Free Republic

ANDY Burnham has given the go-ahead to the US to use British military bases for “defensive strikes” against Iran, it has been reported. The new PM has continued with Keir Starmer’s controversial policy – with Donald Trump vowing today he is “not finished yet”. RAF bases like Fairford and Diego Garcia can continue to be used by the Americans to strike the Islamic Republic, Bloomberg reports. It is the first major judgment by the Labour leader, who risked coming to blows with Donald Trump if he declined access to US aircraft.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., accused Secretary of War Pete Hegseth of asking Americans to ‘foot the bill’ for a war they don’t support during a Senate hearing.

The federal government is pausing more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to two states, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on July 21. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is withholding more than $867 million from California and more than $200 million from Minnesota. Advanced analytics, traditional financial verification and artificial intelligence identified suspicious activity and potential fraud, officials said. “Every dollar the federal government allows to be lost to fraud, waste, and abuse is a dollar stolen from American patients and the American taxpayer. That’s money that should be going to legitimate health care,” Kennedy...

Famed progressive CNN pundit Van Jones is blasting the far left for pushing “crazy ideas” and “turds” — while warning the mainstream of the Democratic Party is too worn down to rein in the extremists. “I’m a strong Democrat, with a winning bipartisan track record. I’m rooted in progressive ideals and policies: criminal justice reform, Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free education, clean air and water. These are ideas I have fought for my entire adult life,” Jones said on X over the weekend. “But some people in groups like the DSA are pushing an agenda FAR outside those...

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is threatening to block two of President Trump’s ambassador nominees if the administration does not present evidence of progress on releasing funds to the President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief (PEPFAR), a government program which provides treatment for HIV and AIDS around the world. “The only way it seems like you can get the administration’s attention on some of these funding issues is by using the leverage to withhold votes on nominees,” Cornyn said in an interview with Semafor on Tuesday. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Cornyn sits, is scheduled to vote on the...

Less than 24 hours after a triple homicide at a St. Paul apartment complex, prosecutors have charged a tenant with murder.Deputies arrested 30-year-old Tsegaab Binessu in the Iron Range Monday night. He was formally charged Tuesday afternoon with the murders of 25-year-old Nansi Fuentes Zambrano, 56-year-old Dena Silcox and 43-year-old Adam Wilwerding. St. Paul police found those three dead from multiple gunshot wounds at around 4:10 p.m. Monday. Authorities say several people called 911, reportedly hearing screams and gunshots at an apartment complex near the intersection of St. Paul Avenue and West Seventh Street in the city’s Highland Park neighborhood....

Philadelphia's notorious DA Larry Krasner is facing serious allegations from two prosecutors who say he refused to hand over an appeal to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) after prosecutors noticed a serious conflict of interest. Krasner allegedly told the attorneys to "protect the office" and threatened consequences for anyone who revealed internal conflicts, ---SNIP--- Mason, who testified that DAO supervisor Matthew Stiegler, routinely held meetings with Johnson's prosecutors to discuss how to "secure his release," without reviewing key evidence. She also alleged that supervisors told her to lie to a federal judge to avoid drawing further scrutiny to...

A group of feral pigs has sparked chaos in an affluent area of San Jose after tearing up landscaped lawns at a business park in search of food, leaving employees stunned by the destruction. Video captured along Hellyer Drive showed a sounder of wild pigs rooting through grassy areas and ripping up sections of landscaping, with workers saying the damage unfolded over just a few days. “It was all a good patch of green grass we used to enjoy in the break time, but now it’s all messy,” employee Bhawani Shankar said.

JD Vance's office flatly denies an Israeli media report claiming that it has been working to block a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin and Donald Trump...

The FBI has captured a fugitive accused of stealing more than half a billion dollars from Medicare and leading authorities on an international manhunt, marking the third arrest from the bureau’s “Most Wanted Fraudsters” list. Khalid Ahmed Satary, who was indicted in 2019 in the Southern District of Florida, was arrested overseas after spending nearly three years on the run, according to the FBI. Authorities said Satary violated the conditions of his pretrial release in 2022, prompting a federal arrest warrant. “The arrest of Khalid Ahmed Satary and return to the U.S. is the third Most Wanted Fraudster capture from...

Oli London @OliLondonTV King Charles visits new ‘eco friendly’ mosque in Cambridge, England. “The fact that you have a purpose built mosque here with a community center attached, makes a huge contribution, not only to the Muslim community here- but to Cambridge itself.”

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...