Free Republic

Energy Louisiana Trial Lawyers Steered Thousands to Judge Overseeing Their Case Against Oil Companies—Then Won a $744 Million Judgment 'The whole thing is set up as a kangaroo court,' former AG Bill Barr tells Free Beacon L: Offshore oil and gas platform (Mario Tama/Getty Images) R: Chevron logo Thomas Catenacci January 12, 2026 The Louisiana attorneys who helped secure a landmark verdict requiring U.S. oil company Chevron to pay $744 million in environmental damages gave nearly $15,000 to the state judge who presided over the case, ethics filings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show. The Baton Rouge-based law firm...

JPMorgan Chase Bank is suing former Chicago Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot for letting her $11K credit card bill go unpaid for 17 months.The media has learned that Lightfoot, who became the first Democrat Chicago Mayor not reelected to city hall in about 40 years, was served with a subpoena at her $900,000 Chicago home in October, the Chicago Tribune reports.Chase ultimately decided in March that her $11,000 bill would be a charge-off, but her last payment of $5,000 on the debt was made on August 7, 2024, according to the bank’s records.

During college, one of my professors in Political Philosophy said that the only real revolutions in modern Western civilization were the French and the Russian. He was right, but I didn’t quite get it at the time. I do now. While the American Revolution was ostensibly a revolution, in reality, it was more of a divorce where the kids kept the same parents, they just lived with their Mom. Their Dad was still their Dad, but they didn’t have much to do with him. In contrast, the French and Russian revolutions were basically the children taking their parents out back...

The Streisand effect continues to be real, as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's AI comments go viral. A couple of days ago, Nadella penned a short note on his hopes for artificial intelligence going into 2026. As you know, Microsoft is very much "all in" on AI, with Azure providing a significant chunk of the backbone for OpenAI's ChatGPT. Microsoft has been baking its ChatGPT-powered Copilot app into virtually every product it has, whether you like it or not. The brute force by which Microsoft is introducing these products has led to an unrelenting backlash on social media, and Nadella's latest...

Pete Hegseth flashed a Vulcan salute Monday as he joined Elon Musk at SpaceX headquarters, where the war secretary touted the Pentagon’s wartime approach to unleashing technological innovation. “We want to make Star Trek real,” Musk said as he welcomed Hegseth to Starbase, the small South Texas town incorporated by SpaceX employees and home to the tech tycoon’s massive rocket-building facility and launch site. “Star Trek real,” Hegseth quipped after being introduced by Musk. The war secretary’s remarks – part of his “Arsenal of Freedom” tour – emphasized the need for the US to “win the strategic competition for 21st...

Soon after Eric Holder was confirmed as Barack Obama’s attorney general in February 2009 he gave a speech to his new employees in honor of Black History Month. It proved memorable. “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot,” said Holder, “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” In February 2023 Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams showed that not all white Americans were afraid to speak about race. On his podcast, “Real Coffee with Scott Adams,” the soft-spoken Adams delivered a droll, only...

Sen. Rand Paul ripped into his fellow Republicans Tuesday over their tepid response to the Trump administration’s series of strikes against suspected drug-running vessels, saying his colleagues on Capitol Hill “don’t give a s— about these people in the boats.” “We’ve been blowing up these people in boats off the coast of Venezuela. They’re accused of running drugs, but nobody knows their names and nobody’s put up any evidence,” Paul (R-Ky.) said during an apperance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “And so what I think is bizarre is I hear mostly my Republican colleagues say, ‘Well, we shouldn’t have...

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, the Massachusetts-based Obama judge who blocked the Trump administration from cutting federal funds to Planned Parenthood last month, issued a temporary restraining order on Saturday preventing the Department of Homeland Security from revoking the legal status of tens of thousands of foreigners. The Trump administration announced last month that it was terminating all categorical family reunification parole programs and corresponding work authorization for aliens from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras as well as for their immediate family members, effective Dec. 15. Per the announcement, the "temporary parole period of aliens who...

As unrest spreads across Iran and authorities tighten controls on communication, news reports suggest that the government is using foreign military technology to block satellite internet services. Iran has reportedly turned to Russian military technology to disrupt Elon Musk-owned Starlink satellite internet services. According to a Forbes report, specialised jammers have interfered with as much as 80 per cent of Starlink’s uplink and downlink traffic in the country.

This is not my usual fare. I typically summarize books that expose institutional capture, medical corruption, or the mechanisms by which official narratives diverge from observable reality. Atlas Shrugged is not that kind of book. It is a novel—a thousand-page philosophical novel published in 1957 about railroads and steel mills and a mysterious man who stops the motor of the world. It came up recently in conversation with a close friend, and I realized that despite its enormous cultural footprint, almost no one I know has actually read it. They know the name Ayn Rand. They have opinions about her....

The Trump administration has intensified its efforts to enhance vetting of foreign nationals entering the U.S., resulting in a record number of visa revocations. The Department of State announced that in 2025, it revoked over 100,000 foreign visas, including 8,000 student visas and 2,500 specialized worker visas. That figure is more than double the number of visas that were revoked in 2024 — 40,000 — under former President Joe Biden's leadership. Foreign nationals whose visas were canceled included those who had encounters with U.S. law enforcement for criminal activity, the State Department reported. "We will continue to deport these thugs...

The FBI executed a search warrant on the home of a Washington Post reporter as part of an investigation into the leaking of government secrets. The reporter, Hannah Natanson, was at her home in Virginia when federal agents descended on her home on Wednesday morning, the Washington Post said. The outlet said Natanson was raided as part of a probe into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials, and she had her home and devices searched.

Today’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is a moment to reflect not only on the Lord’s Baptism but on our own. In an extended sense, when Christ is baptized, so are we, for we are members of His Body. As Christ enters the water, He makes holy the water that will baptize us. He enters the water, and we who are members of His Body go with Him. In these waters He acquires gifts to give us.Let’s examine today’s Gospel in three stages:The Fraternity of Baptism – The text says, Jesus came from Galilee to John at the...

In the last few months, we have gained valuable insights into former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s unprecedented effort to criminally prosecute President Donald Trump, at the time a former president and leading contender for the presidency. In Injustice, Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis, appearing to rely heavily on accounts from Smith’s top deputies, paint a picture of a prosecutor doggedly focused on one objective: prosecuting Trump. On New Year’s Eve, however, the House Judiciary Committee released the transcript of Smith’s closed-door deposition. While a prosecutor’s crusade to imprison a presidential candidate is troubling in itself, Smith’s deposition...

President Trump insisted Wednesday that the US “needs” to take control of Greenland “for the purpose of National Security,” warning that “[a]nything less than that is unacceptable” ahead of key meetings with Danish and Greenlandic officials. “NATO should be leading the way for us to get it,” Trump said on Truth Social in reference to the world’s largest island. “IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!" “Militarily, without the vast power of the United States, much of which I built during my first term, and am now bringing to a new and even...

At least six career prosecutors in the Minneapolis U.S. Attorney's office — including Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson — have resigned as the office continues to face pressure to treat the investigation of the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE officer as an assault on a federal officer case. Thompson also previously served as the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota; he was appointed by President Trump in June and served in the position until October. He resigned from the attorney's office along with Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams, Thomas Calhoun-Lopez, Ruth Schneider and Tom Hollenhurst. Two sources familiar...

At one point during their pro-trans boys in girls’ locker/bathrooms argument, the ACLU lawyer Kathleen Hartnett was asked by Justice Samuel Alito to define a man, boy, woman, or girl. Hartnett appeared to panic as she realized Alito had brilliantly set a trap for her. Unable to answer the question, Hartnett appears to panic, telling him “they” don’t have a definition.

Food prices climbed sharply in December, providing little relief to consumers at the grocery store and adding to the political pressure on President Trump to improve affordability. The 0.7 percent jump in food prices from a month earlier was the largest one-month increase in grocery prices since October 2022. That was up from 0.2 percent in September, the last month the federal government released month-to-month inflation figures for after the shutdown disrupted data collection. Compared with a year earlier, overall food prices were up 3.1 percent and grocery prices were up 2.4 percent in December. The increase could frustrate consumers...

Federal regulators on Tuesday told drugmakers Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to remove label warnings about potential suicidal thoughts and behaviors from their blockbuster weight-loss medications. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said a comprehensive review “found no increased” risk related to suicide among users of the GLP-1 drugs for obesity, including Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Saxenda and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound. A preliminary review in January 2024 showed no link between the drugs and suicidal thought or actions, the FDA said. At that time, however, officials said they could not rule out that “a small risk may exist.” The new...

Federal prosecutors have charged a Maryland man with orchestrating a years-long theft scheme inside the U.S. House of Representatives, alleging he stole hundreds of government-issued cell phones and sold them for personal profit. The findings of this case were revealed by the Department of Justice on Monday. Christopher Southerland, 43, of Glen Burnie, was arrested Friday after a federal indictment was unsealed in U.S. District Court, according to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. Authorities said the stolen devices were worth more than $150,000. According to the indictment, Southerland worked as a system administrator for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure...