Free Republic

If the projection holds steady, it would be the largest cost-of-living adjustment since 2022.Senior citizens group AARP last week forecast a 3.6 percent increase in Social Security payments for 2027, citing current inflation data. If the projection holds steady, it would be the largest cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) since the 8.7 percent increase that took effect for 2023 benefits. The adjustment that went into effect for payments sent out in 2026 was 2.8 percent. The average monthly Social Security payment in July was about $2,086, and a 3.6 percent rise next year means retirees will receive about a $75 per month...

An FBI special agent sought a criminal investigation into Elon Musk for asking government officials what they do all day, a newly declassified email reveals. Former Special Agent Kevin Gounaud emailed a colleague in February 2025 casting Musk’s use of his social media platform X to advertise the work of DOGE, his government efficiency initiative, as a criminal act. He likened it to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to exchange classified intelligence, according to the email declassified by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley. Gounaud floated the legal theory that weekly emails that...

The anti-Communist video at the link is HILARIOUS.

An up-and-coming drill rapper was shot and killed in an ambush at a Chicago gas station — with shocking video showing the killers running up and firing dozens of shots into his Tesla. Bloodhound Q50, who had more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify, was shot and killed early Sunday — just weeks after he ominously told a vlogger that he knew he could be a target. Surveillance footage shows the 22-year-old rapper, real name Mikquale Cooper, strolling out of a BP gas station and into his white Tesla where his pregnant girlfriend was waiting, according to Fox 32....

Two Time Academy Award winner Sally Field took an apparent swipe at President Donald Trump for antagonizing Canada on a mostly apolitical night at the Emmys. The two-time Oscar and four-time Emmy winner had just received an award for her role in “Remarkably Bright Creatures” when her thoughts turned northward. She shouted out to cinematographer Ashley Connor, “who made the Pacific Northwest another character, and it’s Canada!” “Blessed Canada ― our neighbors, our friends,” she said pointedly to big applause from the crowd, which included anti-Trump activist Mark Ruffalo. The “Norma Rae” star did not mention Trump by name, but...

When the Steam Frame was announced, the idea that a high-end VR showcase like Half-Life: Alyx would run natively on a modestly powerful, ARM-based headset seemed far-fetched - and Valve set expectations accordingly.. Yet, as Valve engineers used Alyx as a test-bed for standalone games on the headset, progress came surprisingly swiftly, and Alyx is shipping alongside Frame as a fully native game on the system. ... Alyx renders at 36fps on Frame and is re-projected upward, but the technique is more sophisticated than a simple timewarp. "We're running at 36fps, but we're using depth reprojection," Ashton says. Using a...

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas issued a sharp dissent on Monday from the rest of the Supreme Court’s decision to keep a new set of USPS mail-in ballot rules blocked, warning that the majority of the high court is “incorrectly” affirming a “Hail Mary” bid to halt the new policy ahead of the midterm elections. The Supreme Court majority ruled 7-2 in an unsigned order to deny the Trump administration’s bid to lift a pair of blocks on a new USPS rule that would require mail-in ballots to bear Election Mail markings and be sent in automation-compatible envelopes with...

Tuesday's meeting of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' board will now focus exclusively on the "necessary closure" of the center, and not on additional ways to honor President Donald Trump, the Trump administration said in an overnight federal court filing. In their late-night court filing, Justice Department lawyers included an email sent to the board at 7 p.m. Monday by Kennedy Center official Joe LaFauci, indicating that a separate draft resolution proposing ten new ways to honor Trump would not be considered, and that the board "stands by" its earlier vote to recognize the president. ~snip~...

Myles Morrell was outside former Senate Majority Leader and current Senator Mitch McConnell’s DC home on Monday when he was wheeled out to attend the US Senate to vote on Monday. McConnell on Monday announced his return to the Senate to cast a vote after a three-month absence. Myles tells us he knew the US Senate was voting around 5 PM on Monday so he went to McConnell’s homee to get a glimpse of the 84-year-old senator. Myles had a hunch when McConnell would be wheeled out. This is Mitch McConnell’s first public appearance since his reported stroke earlier this...

Between December 2025 and August 2026, Anthropic's Threat Intelligence team identified and disrupted misuse of Claude across seven categories of harm: cyber operations, surveillance, influence operations, conventional weapons, biological misuse, scams/fraud, and illicit distillation. The report's central argument is that AI has collapsed the skill and resource gap that used to separate state-sponsored operations from individual actors — “sophisticated attacks no longer require sophisticated attackers.” Across every case, operations moved from Claude simply assisting a human conversationally toward more autonomous, multi-agent orchestration that ran reconnaissance, exploitation, and data theft with minimal supervision, sometimes for extended unattended stretches. Four cyber case...

India’s fertility rate has for the first time fallen below the level needed to stop the population from shrinking, raising concerns about future labour shortages and an ageing society. For decades, India has seen rapid population growth. According to government statistics, including the Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report — the country’s largest demographic survey — India has had a falling fertility rate for some years, but the reproduction rate remained high enough to keep the population growing. The latest SRS report, released last month by India’s Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, said that India’s Total Fertility...

Even paranoiacs have enemies, they say — but sometimes they’re just paranoid. Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a founding member of The Squad, organized 59 Democrats to co-sign her letter demanding a federal investigation of a spate of supposed lynchings that never happened. The document pronounced its signatories “extremely alarmed by reports of Black people found hanging from trees in numerous states throughout our country.“ “The series of deaths,“ the letter continues, “raises significant suspicion of foul play given the role of lynching in our nation’s history.” Pressley and her colleagues call for a federal investigation of every hanging death of...

It’s all so tiresome. The formerly adequate New Republic reported absolutely TERRIFYING news late last week about … things they completely made up that are for sure going to happen in their make-believe future. In an essay written by the now-obviously-insane former federal judge Michael Luttig, the magazine warned that Donald Trump is about to launch a huge coup d’état in which he’s not going to allow Democrats to hold seats in Congress anymore. Here’s the headline, framed as a description of “the coming crisis.” COMES NOW THE FINAL BATTLE. It sounds like a lazy Star Wars spinoff. See,...

The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed to its highest levels in 19 years on Tuesday as oil prices surge from the Iran conflict and expectations grow that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates on Wednesday. The rate milestone could ripple through the economy as the 10-year yield is a benchmark for consumers loans and corporate funding. The 10-year yield was last up more than 3 basis points to around 5%. Earlier in the session, it scaled to 5.041%, the highest since July 2007. One basis point equals 0.01 percentage point, and yields and prices move in opposite directions. The...

In California, gas stations are facing a unique challenge. The station signs are only configured to go up to $9.99 per gallon and at several stations the price of diesel has reached that maximum. Diesel prices are higher than they have ever been in history. Worse, according to some news reports the advertising of the maximum price of $9.99 per gallon is meant to signal to truck drivers that they have run out of diesel altogether. Expensive diesel is a hit to the economy, but running out of the fuel at any price is a whole different kind of crisis....

In early 2025, almost no one predicted a recovery in American manufacturing. But manufacturing output has been recovering for a year and a half, and this year hiring finally joined it: factory employment stopped falling in December and has added 58,000 jobs in 2026. The recovery is narrow. Almost all of it, in output and in hiring, comes from advanced manufacturing: chemicals including pharma, machinery, computers and electronics, and transportation equipment. The rest of the sector is still flat or shrinking. The job gains are modest and probably always will be, because these are the most capital-intensive factories in the...

While the hypocrites at WaPo write Dem-friendly puff pieces, Milwaukee elections officials won’t let observers see what’s going on. The Washington Post likes to say that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” The self-righteous hypocrites behind the accomplice media outlet are part of the dark cloud killing representative democracy. (WaPo is keeping the Pulitzer Prize it won for helping to manufacture the Russia collusion hoax, thank you very much). We do know that election integrity dies in darkness, and “progressive” organs like The Post have been bludgeoning it for years. Take Wisconsin’s primary election last month, for instance. The leftist-run Milwaukee Election...

President Donald Trump raged against the Supreme Court’s decision to reject mail-in voting restrictions pushed by his administration on Tuesday, insisting the move “really let our country down.” In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump insisted the move creates an “open field” for “Dumocrats” to cheat in elections: Republicans just got another bad decision from the United States Supreme Court, one that the Court System took forever to give, and then blamed it, in part, on no time left to implement a solution to our totally CORRUPT and out of control Mail-In voting “disaster,” which is a laughing stock all...

A naturalized citizen cannot be deported unless a federal court revokes that person's citizenship. Civil denaturalization requires the government to establish citizenship was illegally obtained or procured through the concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation. Deportation would require a separate removal process and an applicable legal ground for removal.

Beloved, had to share this incredible testimony of Jan Markell; her endurance, faithfulness, vision and knowing in all the adversity, that ALL things work together for good, in God’s perfect will for the child of God, for His ETERNAL glory! Jan’s global ministry is so impactful as she is one of the world’s greatest voices for end times biblical prophetic teaching; and in light of her 21 year infirmity, God has used her beyond all she could imagined. Eph. 3:20-21 May this 20 minute testimony be a great encouragement to you as it was for me; to never surrender and...