Free Republic

A ban on certain contracts between hospital systems and health insurers could save Americans around $45 billion, according to a report from White House analysts released on June 18. “The Council of Economic Advisers’ findings reinforce that the Trump administration is delivering meaningful cost reductions for American patients,” White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster told The Epoch Times by email June 19, noting the president’s surgical approach to policy development that prioritizes fiscal discipline. “By harnessing the use of free-market competition, President Trump has found a real solution to lowering costs instead of blindly throwing more taxpayer money at the problem.”...

Clandestine@WarClandestine HOLY [redacted for FR]The new Syrian regime has been working with the IAEA, and they found uranium samples at clandestine nuclear facilities in Syria?! WHAT?!The IAEA found natural uranium, with signs of chemical processing, indicating that processed uranium derived from yellowcake was handled at these facilities. Samples were taken in June 2025, and the origin of the material has not yet been disclosed.The facilities are supposedly linked to North Korean assistance, and Syria has been a proxy of Iran until the Assad regime fell in 2024. The new regime under Al-Sharaa has been cooperating with Trump and the IAEA.Trump...

The bar for entry-level homeownership has never been higher. While the typical starter home nationwide is worth $198,649, a record 242 cities now have starter homes valued at $1 million or more, A record 242 US cities now have starter homes that cost $1 million, according to Zillow A typical “starter home” is defined for this analysis as a home in the lowest third of home values in a given region. The count of cities with million-dollar starter homes has grown from 226 cities a year ago, even as affordability pressures have begun to ease in parts of the country....

🚨 BREAKING: This is the enhanced security camera footage that captured, from a distance, the final moments leading up to the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf by Karmelo Anthony. Presented during trial, prosecutors used the footage to highlight Anthony’s movements immediately after the stabbing and as he departed the area prior to being taken into custody. This marks the first time the video has been made available to the public. Due to the camera’s distance and angle, the footage does not clearly show the physical interaction itself. However, it does appear to capture a brief exchange of movement beneath the...

The Cyprus Mail reports that an ancient ceramic vessel has been reclaimed from an online auction and returned to Cyprus after a year-long investigation. Cypriot officials who monitor online activity determined that the vase was in the hands of a collector in Canada, who eventually agreed to repatriate it. Researchers from Cyprus' Department of Antiquities determined that the engraved, black-polished hemispherical bowl dates to about 1900 B.C. For more on the archaeology of Cyprus, go to "In the Time of the Copper Kings."

Via NBC, we're about to see a whole lot more of outer space than we've ever witnessed before: After nearly two decades of development, $4.3 billion and the labor of hundreds of scientists and engineers, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is less than three months from launch. From a point roughly 1 million miles from Earth, the telescope is expected to survey the cosmos, capturing panoramas of hundreds of millions of stars and billions of galaxies. With this observatory, NASA hopes to unravel the secrets of dark matter and dark energy and discover thousands of planets beyond our solar...

Haaretz reports that two 1,700-year-old marble busts have been discovered in a wine-collection pit at a winepress dated to the Roman and Byzantine periods in northern Israel. One of the busts is inscribed in Greek with the name "Lycurgus," perhaps referring to the legendary founder of Sparta, or a statesman and orator who lived in Athens in the fourth century B.C. Archaeologists Eliran Oren and Michael Solotskin of the Israel Antiquities Authority said that sculptures may have been buried in the pit to hide them during an invasion. "In the Roman period, statues of this kind were displayed both in...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) chided Jerry Seinfeld for rejecting repeated demands that he say "Free Palestine" in the post-game celebration of the New York Knicks winning the NBA championship. Instead, he said "Palestine doesn't exist." "Anyone who won't support a free Palestine is a horrific human being," the Congresswoman asserted. "As a Jew, Seinfield should be especially sympathetic to others who are being subjected to the same kind of treatment the Jews endured during the Holocaust." Seinfeld defended himself, saying "the people that Ms. Omar is purporting to champion are not being sent to death camps for extermination by Nazis....

To all my fellow Freepers. My wife and I are considering a nice vacation next spring probably in April of 2027. My daughter had told us about an all inclusive vacation to Riu Palace Kukulkan. We were pretty excited about this and were planning on this for next year. My brother-in-law is into security and intelligence. He absolutely positively poopoo-ed on that idea. Has extreme concerns about safety in Mexico. What are your feelings about traveling outside of the US? Has anybody had experience at this resort or other resorts which would be all inclusive and not terribly expensive. Also,...

Students For Liberty@sflibertyIn July 1985, over a billion people watched Live Aid.Months earlier, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie had written "We Are the World." All of it was a response to a famine in Ethiopia.Almost nobody remembers who actually caused the famine. 🧵Students For Liberty@sfliberty·18hWhat the world saw: on October 23, 1984, the BBC aired a report by correspondent Michael Buerk with footage filmed in the Korem refugee camp by Kenyan photographer Mohamed Amin.Within weeks, 425 television stations had rebroadcast those images of starving children to roughly 470 million viewers worldwide.Students For Liberty@sfliberty·18hThe crisis was framed almost entirely as a...

Italy's Giorgia Meloni has again hit back at US President Donald Trump on social media after he questioned her political popularity and repeated his claim that she asked "over and over" for a photo together. Trump said on Saturday that the prime minister was "doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity". He also accused her of not supporting US efforts to prevent Iran "from obtaining or developing a nuclear weapon". In a statement on Instagram, Meloni said Trump's "constant, unprovoked attacks" were "senseless". "As for my popularity, being your friend has certainly not helped it, nor does it...

SpaceX may have just dropped its biggest hint yet about what comes after Starship Flight 13. Indeed, FINALLY! Starship's Next Giant Leap may be here as the new filings point toward an Orbital Return Demo that could mark the next major milestone on the road to full reusability. With that work continues at Starbase on Pads 1 and 2, the Gigabay, and future launch infrastructure. Elsewhere this week, we cover Falcon 9 launches carrying BlueBird satellites, Starlink, and another classified NRO mission, Cargo Dragon’s return from the International Space Station, Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander preparing for launch, Ariane 6’s impressive...

Tony Seruga @TonySeruga 1/6 The Pulte-Gabbard Offensive: A Structural BreakdownI've identified the precise fulcrum point here, and it's worth unpacking why this combination of players and information creates genuine leverage.Tony Seruga@TonySeruga·22h2/6🎯 Why Pulte Scares the MachineBill Pulte isn't just another wealthy Trump ally. He's the grandson of the guy who literally built the modern American home — and he's taken a very different path with his capital.- Philanthropy as intelligence gathering: Pulte's Twitter philanthropy operation (dubbed "Pulte Philanthropy") put him in direct contact with tens of thousands of ordinary Americans. That's not charity — that's a distributed intelligence network. He...

20 June 2026 Saturday of week 11 in Ordinary Time Church of the Irish Martyrs, Ballycane, Ireland Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green. Year: A(II).First reading2 Chronicles 24:17-25'You have deserted the Lord: now he deserts you'After the death of Jehoiada, the officials of Judah came to pay court to the king, and the king now turned to them for advice. The Judaeans abandoned the Temple of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, for the worship of sacred poles and idols. Because of their guilt, God’s anger fell on Judah and Jerusalem. He sent them prophets to bring them back to...

Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said in a statement posted Saturday on Telegram that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed to vessel traffic, accusing the United States of violating the recently negotiated memorandum of understanding intended to end the U.S.-Iran war and restore maritime access through the strategic waterway. The statement, which was also circulated by Iran's Tasnim News Agency Telegram channel, said the move was a response to what it described as America's "bad faith and blatant breach" of the agreement as well as continued Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon."From this moment," the statement said, "the Strait...

Lander, who is running as a progressive with support of Mayor Mamdani, is running away with the contest with just over a month to go before the June 23 primary. If Lander wins by anything close to the more than 2-1 margin in the survey it would represent a huge political victory for Mamdani. Goldman refused to back Mamdani even after he won the Democratic primary.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations and its Texas chapter have filed a federal lawsuit against Fort Worth ISD on behalf of Shayma Alzubi, the former incoming principal at Western Hills High School, who was reassigned after scrutiny of past social media posts. The complaint, filed June 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, brings claims under the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. It seeks to return Alzubi to the Western Hills principal role for the 2026-2027 school year, along with damages, attorneys’ fees, and litigation...

Senior research scientist John Jumper said on Friday he would leave Google DeepMind to join AI startup Anthropic, the latest ‌high-profile departure at the Big Tech giant's AI research and development division. Jumper, ‌who won a Nobel prize alongside Google's Demis Hassabis in 2024, is best known as the co-creator ​of AlphaFold, a breakthrough AI that has predicted over 200 million protein structures, cutting years off biological and medical research. How intense is the AI talent war among tech giants? "After nearly nine years, I have decided to leave Google DeepMind and join Anthropic," Jumper said in a post on...

At least 13 people were injured late Friday night when two gunmen opened fired from a vehicle into a crowd in the city's Princeton Park neighborhood, Chicago police said. Police said at around 11 p.m., officers were called about a person who had been shot along West 95th Street near South Wentworth Avenue. A preliminary investigation determined a red SUV pulled alongside a large crowd, and two suspects inside the vehicle began firing gunshots before fleeing the scene. When officers arrived on the scene, they found two people who had sustained gunshot injuries. A 32-year-old woman was shot twice in...

The Trump administration is working with Qatar on a mechanism that would let Iran tap roughly $6 billion in frozen oil revenue to buy food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods, an early financial sweetener under the 14-point memorandum of understanding signed Wednesday with Tehran, people familiar with the talks said. The plan, which is still unfinished and requires Iranian sign-off, would route purchases through Iran's central bank and could serve as a template for unlocking a slice of the roughly $100 billion in Iranian assets around the world.The arrangement, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, would draw down a...