Free Republic

For decades, politicians in Washington have paid lip service to “fiscal responsibility” as they practice fiscal irresponsibility on a scale unprecedented in American history. The national debt of the United States has now climbed beyond $35 trillion, a number so large that it has ceased to register emotionally with most citizens. Yet numbers do not lose their consequences simply because they become difficult to imagine. A trillion dollars is a thousand billion dollars. Thirty-five trillion dollars represents obligations so enormous that future generations may spend much of their lives paying for promises made long before they were old enough to...

*** Key administration officials are pushing the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to design a $250 banknote with Trump’s image, the Washington Post reported. Should the Treasury Department move ahead with the plan, it would mark the first time a living person’s face was slapped on a greenback since 1866. The $250 note would be a nod to America’s 250th birthday*** Under the Thayer Amendment, which passed in 1866, it is illegal to put the likeness of a living person on official US currency, bonds, or other financial notes. Nonetheless, US Treasurer Brandon Beach and his top adviser,...

@TRobinsonNewEra If this is true, there needs to be a full and open investigation into this. Release the bodycam footage. Justice for Henry Nowak! *** Warning: Strong language in video ***

Paxton has trailed Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in fundraising, and some Republicans say the party will have to spend millions to win the Senate race.President Donald Trump may be celebrating that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won Tuesday’s Senate primary, but some Republicans now worry that they have a Texas-sized problem on their hands. Paxton, with Trump’s endorsement, handily defeated four-term Sen. John Cornyn in the runoff. Democrats largely viewed Paxton as the weaker candidate because of his many controversies. But his fundraising struggles are also raising alarm bells among Republicans. “Economically, it’s a disaster. Texas is extremely expensive,”...

Graham Platner is looking toward the general election in Maine’s Senate race. He’s the presumptive Democratic nominee to face incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins. The Democrats believe they've found their candidate, an oyster farmer with Nazi tattoos who has a habit of masturbating in porta-potties and trolling on Reddit. It’s bad, and reportedly, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Platner posted about how PTSD is a “bullshit” excuse for bad behavior, while telling another veteran who was shot multiple times that he didn’t deserve to live. That is something we should revisit, since in 2020, The Atlantic, which is...

The Wisconsin Democrats are gearing up for a messy primary, as several of them fight to be the nominee in the state's upcoming governor's race. While Francesca Hong is the frontrunner, it seems the Democrats aren't too keen on her radical 'defund the police' agenda and may be trying to torpedo her candidacy. One of her opponents, former Lt. Governor and failed Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, isn't counting himself out of the race yet. In fact, he's trying to tout his accomplishments to stand out from the other Democrats. Unfortunately for Barnes, those accomplishments are few and far between. Like...

Michelle Montez, a flight attendant for 20 years, said barely a flight goes by where someone doesn’t poke, tap, prod or otherwise touch her. “It’s almost a rare occurrence when it doesn’t happen,” she said. In a video clip from the “Jumpseat Chronicles Podcast,” which she co-hosts with colleagues Joshua Boyd and Darion Foy, the trio said they have heard the complaint from multiple people in the industry and experienced it themselves: getting poked in the arm, the side, the rear end. Many consider it a violation, even if passengers aren’t acting maliciously. “You can talk to any flight attendant...

A crazed knifeman shouted “Allahu Akbar” and stabbed three men in front of schoolchildren at a Swiss train station Thursday morning – and authorities labeled the attacker’s rampage a “heinous act of terrorism.” The madman, a 31-year-old Turkish-Swiss citizen, stabbed three men with a “bladed weapon” just after 8:30 a.m. at the Winterthur train station outside Zurich, the Zurich Cantonal Police said. One witness told local outlet Blick that the man shouted “Allahu Akbar five or six times in a very emotional and agitated manner” and three men, age 28, 43, and 52, were injured in the rampage. SNIP

Gov. Kathy Hochul tried to dunk on President Trump over his New York Knicks fandom — but ended up throwing up a brick instead. The Democratic governor inadvertently showed she wasn’t exactly bleeding orange and blue when she misstated the team’s most recent championship in an embarrassing self-own when a reporter asked her what she thought of the GOP leader saying he was a lifelong Knicks fan.ages “I’d ask him to name the starting lineup from the 1993 championship team and see how he does,” Hochul said at an unrelated press conference in the Big Apple. The Knicks last won...

When asked what the worst thing is about Republicans, the most common response among Americans is President Donald Trump or loyalty to him, while the most common response about Democrats is that they are weak and don’t stand up against Trump or for what’s right, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel conducted April 24 through 28. In the poll, Americans were asked what they disliked most about both the Democratic and Republican parties in an open-ended question. For each party, only one single response broke double-digits: 10% of Americans said that the worst thing about...

Daily Readings from the USCCBAs Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging. On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.” And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he kept calling out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me.” Mark 10:46–48Though the Torah commanded kindness and justice toward the blind, they were often treated poorly by the wider community. Unable to work or...

@HantsPolice Today, a man has been convicted of the murder of student Henry Nowak in Southampton. Throughout the trial, we have not discussed this case publicly to ensure that justice could be done but now we can share a message from DCC Robert France.

A state worker union hopes to use a California environmental law notorious for obstructing the construction of new homes to block a very different kind of project: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s impending return-to-office order. On Wednesday, the union representing state attorneys and administrative law judges sent “exhaustion” letters to over 100 state departments, arguing that the return-to-office order will require more than 90,000 state workers to commute four days a week, which will negatively impact California’s environment.

The Trump administration has quietly instructed federal prosecutors in Miami to avoid pursuing criminal investigations into Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez, a longtime target of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to current and former U.S. law enforcement officials, in the latest sign of warming relations between the White House and the oil-rich nation. It’s unclear whether prosecutors had implicated Rodríguez in any crimes or whether investigators were moving toward an indictment. A Justice Department spokesperson said in an email “there was never an investigation into her to shut down.” But DEA records obtained by The Associated Press earlier this...

"Crims found the soft spot in the company's security. MyPillow, the US-based bedding brand founded by election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, has been listed by Play ransomware extortionists as an alleged victim. The pillow shop first appeared on Play’s name-and-shame data leak site on Monday, with the gang threatening to leak stolen data by Friday if MyPillow execs don’t pay the ransom demand. While the extortionists didn’t specify how many gigabytes of data they allegedly stole from MyPillow, they claim it includes “private and personal confidential data, client documents, budget, payroll, IDs, taxes, finance information” and more, according to the...

Israel Gershoni's Colonial Propaganda Masquerading as "Evidence."More on the push by Achcar (who, outrageously, compared genocidal Palestinian Oct 7 onslaught to the 1943 Warsaw Uprising) and Gershoni attempts to downplay widespread Nazi sympathies in Arab Palestine.Gershoni’s use of Arabic newspapers from the Second World War period as reliable evidence is methodologically worthless. These newspapers, during the WWII, did not operate under conditions of press freedom, but under a strict British wartime censorship regime that monitored, edited, suppressed, and directed political reporting in Mandatory Palestine. As British records show, and as laid out by Mustafa Kabha and David Sharfman, the wartime...

Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico said he believes state laws have stacked the deck against him as he looks to become the first Democrat to win statewide office since 1994. "Means you’re probably going to have to win by a little more than we would have to in a completely free and fair election," Talarico said in a recent podcast interview. Talarico’s posture towards Texas voting laws reflects a broader Democratic belief that Republican dominance in the Lone Star State is due to low turnout brought on by election security measures rather than the state’s conservative leanings — a...

Thune spoke directly with Paxton following Tuesday's runoff victory, marking the first reported contact between the two men since the bitter primary contest ended. A person familiar with the conversation described the call as PRODUCTIVE. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told reporters she was "supremely disappointed" by Trump's endorsement of Paxton over Cornyn.

From YouTube: Universal Pictures is proud to release a new original event film created and directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars SAG winner and Oscar® nominee Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer, A Quiet Place), Emmy and Golden Globe winner Josh O’Connor (Challengers, The Crown), Oscar® winner Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, Kingsman franchise), Eve Hewson (Bad Sisters, The Perfect Couple) and two-time Oscar® nominee Colman Domingo (Sing Sing, Rustin). Based on a story by Spielberg, the screenplay is by David Koepp, whose previous work with Spielberg includes the scripts for Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds...

As part of its effort to downsize the federal workforce in February 2025, the Trump administration conducted a mass firing of thousands of agency employees in their probationary periods, which generally last for the first year after a worker has been hired by or promoted within the government. Such staffers have weaker civil service job protections. In September 2025, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that the removals were unlawful. He didn’t order agencies to reinstate affected employees, however, due to an earlier Supreme Court decision and because, as he put it, “The terminated probationary employees have moved on with...