Free Republic

The recent U.S. military operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro echoes a chapter from Latin American history: the 1989 invasion of Panama and the arrest of General Manuel Noriega. Both events unfolded on January 3, separated by 36 years, and highlight Washington’s approach to removing leaders it deems threats. In 1989, U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who had served as CIA director, authorized the invasion of Panama to apprehend Noriega, the nation’s de facto ruler. Noriega, once a U.S. intelligence collaborator, faced charges in American courts for drug trafficking. The action marked the final major...

1. The left is positively turgid about this INCIDENT. They wanted a shooting and did everything they could to set the conditions that made it inevitable, from the rhetoric of the Democrat politicians to the provocations on the street. One leftist white lady dead is a small price to pay for the martyr they wanted. 2. Note that yesterday (1/6/26), the Democrats changed from “The feds are the Gestapo” to “A zillion federal officers died defending Our Democracy, and we support these heroes- here’s a plaque!” back to “The feds are the Gestapo” the very next day. 3. The law...

Sidney Kibrick, who portrayed the bad boy known as “Woim” in Our Gang comedy film shorts in the 1930s, has died. He was 97. Kibrick died Saturday at a hospital in Northridge, his daughter, Jane Lipsic, told The Hollywood Reporter. Kibrick appeared in about two dozen Our Gang/Little Rascals films, made at Hal Roach Studios and/or MGM, from 1935-39. As Woim — that’s Brooklynese for “worm” — he was the henchkid for the neighborhood bully Butch (Tommy Bond). It was a grind making those shorts, he told Nick Thomas in a 2023 interview. “We’d have two hours of schooling in...

Is The Atlantic magazine trying to send its readers a not so secret message? Although it's profile of California Governor Gavin Newsom by Helen Lewis on Tuesday, "The Front-Runner," was generally positive it was also chock full of Gettys as in the oil fortune family of patriarch J. Paul Getty.In fact the name "Getty" was so important in Newsom's personal, business, and political background that it appeared a total of 22 times in the article (including the Getty Images attributions of five of the photos used). Although a Republican presidential hopeful so attached to a family whose fortune was based...

A 30-year-old man was slashed in the face and stabbed in the back during an early-morning attack in Times Square on Wednesday, according to the New York Police Department, as investigators continued searching for multiple suspects involved in the assault, as reported by The New York Post. Police said the attack occurred around 1:50 a.m. near the intersection of West 40th Street and Seventh Avenue, an area heavily trafficked by pedestrians even during overnight hours. Officers responding to the scene found the victim suffering from a slash wound to his face and a stab wound to his back. Authorities said...

Iranian protesters intensified nationwide demonstrations over the past 24 hours, directly appealing to President Donald Trump while chanting anti-regime slogans. Footage published Wednesday showed a protester in Tehran symbolically renaming a street after Trump, while other videos captured handwritten appeals reading, "Don’t let them kill us," Iran International reported. Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, posted the video on X stating, "Since Trump's comments about the Iran protests, I've seen numbers videos of Iranian protesters either thanking him or, in this case, renaming streets after the US president." The appeals came as demonstrators faced a widening security...

A woman claiming to be the wife of a protester shot dead in her car by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent screamed in anguish moments after watching her die. The 37-year-old woman was shot three times in the face at a protest in Minneapolis on Wednesday after she ignored ICE agents' demands to get out of her car, reversed it and tried to drive off. ICE claimed she deliberately drove her burgundy SUV at agents but witnesses dispute that and Mayor Jacob Frey called it 'bulls**t'. Video shared online captured a witness speaking to a woman who claimed she...

MONROE, La. (KNOE) - The Union Parish Sheriff’s Office arrested a Marion woman accused of attacking a deputy. UPSO responded to a home in the Linville community after a caller stated their neighbor was trespassing on their property. Officials say the caller stated the neighbor was standing in their driveway screaming after being told to not trespass on their property on previous occasions. UPSO says when they arrived, the woman was found swimming nude in a pond on the caller’s property. According to officials, 41-year-old Erin Elizabeth Sutton initially refused to get out of the pond and speak to deputies,...

Explanation: Its popular nickname is the Spaghetti Nebula. Officially cataloged as Simeis 147 and Sharpless 2-240, it is easy to get lost following the looping and twisting filaments of this intricate supernova remnant. Seen toward the boundary of the constellations of the Bull (Taurus) and the Charioteer (Auriga), the impressive gas structure covers nearly 3 degrees on the sky, equivalent to 6 full moons. That's about 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. The supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years, meaning light from this powerful stellar explosion first reached the Earth...

Mayor Jacob Frey demanded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents leave Minneapolis in an explicit tirade just hours after a woman who was allegedly filming an anti-raid protest was shot dead inside a car by federal agents. The democratic politician told Donald Trump's ICE agents to 'get the f**k out of Minneapolis' after a woman, 37, was killed at a protest Wednesday. Witnesses claimed the woman and her wife were acting as legal observers and filming the protest when she was shot. But ICE insisted the woman tried to use the SUV as a deadly weapon. Frey reiterated, after...

Multiple pro-life activists and a Christian conservative leader are criticizing President Donald Trump for saying Tuesday that Republicans need to be “flexible” in their demands for stricter rules preventing tax dollars from being used to fund abortions through healthcare subsidies. Trump discussed his views on healthcare while speaking at a retreat for Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives as U.S. Congress ponders a path forward on healthcare policy following the lapse of Affordable Care Act subsidies. He urged the conservative lawmakers to “let the money go in the healthcare account or however you do it” and “let the money...

Many are rushing to judgement. Some falsely concluded after watching the video, perhaps due to the smoke signature that the agent at the window fired the shot, but that's not the case. There was another agent not as clearly seen who was directly in the path of the vehicle. This pic shows one agent at the window who did not fire. The arrow points to the lesser seen agent in the path of the vehicle who did fire. This cap shows the agent who fired beginning to draw - the front wheels of the vehicle clearly pointed in his direction....

Nick Reiner smiled eerily in court today as his high-profile criminal defense lawyer sensationally removed himself from the case. The dramatic departure suggests the Reiner family is pulling financial support from Nick's legal battle after the shocking murders of their parents. Nick, 32, appeared behind a glass screen in brown jail garb with a shaved head, staring blankly through proceedings and occasionally letting out a chilling grin and looked directly into the packed Downtown LA courtroom. He was scheduled to be arraigned on two counts of first-degree murder at Los Angeles Superior Court's Stanley Mosk Courthouse and was widely expected...

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's top adviser ⁠hailed "concrete results" on Wednesday as talks in Paris on peace and security guarantees for Ukraine entered their second day, vowing Kyiv's national interests would be protected. Ukraine is seeking strong backing from allies in the event of a ceasefire with Russia while also pushing ⁠back on a Kremlin demand that it give up its eastern Donbas region in exchange ​for peace. "Not all information can be public, but there are already concrete results, (and) our work continues," Kyrylo Budanov, who was appointed head of Zelenskyy's office last week, said ⁠on the Telegram app. "Ukrainian...

President Donald Trump wants to bar major investors from purchasing homes, as a housing shortage pushes home prices further out of reach for many Americans."I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it," Trump said in a social media post. "People live in homes, not corporations."He said he would further elaborate on the proposal at a speech in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of chief executives, foreign leaders, and ultra-wealthy figures. No details were provided on how the ban...

ICE detained a man who has been living in the U.S. since he was a baby, remanding him into federal custody after a routine appointment with immigration officials. Chong Leng Vue, 45, was brought to the U.S. as a baby from a refugee camp in Thailand. His family was one of many that fled Laos during the Secret War and was granted asylum in the U.S.

'We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is safety and you are doing exactly the opposite.' Frey highlighted how 'people are being hurt' and 'families are being ripped apart' by immigration officials.

Key Points * Headlight brightness has doubled in a decade, with widespread driver complaints and frustration. * Regulatory loopholes allow manufacturers to increase brightness because of outdated federal standards. * Regulations capping maximum brightness for LED headlights have still not been formulated. ============================================================= Illuminated headlights on an urban street at night The Bright Headlights Crisis Is Far From Over If you find yourself squinting while driving at night, you’re not alone. The IIHS reports that average headlight brightness has roughly doubled in the last decade. The NHTSA receives growing consumer complaints regarding headlight brightness. There’s a real, widespread anger out...

Elon Musk, the visionary former head of DOGE, amplified a brave citizen journalist’s exposé on rampant fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community under Tim Walz’s lax oversight. Young conservative Nick Shirley documented empty daycares and shell companies siphoning billions in taxpayer funds for housing, food, and vehicles. For context, most estimates place the total amount of fraud at $80-100 billion statewide, tied to scandals like Feeding Our Future. Building on this point, Musk declared that fraud in California, New York, and Illinois is far worse and estimated nationwide waste at ~10% of the federal budget. Starting the interaction, one of the...

Trump to ban large institutional investors from buying up single-family homes Trump said that he would discuss the announcement further at his speech in Davos, Switzerland, in two weeks. President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he is taking immediate steps to ban large institutional investors from purchasing additional single-family homes, arguing that corporate ownership has pushed homeownership out of reach for many Americans. In a post shared Tuesday afternoon, Trump said buying and owning a home was long considered “the pinnacle of the American Dream,” but claimed that record-high inflation under the Biden administration and congressional Democrats has made that...