Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump pardoned Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife in a federal bribery and conspiracy case on Wednesday, citing what he called a “weaponized” justice system. Trump, who has argued that his own legal troubles were a partisan witch hunt, said on social media without presenting evidence that Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, were prosecuted because the congressman had been critical of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

U.S. — In addition to preventing people from entering the United States from various nations around the world, the White House revealed on Tuesday that Minnesota had been added to President Trump's third-world travel ban. The additional order would officially keep anyone from the foreign land of Minnesota from entering the U.S., eliciting a collective sigh of relief from Americans across the country who live in fear of encountering dangerous immigrants from the North Star State. "They're not sending us our best," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after adding Minnesota to the travel ban. "Murderers, rapists, criminals of...

Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi's former Cotswolds home has been plagued with fresh flooding again, months after the couple put it on the market and relocated to higher grounds. The couple is understood to be plotting a move back to the U.S. as they miss their friends and loved ones, and cannot afford to live through another British winter. This comes after Ellen DeGeneres opted for a new life abroad following allegations she fostered a toxic workplace on her cancelled eponymous show. DeGeneres and her wife, de Rossi, are still struggling to offload their former Cotswolds mansion, five months...

Daily Readings from the USCCBMemorial of Saint Francis Xavier, PriestAt that time: Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, went up on the mountain, and sat down there. Great crowds came to him, having with them the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute, and many others. They placed them at his feet, and he cured them. Matthew 15:29–30Why did Jesus perform so many miracles when He walked the earth? The Church Fathers and saints offer various insights. His miracles were personal acts of compassion, expressions of divine love welling up within His human Heart. They were also testaments to...

Heavily armed gangs attacked Haiti’s central region over the weekend, killing men, women and children as they set fire to homes and forced survivors to flee into the darkness. Police made emergency calls for backup, asserting that 50% of the Artibonite region had fallen under gang control after the large-scale attacks targeting towns including Bercy and Pont-Sondé. “The population cannot live, cannot work, cannot move,” one of Haiti’s police unions, SPNH-17, said Sunday on X. “Losing the country’s 2 largest departments — West and Artibonite — is the greatest security failure in modern Haitian history.” The bulk of Haiti’s police...

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Southeast Asia is being pummeled by unusually severe floods this year, as late-arriving storms and relentless rains wreak havoc that has caught many places off guard. Malaysia is still reeling from one its worst floods, which killed three and displaced thousands. Meanwhile, Vietnam and the Philippines have faced a year of punishing storms and floods that have left hundreds dead. What feels unprecedented is exactly what climate scientists expect: A new normal of punishing storms, floods and devastation. Atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the most on record in 2024. That “turbocharged” the climate,...

As a resident of Nashville, I have been hearing nothing but the suddenly close race in the Tennessee 7th Congressional District election for the last couple of weeks. It was all over the national news as well, even though the competitors, Matt Van Epps (R) and Aftyn Behn (D) were hardly household names. (The man they were replacing, the suddenly resigned Rep. Mark Green, was better known, though not always for the best reasons.) The possibility that Behn would win in a district that Donald Trump won by 22 points in 2024 had Democrats and all the ships in their...

WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge Tuesday night ordered the Trump administration to cease its campaign of arresting immigrants in Washington, D.C. without a warrant or probable cause of a flight risk, warning that the White House’s mistreatment of immigrants could put Americans overseas at risk. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that, while federal agents may have the authority to make warrantless immigration arrests, the way that authority has been used on the immigrant community in Washington was likely unlawful. “Defendants are preliminarily enjoined from enforcing their policy of conducting warrantless civil immigration arrests without probable cause to believe...

A Methodist pastor in New York revealed last week plans to transition into a woman and said the 51-year-old now identifies as asexual. Rev. Phillip Phaneuf, of North Chili United Methodist Church in Rochester, made the announcement during a Nov. 23 Sunday service. The personal update was delivered from the pulpit while wearing a rainbow stole. “So I get to announce with joy that I’m transitioning,” Phaneuf said. “I’m affirming to all of you that I am transgender. The best way to put this is that I’m not becoming a woman, I’m giving up pretending to be a man. This...

Adding thousands of metal "hairs" to a tank helps to protect the tank from first-person-view drones The Russians first fielded these hairy "hedgehog" tanks this fall Now the Ukrainians are building their own hedgehogs, hoping to reduce the impact of Russian FPVs In their never-ending effort to protect armored vehicles from the tiny first-person-view drones that are everywhere all the time all along the 1,100-km front line of Russia's wider war on Ukraine, Russian forces have introduced a number of bizarre innovations. The resulting "cope cages" and "turtle," "porcupine" and "hedgehog" tanks are ungainly and, frankly, ugly. But they work....

The authors of a study that examined climate change’s potential effect on the global economy said Wednesday that data errors led them to slightly overstate an expected drop in income over the next 25 years. The researchers at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, writing in the journal Nature in 2024, had forecast a 19% drop in global income by 2050. Their revised analysis puts the figure at 17%. The authors also said in their original work that there was a 99% chance that, by midcentury, it would cost more to fix damage from climate change than it would...

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The U.S. Department of Justice, under President Donald Trump, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs of violating federal law by refusing to hand over the state’s full voter registration database, including protected personal information, as part of a federal election-compliance review. According to the complaint, federal attorneys say Hobbs unlawfully rejected a September request for an unredacted electronic copy of Washington’s statewide voter registration list — including names, addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers — along with voter registration application records...

The number of Gen Z college freshmen who are entering universities without high school math skills is skyrocketing — as SAT scores are plummeting, a stunning new report has found. Even more shocking — many of the students can’t even do middle-school level math, meaning their skills are fifth grade or below. Experts say this phenomenon, combined with steadily rising high school graduate rates, show that the country is suffering a massive grade inflation problem. The University of California San Diego, for instance, has reported a staggering 30-fold increase in the number of students unable to do basic arithmetic over...

One of Canada’s largest budget airlines is under fire after an agent tore up a family’s boarding pass and falsely told an elderly passenger he had “no right” to film after their flight was bumped. Jason Huang and his family, including his 73-year-old father, arrived at Edmonton International Airport in August to board a WestJet flight to Toronto when they were told at the check-in counter that the plane they had booked was downsized and that they would need to fly out several hours later, the CBC reported. Huang pressed the agents about why his family had been bumped from...

"What we have tried to do, and I think have made some progress, is figure out what can the Ukrainians live with that gives them security guarantees for the future," US Secretary of State saidNEW YORK, December 3. /TASS/. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the key subject of dispute in the negotiations on the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine is the remaining 20% of the territory of the DPR under Kiev's control. "What they're literally fighting over now is about 30 to 50 kilometer space and the 20% of the Donetsk region that remains [under Ukrainian...

The U.S. labor market slowdown intensified in November as private companies cut 32,000 workers, with small businesses hit the hardest, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday. With worries intensifying over the domestic jobs picture, ADP indicated the issues were worse than anticipated. The payrolls decline marked a sharp step down from October, which saw an upwardly revised gain of 47,000 positions, and was well below the Dow Jones consensus estimate from economists for an increase of 40,000. Larger businesses, entailing companies with 50 or more employees, actually reported a net gain of 90,000 workers.

In a major geopolitical realignment that could have far-reaching consequences and further strain the already troubled US-Canada relationship, Ottawa has joined the European Union’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative. Canada will be the first non-EU country to join the ambitious security plan, part of the EU’s broader “ReArm Europe” or “Readiness 2030” initiative. Meanwhile, despite frantic negotiations stretching over weeks, the UK failed to join the initiative. Talks on the UK joining the SAFE fund ended without agreement last week. The move will give Canada access to a €150 billion (US$170 billion – CAD 244 billion) low-interest loan scheme...

The family of a Colombian fisherman who died in a U.S. military boat strike in September has filed a formal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights alleging the U.S. government illegally killed him. Alejandro Carranza was killed in a strike in the Caribbean on Sept. 15, according to the petition, filed on Tuesday. "From numerous news reports, we know that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza and the murder of all those on such boats," according to the petition. In the petition, Carranza's lawyer Dan...

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the ranking member on the Senate's aviation subcommittee, is demanding the Transportation Department expand its $10,000 bonus to all air traffic controllers and FAA technicians who worked without pay during the government shutdown. The department said it would give the bonuses only to those who did not miss a day of work during the 44-day shutdown. "Excluding 96 percent of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Air Traffic Controller and Technician workforce from this bonus is unfair, divisive and disrespectful to the over 20,000 dedicated Federal employees who worked under extremely stressful conditions to ensure...

WASHINGTON — Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas got a lawyer for the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office to admit Tuesday it mounted a “fishing expedition” against a pro-life organization without receiving specific complaints about the group. Thomas drilled down on the investigation of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers during oral arguments in a case challenging a subpoena the organization received from AG Matthew Platkin’s office. “You had no basis to think that they were deceiving any of their contributors?” Thomas asked Chief Counsel Sundeep Iyer. “We certainly had complaints about crisis pregnancy centers,” Iyer deflected before admitting none specifically...