Free Republic

A resurfaced video showing far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker praising Mao Zedong circulated online Sunday night after he addressed the College Democrats of America’s national convention Saturday in Washington, prompting criticism from Democratic activists, political commentators and other public figures.

The Justice Department announced Monday that it snatched over 1,000 websites used to illegally stream matches during the just-completed FIFA World Cup. The final tally of sites snared includes the nearly 400 internet domains shut down by the end of June. The seizures in the U.S. occurred through three enforcement actions, the Justice Department said in a release. American authorities also worked with their counterparts in Latin America to block additional illegal streaming sites, including 14 in Argentina, 309 in Brazil, 1,140 in Colombia, 256 in the Dominican Republic, 223 in Ecuador and 28 in Peru.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday that Republicans would “welcome” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) into their conference if he decides to leave the Democratic Party over growing hostility to Isreal among progressive Democrats. “Yes, we would welcome him,” Thune said when asked whether Republicans would roll out the red carpet for Fetterman if he ever decides to leave the Democratic Party. Thune said he’s had “conversations” with the maverick Democratic senator — as have several other GOP colleagues – about a potential party switch. “I have had conversations with him in the past as have many of my...

Several prominent Democrats were caught on camera participating in a progressive political video call which began with one speaker comparing America to a Nazi regime ruled by "dead-eye psychopaths" and "bloodthirsty imperialists." Participants on the call, which was hosted by Progressive Victory in March, included Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., whose name has been floated as a possible presidential contender, and several Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed candidates, including Abdul El-Sayed, Cori Bush and Darializa Avila Chevalier. A spokesperson for Khanna has since disavowed the speaker's comments and said Khanna was not on the call at the time the remarks were made....

NEW YORK (AP) — Bill Gates and the staff of his charitable foundation met with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein more than two dozen times even as employees expressed concerns about the reputational risk of working with him, an external review commissioned by the Gates Foundation found.The conversations appeared to focus on a public health fund that never materialized and a grant to the International Peace Institute, which was run by an associate of Epstein. The roughly 30 meetings, which took place from 2011 to 2014, included several visits to Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse and one meeting on the Gates Foundation...

Explanation: Is this a fossilized turtle on Mars? No. Although resembling a large Earth tortoise, this is a layered rock outcrop on Mars that is estimated to span about 15 meters, making it much larger than turtles on Earth. NASA’s robotic Curiosity rover came across this unusual mound, dubbed Miraflores, last month during its 4922nd Martian day exploring Mars. The small butte may survive because it was somehow more resistant to erosion than surrounding rock. More recent wind has now covered its top with orange Martian sand. Below the top shell, many layers of stratified rock are visible, possibly indicating...

Never underestimate a Soros-funded eco-extremist group’s capacity to rub it in when its plan to reshape the global government regulatory framework to its financier’s vision starts taking shape. E3G (also known as Third Generation Environmentalism) boasted in a July 21 blog that its fixation on “climate security” was possibly “entering a new era.” E3G Associate Director Kaysie Brown and Senior Policy Advisor Travis Brubaker chirped that “The first generation of climate security work, which E3G helped build, focused on demonstrating that climate change creates security and resilience risk. Across much of the political landscape, that argument has largely been won.”...

The WNBA is celebrating its milestone 30th season with a new All-Star initiative that the league says is designed to help keep girls involved in sports. But one of the Chicago-area organisations selected to benefit from the league’s $100,000 All-Star prize pool says on its own website that it is "moving beyond the binary of ‘girl’" and welcomes "gender-expansive participants regardless of gender identity or expression." The organisation is Girls in the Game, the charity affiliated with "Team (Teresa) Weatherspoon" in the 2026 WNBA All-Star Game. According to the league’s July 15 release, the WNBA All-Star teams will compete for...

Mon Jul 20, 2026 - 12:56 pm EDT OMAHA, Nebraska (LifeSiteNews) — A Nebraska man was arrested for threatening to commit a mass shooting at a Catholic school with the specific intention of killing nuns and the children of Nebraska’s devout Catholic Governor Jim Pillen. Ean Halstead, 32, was taken into custody after a standoff with law enforcement on Friday. Halstead reportedly has a history of violent threats and was previously convicted of threatening an “ex-boyfriend” and setting his bedroom on fire, according to local news outlet KFOR. On June 26, Halstead posted a message on the Facebook page for...

The Department of Defense said the operation was designed to protect American sovereign rights.The U.S. Coast Guard has undertaken an operation to monitor two Chinese ships in the Arctic.Officials have monitored two ships, Xue Long and Lue Long 2, as they moved north through the U.S. exclusive economic zone and the U.S. extended continental shelf in the Bering Sea last week, according to a Department of Defense (DOD) press release.The DOD and the Coast Guard did not confirm the specific dates on which Operation Frontier Sentinel took place, though the Coast Guard said it happened last week."Alongside the Department of...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was asked during a Capitol Hill press conference on Tuesday at what point he will move to use Congressional power to check President Donald Trump’s war in Iran. Johnson pointedly ended his reply by saying “we’ve got to wrap it up” in Iran, which many pundits and political insiders have warned is an additional threat to the GOP keeping its majorities in Congress. Johnson’s answer appeared to be at odds with Trump, who vowed earlier in the day to continue bombing Iran until they come to the negotiating table in good faith. “You repeatedly said...

Restore Britain’s candidate for the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election has been temporarily suspended from his role in the NHS for 'offensive' social media posts. Marlon West, who is from Greater Manchester, has worked in the public sector for 30 years as a community mental health nurse. On Friday July 17, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) published an interim decision confirming the decision to suspend Mr West for a period of 18 months. Mr West was not present or represented at the virtual hearing. An interim order stops a nurse or midwife practising during an investigation. The Manchester Evening News...

Evangelical Christian leader Laurie Cardoza-Moore has called on President Trump to distance himself from recent statements about Israel made by his Vice President. ..She also objected to Vance's reported statement that those who disagreed with him over the issue could "go to hell," describing it as "a curse against the entire People of Israel." Concluding her remarks, Cardoza-Moore called on both Trump and Vance to take action. "Now is the time for the President to publicly distance himself from JD's words, and for Vance to apologize and sJul 21, 2026, 3:37 PMwitch gears.

Google’s parent company Alphabet has reportedly more than quadrupled its office space in Miami this year after co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin bought mansions in the area, fleeing California ahead of a proposed tax on billionaires. This spring, Alphabet signed a lease to expand its Miami space to about 45,000 square feet, adding to its current 10,000 square-foot satellite office in the city’s financial district, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Page and Brin are the second- and third-richest people in the world, with net worths of $257 billion and $237 billion, respectively, according to Forbes. Their...

Fewer than 400 voted illegally; Sherrill orders investigation as some of Trump claims validated; Governor says Trump has ‘zero credibility’ on election matters A serious software error at the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission led to roughly 6,600 non-citizens being erroneously added to the state’s voter rolls between June 2023 and June 2024, beginning nearly three years before Gov. Mikie Sherrill took office. Fewer than 400 of those individuals ultimately cast ballots, a senior Sherrill administration official told the New Jersey Globe. While applying for driver’s licenses or identification cards, the 6,600 individuals specifically answered “no” on a keypad when...

No-bid contracts require justification to the Department of General Services and public posting Gavin Newsom has a $6.2 million diaper problem. His administration awarded a no-bid contract to Baby2Baby, a nonprofit with longstanding ties to the Newsom administration. One of its co-CEOs, Norah Weinstein, also serves on the board of the California Partners Project, the nonprofit co-founded by First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Then Newsom told Californians the deal had gone through “a competitive bidding process.” It had not. California’s own contracting database labels the $6.2 million deal “NON-COMPETITIVELY BID.” Newsom’s administration now says the governor was referring to the...

Published reports suggest that China is inundating its citizens with stories that America is on the decline, inferring that the rest of this century is China's for the taking. It would be wise for China to read up on global history: those who have mistaken America's raucous domestic debates for weakness often find themselves shocked and defeated. Time and again, adversaries have looked at the United States — loud, divided, seemingly distracted — and concluded that it lacked the stamina or strength for a prolonged fight. Time and again, they have been proven wrong — very wrong. Imperial Japan during...

United Council on Welfare Fraud's 53rd National Training Conference will be 3 full days Sep 1-3, 2026 in Pittsburgh, PA We're looking for interested individuals that would be interested in presenting insightful and thought-provoking presentations on FRAUD at the upcoming conference! If you or you know someone who would be interested, please have them click here to fill out the Presenter Application. 18 hrs of training workshops focused exclusively on public assistance FRAUD issues ranging from front-line fraud investigations to effective program administration and fraud recovery and collection techniques Opportunities to network with peers; Workshop sessions offered by subject matter...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a lower court ruling that freed Columbia student and pro-Palestinian protester Mohsen Mahdawi from ICE custody. A Second Circuit panel, made up of one George W. Bush judge and two Donald Trump first-term appointees, determined that Mahdawi should not have been released from ICE custody in 2025. They argued that the Vermont-based federal judge that made the initial ruling lacked jurisdiction to do so. The panel concluded that only an immigration court could oversee Mahdawi's detention challenge, as the case was inextricably linked to his deportation suit. Mahdawi was arrested by masked agents...

Saudi broadcaster Al Hadath reported Sunday, citing an Israeli security official, that Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is not in Iran. According to the report, the new leader's complete disconnection from events on the ground means that all statements and written messages recently issued in his name are fake. The official said the messages were actually being drafted by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Ahmad Vahidi and other senior figures in the organization, who were attempting to create a false impression of control and continuity. In addition to disclosing the supreme leader's whereabouts, the Israeli security official also offered a...