Free Republic

Former Clinton aide and Democratic strategist Paul Begala said the Democratic Party has drifted toward becoming a "faculty lounge," criticizing what he described as growing elitism within its ranks. During an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher" Friday, Begala discussed how Democrats’ election strategy has evolved, and Maher referenced California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent comment that the party needs to be more "culturally normal" to win. In a February interview with CNN, Newsom said Democrats should be "less prone to spending disproportionate amount of time on pronouns, identity politics." "We used to be the party of the factory floor,...

Eunisses Hernandez has been called a hypocrite for repeatedly calling for police to be abolished — then using taxpayers’ money to pay for own her security in public. The socialist Los Angeles councilmember has built her political brand crusading against cops, winning election on an abolish-the-police platform and even voting ”no” to the city’s budget three years running because she claims the $2.4 billion needed to keep them takes funding from her priorities. But when it came time to securing the 36-year-old’s own public event, Hernandez turned to the LAPD — despite just months earlier voting against the use of...

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing furious backlash after breaking his Ramadan fast with Muslim jailbirds on notorious Rikers Island – and describing it one of his “most meaningful evenings” since taking office. “It was a night that will stay with me for quite some time,” the city’s first Muslim mayor gushed Friday on X about his under the radar and historic visit on Monday, which by Saturday sparked a firestorm of outrage. Earlier in the week, the soft-on-crime socialist told NPR of his Rikers powwow: “This is one of the most meaningful evenings that I’ve had as the mayor...

Gov. Hochul was fittingly ridiculed last week for urging wealthy New Yorkers who fled the state for Florida to return and bring their rich friends with them. “We need your money” was the gist of her plea. She has zero chance of success. The rich didn’t get rich by being so easily duped, but Hochul had to know that. So why did she decide to make a fool of herself? It’s not because she’s dumb, but because she thinks voters are — and that they have short memories. After all, this is the same Hochul who, during her 2022 campaign,...

A Venezuelan migrant was arrested in connection with the execution-style murder of a New York teen on a night stroll with friends near Loyola University Chicago’s campus on Thursday, according to reports. The 25-year-old man, who hasn’t been officially charged, is accused of approaching 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman, of Yorktown Heights, NY, at the Loyola Beach Pier before firing the fatal shot from behind. The unidentified suspect was wearing black clothes and a black mask when he allegedly killed the first-year Loyola University Chicago student at around 1:30 a.m., the Chicago Tribune reported. A bystander witnessed the gunman fire a single...

A newly revealed surveillance video from the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s death shows the prison guards casually milling about only a few feet from the cell where he killed himself. Correctional officers Tova Noel and Michael Thomas are seen lounging in front of the officer station in the Special Housing Unit of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center at around 3:15 a.m., both writing on a piece of paper, walking back and forth and talking on the phone — instead of conducting the mandatory 3 a.m. rounds, according to video unearthed in the trove of DOJ documents recently released. Epstein was just...

Two more nations signed on to a letter Saturday strongly condemning Iran’s partial blockade of the Strait of Hormuz – isolating the Islamic Republic diplomatically as it seeks to apply maximum economic pressure by bottling up oil shipments. The two latest to join are Australia and the United Arab Emirates – one of Iran’s Gulf neighbors who has been bombarded with missile attacks from Tehran – bringing the total to 22 countries. Earlier signatories were the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan, whose Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told reporters Thursday that she informed President Trump what her country...

Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, hasn’t been seen since the Feb. 28 strikes that blew up his father, baffling US and Israeli officials as to his current whereabouts and whether he’s actually running the Iranian regime. Since the strikes that took out Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the younger Khamenei has issued two written statements, but no one has so much as heard his voice. It’s left Iranians speculating whether he’s even alive — and earned him the moniker “the cardboard ayatollah” — after an AI-generated video of supporters hailing a cardboard cutout of him went viral. But intelligence from both...

Gov. Kathy Hochul is finally admitting that the “climate” law she’s long supported is toxic to New York’s economy and to “affordability” — but she only wants to delay the death sentence. We’ve warned for years that the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act is leading the state to disaster — and for no purpose except to honor the delusions of green extremists and further the political ambitions of first Gov. Andrew Cuomo and now Hochul. Neither one ever admitted the fundamental idiocy; even now, when she says “a climate policy that leaves working families behind is not a...

A wedding party was interrupted when the floor collapsed at about 4:30 this afternoon in Tamworth, NH, according to emergency responders via radio traffic. The Preserve at Chocorua, also being referred to as The Tap House, at 88 Philbrook Neighborhood Rd, Tamworth, NH was the venue for a wedding today with 145 people present when part of the floor collapsed into the basement during the event. The number of injured has not been stated, but at least 10 ambulances have responded from area towns in what was described as a mass casualty incident, and Life Flight is responding to transport...

Dancing, singing popular song based on Rabbi Nachman of Breslov's saying: "The world is a narrow bridge, and the main thing is to have no fear."

California’s petroleum market watchdog is warning about price gouging at some gas stations charging over $7 or even $8 a gallon as the Iran war sends oil prices soaring. The average price of gas in California is currently $5.66, but as of Friday, a Chevron station in Essex is charging $9.69, another in Los Angeles’ Chinatown is charging $8.71, and one in Vidal Junction is charging $7.79, according to GasBuddy, which tracks prices across the country. “Our team is vigilantly monitoring the retail, wholesale, and spot markets,” said Tai Milder, director of the California Energy Commission Division of Petroleum Market...

Damage to a critical Qatari facility is threatening to keep energy prices high around the world even if the war in Iran ends soon in what some analysts are calling an “Armageddon” situation. Qatar’s Las Raffan plant supplies a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas, which is used for electricity, heating and cooking – but Iranian strikes have damaged the facility, worsening what is already the largest-ever energy supply disruption. “I woke up this morning and thought, ‘No, please no,’” Anne-Sophie Corbeau, former head of gas analysis at BP now at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told...

WASHINGTON — The Senate failed to fund the Department of Homeland Security on Friday, as airline passengers fought through lengthy lines and a growing number of Transportation Security Administration employees began calling out sick. Only 84 senators showed up for the fifth attempted vote to reopen DHS, which failed to clear a 60-vote threshold or even a simple majority — and fell largely along party lines. Forty-six Republicans and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted to fund DHS, while 37 Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) opposed its reopening in protest of President Trump’s immigration agenda....

ADAMS COUNTY, Ohio -- The Grammy-nominated rapper Afroman won a defamation lawsuit filed by seven Ohio sheriff's deputies who sued him over music videos in which he used home security footage to mock their raid of his home. "We did it, America! Yeah, we did it! Freedom of speech! Right on! Right on!" the 51-year-old rapper, born Joseph Foreman, shouted outside the courthouse after the Wednesday evening verdict. He later posted the clip to social media. The case tested the limits of parody and the license artists can take in social commentary directed at public figures. The deputies, collectively, sought...

Joseph Duggar's wife Kendra has been arrested in Arkansas, TMZ has learned. A warrant was issued for Kendra Friday … police went to the Duggar family compound in Washington County, Arkansas earlier Friday with a warrant for Kendra's arrest ... but she was not there. But, now she's been taken into custody, according to the Washington County Detention Center. She was wanted for allegedly endangering the welfare of a minor and false imprisonment. As for Joseph, he was arrested Wednesday in Tontitown, Arkansas, and charged with lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor ... this after a now-14-year-old girl told...

A man fatally shot himself in the head while handcuffed in the back of a San Antonio police vehicle following a pursuit, Police Chief William McManus told reporters Thursday. On Friday morning, the San Antonio Police Department told the Express-News that the officers have been placed on administrative leave until further notice. The officers have been with the department for four and five years Police said the incident began around 2 p.m. on the South Side when officers identified a driver riding in a car with mismatched tags. The man then drove to the North Side, where SAPD’s Eagle helicopter...

A man in Florida for a bachelor party humiliated his friend by stealing all the women they met at Miami Beach bars, then stabbed the pal after he became "agitated" and confronted him, cops say. Olajuwon Dickerson, 32, of Massachusetts, is charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon after attacking the victim while partying with him and two other friends, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime.

Pregnant Chinese women have turned a tropical paradise into a maternity ward — pumping out babies who automatically become US citizens daily. The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a US territory northeast of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, has been flooded with so-called “birth tourists” since 2009 when then-president Barack Obama introduced a visa-waiver program for Chinese nationals. China-watchers estimate about 1,000 companies offer birth tourism to the Northern Mariana Islands, other US overseas territories and even the US mainland. They claim a gob-smacking 1.5 million American babies are being raised in China by Chinese parents who’ve participated...

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini has been killed in ‌strikes ⁠launched by the US and Israel, ⁠Iranian state TV reported ⁠on Friday. Naini, also the agency’s deputy of public relations, was assassinated just days after Israeli forces eliminated the clerical regime’s de-facto leader, Ali Larijani, and its anti-protest enforcer Gholamreza Soleimani. Hours before his death, Naini insisted that Tehran was still able to build missiles despite the US forces’ bombardment from Operation Epic Fury. “These people expect the war to continue until the enemy is completely exhausted,” he said. “This war must end when the shadow...