Free Republic

This seems to be the current state of FR's home page. The link to "https://freerepublic.com/donate/" yields (for me, at least) the following: 404 Not Found nginx/1.18.0 (Ubuntu)

A 71-year-old cyclist was killed after he collided with an off-leash dog in Central Park’s East Drive roadway Monday morning, according to the NYPD. Police said around 8 a.m. they received a call of a cyclist struck near East Drive and 84th Street just steps from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While riding his bike, the man collided with a dog that was unleashed and ran onto the roadway, police said. The cyclist, who was wearing a helmet, fell to the ground and suffered trauma on his head and body. The unidentified man was transported to NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical...

Hundreds of infuriated parents and staff members descended on Portland Public Schools’ headquarters Tuesday night to protest far-reaching proposals to close up to 14 schools, shift grade configurations and programs and redraw attendance boundaries. In numbers not seen since the Portland Association of Teachers strike, demonstrators chanted and cheered outside the district headquarters and scolded school board members during their meeting inside the building. about half of the district’s elementary schools have fewer than 300 students and a handful have only half that number — it gets harder to afford stable staffing.

HANOI, Vietnam — Police in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, arrested 12 men suspected of operating a citywide ring that stole and resold about 2,700 cats for meat, Vietnamese state media said. Police identified 39-year-old Luu Thanh Binh as the alleged leader of the network. He and 11 others are being investigated for theft. Investigators said Binh bought stolen cats, kept them at a facility in the city’s north and resold them for meat. He worked with suppliers who recruited others to ride motorcycles through residential neighborhoods between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m., hunting for cats and trapping four to...

The White House releases a behind-the-scenes look of China’s President Xi Jinping’s during the recent state visit. Hosted by President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, President Xi was welcomed to the White House for events on September 23-25, 2026. Chinese President Xi looks at framed image of an autopen in place of a President Biden portrait.Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visit the National Archives with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan in Washington, D.C.Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visit the National Archives with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan in Washington, D.C.

As faithful P&E readers will recall, over the years your humble servant has made several “modest proposals” seeking to address unresolved issues then percolating in the Republic. Most, if not all of those proposals, have dealt with the “birthright citizenship” and “natural born Citizen” (“nbC”) matters under the 14th Amendment and “Eligibility Clause” provisions of the Constitution. Well, a recent decision of Florida federal District Court Judge David Leibowitz declaring a federal statute – 18 U.S.C. § 611 unconstitutional – presents an opportunity for one more proposal. This one, however, would be specifically directed to the clarification, if not outright...

An upmarket restaurant in Portland has faced a violent backlash after seating a group of white supremacists. Police were called twice to Clarklewis, an LGBTQ+-owned restaurant in the Central Eastside, on Sunday after protesters confronted the diners and restaurant staff. The restaurant said its staff had no idea about the group’s alleged political affiliations when they arrived for a private brunch.(snip) Rogers made clear that the restaurant does not support white nationalism and said staff would not knowingly host a group with those beliefs. Rogers said one female employee quit on the spot after the confrontation, while other staff members...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ We Sing Too! Members of the U.S. Army Europe and Africa Band and Chorus perform to an audience of patients and medical professionals at the Aleris Rehab Station in Stockholm, Sweden. The Stronger Together Outreach Tour is an annual initiative preceding the DEFENDER-Europe 24 exercise, demonstrating U.S. Army Europe & Africa’s commitment to the NATO Alliance and our global Partners. As part of this effort, the USAREUR-AF Band serves as a bridge to increase cultural ties and enrich the alliance between the U.S. and Sweden through music. (U.S....

North Carolinians who have been inundated with TV campaign commercials may start noticing a gap in ads for Senate candidate Michael Whatley. The Whatley campaign has temporarily pulled ads on television, a campaign source told McClatchy. The source said this is a short-term adjustment of who the campaign is targeting. “We are confident we have the resources to target our late-breaking supporters and win on Election Day,” the source said. The campaign’s decision comes as national Republicans pull away from North Carolina’s Senate race to focus on other candidates nationwide. Whatley, 58, a Republican from Gastonia, is facing off against...

The lawsuit alleges Pfizer hid safety signals, misled millions about transmission, and used deceptive marketing to drive maximum COVID shot uptake. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a sweeping lawsuit against Pfizer and its CEO, Albert Bourla, accusing them of deceiving the public about the safety and transmission-prevention capabilities of Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA injection. The 49-page complaint was filed on October 1, 2026, in St. Lucie County, Florida, and targets Pfizer and Bourla personally under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The complaint opens with a striking line: “Those people are criminals.” That is how Bourla described people...

I might have been wrong about Meghan Markle. I always assumed she was vain, vapid and utterly clueless. But is she, in fact, a comic genius? Because surely her newly released advent calendar is a joke. After years of going out of her way – in a very grandiose fashion – to protect her privacy, sharing only closely cropped snapshots of her guarded life in California, and even hiring a separate house when shooting her Netflix show With Love, Meghan, what has she gone and done? Slapped a rendering of her real Montecito mansion on the front of an advent...

The front lawn of an Indiana courthouse was torn up when a woman who was allegedly driving drunk decided to do donuts in the grass, authorities said. A 68-year-old woman was arrested for DUI and "numerous other charges" after she drove her car in circles on the Jennings County courthouse lawn, the sheriff's office said in a post on social media on Tuesday. "If you’ve had a few too many margaritas with dinner, please don’t get behind the wheel, and definitely don’t do donuts on the courthouse lawn," authorities said in the post. "We encourage everyone to enjoy themselves responsibly...

HEADLINES: Early mail-in voting starts; Has Talarico given up?; Christopher Rufo on the Indian-American immigration debate The News of Today is the History of Tomorrow

President Trump on Wednesday said, "I could've done very bad things to Hillary Clinton" and former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Trump made the comment Wednesday during an Oval Office announcement for his “Trump Accounts” for children, the Independent reported. The president previously claimed that if Democrats gain control of Congress in November, they would impeach him. A reporter asked about Trump's assertion, saying, “For what?” “They don’t know,” Trump said, before mentioning Clinton, whom he ran against in the 2016 presidential election, and his Democratic predecessors. “I could've done very bad things to Hillary Clinton,” he said. “I...

Students at Cornell University began what was billed as a seven-hour sit-in on Wednesday in solidarity with "Jane Doe," the former student who alleges she was drugged and raped by multiple members of a fraternity on its Ithaca, N.Y., campus in October 2024. "Seven hours for the seven hours she endured," a coalition of Cornell student groups said in an Instagram post announcing the demonstration. "Seven hours of solidarity. Seven hours demanding change."

Jim Bakker, the popular 1980s televangelist who with his first wife, Tammy Faye, built one of the largest Christian television ministries in the country before its spectacular collapse in scandal and fraud, died Monday. He was 86. His death was announced by his second wife, Lori Bakker, who said her husband had “gone home to be with the Lord.” “He was a pioneer of Christian television, but to me, he was my husband, my best friend, and the man I was honored to walk beside through so many seasons of life and ministry,” Lori Bakker added in a social media...

Much of President Donald Trump’s second term has focused on changes to the nation’s capital. But his ambitions to remake the physical architecture of the presidency transcend Washington: Trump wants to transform his West Palm Beach golf club into a presidential retreat modeled after Camp David. The plan calls for a parcel of the private club to be designated a permanent, official sanctuary for foreign leaders and future U.S. presidents, designed to host international summits and house presidents when they take vacations in Florida, according to a proposal presented to Palm Beach County officials by Trump International Golf Club’s legal...

Planned Parenthood Votes will spend another $1 million on digital ads attacking Republican Senate candidates in Maine and Michigan, an outlay that boosts radical pro-abortion Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in the race to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters. The super PAC affiliated with Planned Parenthood said the new buy targets Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and pro-life former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan. In Michigan, Rogers faces El-Sayed, a former Wayne County health official. In Maine, Collins is seeking a sixth term against former state Senate President Troy Jackson. The $1 million comes on top of $800,000 already spent on ads...

7 October 2026 Our Lady of the Rosary on Wednesday of week 27 in Ordinary Time Basilica of Santa Giustina in Padua Readings at Mass · Office of Readings · Morning Prayer · Terce · Sext · None · Evening Prayer · Night Prayer · Yearly calendarLinks · Spoken Word · Donate · Tweet · Show QR codeReadings at MassThis is a preview of Universalis. The Universalis app gives you every day of every year, not just the single week you’re seeing now, and it doesn’t need the Internet. It gives you the official New American Bible version for the...

Standing before the Acropolis in Athens, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio swept through the history of ancient Greece to the rise of American industry in a speech on Wednesday that portrayed western civilisation at risk of decline. Rubio said the world was at an "inflection point". Nations, particularly in Europe, should return to ancient Greek values and "rebuild our institutions and our alliances to face these threats together". "We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was here millennia ago," he said. While he spoke of cooperation, Rubio also said "nations need...