Free Republic

MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin woman who gets her health insurance through the Affordable Care Act says she’s bracing for next year — when tax credits expire. “This is going to hurt our family,” Shana Verstegen, a Madison fitness instructor, log roller, and mother, told News 3 Now Tuesday. Like log rolling, raising a family requires a lot of risk. “We have two young boys and don't feel good about not having health insurance with the two boys,” Verstegen said. However, Verstegen and her husband are now preparing to pay a lot more for peace of mind next year. “It's...

Anna Kepner, a teen who died aboard a Carnival Horizon cruise ship earlier this month, was found dead under a bed, wrapped in a blanket and covered by life vests, according to a security source briefed on the investigation. The 18-year-old cheerleader from Titusville, Florida, was reported dead while aboard the Carnival Horizon cruise ship on Nov. 8. The Miami-Dade medical examiner has not specified a cause or manner of her death. Among the avenues investigators are looking at is whether there might have been some sort of altercation with her stepbrother prior to her death, the source told ABC...

Bitcoin falling below $93,000 could trigger an accelerated liquidation cascade The total cryptocurrency market cap has erased $1.2 trillion (£913.8 billion) of investor wealth in just over five weeks. Bitcoin prices have plummeted over 25% to below $90,000 (£68,536) this week, down from record highs of $126,000 (£95,951) in early October. The last time Bitcoin traded below the $90,000 mark was seven months ago, erasing much of this year's gains and sparking widespread concern across the crypto industry. The sharp decline has prompted questions about whether this is merely a temporary market correction or the start of a longer-term bear...

The progressive and Islamist movements, both global in scope, have far more in common than meets the eye. As New York City celebrates a socialist-Islamist mayor and we approach the tenth anniversary of the ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in San Bernardino, it is worth reflecting on the many commonalities that unite the Blue-Green (Democrat-Islamist) alliance. Many have remarked on the absurdities of these misfit ideologies as bedfellows. LGBTQ often professes love for Hamas irrespective of the latter’s nonnegotiable religious injunction to sentence gays to death. Feminists who rage against the so-called white western patriarchy offer unconditional support for an unyielding theocratic...

Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and the former president of Harvard University, has resigned from the board of the tech company OpenAI, according to statements released Wednesday. "Larry has decided to resign from the OpenAI Board of Directors, and we respect his decision. We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brought to the Board," a statement from the OpenAI Board of Directors reads. Summers' resignation came just two days after he released a statement saying he was "deeply ashamed" of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Summers' email exchanges with Epstein were released last...

Apparently, some twenty-five per cent of the Internet was inaccessible for much of the day - including (depending where you were) significant parts of the Steyn empire. Get used to it. A few years hence, "surfing the net" is going to be like switching on your kitchen light in Baghdad outside the Green Zone. This will be because China and other hostile powers will enjoy messing with us just to probe our strengths and weaknesses. But it will also be because the west's own governments will appreciate the advantages of a more conditional Internet. Let us say that, oh, multiple...

LEBANON, Ind — Federal immigration authorities have placed a hold on one of the people involved in a fatal crash on Interstate 65 that killed an Indiana National Guardsman and injured three others, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office said. The person, identified as Goderdzi Gujabidze, 56, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was behind the wheel of a car hauler truck when it collided with a military Humvee and a white Subaru on Friday. Police said Gujabidze was later detained after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) notified them of the hold.

Daily Readings from the USCCB“A nobleman went off to a distant country to obtain the kingship for himself and then to return. He called ten of his servants and gave them ten gold coins and told them, ‘Engage in trade with these until I return.’ His fellow citizens, however, despised him and sent a delegation after him to announce, ‘We do not want this man to be our king.’” Luke 19:12–14There are three categories of people in this parable. The first includes those who received a gold coin and followed the master’s request to “engage in trade” until he returned....

President Trump has said he will sign the legislation after reversing his position on whether the documents should be released. But some critics and legal experts question whether that will be the end of the matter. The House passed the bill by a vote of 427-1, with GOP Rep. Clay Higgins (La.) the only dissenter. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) backed the bill despite his opposition to the discharge petition that forced the vote. The Senate later passed it by unanimous consent, sending it to Trump for a signature. A White House official reiterated to The Hill earlier Tuesday that the...

Honda announced Tuesday that it is recalling roughly 256,000 Accord Hybrid vehicles in the U.S. due to a software glitch that could cause "loss of power while driving," increasing the risk of a crash or injury. The recall covers certain Honda Accord Hybrids between the 2023 and 2025 model years, the supplier said in a press release.

In the wake of the newly released Epstein files last week, President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into Democrats mentioned in the files -- including LinkedIn co-founder and major Democrat donor Reid Hoffman. On Tuesday, when pressed by ABC News' Mary Bruce, Trump lashed out about the files, saying Democrats should face scrutiny. Specifically, he called out Hoffman by name, saying, "Hoffman, in my opinion, should be under investigation." "He's a sleazebag," Trump added. Hoffman's ties to Epstein have previously been reported -- including a trip he took to Epstein's island. Hoffman has said he regretted the relationship, which he...

According to a Live Science report, a 2,200-year-old gold coin was discovered by a metal detectorist in eastern Germany. Known as "rainbow cups" for their curved shape and the folklore that treasure can be found where a rainbow touches the ground, such coins were minted by the Celts, who did not inhabit this region. Only two other Celtic coins have been found in the German state of Saxony, and are thought to have been obtained through trade between the Celts and Germanic-speaking people. Saxony state archaeologist Regina Smolnik said that this rainbow cup is in excellent condition, and was therefore...

Washington's Mount Rainier has suddenly awoken and is buzzing with almost nonstop activity for days, stoking fears that an eruption could come soon. This towering stratovolcano looms over more than 3.3 million people across the Seattle-Tacoma metro area, threatening to cripple entire communities with ashfall, flooding, and catastrophic mudflows if it erupts. Since Saturday, Mount Rainier has been experiencing constant vibrations beneath the surface, thousands of tiny tremors blending into one another. The constant seismic rumblings were detected by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN), where seismometers on Mount Rainier have recorded three straight days of nearly nonstop, high-energy seismic...

A team of independent researchers is claiming to have found Atlantis. The research centers around stone structures on Spain's Salmedina Island, off Chipiona in the Gulf of Cádiz, west of the Strait of Gibraltar. The ruins are spread across roughly 11.6 square miles of offshore seafloor and adjacent coastline, with some walls measuring 23 feet high and 6.5 feet thick.

ZME Science reports that a team of researchers led by Pau de Soto of the Autonomous University of Barcelona has created a high-resolution digital map of the entire known network of Roman roads called Itiner-e. These routes, as they were circa A.D. 150, cover some 186,000 miles. The study will help archaeologists calculate more accurate travel times across the Roman world, which would have had an effect on trade and warfare. De Soto and his colleagues began by extracting data from historic copies of Roman maps and the more than 8,000 known miliaria, or Roman milestones. Then they examined more...

Be honest. You’re seeing things every day that you didn’t think you would see in your lifetime! It must be the last days. Up is down, and black is white. Evil is good and good is evil. But some of these items listed, I never could have imagined. Here is just my latest short list of things I didn’t think I would see:...

Digital censorship has been underway in the E.U. for nearly a decade, but last week Brussels took it to a new level. The European Commission unveiled the latest weapon in its arsenal — the European Democracy Shield and accompanying E.U. Strategy for Civil Society — billed as a plan to “protect democracy,” a descriptor that usually means anything but that. The Shield is justified largely as a response to Russia’s information operations and, increasingly, to China’s Gray-Zone warfare. One of its premises is that member-states cannot handle the threats on their own. E.U. leaders say the initiative is designed to...

President's call to investigate Democrats' links to Epstein opens loophole to withhold materialDespite overwhelming votes in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate to pass a bill forcing the release of files about Jeffrey Epstein, some lawmakers believe President Donald Trump could still skirt the bill's intent and avoid disclosing material about the late sex trafficker's activities. Their concern is the Department of Justice (DOJ) may withhold key documents related to its investigations into Epstein's sexual abuse of underage girls through a legal loophole that Trump opened last Friday. The president ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation...

New York City’s incoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani, hasn’t taken office yet. But he’s already the new avatar of evil for conservative media figures. He’s been called “downright sinister” and “incompatible with America.” His labels include commie, Marxist, jihadist sympathizer and “seething leftist.” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham warned her viewers not to be fooled by “smiling socialists who rule like Soviet tyrants.” A New York Post post-election cover that depicted Mamdani holding aloft the Soviet Union’s hammer and sickle symbol sold out on newsstands by noon and was offered on e-Bay for $75. By the end of the day, the Post...

California Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, recently announced he is running for Congress in Nancy Pelosi’s district, as Pelosi confirmed she will not run in 2028. Senator Wiener could actually make voters beg for Nancy to run again. In 2019, Senator Wiener authored Senate Bill 145 which at the time of its introduction would allow a sex offender who lures a minor with the intent to commit a felony sex act, the ability to escape registering as a sex offender as long as the offender is within 10 years of age of the minor.