Free Republic

President Donald Trump proposed making Venezuela a “prosperous 51st state” Tuesday while speaking to supporters in Texas. Trump said: "I want to thank Venezuela, where our relationship has become very, very good, a great one, and billions and billions of dollars are being invested now by the biggest oil companies, many of which come from Texas from all of the world. And jobs are happening in Venezuela that no one thought would have thought possible just one year ago, and we’re bringing out a lot of oil for ourselves. A lot. It will become a prosperous country and who knows,...

CDC Deputy Director Dr. Jennifer Shuford on Tuesday announced that she will be departing her role on November 12. President Trump in April announced new leadership for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In April, the President nominated Dr. Erica Schwartz as the new CDC Director, Sean Slovenski as the CDC Deputy Director and Dr. Jennifer Shuford as the CDC Deputy Director. Dr. Schwartz was confirmed by the Senate over the summer. The Hill reported: Dr. Jennifer Shuford, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) deputy director and chief medical officer, is leaving the agency after just...

A grand jury declined to indict January 6 star witness Cassidy Hutchinson, the Washington Post reported. Breaking news: A grand jury rejected the DOJ’s attempt to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for the account she gave lawmakers of President Trump’s actions during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to people familiar with the matter. https://t.co/kwOJ22r1gG — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 27, 2026 The Justice Department sought to indict January 6 ‘star witness’ Cassidy Hutchinson for lying to Congress. Earlier this year it was reported that the DOJ launched an investigation into Hutchinson. The DOJ’s...

A Florida court threw out the case against former Dominion employee Eric Coomer on Tuesday. Eric Coomer filed this defamation action on June 24, 2022, in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. The case was transferred to a Florida Court in January 2024. From today's decision: Byrne and Coomer have each filed motions for summary judgment, and their papers cite both Colorado and Florida law. As it relates to Court’s determination of the cross-motions for summary judgment, the only relevant difference between the law of the two states is that under Colorado law, where the alleged...

FWIW, based on a few years worth of studying voter registration and other data---which led me to be dead on in 2024 six months out with "Trump 312 EVs with 1.5% of the pop vote) and in 2016, before the election, with "Trump will win with between 300 and 320 EVs" (final 304), and yes, I missed in 2018 on the House---here goes: *Rs hold the senate at 52. Possible ceiling of 54. Paxton, Collins, AK seat, OH all holds. I think Rodgers wins in MI, Whatley loses NC. My long-shots are Sununu with NH and Tafoya in MN. Either...

After preparing five victims of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre for burial, members of Pittsburgh’s New Community Chevra Kadisha stood in a circle and held hands. They had gathered like this before, taking a moment after their work to process what they had done. This time, they were caring for people murdered in their own community. Volunteers from outside Pittsburgh had come to help. David Zimmer, a longtime member, remembered one visitor bringing a custom from another chevra kadisha. “He passed around a piece of chocolate,” Zimmer recalled, “so that there should be something sweet.” Eight years later, NCCK...

President Donald Trump vowed Tuesday to ban the term “artificial intelligence” after lashing out at The Wall Street Journal in a Truth Social post. Trump posted to his social media platform complaining that the the news organization had yet to adopt his preferred term, “super intelligence:” When will The Wall Street Journal start calling Artificial Intelligence (AI), a very bad and inaccurate name, SI (Super Intelligence), the name which virtually everyone else is using, or soon will be. In short order, we will be officially BANNING the term, “AI/Artificial Intelligence,” in all relevant documents, and everything else, due to its...

The Hells Angels motorcycle club, which the FBI classifies as a “transnational violent outlaw motorcycle gang,” is publicly denying any affiliation with a Southern California man who was convicted on child pornography charges and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison last month. The group responded to a press release issued by the Fontana Police Department on Oct. 23, which states that 42-year-old Ryan Van De Car, “a member of the Hells Angels Outlaw Motorcycle Gang,” was found guilty of producing and distributing child pornography in California. A statement sent to KTLA by attorney Gary Wenkle Smith, who represents...

The Massachusetts bar, which catered to lesbians, lifted its Covid mask requirement once a week to attract more patrons. The decision brought criticism and national attention, but did not save the business. Some people were upset that the bar had lifted its mask policy one day a week, saying it risked the lives of immunocompromised customers. Others mocked them.

An Ohio pastor stunned her church congregation as she announced that her self-proclaimed 'prophet' husband had married a second wife. Lydia Ford, 45, the pastor of LifeWorks Church in Cleveland, Ohio, revealed to her flock that she and her husband Israel Ford, 47, had begun a polygynous marriage with another minister at their church, Shakayla Talley, 28. 'And I want to share that, know, Prophet and I, you know, we are living even right now in what we would call a polygynous marriage,' Lydia told her church. 'My husband, our prophet, he has a second wife. Y’all know her. Y’all...

In my part of Texas, oil, gas, and timber drives the economy. I made an observation in a family meeting yesterday that it's really starting to break loose here. The local RV parks that are usually empty during the week, are filling up with oilfield workers. The oil and gas personnel that I know who are involved in site prep are working overtime. My son-in-law is one, and he is now working 36 hour shifts. I've been holding off doing a thinning cutting on one of my timber tracts because the price has been so low. But, last week my...

CUPERTINO is a David vs. Goliath legal drama set in the heart of Silicon Valley. A lawyer (Mike Colter) is cheated out of his stock options by his former employer, a tech start-up. Refusing to back down, he joins forces with another recently fired attorney (Rachel Keller) to represent those taken advantage of by the tech elite and help them fight back in a high-stakes battle against the Goliaths controlling Silicon Valley.

Let’s talk about this COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER, Bill Maher. He’s got a Low Rated Show on equally Low Rated HBO, which was once, long ago, a Network of Quality and Excitement — But that’s all gone. It’s not “HOT” anymore! Maher’s friend and business associate, Chuck LaBella, was also a friend of mine, worked on The Top Hit Show, The Apprentice, as a “gofer” and, because of the success of that show, Number One and Top Rated on many weeks, with the Finale’ being among the Top Shows of the Year, he was automatically and quickly brought up through...

Every time you send a paper check in the mail, consumer advocates say, you're putting your bank account at risk. Check fraud is rising, even as the number of checks in circulation is declining. In 2025, federal data shows, Americans lost more money to check fraud than to debit card or gift card scams. Consumers are writing fewer checks these days, but the amounts are larger, and thieves know it. "Criminals know that when they see a check in the mail, it's less likely to be a $10 check and more likely to be a $10,000 check," said Scott Anchin,...

Wisconsin media is reporting on a MAJOR Democrat Party scandal just days before the November 3rd midterm elections. This involves the Wisconsin race for governor. Democrat primary candidate and Milwaukee County Executive, David Crowley announced on Wednesday, July 8th, that he was suspending his campaign. That leaves current Wisconsin Lt. Governor Sara Rodriguez in the primary race against unhinged communist But Sara Rodriguez dropped out of the race two weeks later on July 17th. Her campaign discovered “serious mismanagement and inaccuracies” in its campaign finance reports, leading to the firing of campaign manager Kara Spencer. So that was the first...

Did not expect to see this in my email. Greetings! I hope this message finds you well. There is a new study about the experiences of licensed clinicians providing end-of-life counseling to individuals seeking medical aid in dying (MAID) to help counselor educators and supervisors better understand their lived experience. This information can be used to inform the integration of end-of-life counseling and MAID-related competencies into existing counselor education programs. For this study, you are invited to describe your experiences providing end-of-life counseling and to assess how well your counselor education program aided in preparation. About the study: • One...

In this episode, your window reveals a timelapse of one of the most dramatic urban evolutions in human history. For over two millennia, Rome was shaped by political revolutions, wars, plagues, the rise and fall of empires, and a continuous cycle of destruction and renewal. Among its most dramatic chapters is the era of the Domus Aurea. After the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, Emperor Nero seized vast areas across the Palatine, Esquiline, and Caelian hills to build his sprawling Golden House, complete with an enormous artificial lake at its heart. Just a few years later, that same...

Former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney pushed back against a deal brokered by President Donald Trump freeing a U.S. hostage from Russian custody, warning of the long-term implications.In a statement posted to social media, Romney invoked former Prime Minister Winston Churchill and George Washington to criticize Trump's decision to waive Russian sanctions as part of the agreement to release a hostage who has been held by Russia for four years. The agreement, Romney suggested, risks compromising more imperatives when it benefits an aggressor such as Russia."Churchill could have shortened WW2 by years if he had just 'done a deal' with (Adolf)...

Here’s One October Surprise, Anyway “The Left has always preferred the ashes of its own making to the inheritance of better men.” —Celina101 on X By now, everybody and his uncle interested in public matters has probably read that a claque of current-and-former agency officials, ex-USAID busybodies, military officers, activist academics, Democratic Party paladins, and freelance communist jihadis has been exposed plotting the overthrow of the US government. The plot was reported by the diligent “X” blogger Jennica Pounds under her nom-de-plume “Data Republican,” who lately received an enormous document-and-recording dump courtesy of careless color revolutionaries who recorded themselves and...

For decades, a fundamental question about the difficulty of computing in high-dimensional spaces has resisted proof. New research resolves this question, removing a major theoretical obstacle to understanding the efficiency of randomized algorithms used across science and computing. The Kannan–Lovász–Simonovits (KLS) conjecture was proposed in 1995. It asks whether, for a broad class of high-dimensional probability distributions, the best flat or hyperplane cut is always nearly as effective as the best cut of any shape. More precisely, KLS predicts that the two differ by no more than a universal constant, regardless of the number of dimensions. This would establish a...