Free Republic

I’ve seldom seen a better example of a rhetorical question—one to which the answer is so obvious no response is necessary—than this: No. No there isn’t, with perhaps one exception, thanks to a woman. One would have to go back to 1998 when Democrat Michael Dukakis, a man never accused of overt manliness, decided to strap on a helmet that made him look like a 2-year-old in an NFL helmet and mount an M1 Abrams tank for a brief spin for the cameras. That ludicrously incongruous image, which has never left the public consciousness, not only doomed his candidacy but...

The U.S. economy expanded faster than initially estimated in the spring, as Americans spent more freely and businesses stepped up investment, according to revised government data. Gross domestic product rose at a 3.3 percent annualized rate in the second quarter, up from the Commerce Department’s initial 3.0 percent estimate and above the 3.1 percent pace economists had forecast. The acceleration followed modest growth in the first quarter. The upward revision reflected households spending more on health care, pharmaceuticals and dining out, while companies boosted purchases of equipment and intellectual property. Business investment was driven by stronger outlays on software, research...

Markets react positively to Bolivia’s recent elections.It happened in Argentina, and now it is happening in Bolivia. Across Latin America, expelling the left from power brings optimism back to the markets. On August 17, Bolivians went to the polls and delivered a historic blow to Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), the left-wing party that has governed Bolivia during 18 out of the past 19 years. Just a day after the election, bond prices increased by 5%, and the country’s Country Risk Index score fell by 20%, according to JP Morgan. This confirmed the upward trajectory bonds had shown, since they had...

The Department of Homeland Security Headquarters Office of Policy has announced plans to award a potential $100 million contract to procure counter-unmanned aircraft systems capabilities. According to the forecast notice published Wednesday on the Acquisition Planning Forecast System, the DHS is seeking potential contractors to deliver c-UAS capabilities that will be utilized against evolving threats from unauthorized or malicious UAS. The capabilities will be used to detect, track, identify and mitigate UAS threats over a wide range of operational environments. The planned acquisition is intended to reinforce defense capabilities against threats to critical infrastructure, public safety and national security. The...

The U.S. Navy’s F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter program, once nearly dead and starved of funds in favor of the Air Force’s F-47, has been potentially resurrected. A surprise move by the Senate Appropriations Committee restored over $1.4 billion to the program. Although it is far from being passed, it prompted top Navy officials to signal that they are now ready to select a prime contractor. This sudden reversal has breathed new life into the critical effort to replace the aging F/A-18 fleet.

The Air Force is granting full military funeral honors for Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who was shot to death by police on Jan. 6, 2021, during the Capitol protest. Judicial Watch, which had petitioned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in July to grant the honor, released a letter from Air Force Undersecretary Matthew Lohmeier dated Aug. 15 reversing the Biden administration's denial of a military funeral. "I understand that the family's initial request was denied by Air Force leadership in a letter dated February 9, 2021," Lohmeier wrote in the letter. "However, after reviewing the circumstances of Ashli's death,...

It appears to be the case that for a very large segment of black America, the ideas of conscientiousness and good citizenship are simply nonexistent. The bottom line is that a civilized society requires that citizens respect a certain level of behavior and decorum, and we’re seeing too many black Americans ignoring that basic responsibility. When people on the edge of the Overton Window of the culture wars (that is, people most normal Americans would find deeply offensive) start saying things that significant numbers of people agree with, that suggests a tipping point might be near.

This image, which combines infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope with submillimeter observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), shows the doughnut-shaped torus and interconnected bubbles of dusty gas that surround the Butterfly Nebula’s central star. The torus is oriented vertically and nearly edge-on from our perspective, and it intersects with bubbles of gas enclosing the star. The bubbles appear bright red in this image, illuminated by the light from helium and neon gas. Outside the bubbles, jets traced by emission from ionized iron shoot off in opposite directions. (Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Matsuura, ALMA...

Dear FRiends, We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. This means no spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers. And because we are not a 501C, we have preserved our God-given, constitutionally protected right to free speech without government intervention. All of the above means Free Republic remains an independent, grassroots, user-funded, conservative forum. If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile God-Family-Country endeavor, please consider making a contribution today: Click here: to...

The Elias Law Group is suing again – this time to kill an Ohio law aimed at blocking foreign nationals from voting in U.S. elections. ussia collusion hoax peddler Marc Elias and his leftist lawfare group are pushing another federal lawsuit aimed at stripping election integrity protections that prevent noncitizens from voting. The Elias Law Group’s complaint, filed on behalf of liberal “voter rights” organizations, claims the state’s new law requiring documented proof of U.S. citizenship before individuals may register to vote at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles “threatens to disenfranchise thousands of eligible citizens.” The law does no...

LEBANON, TN — Questions continue to swirl over whether perhaps Cracker Barrel went too far overcorrecting as it unveiled a logo featuring a Confederate flag and the new name "The South Will Rise Again". While the public had roundly criticized the initial, modern logo update, many felt that displaying the battle flag of the Confederacy perhaps was a bit too much of a step backwards. "We apologize for our overly hasty, modern remake and hope our new mascot, now named Robert E. Lee, will smooth things over," said the company in a statement. "We have listened to our customers and...

in keeping with this week’s theme of immigration, power, and trust, let’s peruse the latest outrage reel from the UK. here we have a grown man with an immigrant accent (sounds pakistani or thereabouts to me but i could be wrong) following two young girls and badgering and filming them. one of the girls is armed. she’s not (at the start) threatening or seeking to threaten anyone, she’s trying to get away, trying to leave. but this guy is having none of it. he keeps coming and will not leave her alone. and he wants this documented and will not...

Back in September 2023, Joe Biden announced a new team to lead the White House’s national monkeypox response. Biden named Dr. Demetre Daskalakis as the White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator. Demetre Daskalakis Instagram On Wednesday Dr. Daskalakis turned in his resignation at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His resignation came hours after news broke that CDC Director Susan Monarez was ousted from the agency. His resignation comes on the same day that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a slew of changes to limit access to the COVID-19 vaccine. On Wednesday...

Nebraska earned second place in this spring's NCAA Wrestling Championships, and for that the entire team ... Got runner-up rings? RING ‘EM.New hardware for the team that made history 💍#ToughTogether | #GBR pic.twitter.com/Jpi2QNbVC1— Nebraska Wrestling (@HuskerWrestling) August 26, 2025Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this... So Penn State, a conference rival, was wrestling at such a high level this year that Nebraska, after losing to them, thought it was appropriate to hand out second-place rings? Is that really a thing? I mean, they did some damage: Ridge Lovett (149) and Antrell Taylor (157) won NCAA titles on Saturday night, helping Nebraska...

JESSE WATTERS: A suicidal transgender who hates Trump's Christians and Jews shoots up kids at a Catholic school and the media wants to take away your handgun. So how are we supposed to protect ourselves from trans shooters? The media is bad at pattern recognition. We aren't. Just two years ago, another trans 20-something walked into a Christian school in Nashville with a rifle and shot three kids and three adults. They buried the manifesto and locked down the case. We've seen trans shootings in Colorado and in Maryland. They even shot up an ICE facility in Texas. And it...

Many years ago, a courageous and devoted American broadcast a message to his listeners that served as a harbinger for where the nation was headed societally and culturally. In his broadcast he revealed what he would do if he were “the devil,” to destroy our culture and undermine our collective societal standards and social mores. That man was Paul Harvey Aurandt, known to the nation simply as Paul Harvey, and his message not only has proven to be prophetic, but serves as a warning to Americans today of where our society continues to trend.

In the last 30 months, an estimated 17 Russian officials, politicians, businessmen and leading figures in the arts have died after falling from high windows. The window on the fifth floor of a building in the historic city of Petrozavodsk in northwestern Russia was wide open when the figure of a man appeared briefly, before plunging to the ground. This was followed by Putin enforcing a "blanket ban" on social media apps from enemy countries. The mangled body of former police colonel, Artur Pryakhin, head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service in the republic of Karelia, was hauled off to the...

Abstract Efforts to alleviate the psychological distress of gender dysphoria have included the use of exogenous estrogen (often with anti-androgens) to alter secondary sex characteristics of natal males. In response to the rapid increase in presenting cases among young people, extensive scrutiny has now been brought to bear on these medical interventions for minors, with ESCAP reporting “an urgent need for safeguarding clinical, scientific, and ethical standards.” However, due to the lack of systematic outcome data, the associated risk–benefit profile is unknown. Several recent systematic reviews have found the evidence of benefit to be of low or very low certainty,...

SNIP LIST OF PERPETRATORS The posts mention a “Nashville shooter,” which appears to reference the recent school shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27, where the suspect, identified as Audrey Elizabeth Hale by police, reportedly identified as transgender (here). The “Colorado Springs shooter” refers to Anderson Lee Aldrich, who is accused of a killing five people at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in November 2022, and whose lawyers have asserted identifies as non-binary and prefers they/them pronouns (here). (Skepticism over Aldrich’s assertion has since arisen, with extremism experts and people who knew the shooter...

There are still many mysteries that surround Stonehenge, but one element that archaeologists generally agree upon is the origin of some of its monolithic stones. A study conducted in the 2010s indicated that the standing bluestones were quarried around 140 miles from the legendary monument, at two locations in Wales. According to a statement released by the British Geological Survey (BGS), new research has further strengthened the ties between Stonehenge and that region, and revealed how the megaliths were transported. During excavations at Stonehenge in 1924, archaeologists discovered a cow's jawbone near the south entrance, and dated it to the...