Free Republic

America’s love affair with the Blizzard is on ice. Since early 2025, Dairy Queen has been in a franchise meltdown, closing at least 46 locations nationwide, with Texas taking the biggest hit after the chain operator, Project Lonestar, refused to renovate its restaurants, which got them iced out of the DQ family. Between February and March alone, 42 Texas locations shut down, leaving Lone Star cravers to fend for themselves. (Or finally try a McFlurry.) In Alaska, three DQ locations in Anchorage, Wasilla and Palmer all shuttered at the start of July, leaving the 49th state with just one Blizzard...

In Mayor Karen Bass’s Los Angeles, the rule of law is separate and not equal when it comes to street food — with illegal immigrants and rogue vendors getting a free pass on violations while citizen restaurateurs and licensed food stands are subjected to fines, high costs, burdensome regulations, and even closures. In short, L.A. and the surrounding counties have two sets of rules. Other progressively-run cities like New York and Minneapolis also are catering to “vulnerable” and undocumented immigrant street vendors. But California is leading the way in sanctuary food practices. The Los Angeles County Health Department, citing immigration...

28 Russian Ships Hit in One Night! Tankers and Tugs Suchomimus In the Ukraine War, Ukraine hits 28 Russian shadow fleet tankers and tugs in one night, bringing the total to 76 different vessels hit by drones in six days in the Sea of Azov. This is the work of Magyar group. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11kn6vpgzzE

The White House says it found these bizarre items at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History: — A sadomasochistic "crotch harness" — A "trans nonbinary" person's "chest binder" — Pages from a 6yo girl's diary in which she prays every night for male genitalia to grow

Göbekli Tepe was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, and it's not hard to see why. Image credit: Resul Muslu/Shutterstock.com ============================================================================ Did a cataclysmic comet impact 13,000 years ago spark the rise of civilization? That's the explosive claim behind a study of carvings at the world-famous site of Göbekli Tepe, which researchers say encode not just a catastrophic comet strike, but the world's oldest solar calendar. Located in southern Türkiye, Göbekli Tepe is a pre-pottery Neolithic complex that is estimated to be around 12,000 years old. Analyzing an intricately carved pillar at the site, the study authors propose...

The proposed Massed Modular Aircraft would not necessarily replace every capability of the MQ-9 Reaper. The Pentagon wants these low-cost drones to feature modular designs. GA The U.S. Department of Defense is searching for a new generation of low-cost combat drones that can perform many of the same missions as the MQ-9A Reaper without carrying its hefty price tag. The step suggests a major shift in military approach as modern battlefields increasingly favor large numbers of affordable, expendable drones over a smaller fleet of expensive aircraft. Low-cost, long-range unmanned aircraft For this, the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has launched...

Meta has abruptly taken down a new feature that allowed people to use its artificial intelligence (AI) tool to make fake images from user content on Instagram. The feature was part of a broad rollout of Muse Image, a new AI image generation tool Instagram's parent company released on Tuesday. It allowed users of the Meta AI chatbot to tag public-facing accounts on Instagram and quickly use content on those accounts to create AI-generated or altered content and images. The feature quickly sparked blowback due to privacy concerns, leading Meta to admit it had “missed the mark" so it was...

Dear Readers, I know many of you have been hoping for more time. So was I. Today I write with news none of us wanted to receive. Jon Rappoport passed away peacefully on the evening of Wednesday, July 8, 2026. One week ago I wrote to let you know that Jon could no longer continue his daily publishing schedule. Two days ago I shared how I intend to steward his work. I now fulfill the final responsibility Jon personally entrusted to me. Several weeks before his passing, Jon recorded the message you are about to hear and asked me to...

The savage killing of 78-year-old Reform UK spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe has unleashed a torrent of vile celebration from left-wing activists, revealing the depths of ideological hatred among the left in the UK. Widdecombe, the outspoken former Conservative MP and prisons minister, was found dead with serious injuries at her Dartmoor home, prompting an immediate murder investigation by Devon and Cornwall Police. Police keenly informed the public that a 26-year-old white British man has been arrested on suspicion of the crime. The incident is not being treated as terrorism, but the public reaction—particularly from leftist corners—has shocked many and exposed a...

35 years after the fall of the USSR the first official Communist DSA member, who admired Stalin, will likely be headed to Congress for the next term, in defiance of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment and the Communist Control Act. But who is out there voting for Communists? Despite the countless millions dead at the hands of the Communist regimes, a significant portion of the electorate has a positive view of Communism as a political movement. A recent Cato poll shows that more members of Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, have a positive view of Communism than those...

There’s a new agency in California that promises to “protect consumers, support honest businesses, and advance affordability for Californians.” If Vegas were to give odds, they would be heavily against any of those ever occurring. It’s called the California Business and Consumer Services Agency, and it’s a cabinet-level department headed by Rohit Chopra, who was sworn in on July 1. It already has a bureaucratic acronym: BCSA. Catchy, isn’t it? Chopra promises his office “will sharpen and accelerate work to promote economic growth and protect the public from abuses.” Let us translate that from California-government-speak. What it really means...

During the heated exchange, Behar insisted she was simply focused on “winning” in what she called an “emergency” situation under President Donald Trump. There is something hilarious about women who spent years demonizing white men suddenly treating them as saviors and their only path to victory. Behar began by floating a list of white male candidates she believes could actually win, naming Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. She framed the suggestion as cold political reality, telling her co-hosts they needed to face facts after watching the country...

Image courtesy of Texas A&M AgriLife While the outbreak of New World screwworm continues in South Texas, an infestation of pasture mealybugs is beginning to threaten Texas’s agricultural industry. Pasture mealybugs primarily feed on important agricultural resources, such as hayfields and forage resources. Immature pasture mealybugs feed on plant sap and can inject toxins that poison plants, causing them to thin or die outright. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension offices across the state have been monitoring the pest. So far, pasture mealybugs have been detected in 70 counties. “It seems like we add new counties every week, sometimes every day,” said...

The Number You Need To Understand First Before we start, one number puts everything in context. Fort Knox contains 147,341,858 fine troy ounces of gold. At current market prices near $4,000 per ounce, these reserves represent around $600 billion. But at the legal book value of $42.22 per ounce, fixed since 1973, the assets are officially valued at only $6.22 billion on the Treasury’s books. America owns $667 billion worth of gold. But it is recorded on the books at $6 billion. That $660 billion gap is the thread that connects everything that follows. January 2025: The Audit That Was...

With good reason, AR-15 style rifles remain America’s most popular firearm. While most Americans probably remain unaware, that very popularity protects it against infringement under the Second Amendment. In welcome recent news, the United States Supreme Court now appears poised to do just that in its next term. By agreeing to review state and local prohibitions on AR-15 platform rifles, the Court possesses the perfect opportunity to reaffirm a Second Amendment principle that should’ve been clear all along: Government cannot ban an entire class of firearms that tens of millions of law-abiding Americans own for self-defense and other lawful purposes....

Nolan Wells demanded “Give me my freaking phone” in an argument filmed shortly before he went missing, his family’s lawyer Ben Crump claims. The 18-year-old college football player vanished during a Fourth of July boat trip with friends to Horn Island, Mississippi. His body was recovered Monday and positively identified as his remains the following day using dental records.

Crowd gathers outside building chanting ‘All Jews are gay’; 4 arrested in Amsterdam; London police officer hospitalized with injury from glass bottle during clashes. Moroccan fans chant, 'All Jews are gay,' outside a community health center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, July 10, 2026. (X video used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)A group of fans of the Moroccan soccer team chanted an antisemitic and homophobic slogan in the Netherlands, while a London police officer was injured in rioting following the team’s elimination from the FIFA World Cup at the hands of France on Thursday night. Footage showed...

Randolph Mantooth, the actor best known for playing firefighter-paramedic Johnny Gage on NBC’s hit 1970s series “Emergency!,” has died. He was 80. Mantooth died Thursday at a hospice facility in Ventura, Calif., after a long illness, his brother Donald Mantooth told The Hollywood Reporter. Mantooth shot to fame in 1972 when he was cast as Johnny Gage on “Emergency!,” the NBC drama that introduced the profession of paramedics to millions of viewers. He starred alongside Kevin Tighe on the series, which ran for six seasons, and performed most of his own stunts. The actor later reprised his role as Gage...

ALL VIDEOS AT LINK............ Screenshot from Pentagon UFO Files The Pentagon released a fourth batch of files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) on Friday, with 40 new declassified files. President Trump previously directed the Department of War and other agencies to begin the process of identifying and declassifying government files related to UAP and extraterrestrial life in the interest of total transparency. The latest batch of files details the bizarre sightings, with unclassified reports from the military and various agencies, including one where a US military aviator describes seeing an object “unlike anything I had seen” in 28 years of...

It’s Friday and that means we have another fresh batch of UFO files declassified by the Trump Administration today! And there are some real doozies in here…. Let’s start with this one: BREAKING: The Pentagon has released a fourth batch of UFO documents and videos, including what officials describe as the clearest footage yet—showing a large two-tiered object captured by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform in 2020. pic.twitter.com/LHgxQm9h8U— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 10, 2026Here is a slowed down and enhanced version: 🚨 Enhanced Slow Motion Of The Craziest UFO Video Ever Released By The Pentagon 🛸This thing is...