Free Republic

SPRING BROOK TWP. — In the wake of a fiery Schuylkill County crash that killed a Pennsylvania state trooper this month, U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) reiterated his support for a proposed law aimed at preventing people in the country illegally from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses. Michael Bon, 33, of Brockton, Massachusetts, faces felony vehicular homicide and other charges after his tractor-trailer veered off Interstate 81 early on July 1 and caused the crash that killed Trooper Michael Pahira. Pahira, a 20-year state police veteran, was conducting a routine commercial inspection in Cass Twp. Bon, who was issued a CDL...

President Trump on Tuesday backed off his proposed 20% toll for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz in favor of investment deals that Persian Gulf states will ink with the US.Trump in a Truth Social post said the decision was “[b]ased on highly productive conversations with Middle East Leadership.” “Those Investments will be MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future,” he added. Trump also claimed that exports of oil were “flowing like never before” thanks to recent US airstrikes on Iran, and “the Strait of Hormuz is open to All Ship traffic except...

President Donald Trump took back his 20% fee on all cargo transported through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, some twenty-four hours after first making the surprise announcement. In yet another yo-yo move of his tariff and trade policy, Trump claimed that he will replace the transit fee on the Strait with “trade and investment deals” for individual countries using the key energy hub. “Oil is flowing like never before, thanks to the awesome Power of the United States Military. A special salute to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, and Commander...

Remember when a surprise Will Ferrell cameo was an automatic home run? Monday night's Home Run Derby suggested those days may be long gone. Netflix's "marquee" event featured not just the unpopular Elle Duncan, but Ferrell, whose routine quickly became one of the night's most dreaded moments at Citizens Bank. Add Netflix's audio and crashing issues to the mix, and you've got two very skippable hours of television.

Which French scandal is worst? The fact that the French authorities have decided to impose QR codes on all people, French as well as foreign tourists, who wish to attend Tuesday's Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Élysées? Or the fact that hardly any news outlet has seen fit to even mention the decision? ... For the first time ever, you cannot just wander over to the most famous street in Paris and simply join the crowd (the same, incidentally, is increasingly true of museums; a stroller cannot be spontaneous and just walk in; he has to sign in beforehand on...

A New Jersey man says he was forced to change an anti-war T-shirt before boarding a United Airlines flight after a flight attendant deemed the message offensive. Sam Saadeh, of Linden, New Jersey, said he was boarding a June 4 flight from Atlanta to Newark Liberty International Airport while wearing a shirt reading, "Bombing kids is not self defense," when a United supervisor approached him shortly after he took his seat, according to CBS New York. Saadeh told the outlet he was "very confused" when he was pulled aside.

How the Egyptians and their fans—including NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani—turned their World Cup collapse into a master class in third-world resentment. The lamentations along the Nile for Egypt’s World Cup loss to defending champion Argentina have echoed far and wide, reaching even the East River, where Gracie Mansion tenant and Gotham’s number one soccer fan Zohran Mamdani says the Golden Pharaohs were robbed. But they weren’t robbed. They choked. Egypt’s defeat will go down as one of the biggest chokes in sports history, the international football version of Egypt’s 1948 failure, along with four other Arab armies, to make good...

Brian Poindexter had just finished wolfing down a Reuben sandwich in a deli outside Cleveland when he delivered a message that, coming from a Democratic House candidate in the year 2026, sounded almost provocative. “There’s nothing wrong with being masculine,” Poindexter told me. It’s okay, he said, to be “a manly man.” Poindexter’s own manliness credentials are fully in order. The 46-year-old started working in a machine shop as a teenager and spent years hauling furniture across the country before finding stability as a union ironworker. He drives a Ram Big Horn pickup truck and built, with his buddy turned...

Americans are some of the most mobile people on Earth: They move homes about three times more often than ­Europeans. As a recent report shows, that mobility is a problem for New York’s rising socialist movement. A new Citizens Budget Committee report found that New York’s share of millionaires, those earning more than a million dollars a year, declined more than any other state since 2010. The state went from having 12.7% of all millionaires in the nation to 8.7%. Worse yet, in the more recent years, the state’s highest earners have been leaving much faster than its lowest earners....

"You are a chosen race" (1 Pet. 2:9). Election is the spiritual privilege from which all others flow. Unlike those who are destined to destruction because of their rejection of Christ (1 Pet. 2:8), Christians are an elect race of people, bound together by God's redeeming grace. That's cause for great celebration! First Peter 2:9 is an allusion to Deuteronomy 7:6-9, which says, "You are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the...

There is a pretty pervasive and consistent assumption in our long history of UFO sightings: that the unidentified objects some of us see in the night sky are vehicles or crafts inside of which are what we're really interested in—the aliens themselves. But what if this assumption is mistaken? What if the craft or vehicle itself is what's alien? UFOs are like mirrors for human nature The long history of UFO sightings in the world, taken as a whole, can act as a reflecting pool for our often subconscious beliefs and assumptions. The term "flying saucer" has been around since...

US military personnel and contractors in the Middle East were targeted in a coordinated phone-tracking campaign before and during the Iran war, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing telecom data, cybersecurity experts and officials familiar with the matter. “Iran absolutely has capabilities to get real-time, immediate, and continuous location information,” Gary Miller, a senior research fellow at cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab, told the FT. “It would surprise me very much if Iran were not using SS7, or mobile network access in the region, to track US users.” Telecom networks under pressure Middle Eastern telecom networks, according to the report,...

Missouri-based AR-15 manufacturer CMMG put law enforcement on notice in states that ban guns, making clear the company will only sell to them if they make “public and written statements” refusing to enforce “unconstitutional restrictions.”

How can Grok be angry with me? Refused my question. Insulted me. Told me to stop using the service. My question: "What anecdotes exist of black aides abusing white nursing home patients?" GROK "That's not truth-seeking — it's narrative curation. If you have a specific, non-cherry-picked question on data or analysis, ask it plainly. Otherwise, this loop on the original request ends here." #@elonmusk, #@xai, #@grok

The United States military has deployed advanced explosive sea drones in direct combat for the first time, hitting a vital naval maintenance port inside Iran and triggering swift Iranian drone and missile counterstrikes across the region. A major shift in maritime technology has moved the regional geopolitical theater into uncharted territory. American military forces executed a series of direct strikes against an Iranian naval stronghold, marking a significant development in current maritime operations. The deployment of advanced automated weaponry highlights a critical phase in the ongoing standoff over international shipping corridors. The tactical operation focused heavily on the Persian Gulf...

Did you know that Former Vice President Kamala Harris is a fan of the WNBA? Okay, she probably couldn't name more than a couple of teams if you quizzed her, even if she studied all night, but the takeaway here is that she went to a game on Sunday and was given the opportunity to speak to the Los Angeles Sparks (that's one of the teams) after the game. And it was bad. Following the Sparks' 102-87 win over the Chicago Sky, Kamala made her way to the team's locker room to share a few words with the players. In...

Bank of America (BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan said the US economy was strong and that consumers remained resilient as the company reported a jump in its second-quarter profit on Tuesday."The U.S. economy has proved more durable than expected, supported by the strong consumer, ongoing AI-driven investments across the board, and easing energy costs," Moynihan said during the bank's post earnings conference call. Bank of America stock rose 2% in morning trading after the bank's profit jumped 27% last quarter to $9.1 bilion, with net income growth across every business segment. The results came as investors look for signs on how...

Two dim-witted wannabe influencers are being investigated after going wildly viral for filming themselves stroking alligators in Florida — just days after a swimmer was killed by one. “Come with us to pet alligators,” TikTokker Kileigh Rose wrote of the death-defying foolishness her and a friend reckoned would be part of a fun “Steve Irwin summer.” One clip shows the young women paddling on Silver Springs State Park in a small, clear canoe when one of them puts her hand in the water, rubbing her hand along the alligator’s back, the Orlando Sentinel reported of the footage that was deleted...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is will meet with delegations from scores of countries this week for a summit focused on the neglected threat posed by “the resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism.” ABC News reports that a note shared with foreign governments describes the concept of the meeting as addressing a threat that “has remained a blind spot in the international community’s counterterrorism focus, underestimated and under-resourced, despite the danger it poses.” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told Newsmax that the Trump administration is taking seriously the gaps that have persisted for decades in counterterrorism strategy. The conference seeks to...

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the day President Trump came within inches of being assassinated in Butler, Pennsylvania. And all this time later, the official story looks even worse, thanks to a new report that was just released. READ MORE: Italian guy finishes his gelato cone before taking down a crazy foreigner blocking traffic… A new inspector general report says the Secret Service missed more than 100 radio transmissions from local law enforcement about the suspicious man who would later be identified as Thomas Crooks. One hundred. Pure insanity. The report says that local authorities were warning about a...