Free Republic

Five youngsters have been arrested in a sleepy suburb for a disturbing TikTok trend that has frightened homeowners across the US. Those detained in Elk Grove, California, included two 13–year–olds, police said. The children were taken into custody after partaking in the so–called 'door kick challenge' - a TikTok trend in which teenagers sneak up to a person's property and smash in their front door. Footage, released by police, showed the two youths, one in a ski mask and the other with his hood up, backing into a front door before booting it at full force and running away. The...

Heiltsuk First Nation fisherman in British Columbia kept finding their underwater crab traps looted, even the ones out in deeper waters, so they asked researchers Kyle Artelle and Paul Paquet for help. The pair of researchers set up cameras along the Bella Bella coast to keep an eye on the traps, figuring it must be some marine animal diving for the traps. Here's what they found: Yep, sea wolves (a subspecies of grey wolf that lives on a marine diet) were diving into the water, swimming out, dragging the trap buoys back to shore, and pulling the rope of the...

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman committed his country to increasing his planned investment into the U.S. economy to nearly $1 trillion over the next year on Tuesday. MBS made the announcement while meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, saying the investments will take place across the U.S. economy. Trump initially stated that the investment would amount to "at least" $600 billion, but the Saudi leader confirmed the higher amount during his remarks. “Today and tomorrow, we are going to announce that we are going to increase that, that $600 billion to almost $1 trillion of investment,...

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (left), President Donald Trump (right) ******************************************************************** President Trump on Tuesday ended the career of a leftist reporter who attacked him and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman, and attempted to tie him to the Epstein sex trafficking ring. ABC’s Mary Bruce started early in the press conference, accusing Trump of a “conflict of interest” with his family business in Saudi Arabia, then took aim at the Crown Prince, stating that Americans “are furious that you are here in the Oval Office” over the killing of a journalist under his rule. Per...

Conservatives are targeting a member of the House Democratic Caucus over her alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., told reporters Tuesday that a member of his group would introduce a resolution to censure Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-V.I., the Virgin Islands' nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. Newly released documents show that Plaskett exchanged texts with Epstein during a congressional hearing with Michael Cohen, a former associate of President Donald Trump, in February 2019. "I think she needs to be censured by the House and removed from the [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]...

A panel of federal judges blocked Texas from using a newly drawn map for the state's congressional districts on Tuesday. "The public perception of this case is that it's about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map," the ruling states. This is a developing story. Check back soon for updates.

Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday. The decision is a major blow for Republicans, in Texas and nationally, who pushed through this unusual mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump. They were hoping the new map would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts — up from the 25 they currently hold — and help protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House. “The public perception of this case is that it’s...

Today, I designated the Muslim Brotherhood and Council on American-Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations. This bans them from buying or acquiring land in Texas and authorizes the Attorney General to sue to shut them down.

Department processed an all-time high of 3M claims in FY25 WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs today announced that the backlog of Veterans waiting for VA compensation and pension benefits has dropped by more than 57% since the start of the second Trump Administration. A VA claim for compensation or pension is considered backlogged once it has been pending for more than 125 days. Since President Trump was inaugurated Jan. 20, the backlog has dropped from 264,717 to 112,353, a 57% reduction. The backlog reduction VA announced today was made possible through a series of record-breaking production milestones, including:...

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations. The move authorizes heightened enforcement actions in the state. The governor's office said in a press release that the designation bars both groups and their affiliates from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas and paves the way for expanded investigations and legal action. Abbott said the groups "have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Shariah law and establish Islam's 'mastership of the world.'" He added that their efforts to "subvert our laws through violence,...

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s estranged sister, a senator, publicly accused him Monday of being a longtime drug addict whose alleged cocaine dependence has led to problems in his governance, including corruption, allegations that his spokesperson said was a recycled issue that has long been disproven. Communications Undersecretary Claire Castro said Sen. Imee Marcos’ baseless accusations against her own brother may have been a desperate attempt to distract ongoing investigations into a corruption scandal involving flood control projects that may implicate her allies in the Senate. “Sen. Imee, I hope you’ll be a patriot and help in the investigation that...

A former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), who has been accused of being a covert Chinese agent, allegedly forged Hochul's signature on flattering letters inviting dignitaries from China's Henan province to meet with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2018. Prosecutors showed court documents to jurors at Linda Sun's trial, revealing that she may have forged Hochul's signature on several letters — when she served as Cuomo's Lt. Gov. — inviting the Chinese delegation to meet with state officials and promote investment opportunities. Sun held several prominent roles under Cuomo before becoming Hochul's Deputy Chief of Staff. Letters, according...

The United States is in the middle of a constitutional stress test. Donald Trump won a second term on a promise to restore borders, disentangle the federal government from progressive social engineering, and return power to voters rather than bureaucrats. That agenda cannot be implemented if a single federal district judge in Washington can repeatedly entangle it in litigation while sitting on cases that overlap with his own family’s income streams and ideological projects. At some point, the problem is not Trump’s policies. The problem is the judge. That point has been reached with Chief Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg of...

https://babylonbee.com/news/troubling-new-survey-shows-90-percent-of-graduating-high-school-seniors-dont-know-the-airspeed-velocity-of-an-unladen-swallow PALO ALTO, CA — A startling new study out of Stanford University shows almost all graduating high school seniors in the U.S. are unable to recall the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. "The data are troubling, to say the least," study lead Marsha Mitchel said. "20 years ago, only 10 percent of seniors were unable to answer the question. Now it's near 90 percent. I don't know what's happening in public education, but something's got to change." The study's authors said they even let kids choose between answering the airspeed of either an African or European swallow, and...

A cautionary tale from the New York governor's office.A big part of the Biden ‘autopen’ scandal is that we don’t really know who’s making decisions in parts of the government. A signature doesn’t really mean much these days and government has gotten so big and chaotic that there are really complicated chains of authority, yet a lot of the actual work, including even the signing, is down by junior personnelAs you read this story about events in the New York State governor’s office, consider it in line of the Biden administration, and how easy it would be for a foreign...

Half a dozen Republican senators are calling on the leading judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to suspend a rogue district judge as efforts to impeach him get underway. On Monday, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution Chair Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and five of his GOP colleagues sent a letter to D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan asking that D.C. District Judge James Boasberg be “administratively suspended pending formal impeachment by the House of Representatives and, if impeached, an impeachment trial by the Senate.” The letter’s other signatories include Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama,...

County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, the far-left Democratic judge who helped an illegal alien escape her courtroom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has come up with a not-so-novel defense: I was just following orders. Dugan claims that she was following a policy set down by the court’s chief judge on April 18, when she told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents trying to arrest Mexican illegal Eduardo Flores-Ruiz to see the chief judge before doing so. Given that the video shows Dugan hustling Flores-Ruiz out of the courtroom through a jury-room door, the defense might not work. But even if it...

Ah, experts. What would we do without them? Thrive as a nation, probably. Outside of journalism, there is no group of people who have done more to absolutely torch their reputations than the so-called "expert" class. It started before COVID, but the pandemic absolutely exacerbated the problems by elevating people who put their political agenda ahead of facts, logic, and science. The Left called them "experts" and demanded we trust them blindly. How did that work out for them? Not well. Public mistrust of both the media and experts is at a historic low. Stories like this won't help,...

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- A day before the legendary Laney College Athletic Director John Beam was shot and killed, he raised concerns about campus security.

In the aftermath of U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order to begin closing the Department of Education on March 20, 2025, the claim that the U.S. had dropped from first to 24th in education worldwide since 1979 — when then-President Jimmy Carter founded the Department of Education — made its rounds on the internet.One X post (archived) featured an image of Carter with the caption: "In 1979 I created the Department of Education. Since then America went from 1st to 24th in education."(X account @AlphaLiger)In November 2024, tech billionaire Elon Musk posted the same image (archived), and wrote: "Not exactly...