Free Republic

Lawmakers are racing toward a mid-December deadline, with Republicans hoping to present side-by-side legislation with Democrats’ plan to extend ACA subsidies.President Donald Trump has again promised a “far better and far less expensive” alternative to the Affordable Care Act, and Republicans are rushing — again — to deliver one.For weeks throughout the longest government shutdown in history, Trump avoided negotiating with Democrats on the health care concerns fueling their standoff. Now lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are speeding toward a self-imposed deadline of mid-December to hold dueling health care votes.Democrats maintain the simplest and most popular option is...

"The Lost Bus" is a film directed by Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips, United 93, most of the Jason Bourne films) and tells the true story of school bus driver Kevin McKay (played by Matthew McConaughey) who rogered up to go pick up a load of kids to be evacuated from a local school during the devastating 2018 Paradise Fire, the worst in California's history.One of those films that definitely deserved a better reception than a quick, limited theatrical release only to get dumped on Apple TV.Seriously, one of the best, most gripping movies I've seen in a long time and...

Under President Trump, an agency intended to keep Americans safe has diverted resources from combating child abuse, trafficking and terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security has diverted thousands of federal agents from their normal duties to focus on arresting undocumented immigrants, undermining a wide range of law enforcement operations in response to mounting pressure from President Trump, a New York Times investigation has found. Homeland security agents investigating sexual crimes against children, for instance, have been redeployed to the immigrant crackdown for weeks at a time, hampering their pursuit of child predators. A national security probe into the black market...

Come trick-or-treat season or any time you’re presented with a choice from a candy jar, selecting just one chocolate bar from the mix is about as difficult as picking a favorite child (or so I’ve heard from parents). Sweetness levels vary widely, as does the source of the chocolate, the mix-ins or fillings, the texture, and more. To help us narrow down the competition and build a shortlist of the best bars for s’mores, snacking, and sneaking into cakes, we called up a handful of our favorite culinary pros from coast to coast for some sweet talk. Read on to...

Having a cat as a pet could potentially double a person's risk of schizophrenia-related conditions, according to an analysis of 17 studies. Psychiatrist John McGrath and colleagues at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research in Australia looked at papers published over the last 44 years in 11 countries, including the US and the UK. Their 2023 study found "a significant positive association between broadly defined cat ownership and an increased risk of schizophrenia-related disorders."

A top Border Patrol commander touted dozens of arrests in North Carolina’s largest city on Sunday as Charlotte residents reported encounters with federal immigration agents near churches and apartment complexes.The Trump administration has made the Democratic city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and down trending crime rates. Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on a similar operation in Chicago, took to social media to document some of the arrests he said had reached more than 80....

Several thousand people took to the streets of Mexico City on Saturday to protest crime, corruption and impunity in a demonstration organized by members of Generation Z, but which ended with strong backing from older supporters of opposition parties. The demonstration was mostly peaceful but ended with some young people clashing with the police. Protesters attacked police with stones, fireworks, sticks and chains, grabbing police shields and other equipment. The capital’s security secretary, Pablo Vázquez. said 120 people were injured, 100 of them police officers. Twenty people were arrested. In several countries this year, members of the demographic group born...

Nigeria's Christians are being pushed to the brink of extinction - and could be wiped off the map within two generations without urgent international intervention. That's the chilling warning from Emeka Umeagbalasi, the outspoken founder of Nigeria's International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety). And he's not mincing his words. The veteran activist says a silent, systematic genocide has swept Africa's most populous nation for nearly two decades - a 'long-running, coordinated campaign' of killings, kidnappings and church burnings carried out mostly by Islamist militants and enabled by the Nigerian state itself. 'If you look at the...

Summary Fed's Kugler exited central bank amid trading rules violations New disclosures detail trading that broke Fed rules Kugler faces Fed Inspector General Inquiry NEW YORK, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Former Federal Reserve Governor Adriana Kugler, who abruptly resigned this summer, had multiple financial transactions in violation of the central bank's ethics rules, government filings showed on Saturday, with the matter referred to the Fed’s in-house watchdog for investigation. Kugler in late July had sought a waiver to deal with investing rules transgressions by her spouse - including trades in individual stocks and other transactions around Fed policy meetings -...

Insurance companies challenged GOP orthodoxy on Obamacare. It’s not going well.The pressures facing insurers and pharma are emblematic of tensions across corporate America as companies scramble to navigate an administration that has upended traditional levers of influence and free market orthodoxy while triggering a record windfall for K Street, Washington’s lobbying corridor.“This president has decidedly chosen to bring insurance and pharmaceutical industries to the table, to make them do things they don’t want to do. That’s a really different world,” said Peggy Tighe, a former insurance representative who now lobbies for providers and patient groups at Powers Law.Two roads diverged...

New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s views have sparked fears that there will be an exodus of companies and capital from the city. But two of the city’s top commercial real estate executives say it’s simply not true, based on leasing activity and new building investments being made, with no pullback in plans ever since it became clear Mamdani would win, and through the democratic socialist’s official election. “New York City is back,” said Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR, at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference in New York on Thursday. “The people who work here, live here, they feel the energy, they...

Researchers have analyzed a sample of DNA believed to belong to Adolf Hitler, which they say reveals the dictator of Nazi Germany had a genetic marker for a rare disorder that can delay puberty, according to a new documentary. The research, which took more than four years to complete, was led by geneticist Turi King, a professor at the UK’s University of Bath who is known for identifying the remains of King Richard III. King said she verified that a piece of material taken from a couch in the bunker where Hitler shot himself in 1945 was soaked in the...

The White House is considering offering political asylum to British “thought criminals”, The Telegraph understands.Donald Trump’s administration is exploring the possibility of extending refugee status to free speech activists who have been prosecuted for their words or for taking part in silent protests outside abortion clinics.The censoring of pro-life campaigners Livia Tossici-Bolt and Adam Smith Connor raised particular concerns among the president’s key allies.“There are some people inside the administration that are actively scouting for cases,” a source with knowledge of the decision making said.The intervention is the latest sign of Mr Trump’s willingness to intervene in domestic British affairs...

Nine-year-old boy ordered to house arrest after being charged with r*ping, attacking, and urinating on a five-year-old girl then leaving her lying naked in a field for hours. NINE.

Billionaire Peter Thiel’s latest 13F didn’t show off a mere trim, but a full-blown exit from AI bellwether Nvidia (NVDA).It comes at a surprising point when Wall Street’s been busy declaring the chipmaker as virtually untouchable.Although Nvidia recently surpassed a $5 trillion valuation, Thiel walked away completely, shrinking his fund’s equity book by roughly two-thirds while building it around three megacap names.That’s far from being a rebalance and more of an emphatic statement.Thiel had previously warned about AI’s hype cycle running far ahead of its real economics, and his Q3 portfolio shakeup aligns with that view.

Buoyed by his Party's success in the recent election, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif) told Symone Sanders, co-host for MSNBC's The Weeknight, "we will win the mid-term elections next November. When we are a majority in both the House and Senate we will put a stop to the Republicans' frivolous investigations of past alleged misdeeds by Democrats and plunge into Democrat investigations of current crimes being committed by Trump and his minions. On January 3, 2027 we will introduce impeachment resolutions against Trump, Vance, and every member of the Cabinet. Criminal charges will be brought against all of them who do...

Irate Trump supporters have slammed Saturday Night Live for its brazen skit mocking the president's response to being named in the Jeffrey Epstein files. Saturday night's cold open sketch sparked outrage among conservative critics for depicting Donald Trump inadvertently admitting to a damning relationship with the disgraced sex trafficker. 'You people are sick!' one X user reacted to the five-minute satirical segment. 'Hope [Trump] sues the hell out of them,' another chimed in. 'SNL makes fun of Trump. Water is wet. Predictable and boring,' one critic bluntly called out the show. Set at a press conference, Trump, played by James...

... The backstory: Barco's family fled Cuba as refugees, and they first went to Venezuela, where Barco was born. He came to U.S. legally with his family when he was four. and enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17. During his time in the Army, Barco was deployed to Iraq twice. He applied for citizenship while overseas, but was told his paperwork was lost. After he was severely injured in an explosion that involved an improvised explosive device (IED), Barco received a Purple Heart. ... Dig deeper: When Barco returned to the U.S. from his overseas stint, he began suffering...

A woman in California of all places takes a stand for women in fiery video after being harassed by a man in the ladies' locker room.The war to keep men who believe they are women out of women’s locker rooms found an unlikely fighter this month: a lesbian gym rat from Los Angeles who has run into so many men in the women’s locker room she’s screaming about it at the top of her lungs. In the video that has more than 18 million views on X, Hyman was getting kicked out of her gym after complaining about men invading...

The arrests of MLB and NBA players could be just the tip of a massive iceberg.The sports world was rocked again this week when two pitchers for Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians were arrested on charges related to gambling. Coming on the heels of the recent indictments of numerous current and former NBA players and a head coach on similarly disturbing allegations in October, the already heated debate about increasingly widespread legal wagering on pro sports has intensified. The overriding concern is about the potential damage it will cause among bettors, not to mention those consuming sports simply for pleasure,...