Free Republic

Union and Confederate veterans shake hands during the 50th anniversary reunion at Gettysburg, 1913. Fifty years after the Battle of Gettysburg, thousands of aging Civil War veterans returned to the Pennsylvania battlefield where they had once fought as young soldiers. The 1913 Gettysburg Reunion commemorated the battle’s semicentennial and became one of the largest gatherings of Civil War veterans ever held. Men who had once faced one another across stone walls, ridges, and open fields reunited as survivors of the conflict that had transformed the United States. Veterans were housed in a sprawling temporary camp near the battlefield, and many...

As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, gun owners should take a moment to remember how unlikely today’s victories once seemed. In 1976, when the nation marked its bicentennial, many Second Amendment supporters believed the right to keep and bear arms was slowly being written out of American life. The law schools were hostile. The courts were hostile. The media was hostile. Most politicians treated the Second Amendment as a historical inconvenience. The future looked grim.We chose to keep fighting. Giving up was not an option. The Constitution was clear, and we intended to fight to keep the Republic,...

Democrat candidates and incumbent lawmakers have not been shy when it comes to bashing the country that allowed them to make it to their privileged positions. As Americans gear up to celebrate the incredible milestone of 250 years of American grit and freedom, several far-leftists have spent the last several years using their positions of power to bash the land of opportunity. It certainly is a time of celebration for the vast majority of Americans, and while patriotism often overshadows the negativity — particularly right ahead of Independence Day — it is important for Americans to remember what they are...

A well-preserved Byzantine-era residential city in the western desert is one of two major archaeological finds announced by Egypt .. The recent discoveries at the Dakhla Oasis and at the Marina el-Alamein archaeological site, near Alexandria, are the latest findings which the Egyptian government hopes will boost the country’s vital tourism sector, partially driven by antiquities sightseeing. ... The Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said that the first discovery reveals details of daily life, urban development and economic activities in the Dakhla Oasis in the fourth century, when Egypt was part of the Byzantine empire. ... A basilica church dating back...

Ugandan-born, socialism-loving New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has emerged as a “kingmaker” in the Democrat party, says Phillip Elliot of TIME. Two prominent House Democrats lost their primaries to insurgent rivals while a third left-wing candidate defeated the Brooklyn Borough chief,” he writes. “All together, the results demonstrated the fragility of an Establishment imprimatur, the power of the New York Mayor’s blessing, and the ascendancy of socialism. Elliott then goes on to do this silly thing that Democrats have done for a few decades now, and suggests that this “ascendancy of socialism” is not, as Donald Trump and some...

Fights have broken out across France as hundreds of shoppers scramble for air conditioning units before soaring temperatures next week. Footage showed Parisians scuffling over the coveted equipment in a Lidl supermarket after 400 people queued all night to get their hands on a unit on Thursday. The clashes came after temperatures reached 44C (111ºF) in parts of France last week, with sweltering heat set to return on Monday. One customer reportedly injured eight people, including a 12-year-old, with pepper spray in an attempt to get his hands on an air-conditioning (AC) unit. Seems like Europe's experiment with no air...

This rare Bronze Age shield was deposited in a bog over 3,000 years ago.It was discovered in Auchmaleddie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1897.Due to its fragile state, it has been kept flat in storage for decades. Until now.Our Artefact Conservator Bethan Bryan and Curator Dr Matthew Knight assess the shield ahead of conservation work. This process involves lifting the shield to look at its underside, which has not been viewed in over 3,000 years. Find out what clues it has about its use and how it was made.The shield has been conserved for display in the free exhibition 'Scotlands First Warriors'...

Gone are the days of university freshmen reading classical philosophers like Plato or contemporary pedagogues like Ta-Nehisi Coates. These days, incoming college students are lucky if they can get through Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.” According to a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — a forum for 38 high-income, predominantly Western countries — a not insignificant number of adult students enrolled in higher education are now reading and doing math at a level which, in a more functional society, would be alarming for a middle schooler. The survey,...

He’s a real American gyro. A star-spangled Long Island diner owner surprised eaters who woke up before 4 a.m. to be part of a special Fourth of July Fox & Friends live shoot on site by paying for every single one of their meals out of an unrivaled love of the USA. “Our kitchen went through seven cases of eggs – there’s 30 dozen in each case. We fed a few thousand,” Embassy Diner owner Gus Tsiorvas told The Post. “It’s the most beautiful thing in the world to see so many people gather around for the birth of our...

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem🇮🇱 (7/5/26)[Prayer]Personalities1 Samuel 4:1-22 4 And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out against the Philistines to battle, and pitched beside Ebenezer: and the Philistines pitched in Aphek. 2 And the Philistines put themselves in array against Israel: and when they joined battle, Israel was smitten before the Philistines: and they slew of the army in the field about four thousand men. 3 And when the people were come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us to day before the Philistines? Let us...

There’s actually a small window of time to completely break the Left, and this opportunity will not come again. The Left can be badly weakened — perhaps even broken. The process has a misleadingly dry name — civil asset forfeiture. This legal procedure allows law enforcement officials — typically the Attorney General or a District Attorney — to seize property based solely on suspicion of criminal activity. No criminal charge, let alone conviction, is required. The justification rests on the extraordinary legal fiction that the property itself, rather than its owner, is the defendant. However implausible that premise may seem,...

The Talk Shows July 5th, 2026 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:FACE THE NATION (CBS): Margaret Brennan anchors: NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman; Debra Houry (Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until she resigned in protest at the firing of Susan Monarez—08/25); Former RINO governor of Massachusetts Charlie Baker; Reps. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) and Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.). FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Anchor Shannon Bream: Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-LA); Maryland democrat Gov. Wes Moore; Butch Wilmore, retired NASA astronaut, U.S....

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A Gavin Newsom-run commission has handed over a spectacular 136-acre California beach back to three Indigenous tribes. Blues Beach and the Mendocino County bluffs will be handed over to a tribal nonprofit group, Kai Poma, which represents the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, Round Valley Indian Tribes and Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians. The historic June 26 move is the first time the California Department of Transportation has returned land back to the Indigenous people, The Los Angeles Times reported. 'This is beyond huge,' J Carlos Rivera, the Sherwood Valley tribal chairman, told The LA Times. 'It's enormous...

The United States enters its 250th year in fantastic shape. Elsewhere, not so much. We are the oldest continuous democracy in the modern world. In large part, this is because our founders were the products of the Enlightenment who fashioned a written Constitution, which provides both freedom to citizens and checks and balances to restrain those in power. Massive celebrations are called for, with big ships, flyovers, and the largest ever fireworks display in the cleaned-up National Mall. It’s extremely hot, but that doesn’t seem to have dampened enthusiasm, and crowds have been large at scheduled events. Just as they...

The final sketch of Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness’s second episode, like many of the HBO historical comedy series’ sketches so far, featured some big deal guest stars alongside Larry David, as well as some of the show’s most direct political commentary to date. It most notably featured Rob Reiner as George Washington, one of his few posthumous performances following his tragic death in December 2025. In the sketch from “Farewell,” Washington is wrapping up his second term as President with the announcement that he will not be seeking a third (term) — a decision explained in his...

The latest fear, of course, is that the AI boom is stealing crypto’s thunder. With the blockbuster IPO of SpaceX and the market debuts of Anthropic and OpenAI expected to be worth trillions, cryptocurrencies are no longer the new, bright, shiny things on the market. It’s hot outside in New York City, but there’s a crypto winter in the markets – and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better, industry players tell On The Money. To be sure, we’ve seen this before: 2018, 2020, then in 2022, when a confluence of factors including the FTX scandal that landed...

All right, Variety, this is weird. Rob Reiner and his wife were stabbed to death by their schizophrenic son. Yes, he was afflicted with Stage 4 TDS, but that's no way to die. We'd let the man rest in peace. Still, Variety is reporting that Reiner is having the last laugh at President Donald Trump with a posthumous role as George Washington in Larry David's “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America."

Nathan Livingstone @TheMilkBarTV Three minutes of Tucker Carlson praising Islam. Worth viewing and is captioned.

Nearly 1 million people who bought President Trump’s memecoin have lost money through the end of June, according to a report by the cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen. Their losses total $3.81 billion. The analytics firm’s assessment was calculated this week after Mr. Trump signed an annual financial disclosure showing that he walked away with a $636 million payout on the same crypto bet, part of a haul of at least $2.2 billion from all of his business ventures in 2025. Once a crypto skeptic, Mr. Trump embraced the profit-making opportunity of digital currencies in 2024, while he was running for...