Free Republic

The AI saga takes a bizarre turn: don’t make Grok your guru; media melts down over Trump’s ‘insurrectionist’ label; RFK Jr. fires CDC vax panel; Trump unveils baby investment accounts; more. Today we return to our ongoing coverage of the AI revolution — toggling from optimism back to the surreal and spiritually sci-fi. On Sunday, we explored some good news: AI might be hitting a ceiling on reasoning skills, which could cap the AI apocalypse. But now, the weirdest AI wrinkle yet: people losing their loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies. Behold, a bizarre, cautionary story Rolling Stone published last...

It has long been acknowledged that the United States’ energy infrastructure isn’t particularly secure, a concern exacerbated by the lack of a central planning process for our nation’s piecemeal electric grid. Presidential administrations and Congress have been slow to address the problem, apparently daunted by the mere size and scope of the challenges the needed upgrades would present.That needs to change now. The recent news that China apparently installed hidden “kill switches” in solar equipment sold to the U.S. was the latest in a long list of reasons to be concerned about our electricity infrastructure and the foolhardy rush to...

In my Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) training, we were taught a sobering truth: a decision made today could come back to haunt us decades later. If we approved a hazardous chemical or ignored a potential risk, and that action later led to human or environmental harm, we could be held accountable—even if we had moved on to another job or employer. The concept is known as the "long-tail of liability." As I watch the explosive growth of Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs), I can't help but draw unsettling parallels. We're rushing forward, unleashing technology into schools, businesses,...

Wall Street traders have developed a biting new acronym for a strategy that’s become surprisingly lucrative for President Donald Trump’s whiplash-inducing trade policy: TACO – “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Reportedly first coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, the term has quickly gained traction among investors who are profiting from what they say is a predictable pattern: Trump threatens steep tariffs, the markets plunge, and days later he backs off in a way that prompts a rebound. The latest example came over the weekend. On Friday, Trump sent markets reeling by announcing sweeping 50% tariffs on European imports. But by...

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency announced Sunday that, well, there were a lot of people over the age of 120 still on the Social Security rolls. A LOT. That's so many geezers. According to Breitbart, DOGE has been providing regular updates on the growing number of seemingly fraudulent Social Security recipients. And in the most recent update, delivered last week, DOGE revealed that a total of 12.3 million individuals listed as 120+ years old were now officially marked as deceased in the system. Back in March, Musk controversially claimed that an alleged 2.1 million illegal immigrants had also enrolled...

VIDEOThe DUmmie FUnnies had a very nice run but all good things must come to an end eventually.

As we reported, Jim Comey posted a threatening message to President Trump that someone, probably him or his family, created with seashells in the sand. He said it was interesting, and he just happened upon it. Comey deleted after significant backlash, claiming he didn’t know what it meant. Comey, a former FBI director no less, didn’t take it down until Kash Patel, the new FBI director, said he was under investigation. President Donald Trump lashed out Friday against ex-FBI Director James Comey over the Instagram post. ABC fake news said “top Trump officials claimed was a threat.” Can you imagine...

There comes a time in every man’s life when he must face the consequences of thinking for himself. For me, that moment arrived in a quiet digital knock at midnight—the “Community Guidelines Violation” email. Innocent enough on the surface. But it was the beginning of my journey through what can only be described as the Google Digital Re-Education Camp™. You think gulags are bad? Try being shadow banned so thoroughly your own mom can’t find your content. Welcome to Camp Compliance The invitation was simple: “Attend voluntarily or disappear algorithmically.” At first, I resisted. I figured I’d survive in the...

London has been thrown into chaos after a massive power outage crippled the city’s subway system. Commuters were left stranded as multiple Underground lines shut down, forcing thousands to seek alternative routes. The disruption, attributed to a failure in the National Grid, caused widespread delays and station closures, with Waterloo, Tottenham Court Road, and Holborn among the worst affected. The outage struck during the afternoon rush hour, bringing the city’s transport network to a standstill. Transport for London confirmed that the Bakerloo and Waterloo & City lines were completely suspended, while the Elizabeth, Jubilee, and Northern lines suffered severe delays....

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) provided an update to one of the biggest scams uncovered by Elon Musk’s team on Wednesday evening. DOGE says it has saved approximately $105 billion in a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings,” and other workforce reductions. The Democrats are angry that DOGE is saving American taxpayers money, so they devised a scheme to stop Elon Musk and his team. There are currently nearly a dozen lawsuits challenging DOGE over its authority, data access, and privacy laws. There is also a secret resistance...

Who or what group was running the country from noon on Jan. 20, 2021 to noon on Jan. 20, 2025? While average Americans and a few “alternative independent media types” were asking that question on a daily basis, the ”journalist” with “legacy media” were not the least bit curious. One who did speak out was not a professional journalist but successful business man John McNabb, chairman of the Free Press Foundation who wrote a column asking ‘A few questions for America about ‘the emperor’s new clothes’‘ (January 10, 2022). What happened to the days when the media held the powerful...

Democrats on Thursday were bracing for a sustained attack on their fundraising operation by Republicans, as President Donald Trump targets ActBlue. Trump plans to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the major online donation platform for what the administration cast as “unlawful ‘straw donor’ and foreign contributions to American elections” in a presidential memorandum on Thursday. “President Trump is taking action to address malign actors and foreign nationals who seek to illegally influence American elections, undermining the integrity of our electoral process,” a fact sheet detailing the memo obtained by POLITICO states. “ActBlue has become notorious for its lax...

I confess to being a troglodyte or cave man or idiot or whatever metaphor you'd like to use but I'm very skeptical of AI...

In a shot at ActBlue, the left’s major online donation platform, President Donald Trump plans to sign a presidential memorandum on Thursday cracking down on foreign contributions in American elections, according to a person familiar with the policy and granted anonymity to discuss not-yet-public details. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office is expected to be involved in the crackdown, the person said, though further details about the mechanism she will use were not immediately available. The order is expected to specifically target ActBlue, which Republicans have long claimed could be exploited by foreign actors. Democrats had been bracing in recent days...

For years, a smug, self-righteous activist named Nandini Jammi made it her mission to silence conservative voices by labeling everything she didn’t like as “disinformation” or “hate”—including Revolver. We covered Nandini Jammi and her dark censorship empire way before anybody else caught on. While the left was busy fawning over her brand safety activism, we peeled back the curtain and showed you what was really going on—an evil censorship racket that shook down conservative companies with empty threats, fake outrage, and social media mob tactics. Here’s a look back at what we uncovered about Jammi’s operation—how she went from memeing...

Well, the end of the war in Ukraine could be very near—and for the first time since this whole expensive nightmare started, there’s an actual adult in the room. And that’s because President Trump is back in the White House. The truth is, Ukraine has always been one of the most corrupt countries in the world—and their leader is leading the pack. OCCRP: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his partners in comedy production owned a network of offshore companies related to their business based in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize. Zelensky’s current chief aide, Serhiy Shefir, as well...

Donald Trump and Joe Biden officials ‘improperly shared’ sensitive documents with over 11,000 federal workers, The Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing internal records. These documents included classified White House floor plans. The lapse by the General Services Administration, which supports the basic functioning of the government and manages its real estate portfolio, triggered a cybersecurity incident report and investigation last week, the report added. WaPo added that the internal records showed that a Google Drive folder was shared with the entire GSA staff, more than 11,200 people. It included sensitive documents and the White House floor plan. Details of...

Boy, this one's a doozy! Tim Pool, yes, Tim Pool, is now a member of the White House Press Corps and he showed up today in his beanie/hoodie combo. He's like if fetterman ran a podcast— Nothing is beyond my memes (@Nothingbmemes) April 22, 2025They let the homeless guy who stole Noem's purse in to ask questions?— Jin Saotome's Dangerous Toys (@JinSaotome) April 22, 2025Pool, who has been labeled right-wing even though he's an Occupy Wall Street liberal, absolutely laid into the media right to their faces. 🚨 JUST IN: TIM POOL asks the first question at today's WH press...

Democrats are waking up to the reality that while they used to operate with a monopoly on “trust,” even their voters are tuning out. Axios published a piece that felt like an obituary detailing how “America’s obsession with countering mis- and disinformation has withered as society grows skeptical of institutions once trusted with facts.” For years, the left controlled “professional fact-checking,” using it to control speech and approved narratives. Even the federal government was a part of the game by creating backdoors into social media companies to restrain Americans from posting unapproved thoughts. Still, Axios seems confused about why institutions...

By now, most North Carolinians are at least somewhat familiar with Generative AI (GenAI). As tech journalist George Lawton explains, GenAI “uses sophisticated algorithms to organize large, complex data sets into meaningful clusters of information in order to create new content, including text, images and audio, in response to a query or prompt.” It is the foundation of numerous platforms, including Open AI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E, as well as Google’s Gemini. And it is either a bane or a boon, depending on one’s perspective—especially, perhaps, in the field of education. Since OpenAI publicly released ChatGPT-3.5 in November 2022, students have...