Free Republic

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has overtaken California Governor Gavin Newsom in prediction market odds for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination for the first time, according to data from Polymarket highlighted Wednesday by the political-tracking account InteractivePolls. The market showed Ocasio-Cortez at 18 percent, narrowly ahead of Newsom at 17 percent. Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff ranked third at 16 percent, while former Vice President Kamala Harris stood at 8 percent. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro each came in at 5 percent. The shift marks a notable moment in the still-early race to shape the Democratic field ahead...

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will leave that post by the end of August, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday. Leavitt’s departure was announced less than a month after she returned to the White House after having been on maternity leave for the birth of her daughter on May 1. Leavitt, 28, is resigning “so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect!” Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing her planned departure. The president said that Leavitt will become “one of my top outside advisors” and...

"Congressman John Larson is well-positioned to win the Democratic primary election for Connecticut’s First District. Larson leads former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin by 23 points, 49 to 26 percent with 9 percent for State Representative Jillian Gilchrest and 15 percent undecided or supporting other candidates. Larson enjoys near universal name recognition (92 percent), is well liked (76 percent view him favorably) and voters believe he delivers for Connecticut (80 percent say that it describes Larson well). He wins all regions of the district, across the ideological spectrum and among voters over 50 years (71 percent of the electorate). What’s more,...

The Dallas airport is now installing dedicated Islamic “Wudu” foot-washing stations inside bathrooms. Sharia financing is coming to dozens of states. Sharia compliant community centers. USDA funded halal public school pipelines. TX public school students being bused to mosques to experience Islam firsthand.

The University of Michigan is eliminating first-semester grades in an effort to address what it calls a growing mental health crisis among college students

Kathy Hochul received $55,000 in campaign contributions from social adult daycare centers (SADCs) in fraud-plagued Flushing, Queens, records show. Almost half of those donations can be linked to two men: local powerbroker Baoli Zhang, and Jiemin Shang — who own two of Flushing’s biggest daycare businesses, both of which were empty of patients when visited by The Post last week. Zhang, 69, personally donated $10,000, as well as another $5,000 through his Bao Kang Adult Day Care, financial disclosures show. Zhang’s various businesses have claimed at least $32 million from Medicaid since 2018, on behalf of tens of thousands of...

For nearly two decades, Pew Research Center surveys delivered the same reliable finding: The world viewed the United States more favorably than China. That era is over. In its July 2026 report, Pew found China now ranks higher in favorability than the United States across most of the 36 countries surveyed. Gallup data from 2025 already showed China’s median approval edging past America’s. Confidence in Xi Jinping now exceeds confidence in Donald Trump by a clear margin in the countries Pew tracks annually. The Council on Foreign Relations rightly asked what happened. The answer is simpler – and more damning...

Elon Musk is betting that the next phase of his sprawling technology empire will require a building on a scale that has never existed before. SpaceX and Tesla are building Terafab, a 100-million-square-foot semiconductor manufacturing facility in Grimes County, Texas, more than five times the size of the world's largest building. "Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far. And it will be stunningly beautiful," Musk wrote on X. "We're now embarking on the most epic chip-building effort—combining logic, memory, and advanced packaging all under one roof," said Musk in a press release. The...

WASHINGTON — Mao-adoring Twitch streamer Hasan Piker erupted in fury after Wisconsin state rep. Francesca Hong’s shocking defeat in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, venting that boomers should be outlawed. Piker, who had stumped with Hong during the final weeks of her primary, blamed older Americans for her loss amid her double-digit lead in most polling and struggled to talk about the blow to the far-left. “I don’t want to read this because I will f—ing kill myself with a gun in a video game,” Piker griped after reading an article about a late-deciding voter who backed Milwaukee County Executive David...

The Maumelle High School player wore the helmet for an hour before noticing movement underneath the padding. Thousands of high school football players across the country are taking the practice field, preparing to kick off the 2026 season in the coming weeks, but one young man in Arkansas recently had a practice experience unlike any other. With the Maumelle High School football team split into position groups during practice, a player noticed there was movement inside his helmet. Obviously, nothing is supposed to be moving inside a football helmet, but when he handed the helmet over to a defensive coach,...

Bill Gates’ “nepo baby” daughter Phoebe Gates, 23, has been accused of “cookie stuffing” at her multibillion-dollar startup, Phia – an illicit practice that comes with a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison, according to reports. Phia – a digital personal shopping assistant co-founded by Gates with fellow Stanford alum Sophia Kianni – reacted with shock in July following reports that it was dropping more web “cookies” than it should, taking undue credit for online sales at retail partners. The company released a statement that it had only learned of the issue “within the last 24 hours,” pledging...

TALARICO (D) PAXTON (R) SPREAD RCP Average 6/3 - 7/30 — — 46.0 44.4 Talarico +1.6 Texas A&M/Siena 7/27 - 7/30 619 LV 4.7 47 43 Talarico +4 TSU/YouGov* 7/27 - 7/30 1200 LV 2.8 47 45 Talarico +2 FOX News 7/23 - 7/27 1006 RV 3.0 51 48 Talarico +3 TPOR** 7/15 - 7/17 1048 LV 3.4 45 40 Talarico +5 NY Times/Siena 6/19 - 6/27 656 LV 4.5 47 47 Tie University of Texas* 6/5 - 6/12 1200 RV 2.8 42 43 Paxton +1 Quantus Insights 6/3 - 6/4 800 LV 3.5 43 45 Paxton +2

A former Southern Poverty Law Center finance officer was charged Wednesday for her role in secretly paying informants who participated in white supremacist groups over the past decade. Heidi Beirich made an initial appearance in federal court, according to her defense attorney Michael Proctor. CNN reported that she had been arrested earlier Wednesday. A 26-page superseding indictment naming Beirich, who was first unmasked by The Post in June, was later filed in the Middle District of Alabama. “There is a new indictment that includes the former CFO of SPLC,” Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed at an unrelated news conference at...

When HMS Barham was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-331 in November 1941, a chain of events began that led to a medium being charged and imprisoned under the archaic Witchcraft Act of 1735. The Queen Elizabeth-class battleship had sunk quickly, resulting in the deaths of more than 860 officers and crew members – two-thirds of the ship's company. Following the sinking, during a séance in Portsmouth, Helen Duncan, known as Hellish Nell since childhood and the medium at the centre of this story, claimed to have spoken to the ghost of one of the sailors who perished that...

Republican members of the New Mexico House’s Epstein-related special subcommittee are blasting the panel’s process after they say a reference to Democrat gubernatorial candidate Deb Haaland’s 2014 flight aboard an Epstein-connected aircraft was removed from the interim report without their knowledge or approval. Reps. Andrea Reeb, R-Clovis, and Bill Hall, R-Farmington, said Monday that they have “grave reservations” about Chair Andrea Romero’s handling of the panel’s first interim report, citing unilateral changes, shifting drafts, lack of notice to Republican members, and the unexplained removal of information they say all four members had agreed to include. The panel has repeatedly been...

James Talarico is running for Senate as a mainstream Texas Democrat. But a look at his past tells a very different story. After previously using his website to promote some strikingly radical positions and rhetoric, key language has since been scrubbed from the site. So what exactly did Talarico remove — and why? This week on Come & Take It, watch as Sara takes a closer look at James Talarico’s political past, the statements and positions that have disappeared, and then you decide whether he’s trying to rewrite his record as he seeks a bigger political future in Texas. Is...

Violence across two of the world’s most important shipping corridors escalated sharply this week after an attack by Iran-backed Houthi rebels killed six people near the Red Sea and U.S. forces separately fired missiles at a commercial vessel in the Gulf of Oman. The incidents mark another dangerous turn in a conflict that is increasingly threatening global shipping and energy supplies. They also come as oil prices climb and negotiations aimed at restoring normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remain stalled. For investors and consumers, the stakes extend well beyond the Middle East. Continued disruption across the Red Sea,...

Today was Scarborough's gaffetastic turn. Praising David Crowley, winner of WI's Dem gubernatorial primary, he described him as coming from a family that had struggled. And that contrasted him with many DSA candidates and members, who, per Joe, come from "good families." So, struggling families, and in Crowley's case, a black family, are not "good families?" The horror! Echoes of Biden’s 2019 gaffe: “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” [snip] Mika closed the segment by promising more on “moderate David Crowley." This exemplifies the liberal media pattern of casting liberal Democratic candidates as...

During Henry’s Kissinger’s famous “Year of Europe” speech in 1973, the then Assistant for National Security affairs observed that, “our values, our goals, and our basic interests are most closely identified with those of Europe.” Indeed, while perhaps Kissinger’s remarks were accurate when taken in the context of Soviet repression and a shared continental commitment to containing the threat, the transatlantic consensus he described has since frayed. Have some East Asian countries moved to take Europe’s place as free speech protectors? Last September, five armed British police officers stood in London’s Heathrow airport, waiting for the arrival of Graham Linehan’s...

Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind down the much smaller US-led operations against the Islamic State jihadist group in the country. US troops pulled out of bases in most areas of Iraq last year but maintained a presence in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region. Bases there have regularly come under attack since the US and Israel launched the war with Iran on February 28. A US official confirmed that the US expects to complete its pullout by September 30, but declined to say how many troops remain in Iraq or where they would be redeployed “The United States,...