Free Republic

Goldman Sachs has issued a stark warning to workers caught up in the AI-driven layoff wave – finding a new job could take longer, and it may pay less when they do. The Wall Street giant says tech employees displaced by automation are facing a tougher road back into work than those in more stable industries. To make matters worse, the very technology replacing them also erodes the value of their skills. In March alone, US employers announced 60,620 job cuts - a 25 percent increase from the previous month - with AI linked to roughly one in four of...

Illegal immigrants in California could soon have their lawyers paid for by taxpayers if a new bill proposed by Sacramento politicians goes through. Starting next year, California would begin to fund legal representation for all unauthorized adults to fight their deportations under new legislation set to clear its first hurdle on Tuesday. “Legal representation saves lives, protects civil liberties and keeps families together,” said bill author Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D). “This is a due process issue in California. People can lose their freedom, their family, their job and home through immigration proceedings.” Last year, Bonta helped pass a law that...

It may seem surprising that researchers could study a phenomenon for which we don’t yet have any data—after all, there are no verified accounts of conversations with aliens. But there are good reasons to consider what alien languages might look like. For one... human languages have far more in common than we might think. A universal grammar underlies what turn out to be mostly surface differences. [A]ll languages use a finite number of sounds (or gestures in the case of signed languages) and phrase types (like noun phrases and verb phrases) to build a theoretically limitless number of unique communications,...

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government... Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools...

Iran has once again closed the Strait of Hormuz, blocking oil tankers from transiting the waterway, in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Hezbollah, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-tied outlet Fars News reported on Wednesday. Oil tankers attempting to transit the strait received threatening messages from the Iranian Navy, according to several shipping sources. "Any vessel trying to travel into the sea ... will be targeted and destroyed..." the message, which was received by several vessels, said. This is a developing story.

Soon after the deadly Israeli attack that caused thousands of Hezbollah pagers to explode in September 2024, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government offered its assistance to Iran, the key sponsor of Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organization by the United States. “Our secret service has already contacted your services and we will share all the information we have gathered during the investigation,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, by telephone, according to a copy of a Hungarian government transcript of the Sept. 30 call obtained and authenticated by a Western intelligence service and reviewed by...

What better way for Morning Joe to mark the Iran ceasefire than by once again tying President Trump to the “monsters of history”? On consecutive days, co-host Jonathan Lemire reached for the same loaded line. He first used it yesterday, reacting to Trump’s bellicose Truth Social post warning Iran of severe consequences. He rolled it out again today—clearly deciding it was too good not to reuse. This time, he escalated further, suggesting Trump’s rhetoric would leave a lasting “stain” not just on his presidency, but on the United States itself. On Tuesday’s show, Lemire cited Trump’s threat-laden language—of the sort...

They should have stuck to chicken breasts. Eight Chick-fil-A staffers say they’ve been fired for jiggling their chests for a TikTok video seen by more than 7 million people — including their bosses. The uniformed workers took it in turns to shake their chests to a mashup of “Wanna Mingle x Top of the Cars” in a clip shared last month, including a male staffer who also turned around to twerk. Their cheeky dance moves for the viral trend, under the title “my CFA crew better than yours,” quickly racked up nearly 7.5 million views — but also got the...

European countries, after the Second World War, came to a painful but profound conclusion: if they wanted to stop centuries of bloodletting among themselves, they had to make war materially irrational. The answer they found was not idealism alone, but interdependence. Trade. Shared markets. Shared interests. Over time, that logic helped give birth to what became the European Union. As the EU notes in its official history of postwar integration, the European Coal and Steel Community was created so that no single country could build the weapons of war against the others as in the past. Established by the Treaty...

A Democratic candidate for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives said supporters of President Donald Trump should not be allowed to post anything online for four years. Suzanna Karatassos is running for a Georgia House seat currently held by Republican state Rep. Houston Gaines, who is himself running for the U.S. House seat held by Republican Rep. Mike Collins. Karatassos, who calls herself a “progressive fighter” on her Instagram page, said in a since-deleted video that when Democrats begin “rebuilding” America, Trump supporters should face “punishment” for their votes. “When this is all over and Trump’s gone and...

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — A Long Island architect accused in a string of long-unsolved slayings known as the Gilgo Beach killings is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday, closing a case that bedeviled investigators, agonized victims’ relatives and tantalized a true-crime obsessed public for years. Rex Heuermann, 62, is charged with murdering seven women, many of them sex workers, over a 17-year span. A guilty plea would put him in prison for the rest of his life.

A Pennsylvania Uber driver woke up to a slithery surprise after picking up two passengers who attended a reptile show. Officers from the Exeter Township Police Department in Berks County were called out Saturday after a local Uber driver found something unexpected in his car: a live ball python. The driver said he picked up two passengers Friday night at a reptile show in Philadelphia. During the ride, a passenger told the driver the contents of their bag had fallen out, and they wanted to look for it, but the driver had to keep moving. He later came home to...

The frustrating experience of trying to speak with customer support only to be transferred to a foreign call center and connected with someone who barely speaks English could soon be coming to an end thanks to the Trump administration. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it had “voted to launch a new proceeding looking into the use of offshore call centers.” The agency explained that bringing call centers back to the United States would be beneficial for several reasons. First, moving call centers overseas takes jobs away from Americans and causes “language, communication, and other barriers that...

The exact terms have not been agreed but Iran wants to charge tolls of up to $1 million on ships that pass through the Strait during the two-week period, an unnamed Middle East official told the Associated Press. Trump welcomed the idea on Wednesday, telling ABC: 'We're thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It's a way of securing it - also securing it from lots of other people. 'It's a beautiful thing.' The Strait, through which a fifth of the world's oil flows, has now become known as the 'Tehran Tollbooth', according to Bloomberg. Ship owners go through...

San Diego is one of the nation’s hottest housing markets, with average home prices hovering around $1 million and rents for a one-bedroom apartment topping $2,000 a month. Yet city officials estimate that more than 5,000 properties sit empty most of the year, which some advocates argue worsens the city’s housing shortage and affordability crisis. So California’s second-largest city is set to take dramatic action. In a few weeks, San Diego voters will decide whether to become the latest California municipality to tax vacant homes

I urge everyone to accompany this moment of delicate diplomacy with prayer, in hopes that a willingness to dialogue may become the means to resolve other conflict situations in the world as well. #PrayTogether #Peace

When intrepid young journalist Nick Shirley made his way to Minneapolis’s now notorious “Quality Learing Center,” he found not just a local scam, but also a too perfect metaphor for today’s Democratic Party. Operating behind the false front of a legitimate political party, Democrats have fashioned nothing more than a money laundering operation that exploits the anxieties of its base to empower and enrich its friends and allies. Although the seeds were planted long ago, those seeds have borne their dark fruit thanks to at least three helpful federal interventions and a major shift in newsroom zeitgeist. Exploiting migrants,...

Retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane expressed doubt that the Iran ceasefire will hold, arguing Tehran is exploiting the pause to delay and ease pressure while testing whether the U.S. has "the stomach" to restart the fight. "I am skeptical about where we’re heading with the Iranians because I flat don’t trust them, and I don't like taking the pressure off them by going to a ceasefire, which is what they want in any event to force the United States to stop the war," Keane said Tuesday on "Jesse Watters Primetime." "We have done that, admittedly only temporarily, but we've got...

US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth claimed today that Iran begged for Donald Trump's 11th-hour ceasefire. Last night, just a few hours before Trump's deadline for Iran to agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the US president said via Truth Social that he had agreed to 'suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks,' after earlier sparking doomsday fears when he threatened to wipe out its 'entire civilisation'. In a later post, the US President hailed 'a big day for world peace' after agreeing to pause the attacks. At a Pentagon press briefing, Hegseth...

Opposition leader Yair Lapid sharply criticized on Wednesday the ceasefire with Iran announced earlier in the day, calling it a failure of political and strategic leadership and warning of long-term consequences for Israel’s security. “There has never been such a political disaster in all of our history,” Lapid wrote in a statement, arguing that “Israel wasn't even part of the discussions when decisions were made concerning our national security.” He added that while “the military carried out everything that was asked of it” and “the public demonstrated amazing resilience,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “failed politically, failed strategically, and didn't meet...