Free Republic

ATLANTA, Georgia — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis fought back against allegations about her personal life during a Thursday court hearing on whether she misrepresented her relationship with Nathan Wade, the prosecutor hired as lead lawyer in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump. "You're confused. You think I'm on trial," Willis quipped to a defense attorney. "These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I'm not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial." An attorney for Willis made one last attempt to keep her...

Few people look twice these days at veterans accompanied by service dogs that help their humans cope with post-traumatic stress disorder. Not so with spider monkeys. When a female patient brought two of the small, wiry monkeys to an appointment last Wednesday at Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center, a military clinic on the West Side, staffers looked twice. And then they asked her to leave. “The animals were under blankets and not immediately visible, but once staff became aware, they politely informed the patient that emotional support animals, to include monkeys, are not permitted in a military medical facility,” said...

A San Antonio jury decided Tuesday that a Guatemalan immigrant failed to prove her toddler got sick at an area immigration facility in 2018 and, as a result, died six weeks after their release — the main allegation of the mother’s federal lawsuit against the operator of the complex. By an 8-1 verdict, jurors found Memphis, Tenn.-based CoreCivic was not negligent while housing Mariee Camyl Newberry Juárez and her mother, Yazmin Juárez Coyoy, in the South Texas Family Residential Center in March 2018. After they were released on March 25, Mariee spent six weeks in hospitals in New Jersey and...

President Joe Biden's campaign has joined TikTok, despite the app being banned on most US government devices over security concerns. His campaign launched its account with the username "@bidenhq" during the Super Bowl on Sunday. In a launch video, captioned "lol hey guys", aides quizzed Mr Biden about his preferences for the big game. The president signed legislation in 2022 blocking most federal government devices from using TikTok. Several states have also adopted the measure. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for the app - owned by Chinese company ByteDance - to be banned in the US...

A new dating app called "Score" has been launched by financial services company Neon Money Club. Score is positioning itself as an app for financially responsible singles, requiring users to have a minimum credit score of 675 in order to join.

As US allies reel from Donald Trump’s weekend comments encouraging Russia to attack European allies if they don’t meet NATO budget contribution goals, multiple former Trump advisers warn in my upcoming book that the former president will seek to formally withdraw the US from the NATO alliance if he wins a second term. In “The Return of Great Powers”, which will be published March 12, a former senior US official, who served in both the Trump and Biden administrations at a high level, told me that if Trump defeats President Joe Biden in November “the US will be out of...

The latest dependability study results from J.D. Power make for grim reading if you’re in the market for a new car. The longer-term reliability of two thirds of all brands has decreased, and industry-wide, drivers are experiencing 190 problems per 100 vehicles. That’s 4 more problems per 100 vehicles than the study found 12 months ago. Worse still, the rate at which problems present themselves has increased. A year ago, 12 percent of people experienced an issue in the first 90 days to three years of ownership. Now, the rate is up to 17 percent. It should be noted here...

Only spent 30 minutes with his father. William did not even see him. Sent to a hotel instead of spending the night in a royal palace.

WILLMAR, Minn. — A 75-year-old man has died after a sheriff's deputy in rural Minnesota shocked him with a Taser during an attempted eviction, officials announced Wednesday. The cause of Michael James Yanacheak's death in Willmar is undetermined pending further investigation by the medical examiner, the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) said in a statement. The BCA, which was called in to investigate the incident, said Riley Kampsen is the Kandiyohi County sheriff’s deputy who deployed his Taser. Kampsen has five years of law enforcement experience. According to the BCA timeline, two Kandiyohi County sheriff’s deputies and two Willmar...

The former president was indicted four times last year and has also had to answer civil lawsuits targeting his business and him as an individual.WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump’s affiliated committees spent about $27 million on lawyers’ bills and related legal fees in the last six months of 2023, new federal election filings show, bringing the total for a year that included four separate indictments to almost $50 million. Trump’s political fundraising apparatus is sprawling, but the new filings show that the price of lawyers is weighing him down. Still, Trump, the GOP presidential front-runner, has seized on the...

The Texas Military Department posted a photo to its official X account Tuesday afternoon, showing the Gonzales flag flying above its headquarters in Austin.The flag, which reads “Come and Take It” underneath an image of a cannon, is the best-known flag of the Texas Revolution and originated at the Battle of Gonzales, according to the Texas Historical Commission. In the post on X, it’s shown flying below the Texas flag at Camp Mabry.No message was posted with the photo. The post had garnered more than 20,000 views about an hour after it went online.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, wants the Biden administration to reverse course and "restore" humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war. On October 7, 2023, Hamas led the deadliest Palestinian militant attack on Israel in history. Israel subsequently launched its heaviest-ever airstrikes on Gaza, home to more than 2 million Palestinians. Israeli officials have said that about 1,200 people in Israel were killed and some 250 hostages were taken by Hamas, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed, officials from the health ministry in Gaza said. International organizations have...

Stanley Kubrick’s sharp and persuasive comedy about nuclear war remains a hilarious act of provocationSixty years ago, Columbia Pictures released the first of two black-and-white movies with the exact same premise: what if American planes with hydrogen bombs were inadvertently ordered to drop their payload on targets in the Soviet Union, potentially triggering an all-out nuclear war that wipe out humanity? The Cuban missile crisis had pushed the superpowers to the brink of conflict less than two years earlier, and film-makers were unusually eager to face their cold war nightmares head on.~snip~On balance, Kubrick’s message is more persuasive. Dr Strangelove...

E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist to whom a jury awarded $83.3 million in damages last week as part of a defamation trial against Donald Trump, said on CNN Monday that the court proceedings were little more than a “campaign stop” for the former president. “The courtroom was not a courtroom to him, it was a campaign stop. That was clear,” Carroll said on “CNN This Morning.” “He’s using me to win voters. Sexual assault. A man found liable for sexual assault is using the woman he sexually assaulted to get votes.” Carroll has alleged Trump raped her in...

Kate Cox, a mother of two, sought a court order to block Texas' abortion bans after she discovered that her developing fetus had trisomy 18, a fatal diagnosis. Kate Cox, the Texas woman at the center of a high-profile abortion case, will attend the State of Union address in March as a guest of first lady Jill Biden, the White House said Wednesday. President Joe Biden and the first lady called Cox on Sunday to hear about her experience and invited her to attend the address, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a press briefing. "They thanked her for her...

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) left critics cringing on Tuesday with a stunning display of sycophancy to former President Donald Trump. The senator, who dropped out of the GOP presidential race in November, was one of two former candidates onstage with Trump in Nashua to celebrate his victory over Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary. In 2012, when she was governor of South Carolina, Haley appointed Scott, then a member of the House of Representatives, to his Senate seat to replace retiring Sen. Jim DeMint. “Did you ever think that she actually appointed you, Tim?” Trump said of Haley during...

Junk fees plague industries like hotels and airlines and end up costing consumers billions every year in add ons, “administrative fees” and other overpriced nonsense. The fees really come out of the woodwork at car dealerships, it seems. While it was enough of a problem for the federal government to take notice, things have changed in favor of dealers. First spotted by Motor1, the Federal Trade Commission paused a ban on dealer junk fees that were originally set to take effect this summer. The ban comes after the National Automobile Dealers Association protested the move by filing a petition. The...

For the first time in 23 years, none of America’s four largest automakers will air national Super Bowl ads – but foreign-owned companies like Kia and Volkswagen are picking up their slack. The “challenging U.S. automotive market” is a leading reason why. Slowing consumer demand and high interest rates are pressuring Ford, Toyota, GM and Chrysler parent company Stellantis into cutting back on their ad spend. Car commercials are a Super Bowl mainstay – Stellantis alone has only missed two in the past 15 years – but this year’s game will be the first since 2001 where none of the...

Donald Trump said people "JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH" presidents who "CROSS THE LINE."He posted the lengthy all-caps rant on Truth Social early Thursday morning.A DC appeals court is weighing whether Trump should have criminal immunity.Donald Trump is once again claiming that presidents should have total immunity from any crimes they commit while in office — this time, with an all-caps rant posted to Truth Social.~snip~"A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY, WITHOUT WHICH IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM/HER TO PROPERLY FUNCTION," Trump wrote on his social-media platform in the early hours of Thursday morning. "ANY...