Free Republic

Tech billionaire Elon Musk was handed a major win Tuesday evening when President-elect Donald Trump announced that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO would co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” with Vivek Ramaswamy. The announcement reinforces the closeness that Musk has managed to achieve with Trump, even after the election. But for some people in Trump’s orbit, Musk’s presence has felt overbearing. Musk has been so aggressive in pushing his views about Trump’s second term that he’s stepping on the toes of Trump’s transition team and may be overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago, according to two people familiar with the...

Former President Donald Trump, during Tuesday’s presidential debate, repeated a baseless and sensationalist claim about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating dogs and other pets. "They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats," Trump said during an answer to a question about immigration. "They're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame." Trump's answer was among the most extraordinary of the first 30 minutes of the debate: a former U.S. president spreading an internet rumor — one labeled by some of his critics...

Police in Springfield, Ohio, said Monday they had received no credible reports of immigrants harming pets, contradicting a claim by Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance.The senator from Ohio, as well as other Republican lawmakers and several conservative commentators, have in recent days asserted without evidence that the arrival of thousands of immigrants from Haiti had created chaos in Springfield.

Vivian Jenna Wilson, the transgender daughter of Elon Musk, said Thursday in her first interview that he was an absent father who was cruel to her as a child for being queer and feminine. Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview posted online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and he alleged that he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16. Wilson said that Musk hadn’t been...

The FBI said this week it had no information indicating a credible terrorist threat against the United States, but social media pundits who have been raising the alarm for days aren’t backing down. Conservative social media influencers have been filling platforms such as X and Truth Social with speculation not backed by any evidence that attacks on civilians in Israel would soon be followed by similar attacks in major U.S. cities and that people should begin preparing — including by avoiding cities and purchasing firearms. The speculation with no evidence to support it has come from former President Donald Trump,...

YouTube said Monday that it had removed a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaking with podcast host Jordan Peterson for spreading what the company said was vaccine misinformation. The decision is the latest challenge for Kennedy as he seeks to find support for a Democratic presidential run after years as an anti-vaccine crusader. The video was removed amid a broader tug-of-war online between vaccine conspiracy theorists and prominent doctors. YouTube’s policies against hosting false medical information are long-standing. "We removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube’s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges...

A little-known European medical team is poised to become one of the most important groups in the shifting landscape of U.S. abortion bans. Aid Access, an online-only service run by a Dutch physician, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, began shipping abortion pills to Americans from abroad four years ago. The organization’s team consists of about four doctors supervising about 10 medical staff members, and they’re difficult for U.S. authorities to reach because all are outside the country and they ship pills from a pharmacy in India. Opponents of abortion rights have so far largely found themselves powerless to stop Aid Access from...