Free Republic

Peter Cullen, the Canadian voice actor who starred as the heroic Optimus Prime in a convoy of Transformers films, TV shows and video games and as the gloomy Eeyore in dozens of Winnie the Pooh projects, has died. He was 85. Cullen died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, his agent, Kevin Motley, told The Hollywood Reporter. He “passed away peacefully, surrounded by his loving family — and held in the hearts of his many friends and countless fans worldwide,” his family said in a statement. They ask “that you honor his remarkable legacy by serving your communities and...

The Democratic nominee for Colorado's Third Congressional District, Dwayne Romero, has made housing affordability a tent-pole issue for his campaign, accusing "Wall Street behemoths" of "buying up homes and driving up rents." Yet, for years, his real estate firm has made big money selling multimillion-dollar luxury homes in Aspen, where residential property is so expensive that even the city's doctors and lawyers can't afford to live. Romero also holds stakes in BlackRock, Blackstone, and Airbnb, his personal financial disclosure shows. Romero told a Grand Junction news outlet that his top priority is "affordability" and that "prices and housing costs" is...

Police in Minneapolis reportedly raided the apartment of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's son and seized firearms before arresting his roommate. Law enforcement sources told Alpha News that a search warrant was carried out at the home of Omar's son Adnan on Tuesday night. According to the outlet, they recovered guns and ammunition from the home and arrested his roommate Abdulrahman Abdi, 22. Earlier that day, the city's police department said in a statement to the Daily Mail that they conducted a traffic stop and cited Abdi for no proof of insurance and no license. The department said that Abdi was released...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) restored information regarding studies of the use of firearms for self-defense on its website, reversing a move made during the Biden administration. CDC took down information about the studies during the Biden administration after a lobbying campaign by anti-Second Amendment groups backed by Democratic Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, according to emails obtained by The Reload. The restoration of the studies to the CDC site prompted criticism from anti-Second Amendment advocates. “It is the politically motivated laundering of disinformation that has become a hallmark of the Trump administration’s approach to all scientific inquiry,...

Leftist nonprofits are using pass-through organizations to boost voter registration for demographics most likely to vote for Democrats, a new report alleges. The report, titled “The ‘Charities’ influencing elections: 2024 and beyond,” written by the Capital Research Center (CRC), found that multiple left-leaning 501(c)(3)s, which are prohibited from engaging in any political campaign for or against a candidate and whose donations are tax deductible, acted as conduits for 501(c)(4)s, which are permitted to engage in direct partisan politics. Those tax-exempt organizations spent $638 million during the 2024 election cycle, according to the report, to register voters most likely to vote...

The U.S. military this week used a laser to shoot down three drones along the U.S.-Mexico border that were allegedly operated by drug cartels, the Pentagon said Thursday. The three unmanned aircraft systems were shot down late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning using an "Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser system," according to U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for overseeing certain military defense operations in North America. The drones were downed by the U.S. military's southern border Joint Task Force, a unit of USNORTHCOM, which did not specify exactly where the drones were shot down, or which cartels they...

The Global Government Affairs team over at X dropped a bombshell Thursday night, revealing that the X Safety team had uncovered proof positive of a foreign influence campaign targeting the build out of AI and data centers in the United States. It turns out that, after launching an investigation, the team uncovered a massive bot farm consisting of roughly 200,000 "suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts," including hundreds that appear to have been trying to manipulate debate in the U.S. over artificial intelligence, data centers, and the associated energy costs. ... According to X, about 200 accounts within the bot farm network...

The most formidable challenges facing establishment Democrats in November’s midterms are the success of far-left, socialist, or progressive candidates in primary elections and mainstream Democrats’ surrender to that wing of the party. Alongside advocating for an agenda that is radical in its drive to reshape America – and is broadly unpopular – the DSA’s influence has left Democrats on the wrong side of an issue that the party has been hobbled by in the past: transgender policies. Simply put, the DSA’s strong opposition to legislation banning biological males from competing in women’s sports has come to define where the national...

It was a long time second-coming. After years of searching, Italian archaeologists have discovered an ancient site that matches a Bible description of where Jesus Christ was buried, per a preliminary study in the Jerusalem archaeological journal Liber Annuus. “We have found evidence of a funerary landscape,” lead archaeologist Francesca Romana Stasolla, of the “La Sapienza” University of Rome, told the Daily Mail as part of an exclusive article. The researchers had been excavating Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a fourth century Roman Church that was built over a holy site where many Christians believe Christ was crucified, buried...

Hundreds of Ceuta residents blocked Red Cross vehicles carrying food to illegal migrants on Thursday, 27 August, before pushing through police lines, dismantling makeshift settlements and setting migrant encampments on fire, as anger over the thousands who remain in the Spanish enclave after July’s mass invasion spilled into a third consecutive day of unrest. The confrontation began near Benítez beach, where residents sat across the road for more than two hours to prevent Red Cross vehicles from reaching El Trampolín, one of the principal improvised migrant camps. Protesters carrying Spanish and Ceuta flags demanded the illegal migrants’ removal, chanting ‘Ceuta...

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the Postal Service from inserting itself into the election process while litigation continues. ================================================================ A federal judge Thursday blocked a Postal Service regulation that would exert control over mail-in ballots ahead of the midterm elections in the latest setback on the issue for President Donald Trump. The recently finalized measure would implement a key provision of Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots that would add a new level of bureaucracy to the elections process, which is typically administered by states. The executive order directed the U.S. Postal Service to, among...

Two air traffic controllers left work early the night an Air Canada regional jet smashed into a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport, killing two people in March, according to reports. The Federal Aviation Administration is moving to fire the two controllers who left work about an hour before their shifts ended on March 22 — leaving two remaining controllers to handle more than twice the usual volume of traffic on the night of the deadly collision, the Wall Street Journal first reported. That evening, the Air Canada regional jet barreled into the Port Authority fire truck while it was crossing...

Here’s a headline that you might not be surprised to see today: “Have The Democrats Been Lost To Socialism?” Only it wasn’t written today. Issues & Insights crafted that headline way back in 2016, when it was already clear the Democrats had moved sharply leftward. Today’s extremist Dems are no different; they’re just more obvious about it. “Polls show a shocking number of Democrats, in particular young ones, find socialist ideas not merely acceptable but preferable to capitalism,” I&I wrote then. “It’s hard to imagine a more stunning indictment of our schools.” That still stands up pretty well today,...

Left or right, taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize political activism they oppose, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is drafting plans to ensure they don’t by revoking tax exemptions from bogus political “charities.” As The Post’s James Franey reports, Bessent and the IRS are taking a hard look at the conduct of up to a dozen or so high-profile lefty nonprofits — including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations — with an eye toward possibly revoking their tax-exempt status. That could mean a $165 million windfall in new tax payments from...

Donald Trump has unleashed his own bizarre personal ranking of former American presidents. Unsurprisingly, Trump, 80, put himself at the top of the list as “The Greatest” of all time in his Thursday Truth Social post. A generous Trump also declared former Presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to be “Great”, but not on his elite level.

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem🇮🇱 (8/28/26)[Prayer]PersonalitiesPsalm 5Psalm 6Psalm 6[a] For the director of music. With stringed instruments. According to sheminith.[b] A psalm of David. 1 Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. 2 Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. 3 My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long? 4 Turn, Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love. 5 Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave? 6...

Maybe he thought it was strip steak? A Houston dad got a shocking surprise when a DoorDash driver delivered food to him and his daughter while as naked as a jaybird. Kiante Matlock said he was inside his home playing video games with his daughter Monday when he got a phone notification alerting him the order had arrived. But when he checked his Ring camera, he realized to his horror that the driver who dropped off the food was stark naked. The incredible footage showed the driver, who had shoulder-length dreadlocks, placing their order on the front porch and then...

One ideology is premised on faith in Allah, and the other on faith in government, but what they share is that once you check in, only death gets you out. Classical Islamic law treats leaving the faith as a capital offense with no statute of limitations. The doctrine rests on a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari, “whoever changes his religion, kill him,” and legal manuals such as Reliance of the Traveller, codify apostasy as a capital crime. Abdul Rahman discovered the doctrine still had force in 2006. He was arrested in Kabul that February for converting from Islam to Christianity sixteen...

An Atlanta woman who participated in a scheme that defrauded Amazon out of nearly $10 million was sentenced to over 16 years in federal prison on Wednesday, the Justice Department announced. The US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said in a release that Brittany Hudson was sentenced to 16 years and three months in federal prison after she and her partner used a business relationship with Amazon to defraud the e-commerce giant. Hudson was convicted in March of 30 felony offenses that involved wire fraud, money laundering, related conspiracy charges and a count related to the forgery...

While California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta and Democrat legislators are working hard to… ban investigation of Somali health care fraud, the corruption is public, obvious and so commonplace that hardly anyone bothers talking about it anymore. The financial ramifications from the fire, which started at Hundred Acre Winery in Calistoga and destroyed the grape crop of dozens of wineries and substantially burned one vineyard, remain uncertain… more than 30 small winery and vineyard owners impacted by the fire are struggling to recover about $90 million they say they lost. Only one wine company has received compensation from Hundred Acre and...