Free Republic

U.S. President Donald Trump has been on a multimillion-dollar bond-buying spree since taking office in January, investing in debt issued by local authorities, gas districts and major American corporations. Across 33 pages of filings with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, or OGE, dated Aug. 12, the president outlined 690 transactions that have taken place since he took office. The documents were made public on Tuesday. According to CNBC calculations, the purchases had a total value of at least $100 million, assuming the lower value end listed for each disclosed transaction. By law, the U.S. president, vice president and other...

All 95 major housing markets in the world have at least one thing in common: they’re unaffordable. That’s according to a May study by the Chapman University Center for Demographics and Policy that compared the median home price to median incomes of 95 housing markets in the third quarter of 2024. Markets were considered “affordable” if their median home price was no more than three times the area’s median annual income. Of the markets analyzed, 12 were classified as “impossibly unaffordable,” and not a single one was deemed “affordable,” the study found. The most affordable housing market was in Pittsburgh,...

President Trump on Sunday sought to ramp up pressure on Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) over his defense of the “blue slip” practice that allows home-state senators to veto nominees to district courts and U.S. attorneys’ offices. “I have a Constitutional Right to appoint Judges and U.S. Attorneys, but that RIGHT has been completely taken away from me in States that have just one Democrat United States Senator,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “This is because of an old and outdated ‘custom’ known as a BLUE SLIP, that Senator Chuck Grassley, of the...

It may be hard to remember a time when it was uncommon for girls and women to play competitive sports, but it’s not exactly ancient history. The 1972 passage of Title IX, which mandated equal access for women to participate in sports and other educational activities that receive federal funding, gets credit for dramatically increasing the number of girls and women playing sports.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called for a reform of Germany's social welfare spending while ruling out tax increases on medium-sized companies. The comments, made at a state-level party conference of his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Lower Saxony on Saturday, will likely be seen as paving the way for further contention with his government coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD). What did Merz say about cutting welfare? "The welfare state that we have today can no longer be financed with what we produce in the economy," Merz said in the town of Osnabrück. The coalition partners had already agreed...

An American has been stabbed after confronting a Syrian national in Germany after allegedly stepping in to help two female passengers being harassed on a tram, according to reports. The young man was attacked at around 12:25 a.m. on Sunday after intervening when “two men from a group harassed female passengers” on the tram in the eastern German city of Dresden, Saxony police said in a statement. Pictures from the scene show blood spattered over the tram along with empty booze bottles as well as tissues that other passengers used to halt the bleeding. The unidentified American was rushed to...

Sir Keir Starmer faces mounting pressure over the small boats crisis after protests continued outside asylum hotels and a poll suggested voters thought he was failing to grip the problem. The Prime Minister and his government have set out measures to speed up the asylum appeals system to aid the removal of people with no right to be in the UK. But Labour former home secretary Lord Blunkett said the Government had so far failed to offer a “comprehensive answer or an understandable narrative” on tackling the crisis. So far this year a record 28,076 people have crossed the English...

A fierce dust storm hit the Black Rock Desert on the eve of its annual Burning Man festival, damaging campsites that had been set up early, participants reported. Winds of up to 50 mph stirred up the lakebed's alkaline dust so fiercely that participants in the annual art and culture festival reported not being able to see beyond a foot. Still, gates to the festival had opened by Sunday morning, with organizers cautioning new arrivals to "drive safely!" The dust storm arrived Saturday evening after strong thunderstorms in the Sierra Nevada drifted off the mountains and whipped up strong winds...

A petition is online for Harjinder Singh to be freed. Not kidding. "He just made a mistake" "He was just trying to feed his family" "He did not mean to kill three people". This youtuber shows the videos on the petition and what other Sikhs are saying about Harjinder. BARF ALERT.

Fox News correspondent Christina Coleman discusses an apparent attack on ICE agents in San Francisco amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown on ‘Fox Report.’

I want you to trust every word of the Bible . . . . . . even from the very first page.

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) just hit another mind-bending milestone. The chip giant's market cap has swelled to $4.5 trillion, putting it $1.5 trillion above the entire Russell 2000 index. That means one company is now worth more than 2,000 small U.S. firms combined. Nvidia isn't just dominating in price. It's woven into the core of global investing. The stock sits inside 667 ETFs, which together control nearly 3.6 billion shares. Whether through passive funds or active bets, chances are, most investors already own a slice of Nvidia.

During Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated that scientists are saying that “if we don’t get our act together within the next eight or nine years,” major cities will go underwater because of climate change. Sanders said, “We don’t have decades. What the scientists are telling us, if we don’t get our act together within the next eight or nine years, we’re talking about cities all over the world, major cities going underwater. We’re talking about increased drought. We’re talking about increased extreme weather disturbances. The United Nations is telling us that in...

Cracker Barrel has gone fully woke and now it’s time to expose everything. This goes WAY deeper than a logo redesign. If you go to Cracker Barrel, did you know that you’ve been funding all ages LGBTQ Pride events and pronoun trainings? My video has the full story. Share this with everyone you know. Here’s the highlights you need to know. Welcome to Brand Destruction 101: • Cracker Barrel has funded “all ages” Pride events for many years like Nashville Pride and Third River City Pride. • Cracker Barrel worked with the far left HRC organization and reportedly sponsored HRC...

Under the initiative, the Japan International Cooperation Agency has assigned Kisarazu in Chiba Prefecture as the hometown for Nigerians, Nagai in Yamagata for Tanzanians, Sanjo in Niigata for Ghanaians, and Imabari in Ehime for Mozambicans. Announced on the sidelines of the 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 9), held in Yokohama from August 20–23, 2025, the initiative forms part of Japan’s strategic effort to strengthen bilateral ties with African nations, promote cultural exchange, and address labour market challenges arising from its rapidly declining population. Special Visa Program for African Talent Director of Information at the State House, Abiodun...

I was 18 when Bruce Springsteen’s third album, “Born to Run,” was released 50 years ago, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. I’d just finished my freshman year in college, and I was lost. My high school girlfriend had broken up with me by letter. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was stuck back in my parents’ apartment in the Bronx. So when I dropped the record onto my Panasonic turntable and Springsteen sang, “So you’re scared and you’re thinking/That maybe we ain’t that young anymore” on the opening track,...

Hamas employees of UNRWA punished Gazns who took free aid without paying fees for the terrorists to keep waging Jihad against Israel.pic.twitter.com/u4qsrsYj70— Liza Rosen (@LizaRosen0000) August 24, 2025 (See clip at link).

Before she allegedly took her own life exactly four months ago today on April 24th, Virginia Roberts Giuffre was the most famous of all Jeffrey Epstein victims. She was a woman that fought in the justice system, and got the trifecta of financial reparations: from Epstein, from Ghislaine Maxwell, from Prince Andrew. Giuffre knew where the bodies were buried – and now, from beyond the grave, she will have the last word.

The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem accused the British newspaper of spreading Hamas propaganda. JNS Staff. (Aug. 24, 2025 / JNS) The Israeli Foreign Ministry called out the Daily Mirror British tabloid on Sunday after it ran a front-page photo of a seemingly emaciated child who suffers from a rare genetic disorder that disrupts the absorption of essential nutrients under the headline, “Stop Starving Gaza’s Kids.” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein accused the paper of manipulation by concealing this context from its readers on its Saturday cover. “@DailyMirror stop spreading Hamas propaganda!” the spokesman wrote on X. The “Daily Mirror” front...

Thinking of buying a starter home? Be careful!The above image from John Burns Research.💭 When do you think owning will feel affordable again for first-time buyers?— John Burns Research and Consulting (@JBREC) July 2, 2025Burns CriteriaHome payment, entry-level home mortgage5 percent down, 30-year fixed mortgagePrincipal, Interest, Tax Payments, and Insurance (PITI) payment plus mortgage insurance payment Annual maintenance costs ranging from 0.85 percent to 1.25 percent of home price One might put down 10 percent to avoid mortgage insurance. Looking ahead Burns see homeownership costs stubbornly high, 95 percent premium all the way through 2028.That means home prices remain stubbornly...