Free Republic

Iryna Rybakova is horribly aware that the front line is inching toward Kramatorsk. Having served in eastern Ukraine for several years, she has watched her units being pushed from one strategic hub after another. But she said the past few weeks have been “insane.” The city remains one of Ukraine’s last strongholds in the Donbas region, but the Russians are getting dangerously close. Nearly all of the city’s bridges have been destroyed, and barrages of guided bombs and drones are now a daily reality. “The attacks happen dozens of times a day. Dozens of cars, utility buildings, residential buildings, administrative...

A group of Cuban doctors claim they were effectively sold into slavery by their country’s regime and are asking for $129 million in damages in a lawsuit. The legal filing says 3,500 doctors were sent to Brazil between 2013 and 2018 and claims the Cuban regime earned more than $2.3 billion for their services but paid them “a small fraction” — less than 10 percent — of their earnings. The doctors, now living in the US, claim that when dispatched abroad they were never informed 90 percent of their wages would go to the Cuban government. They also say that...

Authorities are searching for multiple black male suspects involved in a violent campus brawl at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. The fight involved weapons, including a knife and baseball bats.The incident occurred around 7 pm on Tuesday outside of the Holton-Hooker Living Center. Police said two individuals have been taken into custody on obstruction charges, while several others remain at large, according to local news. Officers arrived on the scene and located one individual with cuts on his hand. He was transported to a local hospital for treatment. Another person sustained knee and hand injuries, but declined medical care,...

Republican Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s staff would not tell the Daily Caller News Foundation Thursday whether the senator would return after the August recess. McConnell’s staff sent the DCNF an Aug. 6 press release about his rehabilitation and said there was “no additional guidance or announcements” on his health or return. McConnell has not made a public appearance or cast a vote in the Senate since his hospitalization on June 14 after suffering a fall at his residence in Washington, D.C.

Behind the scenes, officials attempt to bridge a widening funding gap Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says his government needs tens of billions of additional dollars to keep fighting and pay bills through the end of the year. The request couldn’t come at a worse time for European governments, the main donors to Kyiv’s defense against Russia. European officials privately warn they might not be able to foot the bill for everything Ukraine wants. Last weekend, the hard-right Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD, stormed to victory in the Saxony-Anhalt state elections on a platform of ending assistance for Ukraine...

Joe diGenova, the 81-year-old Trump loyalist who had headed a sprawling investigation in the Southern District of Florida that targeted President Donald Trump’s perceived political enemies, has resigned from the Justice Department.“It was an honor and a privilege to serve the president and the department,” diGenova said Thursday.Asked why he is leaving, diGenova declined to comment.“I’m moving on,” he said.ABC News first reported diGenova’s departure.While diGenova resigned from the Justice Department and was not fired, a source familiar with the determination told NBC News that Justice Department officials had already lost confidence in his leadership skills and his ability to...

Neo-Nazis believe a mysterious potato farmer known as “Scary Larry” is the infiltrator who prosecutors say shacked up with Southern Poverty Law Center boss Heidi Beirich. Former National Alliance member Lawrence W. Myers — an Arabic-speaking, guitar-strumming, “paranoid” man — was even kicked out of the racist group for being a spy, sources said. Multiple ex-members told The Post they believe Myers, 68, is the person labelled with the pseudonym “F-9” in a recent federal indictment, who feds claim was paid $1.2 million from SPLC donor funds. “Many people, especially [former National Alliance chairman] Erich Gliebe believe that Myers was...

Former NBA point guard Ty Lawson put himself in an uncomfortable spotlight this past July with his latest run-in with the law. The 38-year-old was arrested on July 16 in Castle Rock, Colorado, after a liquor store employee accused him of stealing a $34 bottle of vodka. According to police documents, Lawson allegedly carried the bottle to a nearby restaurant where officers later confronted him. Authorities also noted they believed the retired NBA player was intoxicated, documenting the smell of alcohol during their interaction. Things reportedly escalated after Lawson was taken into custody. Police alleged he repeatedly called an officer...

Friedrich Merz cancelled a phone call with Donald Trump hours after the US president celebrated the AfD's election win. The leaders had been scheduled to hold a call on Wednesday until Mr Trump posted on Truth Social. A spokesman for the German chancellor declined to give a reason for the snub, but noted that it was not because of scheduling conflicts. On Tuesday night, Mr Trump wrote: "Wow! The populist party in Germany just had a really big night. They finally got tired of the absolutely horrible immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly. "They are on...

The Seattle Times and Newsday have sued OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing the companies of copying hundreds of thousands of articles without permission to train AI systems and asking a federal court to destroy models and training datasets that incorporate their journalism. The copyright infringement lawsuit, filed September 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, targets the use of the newspapers' work in products including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and AI features in Bing. The publishers say OpenAI and Microsoft scraped stories from their websites, including articles behind paywalls, and incorporated the material into their AI...

An Orange County woman was arrested by the FBI Thursday for allegedly stealing more than $400,000 from a nonprofit organization created to support a high school football team. The FBI raided the Aliso Viejo home of Julie Molina, 56, early Thursday morning. Authorities allege she stole the money while serving as treasurer for the Aliso Niguel High School football team. She’s expected to make her initial appearance and be arraigned later Thursday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on four counts of wire fraud, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release. According to the indictment, from 2023...

Imagery analyzed by Faytuks Network indicates a large plume of smoke near Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline south of Medina

DALLAS, Texas—President Donald Trump on Wednesday night cast his second term as “the greatest two years in the history of the presidency,” rallying voters to support Republicans in the upcoming elections at a historic midterm convention in Dallas. Trump promised to issue a $5,000 dividend to every adult citizen if Republicans keep their majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. “Your vote will decide whether our country stumbles at the starting gate of the next 250 years or surges forward and never ever looks back,” Trump said as he began his remarks. “Vote Republican, and we will...

WASHINGTON — Any immigrant legally in the United States on a work visa would have to depart the country immediately if they lose or quit their job under a new rule being proposed by the Department of Homeland Security. The proposal would eliminate the 60-day grace period foreign workers receive when they become unemployed — allowing them to stay in the US to find more work. Instead, the loss of employment would mean an immediate loss in legal status.

This video features a gathering in Dallas where several Americans who were held hostage abroad during the Biden administration share their stories after being freed under President Trump. The speakers include Fabian Buglione, George Glesman, and Ksenia Karellina, along with Ronen and Orna Neutra, the parents of Omar Neutra, an American-Israeli citizen killed by Hamas on October 7th. Key Highlights: Hostage Experiences: Survivors discuss their time in captivity in countries like Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Russia, expressing their feelings of being left behind by the previous administration and their gratitude for their release under President Trump (0:59 - 9:52). The Case...

By the time the public hears about a local data center project, corporations are already seeking tax breaks, utility subsidies, infrastructure investments, and approvals that could reshape a community for decades. Public schools can end up carrying the cost. Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and water, can drive up utility costs, and bring noise, pollution, and industrial infrastructure closer to the places where children learn and live. Nearly 2,000 U.S. schools are already located within a mile of a data center or one approved for construction. Then, there is the money. Governments are handing data center corporations massive...

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent must be feeling chafed. Last month, amid rapidly rising interest rates on federal debt, he announced that his department would double its typical longer-term bond buybacks, from $2 billion to $4 billion. The idea was that, by boosting demand for Treasuries, yields might come down and the government would be able to borrow additional money at lower cost. And yields did come down a little bit — for about a day. Then they shot right back up to where they began.

A sculpture inspired by a desire to bring a contemporary "everywoman" to Trafalgar Square has been unveiled on London's Fourth Plinth. Lady In Blue by New York artist Tschabalala Self, which pays homage to a young, metropolitan woman, is the 16th artwork to feature on the plinth since 1998. The bronze and blue figure replaces Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) by Teresa Margolles. The statue has been patinated with a pigment refined from Lapis Lazuli, a semi-precious stone that has been used by artists for millennia. Self said she had set out to put an...

Former President George W. Bush warned that Americans risk forgetting a critical lesson of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks if the United States turns inward and ignores threats developing overseas. "Our nation occasionally goes through isolationist periods, where the attitude is, 'Well, we've got too many problems at home. Therefore, who cares about what happens overseas?'" Bush said Wednesday, according to CBS News. "Which really means to me they just don't pay attention to the lessons of 9/11, because what happens overseas matters to our national security at home." Bush delivered the warning at his presidential library in Dallas...

The families of 9/11 victims opposed to Zohran Mamdani’s attendance at the 25th anniversary memorial have received celebrity support. Banging his gavel in the name of respect for the 2,977 lives lost on September 11, 2001, Adam Levy, son of world-renowned Judge Judith “Judy” Sheindlin, and star jurist of forthcoming CBS series “Adam’s Law,” is unabashedly backing the throng of protestors who’ve called for Mamdani’s exclusion from this year’s annual remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero, Friday, at 8:46 a.m. “Don’t show up at this memorial when you’ve supported radical Islam in the past,” Levy raged to The Post about Hizzoner....