Cambodians, Venezuelans, Cubans,...

Expectations for Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska have been downplayed but diverted attention from a stalling US and global economy. Any independent observer will note that the outlook for the dollar is deteriorating, credit risk rising, and a debt trap is being sprung on the US Treasury. Tonight’s Alaska circus is a diversion from this reality. Gold and silver continued to consolidate earlier gains this week, but the market underneath continues to tighten. In European morning trade today gold was $3340, down $60 from last Friday’s close, and silver was $37.90, down 40 cents. Comex volumes in both contracts...