Free Republic

The Biden administration pushed COVID-19 boosters for elderly people even harder after its vaccine safety surveillance systems discovered, as early as November 2022, "statistically significant safety signals for ischemic stroke" in that age group following uptake of the Pfizer bivalent, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy in a letter Monday, disclosed Wednesday. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chair released nearly 2,000 pages of "relevant HHS records" in conjunction with the letter, in 10 batches, documenting the stroke signal and internal communications between officials "acknowledging significant statistical limitations in their ability to detect...

Explanation: In the words of today's astrophotographer, Rositsa Dimitrova, "What have these silent sentinels watched pass across the sky?" The volcanic mo'ai (meaning statue) of Ahu Tongariki stand guard over Rapa Nui (Isla de Pascua, Easter Island), a Polynesian island (annexed by Chile in 1888) located thousands of kilometers off the coast of South America in the Pacific Ocean. Due to the island's remoteness, the mo'ai, with their backs to the dark ocean, are able to gaze upon a clear and vibrant night sky. Pictured, these larger-than-life statues stare at the bright band of the Milky Way, partly obscured by...

The Loyola Phoenix, the student newspaper of Loyola University Chicago, has issued an editor’s note apologizing for an Instagram post calling the alleged killer of 18-year-old student Sheridan Gorman an "illegal immigrant." "On March 23, a post on The Phoenix’s Instagram page carried the following headline: ‘Immigrant Man Charged in Murder of Sheridan Gorman, DHS Involved,’" the editor’s note, posted below a Sunday article about Gorman’s murder, read. "That headline didn’t reflect the most important elements in the story, and it was taken down minutes later to prevent any further harm to affected community members," the editor’s note continued. "Additionally,...

@RepNancyMace Just walked out of a House Armed Services briefing on Iran. Let me repeat: I will not support troops on the ground in Iran, even more so after this briefing. @RepNancyMace The justifications presented to the American public for the war in Iran were not the same military objectives we were briefed on today in the House Armed Services Committee. This gap is deeply troubling. The longer this war continues, the faster it will lose the support of Congress and the American people. @RepNancyMace Washington’s war machine is hard at work. They are try to drag us into Iran...

CNN, in a laughable attempt to boost its ratings, has attempted to dress up a couple of its broadcasts in podcast trappings -- based on the misguided notion that viewers will be attracted to the new form rather than the losing substance of what journalists such as Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper are saying. As an inevitable result, such a desperate move has been the object of widespread mockery. What is interesting is this mockery is not only coming from the right but even from left leaning media such as the New Yorker. Jay Caspian Kang who is himself a...

First Lady Melania Trump is hosting the Fostering the Future Together summit in Washington, DC aimed at 'expanding access to educational tools' and protecting kids in digital environments, according to the White House. Trump, France's First Lady Brigitte Macron, and leaders from more than 40 other countries were joined by a humanoid robot named Figure 3 developed by the AI robotics company, Figure. The robot takes care of household tasks like laundry, cleaning, and doing dishes.

A Los Angeles jury found Wednesday that Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube harmed a young user with features designed to hook kids — in a bombshell verdict that “shakes Big Tech’s predatory business model to its core.” The high-profile case involved a 20-year-old woman who claimed she became dangerously obsessed with the apps at a young age because they were deliberately built to be addictive, using features like infinite scroll and autoplay. The tech giants were found liable for $3 million in damages. The multi-million-dollar judgment is likely to grow, as the jury of seven women and five men will...

The new documents show that Smith’s efforts to acquire Patel’s phone records during his time as a private citizen were far more extensive than previously reported. pecial Counsel Jack Smith’s targeting of Kash Patel and numerous congressional Republicans as part of his lawfare against Donald Trump was worse than originally thought, new records show. Released Tuesday by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the new documents demonstrate that Smith and his team’s efforts to acquire Patel’s phone records during his time as a private citizen were far more extensive than previously reported. The bid to...

WASHINGTON — Airline passengers are experiencing some of the highest security wait times in the 25-year-history of the Transportation Security Administration — with some taking more than four-and-a-half hours to make it through checkpoints, a top official told Congress Wednesday. TSA acting administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill testified to the House Homeland Security Committee that her beleaguered agency is “being forced to consolidate” and “may have to close smaller airports if we do not have enough officers.” “It is a fluid, challenging and unpredictable situation. We understand this is frustrating and disruptive,” she added. “This is unacceptable.” More than 480 Transportation...

What’s in a name? These days...not much. The European Union does not include Ukraine; nevertheless and notwithstanding the objections of E.U. members Hungary and Slovakia, the European supra-state insists on paying the salaries of Ukraine’s government bureaucracy while that nation’s martial-law-holdover-president, Volodymyr Zelensky, fights to maintain control over a breakaway region that has rejected Ukrainian rule since the 2014 coup d'état of Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Yanukovych. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization does not include Ukraine; nevertheless and notwithstanding the objections of NATO members Hungary and Slovakia, the American-led military alliance insists on sending money and weapons to the Kyiv regime...

According to the Times, Lopez-Jimenez and her daughter had been ordered removed from the country in 2019 after she missed an immigration court hearing. The newspaper reported that TSA officials identified the pair on Friday and alerted ICE ahead of their planned Sunday trip.

Friends of the Israel Defense Forces distributed more than $132 million in 2025, the largest annual allocation in the organization’s 44-year history, with what it said was “significant” funding for mental health care and post-traumatic stress treatment for IDF soldiers, reservists and veterans... “We started seeing these reservists getting out of Gaza or from Lebanon, and nobody took care of them,” said Nadav Padan, CEO and national director of FIDF. Padan told JNS that he witnessed the psychological toll of combat in the days following the Oct. 7 attacks. “I flew to Israel the night of Oct. 7, reached Israel...

Sometimes, doing what you believe is right comes with a cost. For former National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) midfielder Elizabeth Eddy Biggs, she knew that long before she ever hit "post." Mrs. Biggs officially announced her retirement Tuesday after an 11-year professional career. "I'm deeply thankful to God, my family, friends, teammates, staff, coaches and fans for this wild, wonderful journey, both full of blessing and growth," Mrs. Biggs said in a video posted to her social media. (Video: https://x.com/elizabetheddy2/status/2036553794373210317) And, in a conversation with OutKick on Monday, she said she's at peace with how everything unfolded — even if...

The 53-second clip, titled 'One Vengeance for All,' was released by Iranian news outlet Fars News Agency, which is closely tied to the country's state broadcasting network. The video unfolds as a dark montage of historical and modern conflict imagery framed to portray American and Western actions as sources of global suffering. It opens with scenes referencing violence against Native American populations before shifting to the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. Scenes resembling the Vietnam War follow, alongside footage referencing recent conflicts in Gaza, Yemen and an Iranian school reportedly struck by an American...

Los Angeles homeless people are being put up in brand new apartments in ritzy neighborhoods that cost taxpayers up to $1.5 million per room, the California Post can reveal. At least $2.6 billion of taxpayers cash has been spent buying and renovating hotels, motels and dorms for the huge unhoused population in the city and county since 2020. The properties were all purchased with $1.3 billion from Governor Gavin Newsom’s Homekey initiative, which then renovated with another $1.3 billion in funding from the city and county of Los Angeles. Some of the suites, which are staggered across neighborhoods such as...

Peter Jackson gave a promising video update on Andy Serkis' progress on The Hunt for Gollum, the next chapter in The Lord of the Rings cinematic saga. "The script is coming together really well, and I think it's going to be a really good film," Jackson teased, before bringing on Stephen Colbert to announce another new LOTR film. The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, developed by Colbert and his son, Peter, will depict chapters 3-8 of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, which did not appear in Jackson's original film trilogy. Let the hunt officially commence...

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner went to Philadelphia International Airport and threatened to jail federal immigration agents who are currently deployed there and across the country as part of an ongoing federal response. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were deployed to Philadelphia and at least a dozen other airports as part of a federal response to a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staffing shortage during the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. Nearly 20 percent of TSA officers in Philadelphia called out of shifts, forcing checkpoint closures. The deployment remains active, with ICE agents continuing to support airport operations nationwide. Federal...

Do politicians internalize the consequences of their war-related votes? A new paper published in the Journal of Political Economy finds that they do -- when their family is involved. In “No Kin in the Game: Moral Hazard and War in the U.S. Congress,” authors Eoin F. McGuirk, Nathaniel Hilger, and Nicholas Miller compare conscription-related voting records of members of Congress with and without draft-age sons. They find that legislators with sons eligible for the draft are 7-11 percentage points less likely to vote for conscription than their counterparts with daughters of the same age. The authors compiled a dataset of...

I just ordered home heating oil... FIVE TWENTY-NINE A GALLON. I have (2) 330 gallon tanks. I thought I'd order 200 at 4.65 to tide me over until the price goes down, but today it is FIVE TWENTY-NINE. So I ordered the miserable 100 gallon minimum instead of paying over a thousand for 200 gallons. I love Trump, but this is unsustainable, and there should be no reason it is happening with the amount of oil we are producing domestically. I am P!SSED! If you have some snide insulting comment for me, blast away, but if you do that I...

Heading into this midterm election year, the cost of health care tops the public’s economic anxieties and more than 4 in 10 voters say the issue will have a major impact on their vote, a new KFF Health Tracking poll finds. Voters, including independents, currently trust Democrats more than Republicans to address the cost of health care and most other health care issues, though neither party has an advantage on addressing the overall cost of living, the poll finds. A majority (56%) of the public expect health care costs for their family to become less affordable in the coming year....