Free Republic

In the race to develop Silicon Valley‘s dominant large language model, Grok ... remains the least predictable. A month after the company unveiled Grok 4 ... it was briefly suspended today from Musk’s social platform, X. A notice appeared on @grok’s blank profile: “X suspends accounts which violate the X rules.” But no further information was immediately available. The ban lasted roughly 15 minutes, after which @grok was reinstated without a blue verification check mark. However, that soon reappeared as well. X users were left to speculate about how a prized Musk product had potentially violated the rules of a...

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) accused President Trump of a “raw authoritarian power grab” after the president moved to federalize the District of Columbia’s police department and call the National Guard to the District’s streets. “He’s playing dictator in our nation’s capital as a dress rehearsal as he pushes democracy to the brink,” Van Hollen wrote on social platform X. “And by the way, Trump couldn’t care less about safety in DC or the people of DC. If he did, he wouldn’t have blocked DC from spending $1 billion of its OWN money to fund its OWN police department, schools...

A rebel Republican congressman has invited multiple victims of Jeffrey Epstein to a press conference at the U.S. Capitol as part of a bipartisan push to force the release of legal files linked to the late pedophile. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a thorn in Donald Trump’s side for his frequent objections to the president’s spending bills and foreign policies, said that he and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna will be co-hosting the Sept. 3 conference. The event will feature survivors of abuse by Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, several of whom “will be speaking out for the first time,”...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin “can’t tolerate” going “after his customers” ahead of an Alaska meeting between Putin and President Trump. “Putin could give a damn about sanctions. He evades them. He could give a damn about how many Russians die. The one thing that he can’t tolerate and live with, if we go after his customers,” Graham told NBC News’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.” “The whole goal is to crush his customers, India, and China, and Brazil. That if you keep buying Putin’s oil and prop up his war machine, you...

White-collar layoffs make headlines while tradesmen name their price. If your sink explodes at 3 a.m., ChatGPT can’t fix it. But that’s just the start. What comes next moves in slow, silent steps. It’s harder to notice, harder to fight. Even the skilled trades, once thought untouchable, won’t be immune for long. That’s because, in the age of AI, no collar is safe forever, no matter how dirty or clean. In other words, a blue-collar bloodbath is inevitable. For now, trades thrive because machines still fumble with fine motor skills. Plumbers, welders, electricians — these are jobs that demand real...

Republican-led states are leading the charge to ban soda and candy from their food stamp programs, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement flips traditional partisanship on its head. Colorado is the only blue state to seek and have a soda ban waiver approved, and the only waiver state to propose expanding SNAP benefits in conjunction with limiting its scope. Both parties at times have expressed interest in eliminating soda from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), but the Trump administration is the first to encourage states to do so.

Say hello to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Say hello to a blue wave in the 2026 midterms. Say hello in 2028 to President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If President Trump and congressional Republicans keep this up, it will only be the start of the progressive takeover. Left-wing populists are already winning over voters by raising hell about the rising price of clothes and groceries due to tariffs. The growing appetite for populist left voices damning the high cost of living made headlines earlier this year in the successful “Fighting Oligarchy,” tour featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ocasio-Cortez.

Inflation has caused increases in grocery prices across the country, but for military families who are more vulnerable to increasing costs due to frequent moves, putting food on the table is a growing struggle for many.

@NuryVittachi "The American empire is over," Richard D. Wolff, U.S. professor of international affairs, tells Al Jazeera. Already the biggest economic power on the planet is not the US and its allies, but China and the BRICS. But no U.S. politician dares to tell the people: "It's over."

NEW DELHI, Aug 2 (Reuters) - India will keep purchasing oil from Russia despite U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of penalties, two Indian government sources told Reuters on Saturday, not wishing to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. On top of a new 25% tariff on India's exports to the U.S., Trump indicated in a Truth Social post last month that India would face additional penalties for purchases of Russian arms and oil. On Friday, Trump told reporters he had heard that India would no longer be buying oil from Russia.But the sources said there would be...

India will keep purchasing oil from Russia despite U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of penalties, two Indian government sources told Reuters on Saturday, not wishing to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. On top of a new 25% tariff on India's exports to the U.S., Trump indicated in a Truth Social post last month that India would face additional penalties for purchases of Russian arms and oil. On Friday, Trump told reporters he had heard that India would no longer be buying oil from Russia. But the sources said there would be no immediate changes. "These are...

The GOP infighting on Capitol Hill has expanded to an unusual place: Israel. For years, GOP leaders have used U.S. support for Israel as a wedge to highlight the stark divisions among Democrats, pitting Israel’s staunchest allies against pro-Palestinian liberals and challenging Democratic leaders to ease the tensions. Republicans, through it all, were virtually united on the issue. Yet Israel’s long-running war against Hamas in Gaza, where the Palestinian death toll has topped 60,000 and recent images of starving children have prompted a global outcry, is now creating headaches for GOP leaders, as well. While a vast majority of congressional...

Unconditional American support for Israel — once the bedrock of conservative foreign policy — is crumbling in real time. From Congress to right-wing media and Trump-aligned grassroots organizations, a new tone is taking shape towards Israel: one of skepticism, impatience and in some cases outright hostility. The Republican Party’s old covenant with Israel is no longer sacred — and the cracks are widening fast. In the mid-20th century, Republicans were generally skeptical of Israel, instead favoring Arab ties. Support grew later, driven by Cold War strategy, evangelical Zionism, neoconservatism and post-9/11 alliances — ultimately transforming the GOP into Israel’s most...

The FBI and other government agencies have a copy of the video from outside Jeffrey Epstein’s cell on the night he died, which includes the so-called “missing minute” from the version of the tape that was released publicly. According to a report from CBS News, the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice inspector general have a copy of the video containing the minute from 11:59 p.m.-12:00 a.m. that was not included in the public release. Government officials have cited the video as crucial evidence that Epstein died by suicide, but critics have raised many questions about...

I grew up in two separate households and in two different countries. My family is originally from Ecuador but we have Spanish ancestry and Jewish roots. For the first eight years of my life I lived with my maternal grandparents in Ecuador. My grandfather was originally Christian but converted to Judaism and my grandmother was Jewish though not particularly observant. Our Judaism consisted of occasional visits to the synagogue and the observance of a few holidays.

The data centers required for Big Tech are driving up electricity demand — and prices.This summer, across a vast stretch of the eastern United States, monthly home electric bills jumped. In Trenton, New Jersey, the bill for a typical home rose $26. In Philadelphia, it increased about $17. In Pittsburgh, it went up $10. And in Columbus, Ohio, it spiked $27.Few customers were happy, of course, but even fewer knew exactly why the rates had climbed so quickly.“I never know why it goes up,” said Vicki Miller, a retired secretary in Columbus. “But I can adjust the thermostat to save...

President Donald Trump seems unfamiliar with the Streisand effect, the phenomenon of inadvertently drawing more attention to an issue by trying to make it go away. The president on Wednesday unleashed another rant on Truth Social, claiming, without evidence, that Democrats are behind the uproar over the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Referring to Democrats, Trump wrote on social media that their “new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.” He then appeared to turn on his own supporters: “My PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned...

The House speaker’s comments wrecked one of the far right’s most ridiculous, reprehensible tropes.It was a remarkable moment: After introducing a package of bills that includes military aid to Ukraine, Mike Johnson flatly told reporters on Wednesday that enabling Ukraine to defend itself is in the best interests of America and the world. This surprised a lot of people who had wrongly assumed the House speaker was effectively functioning as a stooge for Vladimir Putin—and Donald Trump—and would thus slow-walk Ukraine aid to death before ever allowing a vote on it.Johnson’s new stance has attracted a good deal of positive...

The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a "rules-based international order" is at stake. Victory is assured.The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against.The Russian invasion of Ukraine was...

A look at how the majority of the rest of the world sees things through the lens of Pepe Escobar. Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian journalist and geopolitical analyst. His column "The Roving Eye" for Asia Times regularly discusses the multi-national "competition for dominance over the Middle East and Central Asia." Very useful, eye opening discussion for the very intelligent freepers. I do not recommend it for the others.