Free Republic

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump has indicated that the U.S. has “hit” a dock facility along a shore as he wages a pressure campaign on Venezuela, but the U.S. offered few details. Trump initially seemed to confirm a strike in what appeared to be an impromptu radio interview Friday, and when questioned Monday by reporters about “an explosion in Venezuela,” he said the U.S. struck a facility where boats accused of carrying drugs “load up.” “There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Trump said as he met...

Finland's prime minister apologised on Wednesday to citizens of Japan, China and South Korea after MPs sparked outrage by posting pictures of themselves making derogatory squinting gestures. The parliamentarians from the populist Finns Party, which is part of the right-wing coalition government, posted images on social media where they pulled back the corners of their eyes -- widely seen as a racist gesture targeting East Asian people. They claimed to have shared the pictures in support of the 2025 Miss Finland, Sarah Dzafce, who was stripped of her title last week for posting a similar picture on social media in...

VIDEOWatch REAL journalist Nick Shirley expose corrupt clucking chickens in Minnesota. Farmer Walz had absolutely no idea that his own chickens have been highly corrupt for years despite openly scamming billions of dollars worth of chicken feed.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman held a press conference Monday to discuss the murder charges a woman faces in connection with a DUI crash that left a high school tennis prodigy dead earlier this year. Jenia Resha Belt was hit with a murder charge last week after she allegedly struck 18-year-old Braun Levi around 12:45 a.m. on May 4. Belt, 33, is alleged to have been speeding and driving under the influence when she struck the beloved Loyola High School senior while he crossing Sepulveda Boulevard at Ronda Drive. Despite life-saving measures, Levi, who was set to graduate...

What are movies for?Well, they’re for entertaining us, George…Yes, they are that. But they can also be… maybe even need to be… so much more.From Hollywood’s inception right up until roughly the end of the millennium, a vast multitude of directors, writers, executives, producers and movie stars too numerous to name did a lot more than just make and release movies…. they broadcast a powerful, attractive and wildly successful American culture to the entire world. Hollywood movies encouraged the world to want to be more like us… which is to say happy, prosperous and free. By their celebration of an...

A video that surfaced on YouTube this past weekend contained explosive allegations about Minnesota’s child care assistance program, raising new concerns about fraud and triggering a quick reaction from state regulators. In the 43-minute video, which went viral on social media and currently has more than 1.4 million YouTube views since it debuted Friday, right wing influencer Nick Shirley alleges that a group of day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis have misappropriated “upwards of $100 million.” In 2024, the program — which provides financial assistance to help low-income families pay for child care so parents can work...

Every year, New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof ends the year providing a useful and compelling summary of good news from the past year to counteract the general journalistic theme of bad news dominating the headlines. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kristof refused to offer that annual summary this year. His reactionary political ethic regarding the President of the United States prevented this work. In his own words: "I’ve done these “best year ever” columns annually, irritating Eeyores. But now I just can’t. The year 2025 was a setback for humanity -- and unfortunately, the United States is a reason for the retreat.”...

I'm just wondering, over a lifetime what the most ethical and right away to deal with money when it comes to being charitable or paying tithes? Should I just give the money once, by giving what I am able to give, or would it be better to give potentially more over the long-run, because money will tend to multiply over a lifetime and invested money can be given repeatedly.

Over the last year, these online witches have been credited with saving weddings, securing jobs, influencing basketball games and sparking outrage after Charlie Kirk’s death.Katie Begley needed “some good juju” this summer. Begley, a New York-based content creator and fitness instructor, was waiting to hear back about several big work opportunities, including a potential Little Caesars commercial with Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley. So she turned to a figure praised online for offering low-stakes help for the price of a latte: an Etsy witch. “It can’t hurt. I love witches. I love magic. I love all of that,” Begley,...

This is what you call bad timing. A Somali-born day-care owner recently announced he is running for state legislature in Minnesota — where his community and business field have been engulfed in an explosive billion-dollar fraud scandal. Abdi Daisane, who is not accused in the up to $9 billion web of alleged fraud, announced Christmas Eve that he plans to take another shot at the statehouse in the 2026 midterm elections after he was defeated by the Republican incumbent in 2024. He also suffered a failed City Council bid in 2016. Daisane has said he opened his day-care business, Blooming...

They say they’re Christians and are not occultists. Nor, he says, are they witches. Her husband, she swears, isn’t a warlock. But this Chesapeake couple does sell crystals, intended to help customers heal — their bodies, their auras — physically and metaphysically. Chris and Lindsey Thornhill own and operate Love and Crystals, marketing it specifically as a Christian crystal store and gift shop.

Minnesota officials are being accused of knowing about the massive alleged fraud involving daycare centers for years, and one reporter exposed the issue nearly a year ago. In a social media post on Sunday, the X account Libs of TikTok referred to a report from January when a daycare center in Minneapolis, the Quality Learning Center, was said to have received around $8 million in tax dollars since 2019. “Between 2019 – 2023 they had NINETY FIVE violations leading to them being placed on a conditional license. They got their license back in 2024 and continued receiving taxpayer dollars. No...

"Topline: A then-employee at the City of Austin’s energy utility allegedly paid $980,000 in taxpayer funds to fictional companies with bank accounts belonging to his family members, according to a new report from the city auditor. Key facts: Mark Ybarra was given a city credit card from 2018 to 2023 to hire repair companies for city buildings. He used it to pay 30 different vendors, but the city auditor could only verify that eight of them were real companies, according to the report."

They look like coins. They circulated like money. Yet the U.S. Mint never meant them to be coins at all. In the mid-1940s, the United States Mint struck one of the most unusual forms of American gold ever produced: anonymous gold disks made not for collectors or commerce, but to pay oil royalties to Saudi Arabia. These pieces sit at the crossroads of geopolitics, bullion, and numismatic mystery, and remain among the most counterfeited U.S.-minted gold items today. Saudi Arabia Oil Fields Unlike commemoratives or circulating coinage, these disks emerged from a quiet diplomatic crisis. Saudi Arabia demanded gold. The...

<p>When I heard that French actor and animal activist Brigitte Bardot had died at 91 on Sunday, my first thought was of blasting her song “Les Cheveux dans le vent” non-stop with my mom when I was a kid, and she was introducing me to the Gallic yé-yé pop and its various offshoots that had soundtracked her own childhood. My second thought, though, was somewhat less nostalgic and pleasant. I recalled Bardot’s late-in-life shift to supporting right-wing political candidates, her way of coldly dismissing actresses who came forward about their experiences of sexual harassment during the #MeToo movement, and how she was fined multiple times by the French government for “inciting racial hatred” with her blatantly bigoted comments about Muslims.</p>

White supremacist and MAGA influencer Nick Fuentes went all in over the weekend on supporting California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) over Vice President JD Vance because Newsom is more “handsome.” Fuentes, who has regularly attacked Vance in the past, calling him childish names like “gay” and “fat,” posted to social media on Sunday: “Physiognomy is real. Post physique, its handsome thursday. I only believe in beauty and aesthetics!!” JD Vance = fat subhuman. Newsom mogs him to death I would vote for him 100x over just because he’s handsome. “NOOOOOO NOT LIKE THAT!!!! YOU HAVE TO VOTE FOR THE REPUBLICAn!!”...

In a request for opinion filed to state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office on Dec. 12, Hancock asked whether schools could be excluded from the program if they were linked to a “foreign terrorist organization” or a “foreign adversary.” Hancock suggested schools that had hosted events for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group which Gov. Greg Abbott recently designated as a terrorist organization, would be affected. Abbott’s designation of CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization is part of an uptick in Texas politicians’ criticisms of Islam and the presence of Muslim organizations in the state. The...

Few topics are more distorted in public debate than slavery—especially its relationship to Scripture and Western history. When viewed through the lens of Scripture and credible historical research, the picture becomes far more complex—and, in many cases, radically different from the cultural narrative promulgated by many far-left progressives. Here are seven myths that need to be challenged, each grounded in biblical truth and supported with historical data. ===================================================================== The Bible Condones Slavery Scripture’s storyline consistently moves toward liberation, human dignity, and equality in Christ—not the perpetuation of bondage. Slaveholders in the American South understood this, which is why they forbade...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has claimed that President Vladimir Putin's state residence in the Novgorod region was the target of a Ukrainian drone attack overnight into Monday, and said it would have implications for the peace negotiations.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed the claim as "typical Russian lies" made because Moscow does not want to end the war.The allegation comes as U.S. President Donald Trump hailed progress toward peace following his latest talks with Zelensky at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday.Securing a long-sought deal on Ukraine would be a crowning moment for Trump, the self-styled global...

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