Free Republic

The Secret Service has reportedly urged former President Donald Trump’s campaign to halt outdoor rallies and other events with large crowds after the attempt on his life.After a gunman shot Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, officials discussed concerns about another attempt on the former president’s life with his campaign, according to The Washington Post.The people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.For upcoming events, Trump’s team is scouting indoor venues, such as basketball arenas and other large spaces where thousands of people can fit, people familiar with the request said. The campaign...

<p>5) Secret Service was initially not going to send snipers to the rally, according to local law enforcement.</p>

Law enforcement officials admitted it was “surprising” how the gunman was able to get so many shots off in the attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump before he was taken out by Secret Service snipers. During a press conference early Sunday, officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pennsylvania State Police deferred several questions about security to the Secret Service — who were notably absent. When asked if he was surprised at the number of shots the gunman was able to take at a former president, Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field...

Joe Biden has logged yet another foreign policy disaster under his belt after the Pentagon announced the "Gaza pier" will be dismantled due to damage. Some press reports describe the move as "temporary," though it's questionable whether the project will ever resume after being completely torn down and towed away. This marks the latest in a string of logistical issues involving the president's prized pier. For context, the pier has been in place for less than a month, and it's already suffered multiple shutdowns related to moderate seas overtaking it. Here's the full timeline illustrating just how absurd this idea...

The Biden administration is close to finalizing a treaty with Saudi Arabia that would commit the U.S. to help defend the Gulf nation as part of a long-shot deal to encourage diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Israel, U.S. and Saudi officials said. But the success of the diplomatic effort hinges on Israel’s commitment to a separate Palestinian state, and more immediately an end to the war in Gaza, an unlikely proposition amid months of fruitless cease-fire talks and an Israeli weekend raid to retrieve hostages from the heart of the territory. The U.S. aims to present Israeli leaders with an...

Ajudge in New Jersey ruled that about 1,900 mail-in ballots that were prematurely opened have to be counted and accepted in Atlantic County. Superior Court Judge Michael J. Blee ruled Friday that the prematurely opened ballots will be counted in the county's primary race. This decision could determine the outcome of the state’s 2nd Congressional District Democratic primary. [snip] One official testified that there was chaos with too many workers sorting ballots, leading to disorganization.

Twice before, this Virginia carpenter had awoken in the predawn to start his work day only to find one of his vans broken into. Tools he depends on for a living had been stolen, and there was little hope of retrieving them. Determined to shut down thieves, he said, he bought a bunch of Apple AirTags and hid the locator devices in some of his larger tools that hadn’t been pilfered. Next time, he figured, he would track them........ The storage unit, stuffed with purloined power tools, led detectives to similar caches in other places in the next four months...

Last week, President Biden said he would withdraw military aid to Israel if it commenced military operations to go into Rafah and go after Hamas. There were many reactions to this announcement because it seemed to perfectly encapsulate the incoherent Israel policy the Biden administration has been developing since Hamas’ brutal attack last October that touched off the war in Gaza. On one hand, the American people are broadly supportive of Israel and the moral justification for this war. Lest anyone forget, Hamas is still holding American citizens hostage at this very moment. On the other, the hard-left grassroots that...

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team acknowledged Friday that some evidence in the prosecution of former President Donald Trump for hoarding classified documents at his Florida home may not be in the same sequence FBI agents found it when they swept into the Mar-a-Lago compound with a search warrant in August 2022. The concession from prosecutors in a court filing Friday afternoon came after attorneys for one of Trump’s co-defendants asked for a delay in the case because the defense lawyers were having trouble determining precisely where particular documents had come from in the 33 boxes the FBI seized almost two...

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) received a stunning rebuke Wednesday on what should have been a slam-dunk resolution to oppose antisemitism followed by a rare procedural defeat on legislation to clarify mining regulations. The events, hours after Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced they would force a vote to expel Johnson, do little to show Johnson has a firm hand on the wheel. The Antisemitism Awareness Act, introduced by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Jared Moskowitz (R-FL), would mandate that when the Department of Education enforces federal anti-discrimination laws it uses a definition of antisemitism put forward...

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Our 15-year-old son Noah is a baseball player. Baseball gear today can be quite expensive. A new (and sometimes even used!) quality bat or glove alone can easily cost several hundred dollars. For many years now, we’ve used Christmas and Noah’s birthday to provide him with a new bat or glove based on what he most wants or needs. If it’s not gift-giving time and Noah wants an expensive baseball item, he typically either waits or uses his own money (maybe with a little help from us) to purchase the item. If it’s the latter, Noah will often look for...

DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. - She must go. That’s the unanimous recommendation from a hearing panel investigating Douglas County Probate Judge Christina Peterson. The first-time judge has also been the subject of several FOX 5 I-Team investigations since she took office in late 2020. The three-member panel for the Judicial Qualifications Commission decided Peterson is guilty of "systemic incompetence" because she ignored courthouse rules, abused courthouse personnel, made inappropriate posts on social media and, in repeated cases, failed to do her job. The extraordinary decision to remove Peterson follows four separate hearings starting in September 2023 where Peterson had a chance to...

A Chinese couple working at Canada's highest biosecurity lab were secretly sending information to Beijing and mailed live Ebola to China, a bombshell investigation has found. In a 600-page report released this week by the Canadian intelligence service, the pair were also accused of allowing visitors into the lab who tried to leave carrying plastic bags of vials containing an unknown substance. Dr Xiangguo Qiu and Dr Keding Cheng were found to have left visitors with ties to the Chinese government and military unsupervised at the facility.

Special Counsel Robert Hur completed his year-long investigation of President Biden's mishandling of secret documents. His conclusion was that "Biden willfully retained these materials, stored them in an unsecured manner, and illegally shared them with his ghostwriter." Hur declined to recommend prosecution "because the President presented himself to us as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. It's my belief that a jury would be unlikely to convict him because of his mental incompetence." In an effort to rebut Hur's findings, Biden called a press conference where he claimed "my memory is fine. Take a look at what...

Per Special counsel Robert Hur’s—a Republican, you’ll be reminded incessantly if you follow this story—findings in the Joe Biden classified documents case, Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified material after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” I’m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure this constitutes a felony, at least when a Republican or anyone not named Obama, Biden, or Clinton does it. But Mr. Hur won’t bring charges because “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”This...

Electric vehicles are the future, they said. They’re the quintessential pain in the backside that isn’t worth the money and a resource drainer for the working family. Who am I kidding? These cars aren’t for people like us. It’s for rich, wealthy, woke whites who think they’re doing their part in going green. They’re really setting up their families to freeze to death when the battery dies as temperatures dip. In Canada, one man detailed how these vehicles were the greatest scam of the modern era, given the $130,000-plus investment he sunk into this cockamamie lefty idea. When the EV...

The House passed a short-term spending extension only hours after the bill cleared the Senate, pushing the next shutdown threat to March and surrendering Republican leverage on enacting a border security package. The continuing resolution (CR) passed 314-108, extending spending levels and priorities set by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in December 2022 during a lame-duck session of Congress.

DIVERSITY Y'ALL! Here's the group that made the door plug................... And there's Shania Twain music!..................

The cockpit voice recorder data on the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet which lost a panel mid-flight on Friday was overwritten, U.S. authorities said, renewing attention on long-standing safety calls for longer in-flight recordings. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy said on Sunday no data was available on the cockpit voice recorder because it was not retrieved within two hours - when recording restarts, erasing previous data. The U.S. requires cockpit voice recorders to log two hours of data versus 25 hours in Europe for planes made after 2021. The industry has been wrestling with the...