Free Republic

After Finland’s Supreme Court found Päivi Räsänen guilty of “crimes against humanity” for sharing an online Christian pamphlet, Britain canceled her travel authorization, escalating concerns about the future of religious liberty in Europe. [UPDATE] The U.K. is a nation that now allows rapists, murderers, and terrorists to pour across its borders and live permanently in taxpayer-funded homes, but there is one thing that can get someone banned from even setting foot on British soil: “insulting” homosexuals. That’s a lesson that Päivi Räsänen, a member of Finland’s Parliament, recently learned when the U.K. denied her travel visa application.

BPD is looking for 6 people who jumped an elderly man outside of a 7/11 in North Baltimore.

They raised a stink. City Council members overwhelmingly voted Thursday to give themselves an 18% raise — a shamelessly self-serving move that comes after months of thwarted attempts to pass a fat pay hike. A veto-proof 42-6 vote approved the measure to inflate council salaries to $175,500, as well as hike Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pay to $305,800 a year, backdated to January — the start of new terms in office and the first day on the job for some lawmakers. The nay votes all came from Republicans and conservative Democrats, including Councilman Phil Wong (D-Queens), who said he pushed for...

Sánchez’s family is always in the headlines, for all the wrong reasons. A Spanish court rejected for the most part the appeal by Begoña Gomez, the wife of Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and she will have to stand ​trial before a jury on charges of influence peddling and embezzlement. It’s another heavy blow for the Socialist government, embroiled in months of graft investigations and scandals. Begoña Gomez’s defense team had launched an appeal, asking Madrid’s high court to drop the charges made against her that she denies, and ​lift other orders imposed on her by a lower court last...

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner suspended his campaign after a rape accusation saw fellow Democrats calling for him to step down from the race. Instagram / Graham for Maine It’s hilarious that snot-nosed socialist svengali Morris Katz, the Mamdani whisperer, is reportedly trash-talking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chances as the Democrat presidential candidate for 2028 — reportedly because he says a woman can’t win.The left always eats its own in the end.We knew Democrats were trying to rebrand as the party of “Manly Men” but they’ve really taken this new masculinity jag off a cliff.Katz, who plucked accused rapist Graham Platner out...

Some of Michigan's lawmakers have sent letters demanding answers on the rash of wildfires in Canada, where the smoke has drifted into the United States. Michigan has been dealing with hazy skies and poor air quality because of drifting wildfire smoke since Wednesday. The smoke is expected to continue to linger into Friday over the state. This drifting smoke is a repeat of scenarios that happened in 2023 and again in 2025. Detroit had the worst air quality in the world on Thursday because of the fine particulate matter in the atmosphere. In a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Mark...

For fresh proof of how little New York authorities care about social-services fraud, consider the curious case of adult daycares in Flushing. Dr. Mehmet Oz, who oversees the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, puts out that within a one-mile radius in the Queens neighborhood, a full 64 Social Adult Day Care centers operate, with thousands upon thousands of supposed elderly enrollees. This reeks: Over the past three years, such New York senior centers have generated $2.5 billion in billings, with $2.1 billion of that coming from Flushing. Flushing’s Medicaid-eligible senior population grew by 20% from 2018 to 2024, yet...

More than 115 million people could be exposed to unhealthy air quality. Dangerous wildfire smoke is filling the skies from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic. And in some areas, conditions are expected to worsen. Through Friday, more than 115 million people are forecast to be exposed to air quality levels that are unhealthy or worse as winds funnel smoke south from out-of-control fires in Canada and Minnesota — and a heat dome traps that smoke near the ground. From late Wednesday into early Thursday, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis and New York had some of the worst air quality of the world’s...

It isn’t exactly news that Homer’s “Odyssey” is a very, very good poem. But seeing Christopher Nolan’s screen adaptation drove this home again for me. The hotly anticipated mega-spectacle is, in the end, pretty good. But it isn’t Homer. Mr. Nolan’s shortcomings have made me love Homer more by comparison and sent me running back, agog, to his deathless masterpiece. Mr. Nolan’s “Odyssey” succeeds as well as any adaptation can. It tells the story of Odysseus’ 10-year journey home from the Trojan War with verve and affection for the source material. It isn’t the hostile woke takeover that some high-profile...

JD Vance is the Vice President of the United States, a Marine Corps veteran, former U.S. Senator from Ohio, and author. His latest book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” is available now. Video Transcript SummaryThe video is Joe Rogan Experience #2526 with JD Vance (Vice President of the United States as of the interview date in mid-2026), released around July 15-16, 2026. It runs about 2+ hours (typical for JRE) and covers a wide range of topics in Rogan’s conversational style: personal stories, politics, faith, technology, culture, and current events. Vance promotes his new book Communion: Finding My...

“What would it be like to live in a world without Capitalism?” a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) leader asks, before describing her party’s vision of creating a workers’ paradise – where people don’t have to work, because they don’t have bills, and are free to do whatever they like. In an hour-long video laying out DSA’s “Workers Deserve More” program launch published Wednesday, DSA’s National Political Education Chair Michaela Brangan portrays Democratic Socialism as the author of a worry-free society that enables people to do as they please: “What would it be like to live in a world without...

President Trump's July 16, 2026 speech

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said Thursday that he will not support Todd Blanche for attorney general unless President Donald Trump’s nominee first meets with women who say the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein abused them as minors. Tillis announced his position during the second day of the acting attorney general's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying the meeting must occur before he is prepared to advance the nomination. “I have not made a final decision,” Tillis said of whether he will vote to advance Blanche to lead the Justice Department. “Todd Blanche said he’d meet with the...

The $450 million Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opened its doors on July 4th. And for the first time, a major institution went accurate about who Roosevelt really was. Glenn Beck says that's actually the problem. Because when you read what TR wrote in his own hand — to Charles Davenport at Cold Spring Harbor on January 3rd, 1913 — the museum isn't making Roosevelt look like a progressive. Roosevelt was a progressive. And that's what the exhibit is hiding.

OPINION:Democrats are abandoning the party’s most cohesive and dependable voting base — Black voters — in favor of flashy, young and charismatic socialists. Historically, about 80% to 90% of Black voters have aligned with the Democratic Party. No other major demographic in the U.S. votes as unitedly. Black turnout is essential for Democrats to win national elections, and candidates who fail to secure their support, as seen in the historically crucial South Carolina primary, rarely win the overall nomination. However, the Black electorate is not a progressive monolith. About 73% of Black Americans identify as Christian, and nearly 97% believe...

Even though the U.S. abortion industry kills roughly 1 million unborn babies each year, data reveals that the number of conceived lives lost in America through in vitro fertilization (IVF) processes is far outpacing elective abortion. According to 2022 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the scale of loss of conceived embryos from IVF that year was nearly triple the lives lost to the abortion industry at more than 2.9 million. In 2022, IVF clinics reported that patients underwent more than 435,000 IFV cycles, in which each cycle conceives about seven embryos. Researchers estimate that slightly more...

@ZiaYusufUK Tahir Andrabi, a spokesman for Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has told the BBC that Pakistan will not take back the Rochdale Monster, Shabir Ahmed. So why did the Tory Labour uniparty send them £6 billion of your money?

A super-woke Democrat running for Congress in Washington state has admitted she’s too scared to come out in support of LGBTQ+ rights because it might upset Muslims, even though they account for a tiny fraction of her district. Melissa Chaudhry, 34, who is running for a second time in Washington’s 9th congressional district after losing her 2024 bid, made the glaring admission in an interview with a local Seattle-based newspaper. Chaudhry, who took her Muslim Army veteran husband’s last name and wears an Islamic headscarf, or hijab, was asked why she had nothing on her campaign website about LGBTQ+ rights,...

And just like that… lefty actress Cynthia Nixon will get to screen and recommend candidates to serve on the state’s highest court, The Post has learned. Nixon — who isn’t a lawyer but played one on the hit HBO show “Sex and the City” — was just appointed to serve on the Commission on Judicial Nomination by New York Chief Judge Rowan Wilson. The commission suggests and vets potential judges to the Court of Appeals. Nixon’s appointment runs through April 30, 2030. Most of the other dozen members of the panel are practicing lawyers or have law degrees. “The Commission’s...

WILLIAMSBURG — A Burgy resident and his children are having a towering problem trying to sleep at night, saying the hourly, around-the-clock chimes that emanate from the Haydenville Congregational Church bell are disruptive for his family. “It’s really loud. In the daytime it doesn’t seem it because of all the noise, but at nighttime, laying in bed, it’s like jarring — jarring,” High Street resident Mike Ambs told the Select Board on Tuesday. He said he is a light sleeper and that his four children have also been awakened by the bell. Ambs is asking the board to direct the...