Free Republic

First Lady Melania Trump is responding to reports that a Russian oligarch accused of helping lead an organization that facilitates the abduction of Ukrainian children helped pay for Donald Trump Jr and his new wife Bettina Anderson's lavish wedding party.

The House Judiciary Committee, along with the House Administration Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released an interim staff report on ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform. In that report, the Committees found that ActBlue failed to prevent illegal foreign political contributions, and it's being called an "explosive" insight into the organization's practices. Two years ago, the Committees began investigating ActBlue's fraud-prevention practices. In 2024, ActBlue changed its fraud policy twice during the presidential campaign, reportedly implementing "more lenient" standards that let foreign donors and other suspicious donor money flow into U.S. campaigns. Earlier this year, The New...

On September 15 around 9 a.m., surveillance video captured a masked suspect demanding property from a customer at a Shell station near 151st Street and Harlem Avenue in Orland Park, Illinois. The concealed carry license holder drew his firearm and shot the 20-year-old Christopher Brown in the cheek, who fled but was soon caught nearby and hospitalized in stable condition. Brown faces charges of attempted armed robbery, possessing a stolen vehicle and firearm, and aggravated unlawful weapon possession. The gas station owner's family member, Naseem Elmosa, praised the customer's preparedness, noting no one else was hurt and police confirmed...

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has withdrawn from public engagements after returning from the BRICS summit in India, his office said on Wednesday, citing ill health. Ramaphosa, 73, returned from New Delhi on Monday and was advised by his doctors to rest and recover. His absence comes as Deputy President Paul Mashatile continues recovering from a minor medical procedure, leaving both of South Africa’s top leaders away from public duties. Meanwhile, unverified claims about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s health have surfaced following his visit to New Delhi for the BRICS summit. Wanjun Xie, chairman of the China Democracy Party, alleged...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ Ooh Rah! Looking The Part! U.S. Marine Corps recruit Angel Onofre Jr. with Fox Company, 2nd Recruit Training Battalion receives his weekly haircut at Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) San Diego. Recruits receive haircuts weekly during their time at MCRD San Diego in order to maintain a uniform appearance and promote good hygiene throughout recruit training. Onofre is a naive of Lake County, Illinois. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Yvonna Guyette) (This image was captured in color and changed to black and white.) Canteen Mission StatementShowing support...

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened the European Union with 'very serious tariffs' or to 'stop trading' if it makes a trade deal with Canada 'with bad intentions.'

Veteran national security reporter Bill Gertz posted to social media on Wednesday that wild "rumors are flying" about Chinese leader Xi Jinping's health and a possible plot to oust him from power. "Rumors are flying in China over Xi Jinping begin [sic] taken ill during his visit to India. They include claims that he suffered a minor illness to experiencing a stroke worsened by failure to treat early," wrote Gertz, a national security correspondent for The Washington Times. "Some wild claims say rival group armies are mobilizing for civil war. No confirmation but Treasury Sec Bessent is meeting with Chinese...

Earlier this week, as I sat in a waiting room and scrolled on my phone, the algorithm attacked. There on my screen was an ad from the so-called Catholics for Free Choice asking me to purchase a training class on how to spot “fake clinics.” They were referencing pregnancy resource centers. And for a fee, they were willing to teach me how to hunt them down. Clearly, Catholics for Choice (CFC) has a new target, and for once, it’s not the bishops. They are now targeting the women sitting in a waiting room with a positive test and no idea...

Texas Democrats have allegedly found a “roundabout” way to pay for votes in the critical Senate and governor’s races, according to an undercover video published Wednesday. A Democratic operative with Texas Majority PAC admitted in the new footage released by the conservative outlet Townhall that the group is shelling out $25 per person for attendance at Zoom classes that discuss “bad things” Republicans are doing. “We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things,” said Sky MacAdams, an organizing manager for...

Explanation: Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust partially blocking its bright core earned it the moniker “the Black Eye Galaxy.” Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) sees that dust, shown in red, as it absorbs and re-emits light from surrounding newborn stars. These young stars are embedded in pink star-forming regions in the secondary Hubble-only image. M64’s inner and outer gas regions counter-rotate, creating regions of increased star formation where the two gas “currents” meet and compress. A...

Oh, brother! Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s marriage to her alleged brother won’t get her kicked out of the US, but other matters in her immigration file might, sources told The Post. In 2009, Omar wed self-described ‘dirty dandy’ Ahmed Elmi, a UK national long rumored to be her brother. But the federal probe into Somalia-born Omar’s past is more likely to focus on how she became as US citizen as a teenager and paperwork filed by her father. The father, Nur Said Mohamed Elmi was long identified as an “educator” before his death in 2020, at which point his military...

Sydney Sweeney is doing what Sydney Sweeney does. She is hot and she knows it. She is using her hotness to sell something. The something happens to be Novig, a sports betting app. So she’s holding footballs. She is not pretending to be an athlete; she is being a woman men like to look at. That is the entire point of the ad. Predictably, a posse of female athletes is furious. Former UCLA gymnast Gracie Kramer posted a training montage: “idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like.” Sydney isn’t claiming to...

She pierced the immunity of the medical board that suspended her license over Covid “disinformation.” A judge ruled she can now sue the board members personally. “Their broad immunity that they thought would protect them has been pierced.” “The judge said, ‘You can go after them for damages, even potentially including punitive damages.’” This sets a groundbreaking precedent. “There were a whole lot of doctors out there that had similar attacks.” “Somebody had to do it.” Video of Doctor Nass speaking in front of the Brownstone Institute @nass_meryl @Polyface_Farms

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed claimed that slavery “profoundly” influenced the American health care system and that any public opposition to taxpayer-funded treatments for illegal immigrants would be a “deliberate, racist attack.” In a resurfaced 2022 interview, the doctor claimed slavery still weighs on America’s for-profit health care. “Racism continues to flummox our capacity as a society to invest in collective public goods” and remains “more powerful than the self-interest of … lower income white folks … in legacy confederacy states,” he said. The Michigan Democrat, who ran a failed campaign for governor of his state in 2018, went...

Neuroscientists in the US have successfully adapted mice to have functioning human cells inside their own brains. The researchers hope that potential treatments for psychiatric and neurodevelopmental diseases that only occur in humans could now be tested on the laboratory rodents. While mice with brains that are partly human might sound like a Kafkaesque experiment, the scientists said these are not "mice that think like humans". The animals are genetically engineered - and surgically altered - so that some of their brain tissue is human. ... First, they genetically-engineered mice to develop almost none of their own cerebral cortex –...

Brownstone Institute@brownstoneinst·7hDr. Meryl Nass just secured a massive legal victory for Covid dissidents.She pierced the immunity of the medical board that suspended her license over Covid “disinformation.”A judge ruled she can now sue the board members personally.“Their broad immunity that they thought would protect them has been pierced.”“The judge said, ‘You can go after them for damages, even potentially including punitive damages.’”This sets a groundbreaking precedent.“There were a whole lot of doctors out there that had similar attacks.”“Somebody had to do it.”@nass_meryl @Polyface_Farms

Zo-and-tell! City Hall officials must cough up their emails and texts with the powerful Rent Guidelines Board that Mayor Zohran Mamdani allegedly bigfooted into fulfilling his promised rent freeze, a judge ruled Wednesday. Judge Brendan Lantry — the former chair for the Staten Island GOP — granted a narrow order for the behind-the-scenes communications to see if supposedly independent rent board members illicitly colluded with Mamdani’s team. “The question naturally arises: how would the Mayor comply with his ‘guarantee’ to the voters to ‘freeze’ the rent unless he, or his staff, communicated with the Board to ensure that the Board...

Wanjun Xie, chairman of the China Democratic Party, has claimed in a post on X that Chinese president Xi Jinping fainted during the Brics summit hosted by New Delhi and was taken back to China on a special flight for medical treatment. Xie claimed that after receiving emergency treatment from his accompanying medical team, Xi ended his visit to India early and returned to China on a special plane. According to the post, upon the plane's arrival at Beijing airport, authorities did not arrange for a large group of officials to greet Xi or organise a welcome ceremony. Instead, "a...

Switzerland’s upper house of parliament wants to hand the Federal Council, the country’s executive body, the power to decide how much capital UBS needs to hold. The motion... would allow the government to set banking capital regulations through ordinance rather than requiring full parliamentary approval. The stakes are substantial. Government estimates peg the additional Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) capital requirement at roughly $20 billion, with some analyses suggesting the figure could climb to $22 billion. At issue is how much of a financial cushion UBS must maintain at the parent level to fully back its foreign subsidiaries. CET1 capital...

Crude oil prices dropped Wednesday as the Trump administration tried to reassure the market that Saudi Arabia's damaged East-West pipeline will restart operations in days. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures shed 3.2% to close at $102.43 per barrel. Brent crude, the international benchmark, lost 2.7% to settle at $105.83 per barrel. Prices have rallied more than 16% this month as fighting has sharply escalated in the Persian Gulf. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC on Tuesday that the pipeline outage is a "brief and temporary interruption" that "will be measured in days." But independent analysts warned the pipeline could...