Free Republic

A wave of party switching in West Virginia is reshaping the state’s political landscape, with tens of thousands of voters — including more than 16,000 Democrats — registering as Republicans since early 2024, according to new data released by the secretary of state. West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner reported that 68,235 voters have changed party affiliation since Jan. 31, 2024, signaling a significant shift ahead of the state’s May 12 primary election. Among the biggest changes, 16,910 voters switched from Democrat to Republican, while another 20,003 unaffiliated voters also moved to the GOP, according to the data. At...

We have recently relocated from another state to Kentucky. We're in Owensboro and would like some insights about differing candidates. Thanks!

The shock announcement Tuesday comes after the UAE was the target of missile and drone attacks for weeks by fellow OPEC member Iran. Tehran’s attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz has also severely constrained the UAE’s ability to export oil, threatening the foundation of its economy. The UAE has played an influential role in OPEC’s decisions over nearly six decades. It was the group’s third-largest oil producer in February behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The UAE’s OPEC membership originated with the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in 1967, seven years after the organization was founded. The UAE came to...

As the mother of sons, I wish we didn’t spend quite so much time knocking young men. TV talking points like Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere have focussed our attention on problematic blokes to such an extent that few pose an important question: What’s up with the femosphere? It seems that for every male who’s found his mentor in Andrew Tate or the late Charlie Kirk, there’s a young woman who’s been radicalised by Greta Thunberg and AOC (Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to you and me). On both sides of the Atlantic, polling shows young women are far more likely...

From 1973 to 1977 the National Hockey League was the wild west, and Bob “Gasser” Gassoff—a 5’10”, 190-pound wrecking ball who skated for the St. Louis Blues—was one of the best enforcers in the game. His job was not to score. It was to protect the players who did. High-stick, slash, board or manhandle a Blues skill player and Gasser would drop the gloves and answer the bell, over and over, until somebody turtled or a referee had the stones to break it up. He skated to the penalty box bloodied and sometimes missing his jersey, then flashed a trademark...

CalGuard is working with federal, state, and local agencies to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the state, and break up drug-trafficking networks as part of Newsom’s border security and public-safety plan. March...the task force seized 633 pounds of fentanyl and 268,679 fentanyl pills worth more than $5 million. During a recent narcotics task force operation in San Bernardino County, officials seized 188 pounds of fentanyl, 16.8 pounds of heroin and 4.4 lbs of cocaine, worth an estimated $1.5 million. The bust helped to “significantly disrupt” a major drug-trafficking network operating in Southern California, according to California Military Department...

President Trump has now survived three assassination attempts. The perps weren’t exactly members of Moms for Liberty. The liberal media like to portray violence as coming exclusively from the right. President Biden claimed that White supremacy was the greatest threat to America. What do Luigi Mangione (charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson), the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk, the man convicted of the 2012 attack on the Family Research Council, and the shooter at a practice session for the 2017 Congressional Baseball Game have in common? All are or were hard-core leftists. Most of the political violence...

[From Grok, after my prompts] Here is a simple, ready-to-use formula for your "Work Life Hours" metric, expressed directly in average taxpayer lifetimes: Taxpayer Lifetimes = (D × 1.104) / 2,960,000 Where: D = dollars funded to the project 1.104 = overall multiplier for government overhead/efficiency (IRS collection cost ≈ 0.36% + typical agency/program administrative overhead ≈ 8–10%) 2,960,000 = dollars of tax revenue that one average U.S. taxpayer generates over a full 40-year working lifetime (based on current data) Why this formula works. It first calculates the total taxes that must be collected to deliver D after overhead: D...

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The third attempt on Trump’s life confirms it: polite society is becoming violently intolerant.We now have an extraordinary situation where the university campus, once the great refiner of minds, seems to be indoctrinating the young with a fancy for violence. It seems that if you teach people that their self-esteem is the most sacred thing on Earth, and anyone who dents it deserves instant cancellation, then you will give rise to an army of the intolerant. That’s what we are witnessing, in the UK too: a style of politics that feels haughty, dogmatic and tinged with violence. From the...

Philanthropy among the world's wealthiest is under renewed scrutiny as donors debate what meaningful generosity looks like…difficulty comes from trying to ensure donations create real impact rather than good publicity, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said. "The biggest challenge I find with my foundation is trying to give money away in a way that is truly beneficial to people," Musk said on the "WTF is" podcast, hosted by Nikhil Kamath. He added that it is easy to give money away "to get the appearance of goodness" and much harder to reach "the reality of goodness." The Musk Foundation's philanthropy — roughly...

A fundraising email for California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter bearing a vulgar message aimed at President Trump has has been blasted for going out after a gunman targeted Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The email — with the subject line “(Explitive) Trump” — included statements the ex-congresswoman made at the California Democratic Party Convention in February, where she held up a sign bearing the vulgar two-word insult. “I’m Katie Porter. Some of you know me as the whiteboard lady who held CEOs and billionaires accountable in Congress,” read the email, which was sent by the progressive activist organization...

Two North Carolina legislators are leaving the Democratic Party to become unaffiliated after facing scrutiny for not sufficiently supporting the party’s agenda. State Reps. Carla Cunningham and Nasif Majeed, both of Mecklenburg County, announced in recent days that they are leaving the Democratic Party. Cunningham has served in the state House of Representatives for about 14 years and Majeed has served for eight years. Their moves come about a month after losing primary elections to Democratic challengers who attacked Cunningham and Majeed for occasionally voting with Republicans to override vetoes by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and, before him, by former...

The national wage floor is so low that it might as well not exist.Do you want to know the good news about the minimum wage? In most parts of the country, it is practically irrelevant. The last federal minimum wage increase went into effect on July 24, 2009, raising it from $6.55 an hour to $7.25. We have experienced nearly 50 percent inflation since then, yet the minimum wage has stayed the same. Even in 2009, only 4.9 percent of workers were actually paid $7.25 an hour, and that number has dropped to 1.1 percent today. This is good news:...

President Trump slammed the chancellor of Germany on Tuesday after Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by Iran. “The Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If Iran had a Nuclear Weapon, the whole World would be held hostage. I am doing something with Iran, right now, that other Nations, or Presidents, should have done long ago.” “No wonder Germany is doing so poorly, both Economically, and otherwise!” he wrote. Merz, speaking to students Monday in Germany, said...

The suspect in a deadly shooting that happened outside a Strongsville Costco on Saturday evening, April 25, faced a judge on Monday morning. Christian M. Bryant, 22, of Fort Worth, Texas, is facing an unclassified felony count of murder, accused of shooting an employee outside the store, according to Strongsville police.

President Donald Trump remains at the center of a developing national security investigation as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issues a critical statement regarding a recent attempt on the President's life. Kash Patel, a key ally and security strategist, has raised urgent questions about the intelligence community's failure to prevent the security breach. The FBI's briefing provides the first official confirmation of the suspect's background and the forensic evidence recovered from the site of the attack. As President Trump continues his official duties, the White House is facing increased pressure to review executive protection protocols. This Reuters-style report confirms...

As the number of women of childbearing age declines in Germany, birth rates are projected to continue falling. The German Family Association says family-unfriendly structural policies are to blame. Germany's birth rate fell to its lowest post-World War II level in 2025. According to preliminary figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), around 655,000 live births were recorded in 2025, compared to around 680,00 in 2024. Last year, the country recorded more than one million deaths. This brings the birth deficit to around 350,000, setting yet another record. Declining birth rates for the fourth year in Germany Last year marked...

King Charles has extolled the importance of Britain’s “special relationship” with the United States in a speech to US Congress that made pointed reference to the importance of Nato, the defence of Ukraine and the climate crisis. In a speech that will be read as a veiled plea to Donald Trump to return to the United States’ traditional European alliances and restore his country’s role as a defender of liberal values, Charles said: “America’s words carry weight and meaning, as they have since independence. The actions of this great nation matter even more.” Charles’s appearance before the joint session of...

When I look at the faces of those eight young Iranian women about to be hanged for the “crime” of wanting freedom I think of their grandmothers. Their very own grandmothers -- who enjoyed wide-ranging individual freedom and wore bikinis, miniskirts, and smoked cigarettes -- are sadly the root cause of their grandchildren’s demise. Decades ago, they welcomed the revolution with open arms. At its core, they are the reason it succeeded. And now, 47 years later their grandchildren are being slaughtered for wanting the same freedoms their grandmothers had, yet foolishly gave away. They are the reason women are...