Free Republic

Hunter Biden, the son of former President Biden, was awarded $1.7 million in damages on Friday as part of a defamation lawsuit against former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. Byrne, a known denier of Biden’s victory over President Trump in the 2020 presidential election, accused the younger Biden of taking part in an $800 million bribery scheme involving Iran and failed to defend his claims in court. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of the Central District of California ruled the ex-executive acted with “intentional misrepresentation” and “conscious disregard” for Hunter’s rights, and said Byrne continued to amplify the false allegations even...

The blaze, which broke out around 6 p.m. on July 7, quickly engulfed the historic structure, causing the roof to collapse. ALERT: Pittsburgh Fire is battling a 3-alarm fire in a vacant church on Grandview Ave. & Kearsarge on Mount Washington. There are no reports of injuries at this time. Please watch this space for updates. A PIO is on scene. pic.twitter.com/actU6tJjMC — Pittsburgh Public Safety (@PghPublicSafety) July 7, 2026 Allegheny County dispatchers received a call about the fire at approximately 6:05 p.m. Firefighters arrived within four minutes and upgraded the response to a three-alarm fire, according to a WPXI...

Iranian and Middle East diplomats held crisis talks in Oman Saturday to respond to the US demand that Tehran issue a public pledge to keep the Strait of Hormuz open – while reportedly weighing whether to propose a new travel route along the critical waterway. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was meeting with Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi in Muscat to discuss “safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz,” according to state media in Tehran. There were no indications top US officials were involved in the negotiations. Qatari officials, who have sometimes served in a mediating role between the warring...

America’s love affair with the Blizzard is on ice. Since early 2025, Dairy Queen has been in a franchise meltdown, closing at least 46 locations nationwide, with Texas taking the biggest hit after the chain operator, Project Lonestar, refused to renovate its restaurants, which got them iced out of the DQ family. Between February and March alone, 42 Texas locations shut down, leaving Lone Star cravers to fend for themselves. (Or finally try a McFlurry.) In Alaska, three DQ locations in Anchorage, Wasilla and Palmer all shuttered at the start of July, leaving the 49th state with just one Blizzard...

Göbekli Tepe was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, and it's not hard to see why. Image credit: Resul Muslu/Shutterstock.com ============================================================================ Did a cataclysmic comet impact 13,000 years ago spark the rise of civilization? That's the explosive claim behind a study of carvings at the world-famous site of Göbekli Tepe, which researchers say encode not just a catastrophic comet strike, but the world's oldest solar calendar. Located in southern Türkiye, Göbekli Tepe is a pre-pottery Neolithic complex that is estimated to be around 12,000 years old. Analyzing an intricately carved pillar at the site, the study authors propose...

The proposed Massed Modular Aircraft would not necessarily replace every capability of the MQ-9 Reaper. The Pentagon wants these low-cost drones to feature modular designs. GA The U.S. Department of Defense is searching for a new generation of low-cost combat drones that can perform many of the same missions as the MQ-9A Reaper without carrying its hefty price tag. The step suggests a major shift in military approach as modern battlefields increasingly favor large numbers of affordable, expendable drones over a smaller fleet of expensive aircraft. Low-cost, long-range unmanned aircraft For this, the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) has launched...

Dear Readers, I know many of you have been hoping for more time. So was I. Today I write with news none of us wanted to receive. Jon Rappoport passed away peacefully on the evening of Wednesday, July 8, 2026. One week ago I wrote to let you know that Jon could no longer continue his daily publishing schedule. Two days ago I shared how I intend to steward his work. I now fulfill the final responsibility Jon personally entrusted to me. Several weeks before his passing, Jon recorded the message you are about to hear and asked me to...

It’s Friday and that means we have another fresh batch of UFO files declassified by the Trump Administration today! And there are some real doozies in here…. Let’s start with this one: BREAKING: The Pentagon has released a fourth batch of UFO documents and videos, including what officials describe as the clearest footage yet—showing a large two-tiered object captured by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform in 2020. pic.twitter.com/LHgxQm9h8U— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 10, 2026Here is a slowed down and enhanced version: 🚨 Enhanced Slow Motion Of The Craziest UFO Video Ever Released By The Pentagon 🛸This thing is...

This video explores the spectacular remains of the Roman mines at Las Médulas, Spain. The Roman Gold Mine that Ate Mountains | 9:09 toldinstone | 21,693 views | July 10, 2026

How worried should Democrats be about the Democratic Socialists of America? As someone who knows the DSA inside out, I can say with authority: They should be very worried indeed. I was a DSA member for years and served in local leadership. But today’s DSA — illiberal, dogmatic and hostile to traditional American political norms — is not the organization I once knew. It includes disciplined, radicalized networks that have methodically expanded their power over the last decade in pursuit of extremist goals. As the Democratic Party grapples with the DSA’s growing influence and extremism, it would do well to...

Eric Swalwell launched a campaign of threats and intimidation to stop the sordid details of his alleged rape and sexual assaults from being spread wide. Records obtained by The California Post show the disgraced politician used a team of high-powered lawyers to fire off legal threats to a rival campaign in an effort to suppress rape and sexual assault allegations — just weeks before his own campaign imploded over those same claims. Attorneys representing Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign sent a cease-and-desist letter on March 20 to Ryan Hughes — general counsel for progressive billionaire Tom Steyer’s campaign — accusing him of...

The European auto industry is a case study on how short-sighted trade policy goals, results in consequences. Previously, German auto companies like Volkswagen entered into trade agreements with China and began manufacturing their vehicles with immediate financial success in the market. However, it did not take long for Chinese auto companies to reverse the engineering and begin to deliver the same quality vehicles at much lower prices. The Chinese then stop purchasing the Volkswagen vehicles and purchase the cheaper version, while simultaneously begin exporting those same vehicles into the home market from where the technology originated. Today, with a double-digit...

Martha Ann Lillard, the last U.S. polio patient who used an iron lung to survive, has died at age 78. The Shawnee, Okla., resident first experienced symptoms of the disease on her fifth birthday in 1953, she told KFOR 8 days before her death. “I woke up and it was sunny outside, and I started to sit up, and my neck was killing me,” she said. “I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow.” “After four days, I went unconscious. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move my arms or legs,” she explains. Lillard had contracted polio — just two years...

Maine Democrat Graham Platner on Friday formally withdrew from his US Senate bid in a letter to state elections officials that signed off with an F-bomb. Platner posted on X a picture of the letter, which did not share any immediate details about who he hoped would succeed him to face Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November. The missive touted the 156,084 votes he had received in Maine’s Senate Democratic primary last month, suggesting that his more than 70-percentage-point win showed: “People are desperate for change.” “Mainers voted for a new kind of politics,” the letter read. “One that...

A convoy of police cars, lights flashing, tail the large yellow truck up to the back gates of London’s British Museum. It’s just before 3 a.m. on July 10, a date that has been kept under wraps for months. After the truck pulls into the museum’s loading bay, four men open its back doors to reveal a cage-like rectangular crate. Inside it is another crate, inside that crate is a metal shell, and inside that shell, folded back and forth on itself 28 times, is a precious and fragile artifact, nearly a thousand years old. The journey this truck has...

1:07 VIDEO AT LINK............ SpacEx has competition!...............

A former Long Island nurse who raked in $1.5 million selling fake vaccine cards during the COVID-19 pandemic was slapped with a record-breaking $544,000 fine from the state. Ex-Amityville practitioner Julie DeVuono, 53, who pleaded guilty to forgery and money laundering back in 2023 was hit with the massive penalty for a “large-scale” scheme where she hawked the phony cards to parents of 162 school-aged kids between November 2019 and January 2022, the state Department of Health announced Thursday. “This is the largest civil penalty imposed for vaccination fraud in the Department of Health’s 125-year history,” state Health Commissioner Dr....

An illegal immigrant who has been deported three times has been charged in a July 3 crash that killed a 6-year-old girl in North Carolina. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged a detainer asking North Carolina officials not to let Jaime Santiago Corona out of jail without notifying them, according to a Department of Homeland Security news release. Calli Toler, 6, was killed in the crash. Corona, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, faces multiple charges. DHS noted that Corona’s “criminal history includes convictions for driving under the influence of liquor and obstructing police.” According to arrest warrants, Jaime...

While disagreeing on most else, teacher unions and conservative education policy reformers share views on cellphone bans, AI guardrails in K-12 public schools. ================================================================== Teachers unions and education reformers are historically longtime rivals – frequently bumping heads over policies surrounding school choice, parents' rights, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices in K-12 schools. There's one issue, however, upon which these groups agree – that technology, creeping first via phones and now Artificial Intelligence, is interfering with student learning. "Social media and student personal device use have become a constant presence in our schools,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National...

Dramatic new bodycam footage captured the moment heroic NYPD cops plucked a distraught woman off steel cables high above the Brooklyn Bridge, saving her from sure death. “I just wanna talk,” one cop is heard telling the woman after she climbed high atop the East River span shortly before 7:40 p.m. on Wednesday. “What’s happening today? “I wanna help you, that’s why I’m up here right now,” the officer said. “I genuinely care, I do. It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem, it really is. I don’t know what you’re going through but I want to understand. We have...