Free Republic

Austin has introduced a new logo that took seven years to design, and the fallout could be worse than Cracker Barrel's disastrous rebrand because Austin's was funded by tax dollars. Taxpayers in the Texas capital are outraged after learning their leaders spent over a $1 million on a new city brand all while warning they will ask for higher taxes in November. Residents blasted city hall after it rolled out its new moniker after it was approved in 2018 and spending a staggering $1.1 million for a green and blue letter 'A.' 'Is it just me or does Austin’s new...

MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been informed that he will be deported to the African country of Eswatini. .... Snip.... Per Fox News reporter Bill Melugin: @FoxNews has obtained an email ICE sent to Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawyers this afternoon notifying them that ICE now plans to deport him to the tiny African country of ESWATINI due to him claiming fear of persecution/torture in Uganda & 20+ other countries, which ICE says is “hard to take seriously”.

Well-known authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson sued the company over what their lawyer calls “brazen infringement.”AI startup Anthropic will pay a $1.5 billion settlement after being accused of copyright violations and piracy by illegally downloading books to train its AI's language models. (Scripps News)AI startup Anthropic will pay a $1.5 billion settlement after being accused of copyright violations and piracy — a case that legal experts say is a first-of-its-kind, that "will be known by its first name to law students for a long time." Well-known authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson sued...

Emma Stone has sparked backlash over her recent "tone-deaf" comments about Luigi Mangione. The actress was called out for comparing her new film "Bugonia" to the Mangione case, where the suspect is accused of killing a healthcare CEO. Away from the controversy, critics have praised "Bugonia" as a genre-bending thriller, with Emma Stone's performance hailed as both daring and darkly convincing. Stone came under fire after drawing a controversial parallel between her new film "Bugonia" and the high-profile Luigi Mangione case. In Yorgos Lanthimos's dark drama, the 36-year-old actress portrays a powerful healthcare executive who is abducted by a disgruntled...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary legal protections that have granted more than 1 million people from Haiti and Venezuela the right to live and work in the United States. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco for the plaintiffs means 600,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protections expired in April or whose protections were about to expire Sept. 10 have status to stay and work in the United States. It also keeps protections for about 500,000 Haitians. Chen scolded Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for revoking protections...

Mark Volman, a cofounder of the Turtles and the cosinger on several of their hit songs, has died. He was 78. Over his five-decade career, Volman also performed with fellow Turtles cofounder and singer Howard Kaylan as Flo & Eddie, who released albums as a duo and also performed on songs by Bruce Springsteen, T. Rex and Frank Zappa. According to Variety, Volman died in his home in Nashville on Friday after a sudden illness. In 2023, Volman revealed he had dementia. He noted at that time that he was diagnosed in 2020, but did not discuss his illness as...

Assuming this report in the Daily Beast is true, oh, how the mighty have fallen: "Spies tell The Swamp that Barack and Michelle Obama, and Kamala Harris, and husband Doug Emhoff were all dining at the exquisite ($30-a-burger) State Road restaurant in West Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard last Thursday night. The only issue was that the couples were in separate rooms.... Now, The Swamp hates to draw any conclusions from the dining arrangements, and the folks at the popular dining spot weren’t saying. Our spies did report that one couple stopped by to say hello to the other, so it...

The Herald Scotland reports that prior to the construction of a new housing development in Guardbridge, Fife, archaeological excavations uncovered traces of some 10,000 years of local history. The historic village takes its name from a sixteenth-century bridge that led pilgrims across the River Eden to St. Andrews, but a team from GUARD Archaeology recently unearthed evidence that the site was a hotspot of human occupation far earlier than that. During the Upper Paleolithic period, some of Scotland's first inhabitants made flint tools at the site. Later, early Neolithic farmers left many pits across the area, which contained burnt cereal...

CBS News is shaking up its policy regarding interviews on Face the Nation. On Friday, September 5, the network announced that it will no longer edit taped interviews with guests. The change comes after Face the Nation was criticized for airing an edited-down, prerecorded interview with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “In response to audience feedback over the past week, we have implemented a new policy for greater transparency in our interviews,” CBS News told multiple outlets in a statement on Friday. “Face the Nation will now only broadcast live or live-to-tape interviews (subject to national security or legal...

Only 22,000 jobs created in this whole nation in August...and these are Trump numbers! Something is very wrong with his plan....Next out the Inflation report is expected to be higher and you can see it in the Stores as they admitted maybe next year it will be better...Something is very,very wrong with his line of thinking. Remember folks mid-terms just around the corner....

Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., sparked a social media firestorm on Thursday for saying she does not "give a sh--" whether people in her district can vote for her in a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. During a press conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Ansari was asked about her use of the term "constituents" while criticizing the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts. "So, I didn’t realize this was such a controversy until the right-wing media started attacking me for using the word, so I Googled the word constituent. The definition of constituent is somebody who is part of...

I>She credited Carl Sagan with inspiring her beliefs. Alex OchoEmma Stone says she believes in aliens. The Oscar-winning actress made the confession on Thursday (Aug. 28) when she and director Yorgos Lanthimos appeared at the press conference for their new film Bugonia during the 2025 Venice International Film Festival. When asked by a reporter whether she believes in a “higher intelligence looking upon us,” Stone gave a surprising take on the matter. “I don't know about looking down on us,” Stone said at the one-hour, 24-minute mark of the video linked here. “One of my favorite people that has ever...

House Speaker Mike Johnson has revealed that President Donald Trump was once an 'FBI informant' in relation to Jeffrey Epstein's illegal activities. Johnson made the stunning comments in the halls of Congress on Friday after being pressed by CNN's Manu Raju about Trump routinely calling the Epstein files controversy a Democrat-invented 'hoax'. 'What Trump is referring to is the hoax that the Democrats are using to try to attack him,' Johnson said. 'I’ve talked to him about this many times, many times. He is horrified. It’s been misrepresented. He’s not saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It’s a...

The ‘Deadpool’ franchise star was at the Toronto Film Festival for the world premiere of the documentary ‘John Candy: I Like Me,' which he produced.Hollywood actor and producer Ryan Reynolds nailed his Canadian roots to a mast on Friday when he talked about making it in the movie business during a time of cultural wars. “I’m not MAGA. I’m not extreme anything,” the Deadpool franchise star said while participating in an informal conversation at the Toronto Film Festival. Reynolds criticized what he called identity politics as divisive, too “binary, us vs them.” He added that his upbringing in Vancouver and...

In the early 1980s, AIDS was one of the most feared and misunderstood health crises in America. This News special report, originally broadcast when the epidemic was still new, takes a hard look at the growing menace that had been claiming lives since 1979. The program features the voices of people living with AIDS, giving viewers a rare glimpse into the human cost of the disease at a time when treatments were limited and misinformation was widespread. Some believed AIDS could be spread by casual contact — a reflection of the fear and stigma of the era. More show notes:...

Independence at the Federal Reserve? Only sometimes, it seems.was rocked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Then, the progressive lawmaker exposed her hypocrisy at a confirmation hearing involving Stephen Miran, President Donald Trump’s pick to join the Federal Reserve Board temporarily. While Warren shrieked in the upper chamber about central bank independence, she forgot to talk about her own list of demands to Fed Chair Jerome Powell.Elizabeth Warren Talks to Stephen MiranLast month, Fed Governor Adriana Kugler abruptly resigned from the Eccles Building, effectively vacating a seat at the powerful establishment. Days later, President Trump unveiled...

[Catholic Caucus] How would St. Pius X likely have reacted to “Catholic” Fr. James Martin if the pope were alive today?Given St. Pius X’s documented response to Modernism, he likely would have reacted with the same doctrinal clarity and pastoral firmness to the ideologies spread by the LGBTQ+ cult, including “Catholic” Fr. James Martin. For one, St. Pius X unequivocally singled homosexuality out as one of the “sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance,” likening it with voluntary homicide, oppression of the poor, as well as defrauding a laborer of his just wage.Every year, the Feast of St. Pius...

Democrats are facing looming decisions over how to advance their movement as President Donald Trump’s agenda at times appears to overlap with the party’s best interests. Gun control is one of the fronts on which the Democratic Party is finding itself in a dilemma. While such measures are typically in line with the party’s ethos, the White House is rumored to be pitting gun control policies against another favored Democratic priority: the LGBT movement. The ideological turmoil began with the recent shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church, in which a transgender-identifying biological male killed two young girls, which some conservatives argued...

Watching, to the degree I could bear it, the Senate Finance Committee hearings with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was more like a “new edition of the Spanish Inquisition” (for Kennedy) than it was any kind of remotely enlightening experience. And this Inquisition failed miserably in its intention, if it was to discredit HHS secretary in some way..The junior league Torquemada’s—almost exclusively Democrats--display of uncontrolled anger was particularly a head scratcher since most Americans agree our healthcare system has serious problems that need fixing. That Kennedy—a former Democrat himself—is trying to do just that either eludes...

Montgomery County police are calling it a close call after arresting a man accused of impersonating a police officer. Alejandro Zunca, 67, of Maryland, is now facing a criminal charge. “We actually intercepted this individual before he could potentially pull somebody over,” said Cmdr. Jason Cokinos with Montgomery County police. Montgomery County police say it all started in Silver Spring on New Hampshire Avenue near East Shaw last Friday. An officer on patrol noticed a van with flashing lights driving down the road, and it didn’t take long to realize something was fishy. When the officer pulled that van over,...