Free Republic

Nearly a decade ago, Los Angeles County voters overwhelmingly approved Measure M, a half-cent sales tax to fund projects focused on public transportation. The idealistic vote gave Angelenos a lot to look forward to, including a $365 million plan for an 8-mile bike path along the Los Angeles River, which would close a crucial gap between existing paths lining LA’s concrete channelized waterway. The expected opening date: 2025. But, as the year nears a close, the bike path still isn’t open. In fact, construction hasn’t even started, and the environmental review process is still in the early stages. In the...

Seattle’s socialist mayoral candidate Katie Wilson, who has been nicknamed the "Mini Mamdani," has raised concerns among critics about conflicts of interest and government overreach, this time over her plan to tax residents to subsidize media outlets that support her campaign and employ her. In a recent interview on the Mostly Economics podcast, Wilson promoted a proposal she calls “News Notes”: a taxpayer-funded voucher program that would give every Seattle resident $100 to donate to local media outlets, to save failing outlets from the free market. To pay for it, she floated new property taxes, a capital gains tax, or...

Germany’s globalist political class is once again talking about going to war with Russia. Officials in Berlin have suggested that Europe should “prepare for conflict,” a statement that’s raised alarms across the continent. But while Germany rattles sabers, another European Union member is already at war, not with Moscow, but with its own citizens.Romania, one of NATO’s key Eastern members, has quietly constructed an enormous internal surveillance system under the banner of “national security.”Documents obtained under Romania’s Freedom of Information law reveal that from the 2024 presidential elections through September 2025, the country’s Supreme Court issued 2,843 national security warrants....

Discussing ongoing U.S. strikes against alleged drug smugglers, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) called for lawmakers to assert congressional authority over when the U.S. uses armed force — and work to bring unauthorized conflicts to a close altogether. At today’s Axios Future of Defense Summit, Sen. Young complained the Trump administration was not giving lawmakers enough information about its ongoing offensive against so-called “narco-terrorists,” in the Caribbean sea near Venezuela (though Secretary of Defense Hegseth said that the military had struck a suspected drug carrying vessel in the “East Pacific” on Tuesday. It was the eighth vessel struck since September in...

Let’s put the events of the last 72 hours into context.On Monday and Tuesday, Russian oil refineries in NATO countries Hungary and Romania suddenly, and simultaneously, have mysterious explosions and catastrophic fires {citation}}. On Wednesday, NATO head Mark Rutte comes to visit President Trump in the White House, and at the end of the day, the same Russian company, Lukoil, whose refinery exploded in Romania, suddenly becomes sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury. These events are not disconnected.President Trump then disputes a Wall Street Journal report, further saying he did not give approval, nor does he know where NATO long-range missiles...

In 2009, Russia’s state nuclear agency, Rosatom, began acquiring a Canadian company called Uranium One. It started small—17%—then kept buying. By 2010, Rosatom wanted control. The prize wasn’t just uranium. It was access: to Kazakh deposits, American mines, and strategic reserves buried beneath a 35,000-acre ranch in Wyoming.The deal needed approval from CFIUS, a powerful U.S. committee tasked with blocking foreign threats to national security. On the panel sat the State Department, then led by Secretary Hillary Clinton.That spring, as the uranium deal quietly advanced toward Washington, Salida’s charitable arm—the Salida Capital Foundation—received $3.3 million. It was an anonymous donation.Within...

healthbot @thehealthb0t Pediatricians collect $200–$600 per fully vaccinated patient, with some making more than $1 million a year. Definitely no conflict of interest there!

The SCIF @TheIntelSCIF OBAMA was running a MONEY LAUNDERING operation through the CAYMAN ISLANDS using USAID as a front, DISGUISED as "FOREIGN AID." You just can't make this stuff up. It ALWAYS seems to be the same culprits, the same groups, and the same people. Every, single, time. During the Obama USAID era, we were running rogue operations in Cuba. USAID pumped $1.2 BILLION into activist groups, teaching them how to use Facebook, Twitter, hashtags, and coordinate street protests. All of it was structured to fool the American people, Congress, and even the White House. Obama even secretly funded a...

Leading U.S. practitioners of gender-transition techniques knew all along that their treatments were based on “weak evidence” and “consensus” among like-minded doctors, recently unearthed emails reveal.University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) medical directors Madeline Deutsch and Stephen Rosenthal are co-authors of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) Standards of Care version 8 (SOC 8). Rosenthal also founded the UCSF Child and Adolescent Gender Center (CAGC).Judicial Watch sued to obtain Deutsch and Rosenthal’s emails after a public-records request for them from the Daily Caller was denied in 2023. Two years later, the group finally got them — all 2,491...

NOW - Ursula von der Leyen announces 4 billion euros will be disbursed to Ukraine today, including 2 billion for drones and proposes "reparation loans for Ukraine, on the basis of the immobilized Russian assets, Ukraine has to pay back this loan, if Russia pays reparations."

President Donald Trump is flexing new leverage in the war in Ukraine — allowing the nation to use U.S. weapons to strike deep into Russia, weighing whether to provide Kyiv with Tomahawk cruise missiles and vowing Ukraine can take back all its land — while pressing China and India to slash purchases Russian oil. Ukraine supporters are cheering the shift, noting that after months of frustration over the grinding conflict, Trump appears to be changing tactics. From a combative February meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his declaration last week that Ukraine could reclaim all of its original territory, the...

Ukrainian defense and national security officials are on their way to Washington to hammer out details of a proposed drone deal with the Trump administration, The Post has learned. Representatives of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and its National Security and Defense Council will be working with their American counterparts Tuesday through Friday as Washington and Kyiv aim to solidify a defense agreement that would bind the countries closer together. “Following the results of the negotiations between the presidents of Ukraine and the United States, a Ukraine delegation will arrive to Washington from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2 for technical...

When the Obama Foundation snagged a sweetheart deal to build its beleaguered Obama Presidential Center on a Chicago public park, it pledged to create a $470 million reserve fund to spare taxpayers should the project ever go belly up. But new tax filings show the foundation has only deposited $1 million into the fund and has not added to it in years, with critics saying the empty promise could potentially leave Chicagoans on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. Under its agreement with the city, the foundation was required to create the fund, known as an endowment, in...

Russian drones crossing into Poland and MiG-31s violating Estonian airspace revived the core question: how does a Russia vs. NATO war actually begin? Moscow will keep probing seams—airspace, air defenses, political will—aiming to force NATO into an Article 4/5 dilemma. Europe’s fragmented defense industry, ammunition shortages, and uneven appetite for risk create openings for a rapid, deniable “fait accompli” in the Baltics using EW, drones, and covert forces. That scenario wouldn’t resemble a set-piece tank battle; it would be a shock campaign designed to split allies before they can mobilize.

Millions of dollars sent to Barack Obama’s foundation has ended up being donated to a progressive fund that supported anti-Israel groups, accused of setting up encampments at Ivy League universities, according to public documents. Donations to the Obama Foundation, set up by the former president to build a 19-acre campus including a museum, athletic facility and fruit and vegetable gardens in Chicago, totaling $2 million were instead sent on to Tides Foundation in 2022 and 2023, according to its latest available federal tax filings. The cash was earmarked to “support local organizations that are working to reduce violence in communities,”...

Moldova's electoral commission barred a pro-Russian party from participating in this weekend's parliamentary elections on Friday, a vote beleaguered by widespread claims of Russian interference. The outcome of Sunday's high-stakes vote could determine whether Moldova, a former Soviet republic and a candidate for EU membership, will continue on a path towards the West or be brought back into Moscow's orbit. The Heart of Moldova party is one of four parties in the Russia-friendly Patriotic Electoral Bloc (BEP), which is viewed as one of the main opponents of the ruling pro-Western Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS). The Central Electoral Commission's...

The Trump administration’s first US weapons aid packages for Ukraine have been approved and could soon ship as Washington resumes sending arms to Kyiv - this time under a new financial agreement with allies, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters on Tuesday. This is the first use of a new mechanism developed by the US and allies to supply Ukraine with weapons from US stocks using funds from NATO countries. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby has approved as many as two $500 million shipments under the new mechanism called the Priority Ukraine Requirements List, known under...

Two months ago something happened that I was hesitant to crow about: the amount of electricity produced by solar and wind projects exceeded the amount produced by nuclear energy. A few months earlier, they outpaced energy produced by burning coal. So wind and solar are now the second largest source of electricity production in the United States, if combined. I hesitated because the number of planned solar projects in development had suddenly leveled off, just as wind projects had done the year prior. And there was a plausible cause why this might not just be a one-month fluke: Pres. Trump...

Prince Harry has made a surprise visit to Kyiv after an invitation from the Ukrainian government, saying he wanted to do “everything possible” to help the recovery of the thousands of military personnel who have been seriously injured in the three-year war against Russia. During the trip to the Ukrainian capital, he and a team from his Invictus Games Foundation are set to detail new initiatives to support the rehabilitation of the wounded, with the eventual aim of providing help to all areas of the country. Earlier this year it was estimated that the Ukraine war had already left 130,000...

President Donald Trump reacted Wednesday with a degree of bemusement toward Russia’s drone incursion into Poland, a NATO member that Trump has previously vowed to defend amid heightened tensions with Moscow. “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones?” Trump asked in a short post on Truth Social. “Here we go!” The brief mention of the incident — and the vague suggestion of continued fallout — came as US officials were digesting the overnight events, when more than a dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace, spurring a response from NATO to scramble fighter jets to shoot them down. The incident...