Free Republic

Military officials indicate Gaza City airstrike eliminated terror group’s chief; former hostages hail reports of death of the man responsible for their abduction and captivity.Israel said that it had targeted Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip and the head of the terror group’s military wing, in an airstrike in Gaza City on Friday. While there was no immediate confirmation that he was killed, news of the strike prompted a joyous response from several of the hostages he had personally held and many hailed the apparent death of the last of the major architects of the...

Less than two years after Labour won a landslide majority, Sir Keir Starmer’s prime ministership is on the brink. Sir Keir’s flip-flopping has made him deeply unpopular and caused his party to sink in the polls. A battering in the local elections on May 7th has been the final straw for many of his party colleagues. Nearly 100 of Labour’s 403 MPs have called for the prime minister to stand aside and he has received five resignation letters from ministers, including Wes Streeting, the former health secretary. Sir Keir has vowed to fight on. But a leadership contest—which would be...

Last December, a Georgia woman sustained severe burns to her face, neck, and scalp after a stranger emerged from the bushes at a Forsyth park and doused her in acid. According to law enforcement, a black male approached the victim, Ashley Wasielewski, while she was walking around Forsyth Park and hurled acid at her. The suspect, who is still at large, approached the victim from behind and poured the liquid chemical on her. Wasielewski suffered third-degree burns and received treatment at Memorial Hospital in Augusta. According to police, the attacker was not known to the victim. “I walk around this...

A large Coca-Cola bottling plant in Southern California will shut down permanently this summer, ending a longstanding relationship between the company and the city. Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling made the announcement in a May 8 WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice – a legally required 60-day "heads-up" that employers must give to workers before a major layoff or office closure. "We regularly assess our locations, products, and services to ensure we can continue driving sustainable growth and innovation across our business," a spokesperson for Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling wrote to SFGATE. "As such, we have announced the closure of our Ventura...

nside the gilded clubhouse of Mar-a-Lago, there is a scatter of Donald Trump iconography that blurs the line between myth and memorabilia. A gold statuette depicts the President with fists raised in triumph, evoking his defiant pose after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pa. Nearby stands a hulking “Lifetime Achievement” trophy designating him as “The Greatest Historical President of All Time,” bestowed by the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences. A painting titled The Visionary casts Trump as a sunlit Adonis in tennis whites. On a recent afternoon, I’m waiting in this wood-paneled room, known as the Library Bar, when a...

Colorado's Dem Governor Polis commutes ex-election clerk Tina Peters' sentence after Trump pressure Peters issued a statement through her attorney thanking Polis and apologizing. “Five years ago I misled the Secretary of State when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong,” Peters said. “I have learned and grown during my time in prison and going forward I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I will avoid the mistakes of the past.”

"Reason I'm Gone" from the Walter Trout DVD Documentary of the recording of Relentless in concert at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, NL. With almost 20 tracks and special footage, this DVD is a must have for any guitar lover and fan of Walter Trout. This is a 10 min sample of this wonderful 165 minute full-length and high quality DVD. At the link

Colin Jost and Travis Kelce bonded over their high-profile relationships with Scarlett Johansson and Taylor Swift, respectively. The SNL star shared he is more "approachable" than his wife, who people fan over constantly. "I'm probably approached more because she's less approachable... Because I'm on TV ... I'm in their living room, so they're just like, 'Hey what's up man, how's it going?'" "She's actually almost so famous that they don't believe it a lot of times," he said of passersby. "We've been traveling and we've been standing at the passport check and the person's looking at her passport and he'll...

If you paid me to ruin a movie, I still couldn’t have done it this masterfully

NYP Reporter: Prior to boarding Air Force One to depart Beijing, the entire U.S. delegation disposed of every item provided to them by their Chinese hosts. Gifts, badges, pins, and commemorative items were all dumped into a trash bin on site. The directive was absolute, no item of Chinese origin was permitted to board the aircraft. The precautions extended beyond the departure itself. Delegation members had left all personal electronic devices at home before traveling to China and operated exclusively on clean burner phones throughout the duration of the trip.

After Mike Lee defeated Bob Bennett in Utah in 2010 and then Richard Lugar was defeated in 2012, Mitch McConnell was pissed. He thereafter ensured that EVERY Republican incumbent, no matter how awful, was to be protected from removal by fellow Republican. McConnell and the NRSC would choose which Republicans sat in the Senate, not the infernal people. Republican senators could either leave the Senate on their own, or be defeated by a Democrat. Those were the ONLY two options. For fourteen years, in cycle after cycle, not a single Republican incumbent has been defeated in a primary. This month...

President Trump downplayed the effect redistricting will have on the midterm elections and said the outcome of the Iran war will be a bigger factor. “It helps. I mean, I don’t know [if it will be the] difference,” Trump said of how new congressional districts in several states will impact Republicans in November. “I think a bigger difference would be if I win quickly [in Iran], as opposed to after [the elections], but again, I’m not going to let the election determine what’s going to happen with respect to Iran, because they cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he told Fox...

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is facing a surprisingly intense and serious primary threat from challenger Spencer Pratt this election cycle, with Pratt focusing on the wildfires that destroyed much of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood and using the general anger of Los Angelenos about the disastrous mismanagement of their city against the mayor. As part of that well-executed and high-energy campaign, he has been releasing very funny ads that feature the use of artificial intelligence to generate entertaining scenes that call out the mayor for her terrible policies and their even worse effects. Such is about what Mayor Bass freaked...

Eric Trump announced Friday that he will be suing MS Now’s Jen Psaki and the network for allegations she made that he accompanied his father, President Donald Trump, to China to further his own business interests. In a segment that aired this week after Eric Trump arrived in China, Psaki said that he is on the board of a company called ALT5 Sigma. “Today, while Eric is in China with his dad, the Financial Times is reporting that this company has a memorandum of understanding to explore a potential deal with a Chinese chip manufacturer [Nano Labs] to build AI...

During his Thursday evening interview with Sean Hannity, President Donald Trump admitted that the U.S. went to war with Iran for Israel, as well as for the Gulf state allies.“We’re doing it to help Israel, and to help Saudi Arabia, and to help Qatar and UAE, and you know, Kuwait, and other countries, Bahrain,” Trump said.TRUMP ADMITS WAR ON IRAN IS NOT FOR AMERICA "We're doing it to help Israel—and to help Saudi Arabia, and to help Qatar and UAE, and you know, Kuwait, and other countries, Bahrain." pic.twitter.com/oMQtGUxQUq— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) May 15, 2026The State Department has already confirmed...

n a move that's left progressive D.C. absolutely reeling, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro just announced that if your little angel is out running wild in one of those charming "teen takeover" thingies that have been terrorizing our nation's capital, you - yes, you, the parent - are going to face consequences. VIDEO AT LINK........ Parents, do your job. Or we will do ours. As Pirro says, taxpayers shouldn't have to keep footing the bill for what she calls "parental neglect." Breathe it in, folks, this is what sanity smells like! For those of you unaware,...

Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, already embroiled in a row with Donald Trump over the Iran war, has said he would not advise his children to study or work in the US in the current climate. Speaking to a conference of young Catholics in Würzburg, the conservative leader, viewed by many as a transatlanticist, said he no longer saw the US as the land of opportunity. “I am a great admirer of America. At the moment my admiration is not growing,” he said during a podium discussion, citing the quickly changing “social climate” in the deeply polarised country. “I would...

The US Supreme Court on Friday denied Virginia Democrats' bid to restore the illegally gerrymandered congressional map. Chief Justice Roberts deferred the case to the full court. The high court, in an unsigned order, denied the application for a stay and kept the current map in place. "The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is denied," the Supreme Court said in its response. Last month, the Virginia Supreme Court denied a request from the Democrat Attorney General to pause a lower court order blocking the gerrymander referendum. Virginia voters previously passed...

Despite Eurovision’s insistence it is apolitical, politics has always been part of the continent-wide song contest, as much a feature as whatever constellation of pyrotechnics and power ballads are on display that year. But where, previously, politics was somewhat of a punchline, a useful indicator for cynical fans to guess which country might award points to another, this year it is threatening to overshadow the entire contest. Five countries – Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Iceland – are boycotting this year’s event over Israel’s continued participation in it, marking the biggest crisis in the contest’s 70-year history.

New York City and Chicago voters made the most injudicious decisions possible electing Zohran Mamdani and Brandon Johnson to be their mayors. Both democratic socialists are inept yet destructive, unserious yet dangerous, demagogues who spew venom and traffic in incendiary divisive rhetoric. Their deranged policies will bankrupt their cities, financially, morally and culturally. Will Los Angeles voters do the same? Actually, they already have. The question is, will they repeat their mistake and reelect Karen Bass? The current mayor is a Fidelista and a member of the Venceremos Brigade, a Cuban “enterprise that had a goal of encouraging the health...