Free Republic

ADVANCING MOST-FAVORED-NATION (MFN) PRICING: Today, President Donald J. Trump announced the 17th agreement with a major pharmaceutical manufacturer, Regeneron, to lower prescription drug prices that Americans pay for some of the world’s most innovative drugs, in line with the lowest prices paid by other developed nations (known as the most-favored-nation, or MFN, price). The agreement will provide every State Medicaid program in the country access to MFN drug prices on new Regeneron products, resulting in hundreds of millions in savings and continuing President Trump’s historic efforts to strengthen the program for the most vulnerable Americans.The agreement ensures foreign nations can...

The Santa Cruz County Office of Education (Santa Cruz COE) is conducting its 6th Annual Rainbow Flag Raising ceremony on May 5 in celebration of Harvey Milk’s birthday and in support of LGBTQ+ students, families, and educators.

The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday. The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering. The moves were announced as part of a broader push to step up federal executions...

FORT WORTH, TEXAS — A long-time cattle rancher said Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration understands his industry and what it needs to continue producing quality beef for the American people. Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) Director Steve Sikes told Breitbart News that under past administrations, ranchers were pressured by rules that made their work more difficult, but things have since changed. “We’ve got the EPA that is run pretty well, and in the past that was always a deterrent for ranchers because they were putting in rules that were almost impossible to cope with. They had a...

Explanation: This seaside sunset offered a surreal experience, captured in a sea and skyscape from the west coast of Sardinia, Italy, planet Earth. The Daliesque scene is a composition of sequential exposures made with a camera and long telephoto lens. The Sun is not melting, though. Its shifting and fluid appearance as it nears the horizon is caused as refraction along the line of sight changes and creates distorted images or mirages of the reddened solar disk. The changes in atmospheric refraction correspond to atmospheric layers with sharply different temperatures and densities. Another famous but fleeting effect of atmospheric refraction...

The heiress to the Budget Rent a Car fortune was attacked in her Hollywood Hills mansion on Thursday by a group of masked men, authorities said. Margaux Mirkin, 68, was strangled and assaulted by at least two men who were seen entering her home on Lookout Mountain Avenue at around 8pm, the Los Angeles Police Department said. Officers responded to the home just before 8:30pm, NBC Los Angeles reported. Police said the victim was taken to the hospital for her injuries and was later released in stable condition. Through property records, the Daily Mail identified Mirkin as the owner of...

Suspected Somali pirates hijacked a fuel tanker off the northeastern coast of Somalia, according to a local official and the British military. The vessel was seized on Wednesday in waters between the coastal towns of Hafun and Bandarbeyla in the semi-autonomous state of Puntland along the Indian Ocean. The tanker had departed from the port of Berbera and was heading to the Somali capital of Mogadishu when it was intercepted, a colonel with the Puntland Maritime Police Force told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to a journalist.

Fifteen agricultural spray drones were stolen from a New Jersey location last month in what the FBI is treating as a sophisticated, possibly coordinated theft, according to reporting by national security journalists Jack Murphy and Sean D. Naylor at The High Side. The case is unsolved. Retired FBI agent Steve Lazarus told the outlet the bureau is “freaked out for a good reason,” warning that the machines are “industrial sprayers designed to carry and disperse significant amounts of liquid quickly and with precision.”

In December I listened to an interview with Ben Sasse that stopped me in my tracks. And another in February. And another recently. That last one in particular not only challenged me, but ultimately has shifted something deep in me. It’s not hyperbole to say that I think Ben Sasse is currently the most interesting person in the world. Ben Sasse, the former senator from Nebraska, former president of the University of Florida, a man who by any measure had built the kind of life most people spend their whole careers chasing, sat in the most recent interview across from...

President Donald Trump on Saturday abruptly canceled a planned trip by special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to Pakistan, pulling back from what had been billed just a day earlier as a potential jump-start to fragile Iran talks. “I just cancelled the trip of my representatives going is [to] Islamabad, Pakistan, to meet with the Iranians,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work! Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership.’ Nobody knows who on earth is in charge, including them. Also, we have all...

By Dr. John BergsmaSo we have reached the mid-point of the Easter Season and come to the Lord’s Day unofficially called “Good Shepherd Sunday,” because every year at this time we read from John 10, the famous “Good Shepherd Discourse.” For the most part, the Readings are focused around the idea of Jesus Christ as our divine Shepherd. But what is a shepherd like? In Western culture, shepherding can involve a conflicted relationship with the sheep. Shepherds often drive sheep in different directions using dogs to intimidate them. But in Eastern cultures, shepherds don’t “drive” the sheep, they lead them....

25 April 2026 Saint Mark, Evangelist Feast St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church - Colwich, KansasReadings at MassLiturgical Colour: Red. Year: A(II).First reading1 Peter 5:5-14My son, Mark, sends you greetingsAll wrap yourselves in humility to be servants of each other, because God refuses the proud and will always favour the humble. Bow down, then, before the power of God now, and he will raise you up on the appointed day; unload all your worries on to him, since he is looking after you. Be calm but vigilant, because your enemy the devil is prowling round like a roaring lion,...

Just weeks after the upcoming animated film The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender leaked online in its entirety, the individual responsible for the leak has been placed behind bars. An unidentified 26-year-old man was arrested in Singapore, on charges that he illegally accessed a media server without authorization, according to The Strait Times. Local authorities received a report on April 16 that portions of an unreleased film was leaked onto social media platforms.

Rep. Ilhan Omar gave her blessing to her top congressional aide marrying a young underling – and even promoted the bride a month before the wedding, The Post has learned. The lefty “Squad” member from Minnesota attended the Dec. 19 nuptials in the Virginia countryside, lending her seal of approval to the union between her longtime Chief of Staff Connor McNutt, 36, and legislative aide Tahreem Alam, 27. They both still work in Omar’s office. The whole staff got invited, according to sources, and images reviewed by The Post indicate festive wedding ceremonies, including one where the bride and groom...

A recent event hosted by students at UC Berkeley’s law school drew national criticism after featuring Israa Jaabis, a failed Palestinian suicide bomber released from Israeli prison in November 2023 as part of the hostage-prisoner exchange following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. Berkeley’s response was to invoke free speech, insisting that the university must remain content-neutral toward protected expression. But the deeper threat to academic freedom at Berkeley is not a single student-sponsored event. It is the conduct of faculty who are using departments, speaker series, official academic programming, and university authority to turn anti-Israel activism into institutional practice. That conduct...

This week, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) got a grand jury to indict the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for donating money to known hate groups including the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Aryan Nations, the Nationalist Socialist Party of American Nazis and the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche said "the SPLC is a nonprofit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups, with the goal of dismantling these groups. The SPLC was not dismantling these groups....

An illegal migrant maniac allegedly high on a powerful drug chomped on a toddler’s face in Texas last week, two years after the Biden administration failed to kick him out of the country despite his arrest in an earlier violent assault, authorities told The Post. The horrific April 18 attack in a San Antonio park left 3-year-old Amelia Perez with deep scratches and bite wounds across her face, two teeth knocked out, and life-changing trauma, her family said. “That brute was ravaging my baby!” mom Gabriella Perez, 27, told The Post. “She’s terrified to sleep. She’s lashing out, angry. She...

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is still registered to run for re-election despite having resigned from office amid congressional and federal probes for allegedly mishandling disaster relief funding for personal gain. On April 17, Cherfilus-McCormick submitted a notice of her candidacy to the Florida Department of State as a Democrat just a week before officially stepping down from office. She resigned on Tuesday. The filing raises questions about whether Cherfilus-McCormick believes she can still pursue political office despite facing intense scrutiny at the moment. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Cherfilus-McCormick’s decision to resign from office came right...

The Michael Jackson biopic gives new meaning to the word 'sanitizing'The new biopic about Michael Jackson offers snapshots of his life from ages 8 to 24. It doesn't have a plot, really, just a timeline in which he gradually moves toward separating himself from his abusive father. With the exception of his early plastic surgeries, which he ascribes to a desire to make his face more symmetrical, there's nothing remotely questionable about the behavior of the kid we see in Michael. He's gentle and childlike and in love with animals and toys and Peter Pan. We are meant to understand...

U.S. President Donald Trump said he would impose tariffs on ​Britain if Prime Minister Keir Starmer does ‌not drop the digital service tax, The Telegraph reported on Friday, citing an interview with the president. Trump told ​The Telegraph he would “put a big ​tariff on the UK” if it did not ⁠drop its tax, which is viewed as ​unfairly targeting U.S. tech companies. The United Kingdom rolled ​out its 2% digital services tax in 2020, a move that has been criticized by Trump and his ​predecessor Democrat Joe Biden. The digital service tax ​targets companies like Apple (AAPL.O), Alphabet's Google...