Free Republic

$1 trillion. That's the approximate valuation that OpenAI is eyeing for its public debut, Reuters reported last October. SpaceX is targeting between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion in its IPO valuation, which would shatter the previous record set by Saudi Aramco's $29 billion offering in 2019. OpenAI's last private valuation was $852 billion thanks to a $122 billion funding round in March.

After Trump's Thursday announcement praising her border security work, including what Noem called the 'most secure border in American history' and $13 billion in taxpayer savings, online conservatives urged her to primary Thune in South Dakota's 2028 race. Critics label Thune disloyal with a 51% Liberty Score and past bipartisan moves, while figures like radio host Jeff Kuhner predict Noem would crush him thanks to her MAGA ties and home-state popularity. Noem has stayed silent on any Senate bid, and with Thune's $20 million war chest and strong approvals, the talk remains early speculation amid GOP tensions. This story is...

🇺🇸 Thomas A. Whitaker@WhitakerTA_·15h🚨 Do you understand what quietly happened in Kentucky tonight..Mitch McConnell spent 41 years building the most powerful Republican machine in the Senate..he blocked nominees.. killed legislation.. outlasted six presidents.. and bent the entire GOP caucus to his will for four decades..and the moment he stepped back..Trump walked in on May 1st.. endorsed Andy Barr.. offered the only real rival an ambassadorship.. and the rival dropped out the same week..> Cameron — the man who was supposed to carry McConnell's network forward — entered with a polling lead.. raised money.. had the name recognition.. had the Christian...

Hillsborough County Commissioners on Wednesday approved a nonbinding memorandum of understanding between the county and the baseball team for the Rays’ proposed $2.3 billion Tampa stadium. “Today is a monumental day,” said Commissioner Ken Hagan, who has supported bringing the team to Tampa for nearly two decades. “This is the closest we’ve ever come to finalizing a deal with the Rays.” Commissioners Joshua Wostal and Donna Cameron Cepeda, who voted against the memorandum, disagreed

Former Cuban President Raúl Castro has been indicted in connection to his alleged role in the 1996 downing of two planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. The indictment was unsealed on Wednesday. Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and other officials are expected to make the announcement in Miami.

The once Golden State has a jungle primary, meaning the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party. As in the 2024 Senate race, Democrat party leaders are determined to repeat their primary strategy to set up a general election between a Democrat and a Republican. In the 2024 senatorial primary, then-Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Katie Porter held the one-two spot for a long time. But the last thing Democrats wanted was for Schiff and Porter to win the jungle primary and advance to the general election, where the two Democrats would spend months and dollars...

A retrial jury has been discharged after it failed to reach verdicts in the case of two brothers accused of assaulting a police officer at Manchester Airport. Scenes of PC Zachary Marsden kicking a prone Asian man in the head in July 2024 sparked outrage, with protesters taking to the streets holding 'Black Lives Matter' placards and calling for the police to be 'defunded'. But there was a fierce backlash when leaked CCTV showed the violence to which PC Marsden and two female colleagues had been subjected just seconds earlier. To widespread public fury, it took 150 days for prosecutors...

There have been persistent rumors that industry insiders are bracing for a widespread shortage of motor oil. Are these rumors accurate? I decided that I was going to investigate this and discover the truth. Unfortunately, I have very bad news. Multiple sources within the industry are confirming that we are facing much higher prices and physical shortages of certain products if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened soon.I realize that what I have just shared is not welcome news, but it isn't going to do any good to stick our heads in the sand.According to Axios, supply chains for...

A Florida woman’s DUI arrest is going viral online after deputies said they found her sitting beside a crashed Hyundai near Streamsong Golf Resort surrounded by dozens of miniature alcohol bottles. According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to a single-vehicle crash on May 14 near the resort outside Bowling Green, Florida. When a deputy arrived, they found a red 2018 Hyundai sitting on a sidewalk with 34-year-old Erika Mayer of Palmetto seated nearby. The situation became even stranger after a witness told deputies they had watched the Hyundai being driven across portions of the golf course before...

"Patrick Byrne has just dropped more explosive allegations regarding America’s rigged elections on my TV show. He’s fighting back after Dominion Voting Systems (allegedly!) pushed to destroy key 2020 election discovery evidence."

Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who is already facing criticism over past Reddit posts, made graphic sexual comments on his now-deleted account about masturbating in portable toilets and explicit graffiti found in military restrooms. In one March 2017 post on Reddit’s r/Military forum, Platner responded to a discussion about nostalgic military smells by writing: "I still have to jerk off every time I sit in a portas----er… that blue water smell conditioned me." The archived posts were made under "P-Hustle," a now-deleted Reddit account that Platner previously acknowledged was his. In another post from March 2021 on Reddit’s r/USMC...

The mother of controversial transgender high school track athlete AB Hernandez publicly shared a post slamming California school officials for allowing biological female athletes to receive duplicate podium placements and medals at state track competitions. The post, from the trans active group Rainbow Families Action, included the letter from the California Interscholastic Federation allowing the change ahead of Hernandez’s domination of the long jump, high jump and triple jump at Saturday’s California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section championship final. ”All these big, tough ex-athletes at CIF, and the most courage they could muster was to hand this to coaches at AB’s...

As dawn breaks, hundreds of men gather at a dusty square in Chaghcharan, the capital of Ghor province in Afghanistan. They line the roadside with weary faces, hoping someone will come along offering any work. It will determine whether their families eat that day. The likelihood of success, however, is low. Juma Khan, 45, has found just three days of work in the past six weeks that paid between 150 to 200 Afghani ($2.35-$3.13; £1.76-£2.34) per day. "My children went to bed hungry three nights in a row. My wife was crying, so were my children. So I begged a...

This is what a buffoon sounds like. Thomas Massie was a cancer to the Republican Party. He is already being recruited by the Left to join the Democrat Party. The Woke Right is being purged from the Republican Party. While the Democrats continue to elect radical lunatics. After being defeated in the GOP primary, US House Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky tells supporters that he would’ve announced his concession sooner but he first called his opponent “and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.” He also claims in his concession speech that young voters are still...

LOUISVILLE, KY — Representative Thomas Massie has accused the Jewish population of rural Kentucky of being the cause of his primary defeat. After taking the stage to concede the race to Ed Gallrein, an angry Massie squarely laid the blame for his loss on the "dirty Zionists" of the tiny country towns that dot the Ohio River valley. "I couldn't reach Gallrein to concede. He was probably lost with his supporters in yet another small-town Kentucky synagogue," declared Massie. "Yes, the deck was stacked against me by the Hebrew population of rural Kentucky. We ran a great campaign, I'm really...

California’s aggressive push for a $20 fast-food minimum wage was sold as a moral victory for workers, a bold stand against corporate greed that would lift families without consequence. Yet the reality unfolding at Carl’s Jr. locations across the state tells a different story—one of shuttered opportunities, fleeing staff, and franchise operators driven to bankruptcy. What began as political virtue-signaling has delivered economic pain that no amount of union rhetoric can disguise. Friendly Franchisees Corporation, a major operator running dozens of Carl’s Jr. restaurants, filed for Chapter 11 protection last month, citing the wage mandate as a primary driver of...

Five-term Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb won the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District on Tuesday. Rabb secured the Democratic nomination for the seat held by retiring Rep. Dwight Evans after securing 44.3% of the vote, according to projections from NBC News. The Pennsylvania state lawmaker’s primary victory comes after he unveiled “parody legislation” in October 2021 to “require all inseminators to undergo vasectomies within six weeks from having their third child or 40th birthday, whichever comes first.” “As long as state legislatures continue to restrict the reproductive rights of cis women, trans men and non-binary people, there should...

We Could, We Should, We MustOn Insects As a Delivery System, and “Beneficial Bloodsucking.”A few summers ago I gave consideration to moving to Florida or Texas. This was 2021 when it felt like there was a collective madness in my hometown of New York City. If you remember that moment, you remember the destinations where people like me were fleeing. I was looking into places like Florida and Texas. The so-called free states, the escape hatches (not my framing but more of a public consciousness in a particular demographic that I had seemed to become a part of). I compiled...

@tetsuoai Henry Nowak was 18 years old. A first year accountancy and finance student at the University of Southampton, walking home from a night out with his football team on December 3rd, 2025. On Belmont Road he was met by a 23 year old named Vickrum Digwa, carrying a 21cm ceremonial blade across his chest. Digwa stabbed him four times. One wound went eight centimeters into his lung. Henry climbed over a fence trying to escape. There was already a blood trail on the street behind him. When police arrived, Digwa told them he had been racially abused. Henry told...

Reason number 999,999,999 why migration is a bad idea. You can’t expect everybody to understand or cater to your religion or your customs. And what happened on a deportation flight from Ireland to Pakistan is a perfect example of that kind of cultural miscommunication. Several Muslim migrants, described as “high risk,” were being removed from the country after previous offenses and bad behavior. During the flight, they were served a full Irish breakfast, which included pork sausage. Irish Times: Catering on deportation flights was changed after pork sausages were included as part of an Irish breakfast served on a forced...