Free Republic

Tuesday's election wasn't a blue wave or even a blue tsunami: It was a blue apocalypse.Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who leads the one notable bright spot on the map, referred to the wipeout as "close to an extinction-level event" for the GOP. It was the worst midterm defeat for one party in over a half-century.Much of the postmortem conversation has focused on why this massacre happened. Was it the Iran war? Was it the tariffs? Was it corruption? Was it the "Epstein files" mess?The answer is both simpler and more sweeping: The MAGA movement, which has defined the GOP during...

Breaking: President Trump names Stephen Miller ( @StephenM ) as White House Chief of Staff effective Monday

President Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post Friday afternoon that chief of staff Susie Wiles is leaving her post and will be replaced by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. He said in the post that Wiles had “done an outstanding job” and would be moving to his political operation. “I want to thank her for her service as Chief of Staff — She has done a great job!” Trump said. Miller will take over as chief of staff on Monday.

An image today in this EXPONETALLY abounding Last Days world is worth a million words! The Day of the Lord is at hand! Maranatha! David

Colossal Biosciences – a futuristic startup working to bring back extinct species including the woolly mammoth – is suing one of its former scientists for allegedly stealing trade secrets and sharing the data with competing labs. In a bombshell lawsuit filed Friday morning in Texas federal court in Austin, Colossal accused James Kehler, formerly its vice president of animal sciences and later of BioSynergy, of “dishonesty, greed, and the betrayal of the confidential science at the heart of Colossal’s mission.” The Dallas-based firm – which has so far succeeded in creating “woolly mice” that bear woolly mammoth traits and gray...

A federal judge blocked construction of President Donald Trump’s planned arch project about an hour after it was approved.The National Capital Planning Commission approved the 250-foot arch at Memorial Circle by an 8-4 vote on Thursday after hearing eight hours of testimony from over 120 citizens, according to USA Today.The National Capital Planning Commission voted late Nov. 5 to approve the project after hearing from about 100 opponents, including Democratic lawmakers. Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia said the project would "snarl traffic for years, impact the nearby airport, and present even more serious threats to public safety that this commission...

A Cullman man is facing multiple child sex crime charges in Madison County after school resource officers noticed he was picking up and dropping off a student at a middle school. Officers did not recognize the man and acted to protect the minor. Alexander Riley Schultz, 23, was arrested and charged with second-degree rape, second-degree sodomy and traveling to meet a child for an unlawful sex act.

A YOUNG co-pilot sent a chilling final text to her boyfriend just minutes before the private jet she was flying plunged from the sky, killing all nine people on board. The 20-year-old warned her fellow pilot boyfriend about dangerous conditions in the air before the Learjet plummeted more than 27,000 feet in just over a minute. The 20-year-old texted her boyfriend about dangerous conditions in the air minutes before the Learjet plummetedSource: Instagram/itsnatfilg Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras was flying over Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday when she messaged her boyfriend around 12:40 pm, just ten minutes before the deadly crash....

A class action lawsuit filed this week accuses the Foundation to Promote Open Society, the central cog in billionaire liberal donor George Soros's behemoth nonprofit network, of conspiring to execute a Chinese-backed scheme to obstruct data center development in Seattle. According to the complaint reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, the alleged scheme has cost workers jobs and subjected their families to harassment. The lawsuit comes amid heightened scrutiny of the growing anti-data center movement, which has largely posed as grassroots, but has ties to deep-pocketed left-wing funders. Data center development was among the most important issues for Americans during...

A former FBI counterintelligence agent admitted Thursday to stealing more than $2.4 million in cryptocurrency from adversarial nations, victims of financial crimes and others as he made plans for a new life in Portugal. The former agent, Patrick Yaroch, was a supervisor in the FBI’s counterintelligence and espionage division until his arrest this summer. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money-laundering in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, and faces a maximum prison term of 20 years at his sentencing, set for March. Federal prosecutors said Yaroch routinely rifled through classified records for cases he was not assigned to,...

Former Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) has registered as a foreign agent for a shadowy European NGO to lead "fact-finding" missions to the West Bank—part of a seemingly elaborate propaganda campaign against Israel. The ex-Squad member, who once warned pro-Israel advocacy groups that she was coming to "tear your kingdom down," signed on as an independent contractor for the International Federation for Rights and Development (IFRD), a Brussels-based "human rights" nonprofit, according to disclosures she filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act last week. According to the contract, IFRD will pay $25,000 to Bush and her friend and campaign manager,...

Texas. There is absolutely something rotten in Texas. The vote totals aren’t “off.” They’re literally impossible. They’re a Marxist fantasy. They’re a little child’s fairy tale. Red rural Texas districts turned Democrat blue? For Talafreako? You’re telling me white male Christian hunters, and fishermen, and gun owners decided to vote Democrat for the first time in their lives because they all now hate President Trump? Two years after electing him in a Texas landslide? After he secured the border? After he cut their taxes?

The 20-year-old co-pilot on the doomed Learjet that crashed in Florida last weekend was remembered by her flying instructor as “the most naturally gifted pilot” who was “born to fly!” Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras — who earned her pilot license in high school, even before she could drive — “aced” all her flying exams, longtime instructor Chris Kirk said alongside a selfie of them beaming together in the cockpit. “She was without a doubt the most naturally gifted pilot I have ever taught, and I have been teaching for 40 years!!” he posted on Facebook while proudly saying he was one...

Audio between an air traffic controller and a female pilot flying the Learjet 60 during a flight in May has resurfaced following Sunday’s tragic incident in Palm Beach County. A man and woman in the cockpit were scolded by air traffic controllers after they appeared to make unapproved altitude adjustments during turbulent conditions, according to audio obtained by the Daily Mail and the U.K. Sun. What happened with the Learjet 60 in May? The plane was flying near Newark, N.J., at the time when an air traffic controller asked the crew, “Why are you climbing?” The female pilot answered: “We’re...

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania State University, alleging the school is violating federal law by providing reduced tuition to illegal immigrants and not affording U.S. citizens the same reduced rate. Federal law states that “an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State (or a political subdivision) for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the...

Eight small towns, from Lockhart’s barbecue pits to Hatch’s chile fields, show that great food doesn’t need a big city or a hard-to-get reservation. A great food scene doesn’t always require a crowded city or a Michelin reservation booked months out. Some of the best food in the country comes from towns with a few thousand residents and one specific thing they do better than anywhere else – a barbecue tradition, a crop, a way of cooking a specific food in a specific pot. These eight towns built their identity around food long before "foodie" was a word, and each...

How did the scattered followers of an itinerant preacher come to form the most populous religion in the world? Tim Whitmarsh—a classicist at the University of Cambridge —offers a compelling answer in his new book, Rome’s Age of Revolution: Augustus, Empire and the Making of Christianity. To wit, Christianity took much of its shape from the cult of Augustus. The Augustan age saw a unique revolution that redefined authority, space and literature, remaking both the inner world and the outer. Augustus drew on centuries-old Roman prophecies to cast himself as the promised one. According to his propaganda, Italy experienced auguries...

Expect a surge of gun sales, but also gun control legislation after Tuesday’s dominance in midterm election by Democrats in the U.S. Congress and in various states where the power is shifting to liberal politicians.That’s according to Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Chairman Alan Gottlieb.Tuesday’s election saw Democrats win seats across the country. Gun control groups heralded the wins.“This wave of progress flipped control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, a rare shift seen only twice before in the last 70 years,” said a statement from Brady United, a gun...

Kyle Fellers missed half his daughter’s senior-year soccer games after a dispute over a pink wristband. Two years later, Bow School District has a federal judgment declaring that it violated the parents’ First Amendment rights, plus a settlement providing $275,000 in legal fees and costs. The wristbands carried two letters: XX. Apparently, defending girls’ sports required parents to defend their right to wear something smaller than the average school identification badge. From KSAT: In a dismissal order Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe said the men have a First Amendment right to silently wear the wristbands and that school...

Cardinal Parolin confirms Pope Leo’s approval of China bishop appointments despite ‘imperfect’ agreement Cardinal Pietro Parolin has confirmed that Pope Leo XIV has approved episcopal appointments under the Vatican’s agreement with China, acknowledging that the arrangement remains imperfect but insisting that dialogue with Beijing must continueCardinal Pietro Parolin has confirmed that Pope Leo XIV has given his assent to episcopal appointments made under the agreement between the Holy See and China, while acknowledging that the arrangement remains imperfect and defending the Vatican’s decision to continue implementing it.Speaking to journalists on Thursday, 5 November, the Vatican Secretary of State reaffirmed that...