Free Republic

Transcript SummaryThe transcript discusses an impending partial U.S. government shutdown at midnight, with 78% of federal funding set to expire.A deal between the White House and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would separate DHS funding from a larger package of six funding bills. The DHS portion would receive a two-week stopgap while ICE reforms are negotiated, allowing the other five bills to pass with bipartisan support.Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is holding up the deal by placing a hold on the legislation. He demands a guaranteed vote on his bill to criminalize sanctuary cities before lifting the hold. He spoke on...

A U.S. jury found Linwei Ding guilty of economic espionage and trade secret theft after he stole Google’s sensitive AI infrastructure data.In brief -Former Google software engineer Linwei Ding has been convicted of economic espionage for siphoning Google’s trade secrets to China-based companies. -Federal agents arrested Ding in March 2024, accusing him of stealing 500+ confidential AI files while secretly collaborating with China-based companies. -Ding built his own AI startup in China, pitched investors on replicating Google’s tech, and applied to a Shanghai government talent program. A 38-year-old former Google software engineer has been convicted of siphoning thousands of...

An Anglican priest was removed from the formal election service of Dame Sarah Mullally as the first female archbishop of Canterbury at St. Paul's Cathedral on Wednesday after he shouted his objection to her confirmation. The Rev. Paul Williamson, who was ordained in 1973 and has since been outspoken against the ordination of women, shouted, "I object!" during the service before he was removed, according to Church Times. Williamson's eruption, the rest of which was inaudible, came during the part of the ceremony when the proctor, who represents the College of Canons of Canterbury Cathedral, declared: "No person has appeared...

“The ICE derangement syndrome is off the charts because we are amidst a pandemic of progressive leftist mental illness, which is an extremely disproportionately female problem.” —JD Haltigan on "X" James Howard Kunstler Jan 30, 2026 It has come into focus now and you no longer need to be perplexed, mystified, bewildered, or bamboozled by events unspooling in Minneapolis and other hotspots of Woke-Marxist-Jacobin delirium. You are seeing the infernal machine of a sponsored revolution. Its parts are visible. They can be named and clearly understood. I will tell you how this works. You realize, of course, that there has...

(LifeSiteNews) — In a now-viral social media video, the father of a 12-year-old boy said “this state is absolutely insane” after California regulations granting medical autonomy to teens prevented him from making a doctor’s appointment for his young son. “I cannot explain how ridiculous the state of California is. My 12-year-old son, he needs to schedule an appointment himself to go see a doctor or a specialist,” explained the man, whose accounts are held under the name Jonathan Freeman. “Because when you’re 12 in this state, apparently you can make your own medical decisions.” “We don’t have access to his...

EXCLUSIVE: The Department of Homeland Security lodged a detainer Thursday in California in the case of an illegal immigrant accused of a crime that a top official there is calling the "most heinous one we’ve ever seen." DHS has been pressing sanctuary states and sanctuary cities to respect and honor ICE detainers for public safety and national security reasons, with little headway from those jurisdictions, telling Fox News Digital they hope this is the case that will change their minds. A 20-year-old Mexican national, Enrique Bautista-Vasquez, was charged with rape, a sentence enhancement for sexual assault of a person unable...

Just because you're paranoid about digital sovereignty doesn't mean they're not after youOpinion I'm an eighth-generation American, and let me tell you, I wouldn't trust my data, secrets, or services to a US company these days for love or money. Under our current government, we're simply not trustworthy. In the Trump‑redux era of 2026, European enterprises are finally taking data seriously, and that means packing up from Redmond-by-Seattle and moving their most sensitive workloads home. This isn't just compliance theater; it's a straight‑up national economic security play. Europe's digital sovereignty paranoia, long waved off as regulatory chatter, is now...

(LifeSiteNews) — The University of Notre Dame has defended its appointment of a vehement abortion supporter to a prominent position despite backlash over the professor’s anti-Catholic stance on human life. The self-proclaimed Catholic university issued a statement on Wednesday defending the elevation of Susan Ostermann – an associate professor of global affairs at Notre Dame who has described abortion bans as “violence” and “sexual abuse” – to director of the university’s Liu Institute of Asia and Asian Studies. Ostermann is a particularly harsh critic of pro-life laws, having claimed that abortion access “prioritizes and values women’s freedom from experiencing violence,...

The Seattle Seahawks will go up for sale after Super Bowl LX, league and ownership sources familiar with the arrangement told ESPN, ending years of questions about when the team would seek new ownership following the 2018 death of former owner Paul G. Allen. Sale discussions have taken place at ownership and league levels for at least the past week, the sources said. The Seahawks and the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers have been owned by Allen's estate since the former owner and Microsoft co-founder died in 2018 after a yearslong battle with cancer. His sister, Jody Allen, has controlled the...

Transcript SummaryFormer CNN anchor and current independent journalist Don Lemon was arrested by federal agents in Los Angeles (at a Beverly Hills hotel, where he was covering the Grammy Awards) on the night of January 29, 2026 (around or after 11 p.m. local time, into early January 30).The arrest relates to his presence and filming during a January 18, 2026, anti-ICE protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Protesters disrupted a Sunday service, alleging one pastor (David Easterwood) worked as an acting ICE field office director in St. Paul; they chanted and interrupted worship.Lemon, who had advance knowledge of...

TEXAS – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Debra Lynch, a Delaware-based nurse practitioner who runs Her Safe Harbor, an organization accused of shipping abortion-inducing drugs into Texas in violation of state law. According to the lawsuit, Her Safe Harbor routinely sends mifepristone and misoprostol across state lines. The organization advertises abortion pills by mail and promises delivery to Texas within days. Lynch reportedly acknowledged that she and her staff “mail a lot [of abortion drugs] to Texas,” mentioning cities including Houston, Tomball, Fulshear, Beaumont, El Paso and other major cities. The legal action comes after...

A freelance journalist reported on billions of dollars stolen from welfare programs in Minnesota. Congress did not uncover this scandal; a member of the public did. How did Congress respond? Did they open their own investigation, or claw back money from Minnesota? No, they simply decided to spend another $5 billion on welfare. If Congress cared so much about addressing welfare fraud of the kind found in Minnesota, why is the Senate considering a spending package that includes yet another $5 billion in taxpayer funded welfare for refugees? Can Democrats and big government Republicans be so obtuse as to propose...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) announced Friday afternoon that the Senate is poised to vote on a series of amendments and then pass a massive package of appropriations bills to fund the federal departments and agencies. Thune announced votes on seven amendments, including a proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to repeal $75 billion in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and another by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) to bar the Trump White House from rescinding funding through pocket rescissions. The Senate will also consider an amendment sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to remove $5 billion from...

Hillary Clinton accused the MAGA movement of transforming “savagery” into a moral value, arguing in a sweeping new essay the idea that “compassion is weak and cruelty is strong” has become an “article of MAGA faith” – which she warned has become a “rallying cry” to Christian nationalism. In a 6,000-word article published in The Atlantic on Friday, titled “MAGA’s War on Empathy”, Clinton framed recent federal actions in Minnesota as a turning point that exposes what she called a deeper ethical breakdown within President Donald Trump’s movement. She opened by describing her reaction to video footage showing the killing...

"Ukraine saw a rare overnight lull in attacks on energy infrastructure after President Trump personally urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to pause strikes — but the Kremlin said Friday the brief reprieve will last only through Sunday. There were no overnight strikes on energy facilities in Ukraine after Trump called on Putin to spare them as frigid temperatures leave civilians in danger of freezing to death, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post to X. “Over the past night, there were no strikes on energy facilities,” Zelensky wrote. But that didn’t stop Moscow from continuing to hit other civilian...

Senate rallies, advances funding package in key test after earlier stumbleSenate Republicans and Democrats locked in an agreement to move forward with a behemoth funding package, smashing through resistance on both sides of the aisle. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., teed up the final vote for the package Friday after hours of quelling resistance among Senate Republicans. Lawmakers will plow through several amendments before voting on the package, which is expected to pass and head to the House. That also means that, despite their best efforts, a government shutdown is all but guaranteed given that the deadline to fund...

@TuckerCarlson Most Americans just want to live in a sovereign country that cares about them. That’s not a partisan position. It’s a baseline demand. Cenk Uygur explains.

In the largely unregulated world of IVF, safeguards for embryos, and in some cases, the parents who donate and seek to adopt them, are tenuous at best.When disputes or clinical mishaps call into question frozen embryos’ ownership and parentage, the law offers little to no protection. Federal regulations for laboratories holding embryos are voluntary. In 49 of 50 states, frozen embryos are deemed property with no right to life. Louisiana is the only state where embryos created using IVF are regarded as “juridical person[s]” and where destroying them is illegal. In Tennessee, where the NEDC is located, lawmakers recently codified...

FOX 2 - A sitting judge and Detroit area attorney were among four suspects charged in an embezzling scheme victimizing incapacitated individuals' estates. Dig deeper: The US Attorney's Office said Nancy Williams, 59, Avery Bradley, 72, Judge Andrea Bradley-Baskin, 46, and Dwight Rashad, 69, were charged via indictment with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The indictment also charges Bradley with one count of wire fraud, Bradley, Bradley-Baskin, and Rashad with several counts of money laundering, and Bradley-Baskin with a single count of making a false statement to federal law enforcement agent. Bradley-Baskin is a district judge on Michigan’s 36th District...

[Catholic Caucus] The Question of the Traditional Mass in Pope Leo XIV’s PontificateWe find ourselves in the early days of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate, and there are reasons for cautious optimism. Several signs suggest that the Holy Father wishes to address some of the more pressing challenges inherited from his predecessor.Among these is the thorny question of access to the Traditional Latin Mass (what was once called the Extraordinary Form or Tridentine Mass) and the restrictions imposed by Traditiones Custodes.I approach this question with the disposition we ought to have toward any successor of Peter: giving the benefit of the...