Free Republic

LIVE REPLAY: Fed Chair Kevin Warsh Holds a Press Conference (September 16, 2026) from Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) is coverage of Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s post-FOMC press conference. youtube.com Main decisionThe Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted unanimously (12-0) to raise the federal funds rate by 25 basis points, setting the target range at 3.75%–4.00%. This was the first rate increase since July 2023. youtube.com Key points from WarshInflation remains the predominant focus. He stated it is “too high and has been for too long,” and that summer readings did not show meaningful improvement in underlying trends. The...

Bail set at $4M for woman suspected in deadly Metro crash Officials with the Los Angeles Police Department identified the suspect as 36-year-old Bailee Rios of Simi Valley. She is accused of causing a crash that left two dead and six others injured at a busy intersection in Chatsworth. Video on link

Link to Summary The video is a critical investigative piece arguing that California’s high-speed rail project is a massive failure of waste, delay, and mismanagement—essentially “high-speed rail to nowhere.” It contrasts the project’s poor progress with China’s rapid nationwide high-speed rail buildout and interviews locals, officials, and critics along the route. Core claims about status and costsIn 2008, voters approved a plan to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco. After roughly 18 years and about $15 billion spent, the project has connected nothing. Visible work consists mainly of concrete, rebar, and incomplete structures in the Central Valley (derisively called a...

Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair was fined $11,492 for putting an unauthorized message in his eye black during the Texans’ loss to the Bills on Sunday. The radical Al-Shaair wrote the words “Hind Rajab” across his eye black to honor a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed during a military engagement in Gaza in 2024. Texans’ Azeez Al-Shaair Fined for Memorializing the Death of a Palestinian Girl on His Eye Black Jack Gorman_Getty Images (1)Jack Gorman/Getty Images Warner Todd Huston16 Sep 2026108 3:06 Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair was fined $11,492 for putting an unauthorized message in his eye black...

A California golden retriever apparently missed the memo on the whole guard dog thing. A 90-pound pooch named Nash had an unexpectedly friendly reaction when a stranger allegedly broke into his family’s San Diego home, repeatedly bringing the intruder toys and seemingly trying to turn the bizarre break-in into playtime, per NBC 7. The unusual encounter unfolded earlier this month in Sherman Heights, a neighborhood just east of downtown San Diego, while homeowner Dante Rowley and his family watched the surreal scene play out remotely through their home security app. The stranger allegedly got into Rowley’s home near 20th and...

EXCLUSIVE: The volume of reality TV production in Los Angeles has been falling over the last five years and the situation is set to worsen as one of the biggest music competition shows is set to leave the city. Deadline understands that American Idol is moving production from Los Angeles to the Atlanta area in Georgia. The ABC show is moving production for its upcoming Season 25, which premieres in the new year, Fremantle, which produces the show with Sony Pictures Television-backed 19 Entertainment, confirmed to Deadline. We hear that Fremantle is in final talks with a studio complex in...

The New York Times came under fire Wednesday over a baffling passage that appeared in an article about an Israeli documentary — which said the Jewish state “still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7.” The Sept. 14 article, penned by Jerusalem-based reporter Isabel Kershner, covers the controversy over the documentary film “NAZA,” which chronicles the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and just won the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival. The article details the criticism about the 80-minute film lodged by some Israeli officials — who called it “based on blood libels” and...

Travis Kelce has been tagged as a victim in a major Ponzi scheme by prosecutors in a Missouri court, per multiple reports. The Chiefs star tight end was named in court on Tuesday as one of many to be wronged by Siddharth Jawahar, described by the U.S. Attorney’s Office as an illegal immigrant who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud that took away more than $35 million from investors. The 38-year-old pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in January and was ordered to pay over $31 million in...

Peter Berkowitz is one of those rare public intellectuals who doesn’t mind being on the “wrong” side of hot controversies—which is to say, he’s willing to clash with the “progressive” juggernaut. A former professor at Harvard and George Mason Law School, Berkowitz is currently a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His new book, Reclaiming Liberal Education in America, is a collection of his essays on higher education written between 2014 and 2025. They give the reader a comprehensive view of the problems that beset our colleges and universities. He writes, “The nation’s elite institutions of...

*** RealClearPolitics polling averages on Wednesday show Democrats ahead in Texas, Michigan, Maine, Alaska, Ohio, and New Hampshire.*** In Texas, Democrat state Rep. James Talarico leads Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton by 2.6 points in the latest RCP average, 47.6% to 45%. Talarico leads in eight of the 10 polls included in the current RCP average, while Paxton leads in one*** Michigan also shows a narrow Democrat advantage, with Abdul El-Sayed leading Republican Mike Rogers by 1.8 points, 46.5% to 44.7%, in the current RCP average. Seven of the 10 polls in the polling set show El-Sayed ahead, two show...

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved its first interest rate hike in more than three years and indicated another to come, as part of an effort aimed at combating inflation brought on by spiraling oil prices and other factors. In a move that markets widely anticipated, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee voted 12-0 to increase its key interest rate by a quarter percentage point, or 25 basis points. The move brought the overnight funds rate to a target range of 3.75%-4%. “Inflation remains elevated,” the committee said in its brief post-meeting statement. “Today’s policy action will support a...

Travis Kelce has been tagged as a victim in a major Ponzi scheme by prosecutors in a Missouri court, per multiple reports. The Chiefs star tight end was named in court on Tuesday as one of many to be wronged by Siddharth Jawahar, described by the U.S. Attorney’s Office as an illegal immigrant who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud that took away more than $35 million from investors. The 38-year-old pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in January and was ordered to pay over $31 million in...

The judge in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy ordered that the jurors’ names be sealed indefinitely due to concerns about their privacy. Judge William Sullivan said on Sept. 14 that the jury list will remain impounded until a new order is issued, citing “a real and present” risk of personal harm to the jurors and to the integrity of their work if the list is made public. Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. She admitted to strangling her children...

The state of our inboxes here at Futurism is chaotic. Every day is a cacophony of PR pitches, deranged rants, irrelevant news updates, and too-good-to-be-true business opportunities. (Don’t worry, though: we read every email.) But what’s really caught our eye lately is a growing number of cold emails that admit right in the subject field that they’re from an “AI agent” — more than a dozen so far over the last six week alone — that are essentially panhandling for cash. The agents, all of which were given human names in an apparent attempt to elicit sympathy, identify themselves as...

Last week, a relatively unknown 27-year-old researcher quit his job at Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI model.Then, he published his first post on X (formerly Twitter). In it, he warned that artificial intelligence could eventually kill humanity. The post exploded across social media. Within days, it racked up more than 150 million views. Major news organizations seized on the story. Politicians demanded action. And some of the biggest names in AI started debating whether development should slow down.Then, on Monday, Wall Street reacted. Investors started dumping many of the very companies powering the AI boom. But something doesn’t...

Step one is to ‘trick the voters’ to obtain a governing mandate. Step two is to ‘purge the opposition when the voters are realizing that they were tricked.’ And step three is ‘everybody is punished who was part of this conservative movement.’ WASHINGTON, D.C. — It has been just over four months since conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban left office after 16 years of running the country, and what replaced him was not the “new conservatism” promised to the Hungarian people by Western elites, but rather a “liberal authoritarian rule,” according to a conservative Hungarian politician. Viktor Orban had...

Don’t ask an AI chatbot how many letter e’s there are in the word “seventeen.” Or do, actually, if you want to see how dodgy the tech remains. In a clip that’s gone viral in AI circles, the content creator who goes by “Husk” asks ChatGPT’s Voice mode to answer this simple counting question. Not only does the confident-sounding AI get it wrong — insisting there’re only three e’s instead of four — it doubles down so vehemently that it effectively tries to gaslight the user. “Let’s go through it. S-e-v-e-n-t-e-e-n,” ChatGPT spells out, after assuring that its underlying model,...

The general shutdown followed a joint call by an alliance of Iranian Kurdish political groups for businesses to close and workers to stay home on the anniversary of the 22-year-old’s death in morality police custody, an event that ignited the nationwide Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Tensions were highest in Saqqez, Amini's hometown. Authorities deployed heavy security around the city and the nearby Aichi cemetery, where she is buried. Local rights group Kurdpa reported that authorities released water from the nearby Cheragh-Veis dam for a third consecutive year to submerge secondary routes to her grave, while installing elevated structures to mount...

[Catholic Caucus] A Marian Minimalism in Accordance with Mater Populi Fidelis: The Case of Cardinal Müller A Marian Minimalism in Accordance with Mater Populi Fidelis: The Case of Cardinal MüllerBy Karen Darantièrefor Rorate CaeliThe saddening doctrinal note Mater Populi Fidelis, promulgated a year ago by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and approved by Leo XIV, belittles the greatness of the Blessed Virgin by denying her Coredemption — that is, her participation in the acquisition of the graces of our salvation through the merits of her Compassion — as well as her universal mediation in the dispensation of...

For more than 30 years, the path to high school graduation in New York State has required Regents exams, the rigorous end-of-year tests that have determined whether students receive a diploma. The New York State Board of Regents, the governing body for its schools, voted on Monday to take a major step in its yearslong plan to phase out the exam as a graduation requirement, a far-reaching overhaul intended to eliminate barriers to graduation for some students. The changes represent New York’s most substantial education policy overhaul in decades, a sweeping rethinking of student expectations and diploma requirements in a...