Free Republic

President Donald Trump has said he will give the European Union until July 4 to ratify its trade agreement with the U.S., threatening to raise tariffs to “much higher” levels if the 27-nation bloc fails to do so. In a post on Truth Social late Thursday, Trump issued a new trade deadline during a “great call” with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, one in which he said both leaders agreed Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon. The conversation took place shortly after the U.S. president pledged to raise tariffs on cars and trucks imported from the EU...

Time to deploy it against the lawfare, election illegality, and other nationwide conspiracies that have targeted President Trump and his supporters in their efforts to Make American Great Again. Dr. Eastman, himself a target of lawfare since his representation of President Trump challenging illegality in the 2020 election, is a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute and a former, long-time professor of constitutional law.The Racketeer Influences and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as “RICO,” was passed by Congress in 1970, part of that year’s Organized Crime Control Act. It was designed to reach not just the foot soldiers of organized...

President Donald Trump said Thursday that retaliatory strikes against Iranian targets were “just a love tap." The strikes came as U.S. Central Command said Iranian forces “launched multiple missiles, drones and small boats” while the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers USS Truxtun, USS Rafael Peralta and USS Mason were transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections. The court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court said in its opinion. Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn U.S....

WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — City officials have released body camera footage showing last year’s arrest of Victoria Lang from a McDonald’s in Wichita Falls, Texas. Former police officer Daniel Wilson has been indicted in connection with the case. On August 26, 2025, former Wichita Falls Police officers Wilson and Douglas Gulley were called to the McDonald’s in response to a person refusing to leave the restroom. At the scene, Wilson and Gulley found Victoria Lang, 21, in the bathroom. She refused to identify herself or provide identification to the officers. The footage shows Wilson and Gulley carrying Lang out of...

LONDON — Early results Friday from nationwide elections in Britain suggested a historic drubbing for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party and sweeping gains for hard-right Reform U.K., led by Trump ally Nigel Farage. Though many results were still coming in Friday morning, the overall picture will heap pressure on Starmer, an unpopular leader beset by speculation his colleagues may move against him. “The results are tough, they are very tough, and there’s no sugarcoating it,” Starmer said Friday. But he dismissed calls for him to stand down.

One of the most significant challenges for any spacecraft is reentering Earth's atmosphere safely. The Space Rider spacecraft is no different, but recent tests have marked considerable progress. ESA engineers subjected the spacecraft's thermal protection system to extreme conditions, simulating the intense heat of atmospheric reentry. Using the largest plasma wind tunnel in the world at the Italian Aerospace Research Centre (CIRA), ESA exposed the spacecraft's components to temperatures reaching up to 2,900°F (1,600°C). This crucial test ensures that Space Rider can survive the fiery descent back to Earth.The thermal protection system also underwent tests to simulate how it would...

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) -- Montgomery County authorities are crediting the advancements in DNA technology for helping solve the haunting case of Deanna Ogg, a 16-year-old girl who was found sexually assaulted and murdered in a wooded area near Old Houston Road in 1986. The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office confirmed that 60-year-old Bobby Taylor Sr. was arrested and charged with capital murder and is being held at Montgomery County Jail. In a press conference on Wednesday, authorities said Taylor Sr. had been identified as the suspect in the case after detectives began re-examining evidence. Through that investigation, a DNA lab...

Nestled in the countryside just outside Bellville, Texas... Newman's Castle is a delightfully eccentric experience and completely unlike anything else in the Lone Star State.Having lived in Italy and Spain in his early 20s, Mike Newman was heavily inspired by European castles, and in 1998, he began constructing a castle of his own, making it his home in 2007.What started as a personal passion project eventually became a public attraction.Over the years, Newman transformed the property into a fantasy-like fortress using traditional medieval architectural concepts. It features a working drawbridge, a moat that allegedly has alligators, towers, a banquet hall,...

When the scale of the Medicaid fraud in Minnesota started to emerge, our first thought was that, if it’s that easy to rip off Medicaid, the North Star State can’t be the only place where it’s happening. Turns out we were right, as the Daily Wire’s exposé of massive fraud schemes in Ohio makes clear. Which means there are almost certainly still more to be uncovered. Which leads to the question of why we are learning about this only now. Daily Wire is releasing a five-part series that alleges massive fraud in an Ohio Medicaid program – a state that...

US employers added 115,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3%, a surprisingly robust gain to the labor market as the US-Israel war with Iran continued to drive up economic uncertainty. Economists projected about 55,000 new jobs and a 4.3% unemployment rate. A day earlier, the labor department announced 200,000 people filed for weekly unemployment benefits, a slight increase from the week before. Jobs gains were concentrated in healthcare, transportation and warehousing, retail and social assistance. Altogether, 106,000 new jobs were added to those four industries. Meanwhile, job losses were seen in federal government employment –...

For more than a decade, Guy Shoemaker pitched military service to potential new recruits with one key promise: healthcare for life. “You’re going to have medical and dental for the rest of your life,” said Shoemaker, a retired Army sergeant first class and recruiter who spent a year in Afghanistan. “I used that phrase too many times.” That promise held up when Shoemaker, 64, of Fort Worth, Texas, was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2021. TRICARE — the military’s healthcare program for active service members, retirees and their families — covered the chemotherapy, radiation and years of follow-up care that...

And now time for some good news. The ruling Labour Party in the United Kingdom got absolutely destroyed in Thursday's local council elections. While the votes are still being tallied, they could see a net loss of over 1,500 seats. In short, it was bad for Prime Minister Keir Starmer and company. Really, really bad. Keep in mind, the first post is of declared seats (as of this writing) while the second post is a projection of where things will end up when all the votes are counted. ============================================================== GB Politics @GBPolitcs 🚨NEW: State of the Parties at 2PM: Seats...

A prose tract or polemic by John Milton, published November 23, 1644, at the height of the English Civil War... Milton, though a supporter of the Parliament, argued forcefully against the Licensing Order of 1643, noting that such censorship had never been a part of classical Greek and Roman society. The tract is full of biblical and classical references which Milton uses to strengthen his argument. The issue was personal for Milton as he had suffered censorship himself in his efforts to publish several tracts defending divorce (a radical stance at the time and one which met with no favor...

Today, the Department of War announced the initial release of new, never-before-seen files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). This interagency effort includes The White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Department of Energy (DOE), the DOW's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and additional components of U.S. intelligence agencies. The collection will be housed on WAR.GOV/UFO and additional files will be released by the Department of War on a rolling basis....

Manned Circumnavigation of the Inner Solar System Posted on April 27, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen In 1969, a Bellcomm engineer named A. A. VanderVeen published a paper describing a family of trajectories so elegant they seem almost accidental. Fifty-five years later, the most attractive instance of that trajectory family departs Earth in August 2034. This post is about what it would mean to fly it. Back in February 2009, I opened a thread on the NASASpaceFlight.com forum with what I thought was a simple thought experiment: what interplanetary mission might be within reach of an extremely wealthy private individual —...

The Obamacare marketplace is reportedly facing significant upheaval following the expiration of enhanced federal subsidies. Cigna announced in late April that it will leave the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges in 2027, which could further shake up the individual marketplace. CVS’ Aetna ceased offering plans and overall enrollment has declined since Congress refused to renew ACA subsidies, The Hill reported. “Medical insurance has become unbearably expensive, and this is even before a single service is used,” Jeffrey Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “For many people this truly makes no [sense].” “Crowdsourced...

Requiring the disclosure of fiscal sponsorships is key. On April 23, the US Treasury Department announced that the IRS plans to revise Form 990—the annual information return filed by tax-exempt organizations—to improve transparency and strengthen oversight, specifically targeting reporting on government contracts, government grants, and fiscal sponsorship arrangements. The stated goals are to detect misconduct and hold wrongdoers accountable. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put the matter bluntly: “We are ending the days of hiding fraud, abuse, and extremist activity behind complicated nonprofit arrangements. When bad actors misuse charitable structures, directors and officers should understand that transparency can lead to scrutiny,...

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes. It's also the home of imbeciles Tim Walz, Amy Klobuchar, Tina Smith and Jacob Frey. It's also home to the largest collection of grifters in the country- the Somali community. It's also home to disturbingly corrupt DA's and judges. And it's home to a very large criminal organization, known the Minnesota democrat party. In Hennepin country DA Mary Moriarity could not find any meaningful charges to bring against the Ostroushko family for its brutal attack on Savanah Hernandez. Ramsey county DA John Choi filed hate crime charges with possibly 5 years in prison...

A retired Baptist pastor was convicted Thursday of preaching near an abortion center, in an egregious case of violation of free speech rights. The pastor was convicted of breaching a so-called buffer zone outside an abortion clinic after he led a small open-air Sunday service preaching the Gospel near a Northern Ireland hospital that kills babies in abortions. Clive Johnston, 77, was found guilty in Coleraine Magistrates’ Court of violating Northern Ireland’s Safe Access Zones law and of failing to leave the area when directed by police. District Judge Peter King imposed a £450 fine. The conviction stems from a...