Free Republic

A United States Postal Service worker was arrested last week after a search for a missing lottery ticket led investigators back to her, the Florida Lottery announced on Friday. Court documents said the victim purchased a Pick 4 ticket from a 7-Eleven in Tampa on June 14 and went to a Publix the following day to verify the winning amount of $2600. Later that day, the victim went to a United States Post Office and mailed the ticket to a relative in Fort Lauderdale to help cover funeral expenses, the documents said. Nine days later, when the ticket never reached...

On July 14, the State Leadership Initiative was honored to host the Florida DOGE team and their tech partners, Vulcan, Echelon, and DigiBuild, for the Florida DOGE Showcase in Washington, D.C. Spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis, the state has become the leader for providing accountable and efficient governance to its citizens.Since its creation in 2025, the Florida DOGE team has identified nearly $1 billion in waste and abuse at the local government level and sent over $878 million back to the federal government. But the team's work extends beyond fiscal savings and budgetary cuts - it also includes auditing university...

Florida AG warns bishops: Catholic schools could lose vouchers over COVID mandatesFlorida Attorney General James Uthmeier says Catholic schools must honor parents’ religious objections to mandated shots or risk losing access to state scholarship dollars.Florida Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier warned the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops July 31 that Catholic schools could jeopardize their eligibility for state-funded scholarships and vouchers by denying religious exemptions from vaccination requirements.“Ironically, they won’t offer religious exemptions as prescribed by state law,” Uthmeier wrote in an announcement of his letter to the bishops. “This is troubling and may disqualify them from state scholarships and...

The father of a six-year-old Kentucky boy stabbed to death in his own bed is publicly breaking down after the man who did it was released from prison for the second time, this time with no supervision. Dean Tipton took to Facebook on Wednesday and wrote that the killer of his son Logan being released again may be his breaking point. Tipton wrote that the justice system handed his family a life sentence while giving the killer, Ronald Exantus, a slap on the wrist. Exantus broke into the Tipton family’s Versailles home on December 7, 2015, stabbed Logan Tipton to...

Florida is set to become the first state in nearly a decade to carry out a double execution in one day with the lethal injections of a child murderer and an octogenarian. Former police officer James Duckett, 68, died by a lethal injection at 1.19 p.m. Tuesday at Florida state prison near Starke for raping and drowning an 11-year-old girl in 1987. Duckett said “No sir” when asked if he wanted to make a final statement and about four minutes after the three-drug injection began, the prison warden shook Duckett and shouted his name, receiving no response.

Republican Florida State Rep. Paula Stark, a two-term lawmaker, will not be on the ballot. After a weeks-long legal battle, it was determined that she failed to file the proper paperwork for reelection, which is baffling. That’s a clear failure on the part of Ms. Stark and her staff. This is the ‘layup’ portion of the race, lady. What the hell happened? June 12—that’s what happened. That’s the deadline for Ms. Stark to submit her forms, including the critical financial disclosure documents, which her treasurer alleges he did. Rep. Paula Stark says her office did submit them, but claims the...

Nine-banded armadillos are a common sight across the southern US. You’ll find them digging in flower beds and underneath your porch. Sometimes, unfortunately, they unsuccessfully attempt to cross a busy road. They are, for the most part, harmless. But experts say the adorable armored creatures may be the culprit behind a rising number of cases of an ancient disease. Well, “ancient” is only partly true — leprosy, aka Hansen’s Disease, is a 4,000-year-old illness, but it infects as many as 200,000 around the world today. In the US, there are a few hundred cases a year and numbers are climbing....

Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Iran on Wednesday of flying members of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps into Yemen, saying Tehran’s actions helped ignite a renewed confrontation between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. "They decided to send direct flights from Tehran into Yemen, carrying IRGC elements and others into the country," Rubio told reporters. "And the Saudis responded to it." Rubio did not identify the flights, specify how many IRGC personnel were allegedly transported or provide evidence supporting the allegation. He made the remarks while attending an annual gathering of Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers...

A tugboat captain broke down in tears as he accepted responsibility for a collision with a sailboat that killed three young girls in Florida - as prosecutors revealed he was on his phone around the time of the tragic incident. Yusiel Lopez Insua, 46, wept as he pleaded guilty to seaman's manslaughter on Tuesday over the July 28, 2025, incident that left seven-year-old Mila Yankelevich, Arielle Buchman, 10, and Erin Ko, 13, dead, NBC 6 reported. The three girls, two others, and a 19-year-old sailing instructor were in the Biscayne Bay on their final week of camp with the Miami...

A 74-year-old Miami Gardens woman was arrested for allegedly biting two of her step-grandchildren during a family fight, police said. Isabel Baltazar was arrested Monday on two counts each of battery and child abuse with no great bodily harm, an arrest report said. According to the report, the alleged incident happened Sunday night when Baltazar's son, the stepfather of the two kids, got into a physical altercation with the childrens' biological father. During the fight, the two children and Baltazar intervened before she ended up biting the two children in the back and arm, the report said. The biting caused...

Florida's Tampa International Airport (TPA) is on track to privatize its security in a bid to reduce chaos and delays, angering federal workers and their union. TPA's move, announced earlier this week, comes amidst a broader push by the Trump administration to privatize airports around the country. In May, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced a public-private partnership model called TSA Gold+, which will allow private contractors to oversee airport security operations by hiring personnel and managing security equipment. That is the program TPA opted into. A record-long, 43-day government shutdown late last year, as well as lengthy partial shutdowns...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) is calling for all congressional staff to undergo background checks and dishing on growing foreign influence campaigns that she describes as “the worst kept secret on Capitol Hill.” Cammack has introduced a resolution that would also mandate disclosure of staffers’ nationalities as well as any payments by foreign governments to current or new Capitol hill hires. The proposal comes after reports emerged last month that the FBI has been investigating a senior GOP aide for allegedly acting as a foreign agent on behalf of Qatar, as well as revelations that spies for Cuba and...

CARACAS, Venezuela - U.S. missionaries accused by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of espionage have been forced from their remote outposts among jungle tribes by a government order, the final pair leaving Thursday after years of evangelical work. The New Tribes Mission flew those two out of the rain forest to regroup with other missionaries in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz. There they will decide what to do next: leave the country or continue with a legal battle seeking to overturn the government's order to expel them from indigenous areas by Sunday. Most of the group's missionaries are Americans. Since...

A family of seven who tucked into an expensive feast brazenly left an Orlando restaurant without paying, it has been claimed. The group were caught on surveillance footage consuming a spread worth $300 before leaving @ The Diner, apparently without settling their hefty tab on Sunday. The Florida restaurant is now seeking to identify the alleged dine-and-dashers, who are said to have taken off during its busiest shift of the day. It wrote on Instagram that the family ordered multiple dishes and appeared to enjoy a leisurely meal before carrying out their premeditated escape in stages. The restaurant, which shared...

The attorney for an imprisoned Navy admiral told Military.com that efforts are underway to either get his conviction reversed, or to receive a pardon from President Donald Trump. Retired four-star Navy Adm. Robert P. Burke, 63, of Coconut Creek, Fla., once the second-highest uniformed Navy officer who formerly commanded forces in Africa, Europe and Russia, was found guilty in May 2025 of conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, performing acts affecting a personal financial interest, and concealing material facts from the United States following a five-day trial. He was sentenced in September to six years in prison. His case received revived...

A top Missouri prosecutor was booted for having an affair with an illegal migrant her office was probing for sex assault — and because she slept with two other men in glaring conflicts of interest, too, court papers allege. Disgraced Ray County Prosecutor Camille Johnston was yanked from her position Thursday when a judge signed off on Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s petition laying out a slew of misconduct allegations against her during her three and a half years in office, Hanaway announced. Johnston — an elected official who took office Jan. 1, 2023 — compromised the integrity of her...

Missouri Prosecutor Camille Johnston is in MAJOR trouble. Allegedly: • Had an intimate relationship with an undocumented immigrant whose sexual assault case her office was prosecuting. • Helped him evade arrest by driving him to Mississippi in 2023, gave him her car + title, and vacationed with him in Florida. • Never disclosed the relationship, never recused herself, and allegedly slow-walked the charges. PLUS: • Accused of a relationship with a criminal defense attorney whose clients she was prosecuting. • Accused of a relationship with a married domestic violence suspect (C.W.) — and firing an employee who confronted her about...

Former Marine and congressional candidate William Upham faces a federal charge for allegedly threatening to kill President Trump.William Lintag Upham, a former Marine officer and qualified congressional write-in candidate, was arrested and charged on July 16 with threatening to kill President Donald Trump.The charges announced by the Justice Department came after federal agents reviewed social media videos in which Upham allegedly called for the administration’s violent overthrow. Upham, 35, appeared in federal court in Jacksonville, Fla., and a judge ordered him detained. He faces up to five years in federal prison if convicted. He is presumed innocent as prosecutors have...

A 25-year-old man faces a felony charge after authorities say he managed to bypass airport gate agents and board a full United Airlines flight to Los Angeles using a fake boarding pass, triggering an explosives sweep that forced every passenger off the aircraft. Abdulrahman Oriyomi was arrested Friday morning and charged with felony impairing or interrupting the operation of a critical infrastructure facility. The charges stem from an incident last month at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

The things a mother will go through for her child. A woman named Melissa Sotomayor was shocked at how United Airlines treated her disabled son on a recent flight home from Tampa, Florida to New Jersey. Sotomayor took to TikTok — in a now viral video with over 1 million views — to share her very sad experience. She began the video explaining her son’s condition: “My son is dependent upon a trach, short for tracheostomy, and ventilator. He has vision and hearing problems.” The mother went on to explain that in order to fly safely, she made sure to...