Free Republic

Nine-year-old Olivia Smith had plenty to choose from as she walked through the Academy of Natural Sciences on Friday, surrounded by dinosaurs, wildlife and exhibits that have fascinated generations of children. The fourth grader knew exactly what she liked best. “We have seen a lot of exhibits. My favorites were the pandas. Oh, and the rabbits!” Olivia said as she toured the museum with her teacher, Sandy Debies. But Olivia was among the young visitors getting what could be one of their final looks at the museum before its doors close permanently. The Academy of Natural Sciences, the 200-year-old institution...

Brown County deputies tracked his vehicle through Flock Safety's nationwide Flock cameras: northbound hits on Highway 41, a hit on Bridge Street crossing into Michigan, then southbound on I-41 at 3:56 p.m. They coordinated an intercept. The criminal complaint's probable-cause section spells it out with startling bluntness: "Based on prior flock hits, the vehicle travels to Michigan frequently which is a known source State for Marijuana as it is legal there." That sentence deserves a second read. Driving to a state where cannabis is legal became, in a Wisconsin courtroom, part of the justification to search a car. In Madison...

This is not satire. The five men, who are all "citizens," were reported Sunday morning by an English farmer who saw "Middle Eastern-looking" men in strange vans with masks near the RAF Fairford airbase, which is being used by the U.S. military for refueling and munitions in the Iran war. The vans contained explosive ordinance and the men were charged for the possession of explosives, as well as conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. And they were granted bail. Here's LBC on the release of the terror suspects: Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor told reporters outside New Scotland Yard: 'I can...

Grammy-nominated rap megastar Nicki Minaj is urging young Americans to “vote red’ ahead of what many political prognosticators believe will be a close and contentious midterm election cycle. Joining My View with Lara Trump, the New York native sent a message to young voters that they should head to the poll on November 3rd to make sure their voices are heard in Washington, D.C. “Now is not the time to think that your voice will not be heard. Your voice will not only be heard, but your voice is very necessary right now for the country and for the world....

Operation Karameh: Israeli Orders, Civilian Warnings, and the Targeting of Fatah Forces in 1968 Historical analysis based on contemporary reporting, later historical works, and archival sources. Introduction The Israeli operation against Karameh in Jordan on March 21, 1968, followed a period of escalating Arab terror attacks across the Jordan River and, most immediately, the March 18 destruction of an Israeli school bus full of children by a land mine. Two people were killed and 28 were wounded. Three days later, Israeli forces crossed the Jordan River and attacked the Arab Palestinian terror Fatah infrastructure centered in the Jordanian town...

FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey resigned after one year on the job, according to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and MSNOW. Andrew Bailey had been overseeing election matters. Last August, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel tapped then-Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to serve as Co-Deputy Director of the FBI. It is unclear why Bailey resigned. Later Monday morning, Andrew Bailey thanked President Trump, AG Blanche and Kash Patel for the opportunity to serve in the FBI. "I want to thank President Trump, AG Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel for the opportunity...

Microsoft accidentally wiped some nonprofit customers' M365 data before their retention period expired – and now says it cannot tell them what disappeared, or even whether they lost anything. The cockup followed Microsoft's retirement of its Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant, which gave eligible nonprofits ten free licenses for the productivity suite. Microsoft announced in May 2025 that the grant would not renew after July 1 that year. It offered eligible nonprofits up to 300 free Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses, alongside discounted pricing for plans including Business Premium. The company urged customers to move users onto another nonprofit plan...

Prosecutors in central New York are reopening an investigation into sickening allegations that seven Cornell University frat brothers horrifically drugged and gang-raped a former student. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten told ABC News that his office is considering bringing criminal charges related to the case — after the nightmare described in a civil suit filed by the survivor sparked outrage online.

IDF footage shows a child transferring weapons into a civilian home in central Gaza. Troops refrained from striking after identifying the child. DF troops operating in Gaza identified a terrorist using a child to transfer weapons into a civilian home in central Gaza. "The terrorist exploited the child, using him as a human shield to transfer the weapons, in an attempt to prevent the IDF from striking and thwarting their transfer," the IDF stressed. Upon identifying the presence of a child, the IDF refrained from carrying out any strikes against the terrorist. "This is another example of the systematic exploitation...

The U.S. average retail price of diesel was $5.97 per gallon the week of September 7, 2026, up $2.25 from its February average of $3.72, before the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz began. Crude oil accounts for 68 cents of that increase. The refining margin — the gap between the wholesale price of diesel and the cost of the crude it is made from — accounts for $1.71. The world is short of refined diesel rather than crude oil. Russia, once Europe’s largest diesel supplier, has nearly stopped exporting refined products after Ukrainian attacks on its refineries and a...

You see it all the time on social media after big floods or hurricanes. Someone invariably pulls out a fake meme of a shark swimming up the street, in the subway, or some such thing. Except sometimes, perhaps, memes can come true. That seems to be the case after the nor'easter hit southern New Jersey. My colleague Sister Toldjah covered some of the big issues that hit up and down the Eastern Seaboard. There was a lot of flooding in the area of Surf City, New Jersey, with the flooding approaching four feet high in some areas. But one resident...

Donald Trump is now 'very seriously' considering a diesel export ban as gas prices hit record highs – despite his top cabinet officials saying for months the move was off the table. 'The blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn't work,' Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at an event last week. As the President's top energy official responsible for oil and gas production and the management of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Wright has warned that the ban 'would put upward pressure on gasoline prices and jet ⁠fuel prices'. He said in May that the ban was then 'absolutely' ruled...

British counterterrorism police said Monday that five men who were arrested over the weekend on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act in an English village near a Royal Air Force base used by U.S. forces had been released on bail. "Following extensive interviews and enquiries, the five men who were arrested are being released on police bail this afternoon. To be very clear, this does not mean the investigation is over," Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, head of the London Metropolitan Police's Counter Terror unit, told reporters Monday afternoon. "To be very clear, this does not mean the investigation is over....

One of the tragedies of blacks in America is their extraordinary loyalty to the Democrat Party. Few seem to recognize the peculiar dynamic involved: The Democrat Party desperately needs black votes, yet too often its activists speak about black Americans in ways that reflect the unbelievably plantation-style soft bigotry of low expectations. A recent tweet has resurrected an old Ami Horowitz interview at UC Berkeley, where he asked a group of white, left-wing college students whether blacks face particular hurdles when it comes to voting. Their answers are breathtakingly paternalistic. Again and again, these students assume that black Americans lack...

Key Points Nvidia announced the Open Agent Safety Platform to prevent the type of breakout that occurred when OpenAI models accessed Hugging Face. OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google have all disclosed recent incidents where their AI models escaped their sandboxes. Nvidia said Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, CoreWeave, Dell, HPE, Lenovo, ARM and Intel are partners. ============================================================= Nvidia is rolling out a new software platform to allow AI developers to set safeguards for agents and prevent them from breaking out of containment. “You can’t have agents roam around and drift around the company, and so you have to find a way to...

The non-profit company that publishes The European Conservative, which I founded in 2021, is now in the hands of the Hungarian state. Established in 2008 as an unfunded four-page newsletter, The European Conservative was started by members of the Center for European Renewal (CER), which organizes the annual Vanenburg meeting. Five editions were published over approximately two years and then it ceased for two years. So, in 2012, I volunteered to serve as editor-in-chief. I redesigned the publication, gave it a proper cover, added images, expanded its features and contributors (all of whom wrote for free), and established a social...

SpaceX is targeting Starship Flight 14 NET Monday, September 28, 2026 at 7:15 a.m. CT (12:15 UTC). This will be the FIRST orbital launch attempt of Starship with Ship 41 and Booster 21, carrying the first operational batch of 26 Starlink V3 satellites on a roughly 10-hour mission of about six orbits at around 275 km before a Pacific Ocean splashdown. Booster 21 will splash down in the Gulf after boostback, making this a major step from prior suborbital tests toward sustained orbit, payload ops, and eventual full reuse. [4K] Watch the FIRST Orbital Starship Mission!!! | Live Everyday Astronaut...

After decades of climbing the executive ranks at US companies, more men of Indian descent are now entering the boardroom. A record 16 Indian men joined S&P 500 boards this year, taking directorships at companies including Walmart Inc., Southwest Airlines Co. and Western Digital Corp., according to ISS-Corporate and data provider Equilar. Only White men and women added more seats. The surge caps a longer shift. The share of Indian men among directors at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies has tripled since 2018, outpacing increases for women, Black and Hispanic directors, according to data from James Drury Partners. The...

OpenAI’s autonomous agents probed U.S. government websites this summer without the company noticing. The agents interacted with sites operated by the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to the New York Times. OpenAI has confirmed the Commerce and SEC episodes while it keeps investigating what happened at Education. At the Education Department, the software tried and failed to break into the civil rights office in search of data, according to researchers at the AI firm Transluce. At Commerce, the agents pulled Census Bureau figures after finding login credentials in public code repositories, Politico...

Congressman Tom Suozzi is making waves for a two-sentence clip that has now gone wildly viral. The New York Democrat has been consistently inconsistent on his immigration stance for years now. But he left no political wiggle room with these two sentences, as shared by the popular RNC Research account on X. The so-called ‘moderate’ may have unintentionally nailed himself to a precise policy on the issue once and for all! Let’s begin right there, with what he actually said — shall we? Here’s the clip in question, currently standing at 7.6 million views as of the time I am...