Free Republic

Ben Walker is a New Statesman data journalist who runs an election forecasting model Britain Predicts and he has had a go at forecasting the result in Gorton and Denton. The model is not a poll; it uses polling data, but then adjusts the figures on a constituency by constituency basis taking into account a range of factors. It has performed well in the past but, in his write-up of his final forecast, Walker says the result here is “anyone’s guess” because the Greens, Reform UK and Labour are so close. Walker thinks there could be just a few hundred...

Donald Trump faced-off in-person with Supreme Court justices who ruled against his tariffs last week. The four justices who attended his State of the Union address were forced to remain stoned-faced as the president berated them in front of a joint session of Congress, administration officials – and the world. The president tore into the decision right after sharing cordial handshakes with the four justices seated in the front row of his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. 'Just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court. Oh, very unfortunate ruling,' Trump...

I think the idea of Trump accounts, to allow tax free savings for specific self-funded social benefits that aren't taxed, is the way to go. It always has been. Keep them reasonable, so the billionaire class can't sock away billions of dollars of untaxable income but allow it high enough so that it can provide for the average person so that he self-supports himself and isn't supported by the taxpayer. As long as the account is used for the specific purpose intended, any drawings from it remain tax free. However, if it is drawn for other purposes, it becomes taxed...

The lefty student government at a local California university rejected a proposal that would grant its student body free subscriptions to The New York Times, citing issues with how The Times covered major world-happenings. “The New York Times has historically been a little bit problematic and controversial in their reporting and in their journalism,” student official Alya Hassan, who voted against the proposal, told the Fresno Bee. Hassan referenced its coverage of Israel and Gaza as one example, adding the organization lacked journalistic integrity for avoiding words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and occupied territory in its reporting. The paper has...

As nearly half of U.S. adults say they’re actively trying to drink less, the non-alcoholic aisle has become crowded with options that promise ritual without consequence. The problem is that many of them taste like cough syrup or some other kind of compromise. Wine, in particular, has historically struggled in this category. As a professional product tester, I can attest to my own disenchantment with non-alcoholic wine, to the point that I’ve covered it maybe once before. You can remove the alcohol, but can you preserve structure, aroma and the layered character that makes wine worth pouring in the first...

A Maryland squatter posed online as a financial adviser, but was actually living off food stamps and sending her 16-year-old daughter out to work instead of school, while hiding out in a $2.3 million mansion, according to a report. Tameika Goode, 40, who recently returned to the ritzy, 7,500-square-foot home in the suburbs of Washington, DC, presented herself as a bankruptcy expert, flogging $800 courses online and sharing social media posts of her Porsche. In reality, however, she was a squatter, living on a total monthly income of $946, which included $538 in child support and $408 in food stamps,...

Former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland was reportedly hospitalized last week following a suicide attempt, days after he was charged with gross corruption linked to his relationship with late convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a media report Tuesday. The news was first broken by iNyheter which cited a “rock-solid source” confirming that Jagland’s condition remains serious. The specific medical facility treating the 75-year-old statesman has not been disclosed. The former Nobel Peace Prize Chairman is in critical condition after facing “gross corruption” charges linked to the Epstein case, according to iNyheter.

"So that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects" (Col. 1:10). Your manner of life should be consistent with Christ’s. In Colossians 1:9 Paul speaks of being controlled by the knowledge of God's will. In verse 10 he speaks of walking in a manner worthy of the Lord. There is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between those verses. When you are controlled by the knowledge of God's will, you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. The Greek word translated "walk" means "to order one's behavior." It's a common New...

The furious NYPD on Tuesday released photos of a pair of miscreants it says are wanted for pounding two on-duty cops with snow and ice as the officers responded to a snowball-slinging mob in a Manhattan park. The department is investigating whether there are more suspects in Washington Square Park attack, as well, law-enforcement sources said. One of the suspects in the photos released Tuesday is shown hauling a massive snowball the size of a boulder over his head. The other alleged cop-attacker can be seen packing a smaller handful of snow while standing face-to-face with a uniformed officer. The...

Your iPhone calendar used to remind you about dentist appointments and dinner reservations. Now? It might be screaming that you’ve “won a prize” — or worse, that your device is infected and your bank account is toast. Welcome to the latest digital headache: a calendar con that’s turning Apple users’ schedules into spam central, per Newsweek. Cybercrooks have figured out a sneaky way to blast iPhones and iPads with bogus alerts — no shady app download required. Instead of slipping malware onto your device, scammers trick users into unknowingly subscribing to rogue calendars. Once you’re in, they’ve got a direct...

Zohran Mamdani’s socialist pals wrap their proposals in the most innocuous language possible. So when activists rally in Albany on Wednesday to pressure lawmakers to raise taxes, the Democratic Socialists of America claim the bill it backs would “create new brackets starting at $1 million” so that “they pay a slightly higher share in taxes.” Sounds fair. It’s also a lie. Sponsored by Assemblyman Demond Meeks and State Sen. Robert Jackson, the tax increases actually start at half that. For individual incomes over $450,000, and joint incomes over $500,000, the state tax rate would be raised by a point to...

Lauren Chapin, who portrayed the precocious Kathy “Kitten” Anderson on the iconic 1950s TV series Father Knows Best, has died. She was 80. Chapin, who said she was molested as a child before dealing with drug abuse, jail sentences, several miscarriages and divorce after her show ended, died Tuesday after a battle with cancer, her son, Matthew, reported on Facebook. Following appearances on a 1952 episode of CBS’ Lux Video Theatre and in the Judy Garland-starring A Star Is Born (1954), Chapin was hired for Father Knows Best when she was 9. She said she got the job in part...

President Donald Trump hit it out of the park (again) with his 2026 State of the Union address, perhaps his most remarkable speech yet. The frame was an unabashed celebration of America in its 250th year, hailing heroes from the Olympic hockey champions to 100-year-old veterans — and with a close reiterating why the nation’s best days are yet to come. He was the happy warrior we’d asked him to be, with a strong clear message untainted by grievance — even as he expressed his disappointment with last week’s Supreme Court ruling on tariffs and drew clear distinctions between his...

A software engineer in Spain, used an AI assistant to reverse engineer how a robot vacuum cleaner communicated with DJI cloud servers so he could control his vacuum using the joystick on his game controller and inadvertently took control of over 7000 remote vacuum cleaners which allowed him full control over devices in 24 countries, he had full access to the audio and video coming from the devices, he could control the movement of the devices and was able to produce a detailed map of where the devices were located. Fortunately, the individual reported the security flaw to the company...

'That's the first time I've ever seen them get up,' Trump says of congressional Democrats after introducing gold medal US hockey team

The Land of the Free is hot, but it’s not the only in vogue thing that graced Trump’s two-hour Tuesday night speech. t’s official, the United States of America is, as President Donald Trump declared during his 2026 State of the Union address, “the hottest country anywhere in the world.” The Land of the Free is hot, but it’s not the only in vogue thing that graced Trump’s two-hour Tuesday night speech. Here’s every significant moment from the late-night assembly ranked hot to not. HOT U.S. Men’s Hockey Team Jack Hughes’ broken winning smile and Connor Hellebuyck’s presidential medal of...

Bill Gates "took responsibility for his actions" over ties to late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a town hall meeting with employees of the Gates Foundation, a spokesperson for the philanthropic group told Reuters in a written statement on Tuesday. The spokesperson's comments came in response to a Wall Street Journal report, which said that Gates had apologized to staff during the town hall over his ties with Epstein. Documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have indicated that Gates and Epstein met repeatedly after Epstein's prison term to discuss expanding the Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new...

President Donald Trump’s 2026 State of the Union speech gave every American a front-row seat to see exactly who Democrats are — and more importantly, what they refuse to stand for. According to reports, more than 70 Democrats chose not to attend the speech, but most did, and several times over the course of the evening, they made a choice. They sat. They scowled. They heckled. While Republicans rose time and again in applause, the left side of the chamber looked like a group of children being punished. And Trump noticed. He called them out — repeatedly — for refusing...

Tuesday’s State of the Union address gives President Trump a big platform to tout the economy’s performance on his watch. He has already given himself a grade—“A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” he told Politico in December. The report card for the economy is a bit more mixed, however, after his first year back in office. Here are the grades for some key metrics. JobsNeeds improvement It is rough out there for job seekers, unless they are looking for work in healthcare. U.S. employers added only 181,000 jobs in 2025, down sharply from the prior year to the lowest figure outside of a recession in...

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was caught on camera playing with her dentures on Tuesday after President Trump called her out for insider trading during his SOTU Address. Nancy Pelosi and another woman sitting together, displaying emotional expressions during a significant event in the U.S. Congress. Pelosi chomps her gums after Trump calls her out at SOTU Address. Nancy had a rough night. President Trump roasted Democrats during his State of the Union Address for standing up against insider trading. Trump called out crooked Nancy Pelosi: “Did Nancy Pelosi stand up for this? Pelosi has done very well gaming the system.