Free Republic

A married ex-Wall Street executive has been sentenced to 30 years after pleading guilty to drugging and raping multiple women in his upscale Manhattan apartment, keeping chilling planning notes to document his decade-long predatory rampage. Edward Gene Smith, 50, admitted to attacking his victims at his luxury apartment opposite Central Park, as well as amassing a stash of more than 9,000 child sexual abuse images, as part of his twisted spree. Prosecutors say the Harvard educated bigwig, who was most recently a Citigroup managing director, hid ‘behind the façade of a well-educated bank executive’ to prey on and lure in...

M y first car was a 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit. It was a hand-me-down from my mom, manual transmission. You never forget popping clutches, stalling left and right. The car was, let’s say, semi-end-of-life when I got it. It was a classic Volkswagen that, mechanically, ran forever. But it had roll-up windows and the handles had popped off. God knows where the real handles were. We had these vise grips I would use to roll down my window, then hand it to my high school buddies in the back so they could do the same. I’ve got 4,000 memories from inside...

Mamdani Election Bombshell: More Fraudulent Votes Cast Than Margin of Mamdani's 'Victory,' Says Election Auditor "When our right to choose representatives is diluted or harmed, injured in any way, that is a serious crime in America." www.westernjournal.com 28 Jul 2027 ~~ By V. Saxena A prominent election-integrity activist has uncovered bombshell evidence suggesting that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 election victory may not have been legitimate. Marly Hornik, the founder of RealAmerica.Vote and NY Citizens Audit, has suggested that the 2025 election included large numbers of unqualified or nonexistent voters. But that’s only part of the problem. “I...

Top US lawmakers want the Trump administration to launch a formal national security probe into Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT on suspicions that Beijing orchestrated the company’s blockbuster IPO to prop up a key military asset, The Post has learned. Shares for the China-based chipmaker, also known as ChangXin Memory Technologies, skyrocketed 466% in Shanghai trading on Monday — raising $8.6 billion and instantly making the firm the most valuable on a China mainland exchange with a market capitalization of nearly $500 billion. Beijing’s historic windfall — which sent shares of US chipmakers tumbling on competition fears on Monday — is...

Senior London MP Chris Philp has told how a French warship “fired 17 warning shots” as he was giving an interview in the Channel about illegal immigration. The Shadow Home Secretary accused the crew of the French Navy’s Flamant patrol vessel of trying to “intimidate” him as he was stressing that far more needs to be done to tackle the “small boats” crisis. Mr Philp said the incident happened at around 10.15am French time (9.15am UK time) about two to three miles off the French coast near Cap Gris Nez, between Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer. He was clearly slightly startled by...

Facial Recognition Payments

SEATTLE — A judge ordered a 15-year-old held in juvenile detention Monday in connection with a gunfight at a crowded Seattle food festival that killed three people and injured at least four others. Prosecutors said the gunfight involved the 15-year-old, a 19-year-old man who died at the scene and possibly a third person. The 15-year-old is being held on suspicion of three counts of first-degree assault and one count of second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. He had not been involved in a criminal case before in the county, King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office spokesperson Casey McNerthney said. “At this...

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) hit ailing Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) with an ultimatum in his latest demand for transparency about the current state of his health. In a new letter sent to McConnell on Tuesday, Beshear’s ultimatum is simple: Speak up, or resign. The letter comes a day after McConnell’s office released a new proof-of-life photo of the senator alongside his wife, Elaine Chao, and a vague update. “It has now been 43 days since news of your hospitalization, ” Beshear writes. “During that time you have cast zero votes, engaged in no official activities, and aside from two...

Gov. Gavin Newsom's former lover is pulling back the curtain on their affair ... revealing the lengths she went to get him alone -- and the advice Kamala Harris gave her when the scandal exploded. Ruby Rippey writes in a new Vanity Fair essay that professional boundaries with Newsom began crumbling while she worked as his secretary during his time as San Francisco mayor. Rippey says she would scan Newsom's calendar for openings, show up wherever he was expected to be and make sure he spotted her before slipping away. She says her phone would soon light up with a...

President Trump publicly rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday after The Post reported that the leader of the Jewish state is expected to present Trump with evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear technology at its subterranean Pickaxe Mountain site.“Well, I don’t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” when asked about the expectation Netanyahu will bring up Pickaxe Mountain ahead of an Oval Office meeting. “We know exactly what’s going on. But no, I heard Bibi announce that. I said, ‘Why don’t you...

The New York Attorney General’s Office has directed the Steuben County Sheriff’s Office and 11 other law enforcement agencies to end agreements that allow local officers to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Chief Deputy Attorney General for Social Justice Meghan Faux informed Sheriff James Allard that new provisions in the state budget prohibit local governments and police agencies from entering, renewing or extending agreements under which their employees perform immigration enforcement duties. The legislation, called the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, affects Steuben County’s agreement with ICE under Section 287(g) of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act. The program...

I sat down with bestselling author Eric Metaxas to discuss the Christian roots of America and what happens to our freedom if we forget them. His new book, “Revolution,” tells the story of the founding and the values that make America exceptional.

"The very concept of the success is deeply immoral. If you are successful the other is loser. We shouldn’t accept it. We should prosper or suffer together. Otherwise it is satanic. - Aleksandr Dugin, X/Twitter, July 10 2026"

Meanwhile, the US still hopes to block ASML from selling and servicing similar machines in China. A Chinese state-backed company has begun mass producing deep ultraviolet lithography machines, reports The Information. That's a big step towards China's semiconductor biz standing on its own two feet. It takes a complicated lithographic machine to produce a modern chip, and there are two main types: EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography) and DUV (Deep Ultraviolet Lithography). It's the older of the two, DUV, that a Chinese company is said to have figured out. These sorts of immersion machines are still used for modern computer chips,...

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) demanded that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) verbally address constituents and demonstrate his ability to serve or resign his seat in a blunt letter sent to the senator and his staff.The big picture: It's been more than 40 days since 84-year-old conservative stalwart McConnell has appeared outside of pictures released by his office after being hospitalized. His lengthy absence and past health scares are fueling speculation about his capacity to serve. Driving the news: Beshear said in the letter that it was also being sent to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), whom Beshear urged to...

An artificial intelligence (AI) video out of the terrorist hotbed Iran threatens President Donald Trump’s wife, First Lady Melania Trump, and their son, 20-year-old Barron. The video encourages supporters of the Islamic regime to target the mother and son, the New York Post reported Monday.

Back in May, former Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra said there were no migrant children lost on his watch during the Biden years. That's just not true. Biden's own Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General said more than 300,000 migrant children were missing. Now a whistleblower has revealed horrifying information about those missing children, and it should end Becerra's political career. " Xavier Becerra's campaign rocked by horrifying claims about missing migrant kids under his watch https://t.co/UnmoTe1SBf pic.twitter.com/SpLyC6QVz5 " — California Post (@californiapost) July 27, 2026 MORE: Xavier Becerra’s campaign rocked by horrifying claims about...

Authorities say the killings fit the definition of family annihilation, one of at least eight in the US this year Authorities in Michigan have identified a man they say fatally shot his wife and six children on Friday in a mass murder that fits the definition of a family annihilation. Citing autopsy results, the Ottawa county sheriff’s office said in a news release Monday that Kristopher Karolkiewicz; his wife, Amanda; and their six children, aged five to 15, all died of gunshot wounds before their bodies were found in their burning home in Grand Haven Township. The agency noted that...

Two Florida death row inmates are scheduled to be executed hours apart on Tuesday, which would mark the first time in more than six decades the state puts to death multiple people within a single day, as state officials continue to ramp up executions. “I’m not shocked anymore by the number of death warrants that are being signed, but it struck me as a kind of rupture to the system that we would execute two people within six hours from one another,” said Father Dustin Feddon, a Catholic priest who has been visiting prisoners on Florida’s death row for more...

Seattle's police chief now refers to gangs as 'small groups' in the wake of a mass shooting in the city that killed three. Shon Barnes repeatedly used the term during a press conference Monday, hours after Sunday's massacre at the Bite of Seattle food festival that is believed to have been gang related. He told a press conference that a motive remains under investigation but that it was 'certainly group activity.' Seemingly referring to gangs, the police chief added: 'We have small groups that appear to be at odds with each other.' 'In our city, 0.01% of the population is...