Free Republic

The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) recently estimated that the gap between unmarried and married men under the age of 40 continues to widen—with 15 million more bachelors than husbands between the ages of 20 to 39 in 2025. The gap has widened by 12.4 million since 2000, when the gap between married and unmarried stood at 2.6 million. IFS also reports, according to a General Social Survey, 11 percent of young adults in the early 2000s said they were “not too happy.” That percentage is now at 26 percent. During the same period, the number of married men ages...

For most Americans, higher interest rates mean more expensive debt. But for retirees with substantial cash savings, the equation can flip: a Federal Reserve rate hike could put more money in their pockets without requiring them to take more investment risk. That makes the Fed’s next move unusually important for anyone living off savings. The real question for retirees is less about what the Fed does and more about what their cash is currently earning.Cash Could Become More Valuable AgainFor years, retirees were punished for playing it safe. Near-zero interest rates meant traditional savings accounts, CDs and other conservative investments...

The United States has publicly confirmed for the first time that it has weapons deployed in orbit. The revelation could accelerate spending on missile defense, military satellites and space security, creating opportunities for defense stocks and space ETFs while raising the risk of a costly new arms race. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink delivered the news almost casually during the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Maryland. “We are increasing readiness against existing threats, and the United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” Meink said. Then the details stopped. Meink...

As Iran and its allies tightened their grip on shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia scrambled this week to reroute millions of barrels of oil after being forced to close a critical pipeline damaged in an attack.The shutdown of the East-West pipeline risks keeping 4 percent of the world’s oil supply from reaching international markets and driving energy prices even higher.Saudi Arabia on Friday said it had temporarily shut the pipeline after it was struck by an Iran-backed militia. The pipeline, a 750-mile network that transports crude across Saudi Arabia to ports on the Red Sea, had been...

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has withdrawn from public engagements after returning from the BRICS summit in India, his office said on Wednesday, citing ill health. Ramaphosa, 73, returned from New Delhi on Monday and was advised by his doctors to rest and recover. His absence comes as Deputy President Paul Mashatile continues recovering from a minor medical procedure, leaving both of South Africa’s top leaders away from public duties. Meanwhile, unverified claims about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s health have surfaced following his visit to New Delhi for the BRICS summit. Wanjun Xie, chairman of the China Democracy Party, alleged...

Veteran national security reporter Bill Gertz posted to social media on Wednesday that wild "rumors are flying" about Chinese leader Xi Jinping's health and a possible plot to oust him from power. "Rumors are flying in China over Xi Jinping begin [sic] taken ill during his visit to India. They include claims that he suffered a minor illness to experiencing a stroke worsened by failure to treat early," wrote Gertz, a national security correspondent for The Washington Times. "Some wild claims say rival group armies are mobilizing for civil war. No confirmation but Treasury Sec Bessent is meeting with Chinese...

Texas Democrats have allegedly found a “roundabout” way to pay for votes in the critical Senate and governor’s races, according to an undercover video published Wednesday. A Democratic operative with Texas Majority PAC admitted in the new footage released by the conservative outlet Townhall that the group is shelling out $25 per person for attendance at Zoom classes that discuss “bad things” Republicans are doing. “We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things,” said Sky MacAdams, an organizing manager for...

Explanation: Sometimes where Hubble finds darkness, Webb sees light. An example is today’s composite images of Messier 64 (M64), a nearby spiral galaxy of many names. The dark band of dust partially blocking its bright core earned it the moniker “the Black Eye Galaxy.” Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) sees that dust, shown in red, as it absorbs and re-emits light from surrounding newborn stars. These young stars are embedded in pink star-forming regions in the secondary Hubble-only image. M64’s inner and outer gas regions counter-rotate, creating regions of increased star formation where the two gas “currents” meet and compress. A...

Oh, brother! Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s marriage to her alleged brother won’t get her kicked out of the US, but other matters in her immigration file might, sources told The Post. In 2009, Omar wed self-described ‘dirty dandy’ Ahmed Elmi, a UK national long rumored to be her brother. But the federal probe into Somalia-born Omar’s past is more likely to focus on how she became as US citizen as a teenager and paperwork filed by her father. The father, Nur Said Mohamed Elmi was long identified as an “educator” before his death in 2020, at which point his military...

Sydney Sweeney is doing what Sydney Sweeney does. She is hot and she knows it. She is using her hotness to sell something. The something happens to be Novig, a sports betting app. So she’s holding footballs. She is not pretending to be an athlete; she is being a woman men like to look at. That is the entire point of the ad. Predictably, a posse of female athletes is furious. Former UCLA gymnast Gracie Kramer posted a training montage: “idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like.” Sydney isn’t claiming to...

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed claimed that slavery “profoundly” influenced the American health care system and that any public opposition to taxpayer-funded treatments for illegal immigrants would be a “deliberate, racist attack.” In a resurfaced 2022 interview, the doctor claimed slavery still weighs on America’s for-profit health care. “Racism continues to flummox our capacity as a society to invest in collective public goods” and remains “more powerful than the self-interest of … lower income white folks … in legacy confederacy states,” he said. The Michigan Democrat, who ran a failed campaign for governor of his state in 2018, went...

Neuroscientists in the US have successfully adapted mice to have functioning human cells inside their own brains. The researchers hope that potential treatments for psychiatric and neurodevelopmental diseases that only occur in humans could now be tested on the laboratory rodents. While mice with brains that are partly human might sound like a Kafkaesque experiment, the scientists said these are not "mice that think like humans". The animals are genetically engineered - and surgically altered - so that some of their brain tissue is human. ... First, they genetically-engineered mice to develop almost none of their own cerebral cortex –...

Brownstone Institute@brownstoneinst·7hDr. Meryl Nass just secured a massive legal victory for Covid dissidents.She pierced the immunity of the medical board that suspended her license over Covid “disinformation.”A judge ruled she can now sue the board members personally.“Their broad immunity that they thought would protect them has been pierced.”“The judge said, ‘You can go after them for damages, even potentially including punitive damages.’”This sets a groundbreaking precedent.“There were a whole lot of doctors out there that had similar attacks.”“Somebody had to do it.”@nass_meryl @Polyface_Farms

Zo-and-tell! City Hall officials must cough up their emails and texts with the powerful Rent Guidelines Board that Mayor Zohran Mamdani allegedly bigfooted into fulfilling his promised rent freeze, a judge ruled Wednesday. Judge Brendan Lantry — the former chair for the Staten Island GOP — granted a narrow order for the behind-the-scenes communications to see if supposedly independent rent board members illicitly colluded with Mamdani’s team. “The question naturally arises: how would the Mayor comply with his ‘guarantee’ to the voters to ‘freeze’ the rent unless he, or his staff, communicated with the Board to ensure that the Board...

Switzerland’s upper house of parliament wants to hand the Federal Council, the country’s executive body, the power to decide how much capital UBS needs to hold. The motion... would allow the government to set banking capital regulations through ordinance rather than requiring full parliamentary approval. The stakes are substantial. Government estimates peg the additional Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) capital requirement at roughly $20 billion, with some analyses suggesting the figure could climb to $22 billion. At issue is how much of a financial cushion UBS must maintain at the parent level to fully back its foreign subsidiaries. CET1 capital...

The Swiss government says it supports a uniform, national ban on so-called conversion therapy, and it’s moving ahead to consider federal legislation to outlaw the discredited practice. A report from the government published last week details a number of current national regulations addressing the practice, as well as a patchwork of laws or procedures in various cantons (independent member states) across the country, which include their own administrative or criminal measures and corresponding legislative proposals that have been initiated, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation reports. ... The patchwork of Swiss laws makes a national ban on the practice worth considering at...

James Talarico's Minister admits Talarico is COVERING UP his Left-wing views to trick Texans into voting for him: "I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he'll change his tune back to where he was."

WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today released internal records from the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealing HHS knowingly sent two unaccompanied migrant children to a household with established connections to the violent MS-13 gang. Grassley is also making public the referral he shared with federal law enforcement containing evidence of potential child trafficking facilitated by HHS’ Unaccompanied Children (UC) program. Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and co-chair of the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus, acquired the records through legally protected whistleblower disclosures made by former HHS UC program staff. “HHS, Congress...

07.12.2025 Grassley Report Concludes Secret Service Failure to Share Threat Information Allowed for Preventable Tragedy in Butler, Identifies Path Forward for Agency ImprovementsSecret Service received threat intel 10 days before Butler rally; Major gaps in internal policies and procedures contributed to massive security breakdownBUTLER COUNTY, IOWA – U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today released a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report compiled at his request in the wake of the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.The Grassley-requested report states senior-level U.S. Secret Service (USSS) officials received classified intelligence...

President Donald Trump posted on Wednesday afternoon, as he was widely expected to do, fuming about the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates. “Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment!” wrote Trump on Truth Social, adding: If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year. The word “Deficit” is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS....