Free Republic

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Department of Homeland Security from obtaining 17 million Commercial Driver’s License records. US District Judge Anthony Trenga, a George W. Bush appointee, entered an administrative stay and prevented the Trump Administration from obtaining the records it subpoenaed. Judge Trenga also ordered the DHS to immediately return any subpoenaed documents and not inspect the records. The judge said he needs more time to consider the motion to quash the subpoenas. On Friday, 21 Democrat state attorneys general and DC filed lawsuits challenging the records request. The blue state attorneys general sued the Department...

Reporting Highlights Ready, Fire, Aim: In a rushed process exempted from normal rules, the Army hired General Dynamics, which brought on a Turkish subcontractor with little vetting, to make artillery shells. Money for Nothing: Despite being paid $533 million, General Dynamics did not produce a single usable shell at its new factory — and has not been held publicly accountable. Wages of Failure: Since the Army halted two production lines at the factory, the General Dynamics unit responsible for the debacle has received contract awards totaling $2.5 billion. A robot was on fire. Again. It was the summer of 2024,...

One person’s trash dramatically turned into another’s treasure as workers in Belgium happened upon a gold hoard worth more than $10 million while installing a sewer line in a building they were renovating. “Our first reaction was actually disbelief,” Kobe, an 18-year-old student worker, told Belgium outlet VRT. “Of course, we hadn’t expected to find gold.” At the time, the construction crew was renovating a building in the city center of the Flemish community of Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde, located about 40 miles from Brussels. During the building rehab, workers were removing the foundation to make way for a sewer pipe when they...

INSANE: Democratic Socialist Of America’s Frances Gill called to defund the police and eventually abolish it. Gill is a psychiatry resident at Los Angeles General Medical Center and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s National Political Committee (NPC) for the 2025–2027 term (representing DSA-LA). She has been active in DSA since around 2017

By Dr. John BergsmaAccording to Wikipedia, “riffraff” is a term for the common people or hoi polloi, but with negative connotations. The term is derived from Old French ‘rif et raf’ meaning ‘one and all, every bit.’” My ancestors are Dutch, and—like many other ethnic groups—think they're pretty special. The typical saying is, “If yah ain’t Dutch, yah ain’t much.” However one may assess the muchness of the Dutch in modern times, from the perspective of the people of Israel in ancient times, the Dutch were mere riffraff, nameless illiterate Germanic tribes eking out a living on the cold shoreline...

On Tuesday night, late at night, the race for the Democrat candidate was in the bag for state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Wis.), who was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Then the impossible happened – again. This even left the far left MSNOW reporter without words Was he thinking how do I cover it up this time? It was deja vu from 2020, impacting a different race in the same state and city – here is a discussion from my book – The Steal – Volume II: The Impossible Occurs – regarding the 2020 steal in Wisconsin: In...

This video provides an analysis of the 2026 Texas elections, focusing on why Republicans remain the favorites to win both the U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races, despite the state's shifting demographics. U.S. Senate Race (0:57 - 8:24) Candidates: The race features Republican Ken Paxton versus Democrat James Talerico. The Forecast: While some polls show a tight race, the video argues these often underestimate Republican strength (as seen in past election results). Forecast models currently give Ken Paxton a significant advantage (79.6%) with a projected average win of 5.4%. Historical Context: Republicans have maintained dominance in Texas Senate elections since 1990,...

ANOKA CO., Minn. (FOX 9) - A Minnesota prostitution investigation uncovered the alleged involvement of former Anoka County Assistant Attorney Andrea Sampson, who is accused of maintaining fake companies to hide the profits of a sex trafficking operation. The criminal complaint also names Frank Devone Reeves, described by victims as a "pimp," Viktoriya Sergeyevna Komonash, who victims called a "house mom" and Katherine Michelle Thomes, who investigators say owned and operated the online commercial sex website "Minnesota Erotica Personals." Investigators say Sampson, along with Komonash and Thomes, believed they were in a romantic or sexual relationship with Reeves as they...

CHICAGO -- Joshua Báez always believed this day would come. And he has absolutely made the most of it. The Cardinals' young slugger is now the first player in history to homer three times in his MLB debut. On the first Major League pitch Báez saw, Cubs left-hander Matthew Boyd challenged him with a 93.4 mph fastball up in the zone. Báez jumped on it, launching a two-run homer a Statcast-projected 449 feet to dead center field. The ball left his bat at 108.6 mph and gave the Cardinals a 3-0 lead. Then, to make the day even more memorable,...

Explanation: Known for its bright and fast meteors, the annual Perseid Meteor Shower comes to planet Earth's skies from a radiant in the heroic constellation Perseus. The popular northern summer celestial spectacle is created as grains of dust cast off along the orbit of periodic comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle vaporize in Earth's dense atmosphere, tracing brief, but beautiful streaks through the night. Taken near the shower's peak of activity on August 12, this composite image recorded two bright perseid meteors and one meteor's watery reflection from a location near the coastal village of Grisslehamn, Sweden. Almost as bright as Altair, brightest star...

Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News via Yahoo.com Trump endorses in crowded Florida Congressional District 19 race. Who is his pick? Aug. 14, 2026 Key Points • President Donald Trump endorsed Catalina Lauf for Florida's 19th Congressional District. • Rival candidates in the Republican primary have emphasized their local roots in response. • Lauf and opponent Jim Schwartzel have clashed over the firing of a local meteorologist. • The winner of the Republican primary is widely expected to win the general election in the conservative district. With the Republican primary election quickly approaching, President Donald Trump has officially entered...

The Newsroom and American Rust alum Jeff Daniels says The Brink of War, his new Cold War-era nail-biter, which tells an extraordinary true story, has themes that resonate today. “The world is still a dangerous place,” Daniels, 71, told UPI in a Zoom interview Wednesday. “There are nuclear weapons out there. More countries have them than had them, say, back in 1986. More countries want them and the world seems to be on a path towards setting up mutually assured destruction, again, whether you have star wars shields or not.” Written and directed by Michael Russell Gunn, the film follows...

Researchers are shell-shocked at the latest marine discovery. Dolphins have been filmed using shells to ensnare their prey off the coast of Australia, marking the first time this clever tactic has been caught on camera, per a bombshell paper in Marine Mammal Science. “The second I saw that shell in the air, I immediately knew what was happening,” the study’s head author, Alexis Levengood, a marine mammal biologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, told ScienceAlert. Levengood said she and her team were on a research vessel off Hervey Bay when they spotted a female Pacific bottlenose...

Israel Police announce that missing mother and daughter Mali and Liel Yahalomi were located alive on a bus in Buenos Aires. Police official: They accumulated financial debts. ....The Israel Police announced on Friday evening that mother and daughter Mali and Liel Yahalomi, who had been missing since last Friday, have been found alive. Footage released by the Israel Police showed the two being located aboard a bus in Buenos Aires, Argentina. .....

The Japanese defense minister on Saturday prayed at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, seen by Japan’s Asian neighbors as a symbol of the country’s past militarism. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, despite repeated past pledges to visit on the day marking Japan’s surrender, has so far stayed away from the shrine to avoid exacerbating diplomatic tensions. Visits by Japanese politicians to the shrine, which also commemorates World War II war criminals, have been criticized by China and South Korea. They see it as showing a lack of remorse over Japan’s wartime atrocities. Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi has regularly visited the controversial shrine to...

US President Donald Trump urges Americans to accept slightly higher gasoline prices as the cost of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and said he would soon declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory. The comments underscore the growing political risk for Trump as higher fuel prices collide with his campaign promise to lower energy costs, with Democrats already seeking to make the economic fallout from the Iran war an issue heading into the November midterm elections. In a speech in Garden City, Trump says Americans who had to “pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline”...

Researchers at the Marquette Law School Poll recently identified a sharp generational decline in trust across the United States. Americans born before 1960 still hold onto a baseline assumption that their neighbors will not rob them, given half a chance. They are the most trusting demographic in the country. The numbers worsen with each successive generation. The cohort born in the 2000s registers the highest levels of distrust ever recorded by the project. A significant portion of young adults operate under the functional premise that everyone else is a threat. The situation gets significantly uglier from there. A comprehensive 25-country...

Prime Healthcare leaders cultivated ties to Biden, Obama, Harris, Newsom and other top Democrats while their hospitals marketed “Birth Packages in South Texas” to pregnant women abroad. Two Texas hospitals under investigation for allegedly marketing childbirth packages to foreign women belong to a politically connected healthcare empire led by a Biden-honored billionaire and a member of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s leadership network. Dr. Prem Reddy founded Prime Healthcare and created the nonprofit Prime Healthcare Foundation, which owns Mission Regional Medical Center and Knapp Medical Center, the two hospitals now under investigation. In 2024, Reddy received the Joseph R. Biden...

The Italian institute now lists NIH-funded research in its own procurement records, including work on vaccines and monoclonal antibodies for potential pandemic viruses. Just three months after leaving the federal government, Anthony Fauci took an advisory role at a newly created, Italian government-backed center devoted to vaccines and pandemic preparedness. Less than 18 months later, Fauci’s former agency awarded more than $44 million to a pandemic-vaccine research program co-led by the center’s scientific director, the same scientist Fauci had agreed to advise. Now, procurement records from the Italian institute provide an additional receipt: research connected to the NIH-funded program is...

From New York to California, the American left is proving that nothing succeeds like failure. From immigration to taxes to health care, politicians are playing to their past fiascos to push an even more radical agenda. Take immigration. Many, including the Democratic Socialists, have called for open borders or disbanding ICE. After the Biden administration chose to allow millions of undocumented people to enter the country, most Democrats are now calling for “pathways” to make them citizens. After all, they argue, there are too many to deport.We now know the open border was a choice. The Trump administration immediately stopped...