Free Republic

JEWS THE world over will gather around the Seder table this week to recount again the great narrative of their ancestors' redemption from slavery in Egypt. In retelling the story, they will quote the passage from Exodus in which Pharaoh justified the unspeakable repression he intended to inflict on the Hebrews. "Come, let us deal wisely with them," he exhorted his nation. "Otherwise they may become so numerous that if there is a war they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the land." Though the tyrant's idea of dealing wisely with the Hebrews began with slave labor,...

Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch roasted Solicitor General John Sauer over the citations in his argument during oral arguments in the highly-anticipated birthright citizenship on Wednesday. Trump signed an executive order ending birthright citizenship during the first days of his second term, which was promptly blocked by a lower court in a ruling that was upheld by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case — Trump v. Barbara — on Wednesday morning, with Trump in attendance. While it’s tough to forecast based on questioning, things did not...

This NATO war game went horribly wrong. Ukraine’s drone warfare exposed NATO weaknesses during a major Estonia war game, and the results were brutal. In this video, I break down how just 10 Ukrainian operators simulated the destruction of two NATO battalions, and what that reveals about outdated doctrine and the future of warfare. In May of 2025, NATO ran a major "military exercise" called Hedgehog in Estonia, involving over 16,000 troops from 12 NATO countries. This "wargame" highlighted the critical role of a Ukrainian-Estonian OPFOR unit, leveraging advanced "drones" and the expertise of "Ukraine soldiers" to simulate a mechanized...

It’s an entirely different kind of school rush. When Zohran Mamdani won New York’s mayoral election last November, Caven Wagstaff’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing for weeks. Wagstaff runs his own firm, wrangling places for wealthy American families keen to land their kids a perch at tony British private schools. Mamdani, as mayor-elect, turbocharged his biz. “It doubled,” he says now, of the 10 families per week who hit him up for his Anglo-friendly expertise. “They were saying to me, ‘We want to get out.’” A couple of years ago, the twentysomething former teacher spotted the surging interest in overseas applications...

ALBANY – State lawmakers will blow past Wednesday’s deadline to pass Gov. Kathy Hochul’s $263 billion budget plan, as negotiations drag on over her push to delay green energy mandates and her bid to lower car insurance premiums. Democrats in the state Assembly and Senate passed a one-week stopgap measure Tuesday keeping the government funded through next week amid the largely-stalled discussions between Hochul and legislative leaders. “We’re still at the beginning of the middle, as it turns out,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) said, using a stale Albany adage to indicate the discussions have not moved much since...

There are no erasures or do-overs when it comes to waging war. Bush often described his role as that of “decider,” and there were no more consequential decisions during his presidency than the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq... Bush has said that the hardest part of being in office was reading the casualty reports and seeing the brutal consequences of his policy first-hand: placing calls to sobbing widows, looking into the eyes of Gold Star families, visiting injured soldiers at Walter Reade and Bethesda as they practiced using a prosthetic limb or struggled with PTS. (Bush does not use the...

Kamala Harris has been slammed for a bizarre text announcing she will swing across a raft of states in the Deep South. The expected 2028 presidential runner will take trips to North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Arkansas “to uplift Democrats and continue building our power in the South,” according to the message her campaign sent. More stops could be added during the summer and fall, CNN reported, following her appearances in the South to help raise funds for those state Democratic parties. Social media users tore into the announcement Tuesday. One said: “She’s literally the reason we have the...

WASHINGTON — One of President Trump’s most ambitious policy endeavors — his effort to end birthright citizenship — is set to face its moment of truth before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, just over a month after it axed the centerpiece of his tariff agenda. The Supreme Court will decide whether Trump’s attempt to block the kin of illegal immigrants born on US soil from automatically becoming citizens is within his power, something that is widely seen as the most consequential case left on its docket. “This is a glaring red line for the Supreme Court justices that they don’t...

12 years on Time Team returns to the Roman Fort at Brancaster to tackle one of its biggest challenges yet: can you uncover an entire fort without digging? Armed with cutting-edge geophysics, John Gater, Jimmy Adcock and their teams survey the land, revealing vast hidden structures beneath the surface. From magnetometry to ground-penetrating radar, billions of data points begin to map out walls, roads and buildings lost for centuries. But as the digital picture emerges, a new question arises -- how do you interpret a Roman fort you can’t yet see? Brancaster Geofizz Challenge | Time Team (2026) | 1:05:26...

A Brooklyn Council member, her sister — an aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul — and the husband of a Democratic state Assembly member are being investigated by federal prosecutors looking into whether they took bribes to help a migrant shelter provider that has received $200 million in city contracts, according to a report. Democratic Councilwoman Farah Louis and her sister, Debbie Louis, who served as Hochul’s assistant secretary of New York City intergovernmental affairs, were named in a search warrant obtained by the Associated Press seeking evidence for possible criminal violations. Edu Hermelyn, the husband of state Assembly Member and...

The chamber had been sealed for tens of millennia leaving it contents largely undisturbed since the Ice Age. Photo credit: EQRoy/Shutterstock Archaeologists have uncovered a previously sealed chamber in a Gibraltar cave that may shed fresh light on the lifestyles of some of the last Neanderthals in Europe. The space, believed to have been closed off by sediments for around 40,000 years, was found at the rear of Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham’s Cave Complex on the eastern face of the Rock of Gibraltar. The complex of caves is renowned for its extensive archaeological deposits, which include evidence of...

A Clay County man's DNA was a match with a sailor named John Judson Campbell, a U.S. Navy sailor from World War II he had no idea existed until now. DNA matches newly identified WWII POW's remains to surprised Florida family | 3:34 First Coast News | 462K subscribers | 39,006 views | March 26, 2026

A disgraced San Francisco human rights chief and her longtime beau have been arrested for allegedly grifting taxpayer funds for personal use through a city program intended to help the city’s black communities. Sheryl Davis, former heard of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, and her nonprofit boss partner James Spingola were taken into custody Monday on suspicion of multiple felony counts of misappropriating public funds and conflicts of interest. “Public integrity matters because our communities must be able to trust that government agencies treat everyone fairly and serve all members equally,” said District Attorney Brooke Jenkins at a press...

California candidate for governor Eric Swalwell insisted “the case is closed” at an abrupt news conference — as FBI Director Kash Patel threatens to release investigative files about a suspected Chinese spy who infiltrated his office. “This case is closed — the bureau said, over 10 years ago, all we did was help,” Swalwell said in brief remarks Monday outside the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco. The East Bay rep was surrounded by SEIU union officials as he blasted FBI Director Kash Patel as a “temporary employee” engaged in a “horrendous abuse of power” in digging up the...

AI quick bio of MoushAli entering Hell. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei arrives at Hell's bureaucratic reception for his final "admissions interview." A smug demon admissions officer, BeelzeBob, reviews his lifetime "achievements" in a twisted, ironic style — leading to a shocking punchline twist about who he really served. Unique AI-generated reconstruction highlights the suffering of the Iranian people under decades of theocratic rule: mass repression, proxy wars, morality police terror, forced hijab, rigged elections, brutal crackdowns on protests, and the human cost of endless conflict. Blending dark humor, hellish bureaucracy aesthetics, and political commentary — perfect for fans of history, Iranian...

I don't think many people saw this one coming, but it makes sense in a perverse way. Events in the Middle East have conspired to create a situation in which Ukraine has become an indispensable ally and munitions supplier to Gulf Arab states. Nobody in the world has as much experience fighting Iranian drones as does Ukraine, and they have become extraordinarily proficient at destroying them before they do any damage, and at a price that cannot be beat. The Gulf states, having blown through an awful lot of their anti-air magazines, are having to quickly learn how to defend...

When Vladimir Putin has been asked to justify his war for control over Ukraine, his answer is typically that Ukraine and Russia have always been one country. And there is some truth to that. The Russian state traces its roots back to something called the Kievan Rus in the 9th century, with its capital at Kyiv. In the period prior to the 20th century, there were times when parts of today’s Ukraine were controlled by other states (like Poland or Lithuania), but never a time when Ukraine was a fully independent country separate from Russia. And yet somehow a tremendous...

Science in Poland reports that a medieval document has been recovered at a large residential structure at the site of Old Dongola in Sudan by a team of researchers from the University of Warsaw. The text, written in Arabic on paper, is an order issued by King Qashqash, a ruler thought by some to be a legendary figure known only from mention in a nineteenth-century work. The building where the document was found also contained textiles made of cotton, linen, and silk; objects made of ivory and rhino horn; amulets; and more than 20 letters and administrative and legal documents....

La Brújula Verde reports that work along the route of a passenger train uncovered an altar, or momoztli, in central Mexico near the site of Tula, the ancient Toltec capital. The momoztli has been dated to between A.D. 900 and 1150. Archaeologist Víctor Francisco Heredia Guillén of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said that the structure had at least three tiers. The first tier is a stone base thought to be made of andesite, a type of volcanic rock. These blocks are each about four inches long. The next tier consists of slabs made of the same material,...

Lefties turned out in droves for Sunday’s “Tax the Rich” rally featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders in The Bronx — but Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused to show face as he walks a tightrope with Gov. Hochul over taxes. At least 1,000 people filled Lehman College’s sprawling performing arts center, where Sanders (I-Vt.) spent nearly an hour pushing his own proposal targeting the wealthy. “A few years ago, it was estimated that Elon Musk, the wealthiest man alive, paid an effective tax rate of less than 3.3%, while the average truck driver in America paid an effective tax rate of 8.4%,” Bernie...