Free Republic

A sprawling fentanyl trafficking network stretching from Albuquerque to Salem, Oregon, has been shattered by federal authorities in what’s being called one of the largest operations of its kind in U.S. history. The takedown, made public this week, culminated in a massive sweep across New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Oregon. Federal agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration seized staggering amounts of contraband: over 4 million fentanyl pills, $4.4 million in cash, 79 pounds of meth, along with heroin, cocaine, and more than 41 firearms, according to records from the U.S. District Court in Albuquerque. At the helm of...

The financial payoff from a new minerals deal between Ukraine and the U.S. is likely to take a decade or longer as investors face many hurdles to getting new mines into production in the war-ravaged country. Developing mines that produce strategically important minerals in countries with established mining sectors such as Canada and Australia can take 10 to 20 years, mining consultants said on Thursday. Summary Minerals deal between US, Ukraine won't bear fruit for years Threats posed by war with Russia will deter many investors Challenges also include poor data, damaged power infrastructure Russia occupies territory where several deposits...

Polygamy isn't legal, exactly, but the courts in Quebec will recognize "throuples" and other multi-parent families.

Nigel Farage's Reform UK is expected to be the major winner in elections tonight as disaffected voters hammer Labour and the Conservatives. The hard right party is expected to get its hands on real political power for the first time with wins in mayoral and council elections at the expense of Kemi Badenoch's war-weary Tories. Former Tory minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns is expected to become mayor of Greater Lincolnshire and former Olympic boxer Luke Campbell is in with a chance of winning in Hull and East Yorkshire. Reform is also expected to win hundreds of council seats, mainly at the...

It’s easy to laugh at the black American woman who allegedly moved to Ghana to escape racism, only to be confronted with giant spiders, grinding poverty, and the expectation that you pay your energy bills. However, the reality is that, if the video is legit, she made this disastrous move because leftist race hustlers sold her on the lie that America is a racist hellhole and Africa a black utopia. The hustlers haven’t moved, though, preferring vast wealth in America, while she really is living in hell. For decades, leftists, especially black leftists, have been telling the masses that America...

If you watched Donald Trump's cabinet meeting on Wednesday, you may have seen Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins hold up a photo of the Maude family of South Dakota. I'd heard a little bit about the fifth-generation ranching family before that, but I decided to learn more because I couldn't believe the story Rollins told about how the Joe Biden administration treated them. It's unbelievable. Or maybe it's not, given all we're learning about the last four years. ... Trump Admin is reversing Biden-era failures in 100 days! The U.S. Gov has dropped charges against the Maude family, victims of...

Russian forces managed to capture around 68 square miles of Ukraine in April. But it cost them 4,800 vehicles and more than 36,600 dead and wounded troops, according to one statistician who collects data mostly from official Ukrainian sources including the general staff in Kyiv. In the same month, Ukrainian losses were “minimal,” concluded analyst Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting in Poland. Ukraine sprawls across 233,000 square miles, 19% of which is under Russian occupation. At the current rates of advance and loss, the Russians would capture the rest of Ukraine in the year 2256 at the cost of 101...

Nicholas Reeve, his wife Amanda Reeve and their transgender son Sam Reeve, who all requested to go by pseudonyms for fear of retaliation, devised an “escape plan” for their family in anticipation of the 2024 presidential election. Nicholas, a Northwestern University employee, and Amanda worried what another four years under President Donald Trump’s leadership could mean for their preteen transgender son’s access to gender-affirming care. The Reeves said the risk of trauma from potential treatment interruptions was intolerable. For the Reeves, Election Day concluded with one certainty among a sea of questions: They would move to Canada

A federal judge has allowed Venezuelans targeted for deportation under the Alien Enemies Act in the Southern District of Texas to proceed with a class-action lawsuit against President Donald Trump's administration.

Tiger Woods allegedly used four fierce words to shut down skeptics of his relationship with Vanessa Trump. The golf legend’s friends warned him about dating the ex-wife of Donald Trump Jr., because of her ties to President Trump’s politics, the Daily Mail reported Wednesday.

Republican lawmakers from Democratic states are locked in tense closed-door talks over state and local tax (SALT) deductions — seeking an annual cap of between $30,000 and $100,000 to include in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” sources say. GOPers from New York, New Jersey and California met Wednesday with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Ways and Means Chairman Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) on Capitol Hill to hash out an agreement to stick in a multi-trillion dollar tax package. Three sources familiar with the meeting told The Post that members sought consensus as they batted around figures of...

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK/KBFX) — The House of Representatives voted Thursday morning to block California from implementing plans to block new sales of gas-powered vehicles in a decade. The House approved House Joint Resolution 88, which seeks to withdraw a waiver granted by the Environmental Protection Agency to California. The vote was 246 to 164, with 35 Democrats and 211 Republicans in favor. Those who approved were Central Valley representatives Vince Fong and David Valadao. The House also approved two other measures, which withdraw waivers on the state's mandate that truck makers sell zero-emission trucks and implement nitrogen oxide engine emission...

Will Zelensky attack ther Victory Day parade and escalate the war to the maximum? On the one hand, we all know ‘talk is cheap’, so it may be that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is just posturing when he hints that his forces may well attack the May 9th Victory Day Parade in Moscow, Russia – an event that will gather thousands of people, including as many as 20 heads of state. This would amount to an especially damning escalation since Putin declared a 3-day truce from May 8-10 – a proposal that Kiev sneered at, but hasn’t publicly rejected. However,...

What do you get when you take a 40 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate, mix it with a 25 percent absentee-father rate, and sprinkle some social media on top? You get feral kids. Raised by their devices and peers, and educated not in the school of virtue but of virality, most of them are in their late teens to early twenties. Anybody living in our nation’s largest cities has become acquainted with these kids in recent years — from the teen takeovers in Chicago and illegal house parties in Nashville to the drag racing in Florida and the storming of malls in...

In a majority of states across the union, gas prices are now higher than they were on the day of Donald Trump's return to the White House on January 20, while in a handful they are exactly the same and only in a few they have fallen, according to AAA data. The numbers show that, after more than 100 days in office, the U.S. president is still struggling to keep his promise to lower prices at the pump for American drivers, especially as his administration's tariffs threaten further turmoil in the global markets. Gas prices surged under Joe Biden, driven...

President Donald J. Trump has secured over $5 trillion in new U.S.-based investments in his first 100 days, which will create more than 451,000 new jobs as he sets the stage for a new era of American prosperity. From advanced manufacturing to cutting-edge artificial intelligence infrastructure, these historic investments — spurred by President Trump’s unwavering commitment to revitalizing American industry — will reinforce the U.S. as the global leader in innovation and economic growth.The announcements keep coming. In recent days:IBM announced a $150 billion investment over the next five years in its U.S.-based growth and manufacturing operations.Thermo Fisher Scientific announced...

Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., who won a special election to replace national security adviser Mike Waltz in Florida's 6th Congressional District, ripped Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Wednesday for working with Democrats on a Senate resolution designed to rein in President Donald Trump's proposed tariffs.The Senate was poised Wednesday to vote on the resolution, which would end the national emergency Trump declared in an executive order to implement the tariffs on foreign imports. Paul and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who sponsored the resolution, used a special legislative procedure to force a vote. The resolution prompted House Republicans to add a...

The U.S. Justice Department Thursday said it had filed a complaint against three of the country's biggest health insurance companies, Aetna Inc. and affiliates, Elevance Health and Humana, under the False Claims Act.The action also affects three large insurance broker organizations: eHealth, GoHealth and SelectQuote, it said."The United States alleges that from 2016 through at least 2021, the defendant insurers paid hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to the defendant brokers in exchange for enrollments into the insurers’ Medicare Advantage plans," the Justice Department said in its release.The DOJ also said that Aetna and Humana conspired with the...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the much-anticipated deal with the United States involving rare-earth minerals on Thursday, saying the agreement is "now truly an equal partnership." "All our representatives did a good job. The agreement has changed significantly during the preparation process. It is now truly an equal partnership - one that creates opportunities for substantial investment in Ukraine, as well as significant modernisation of Ukraine's industries and, equally importantly, its legal practices," Zelenskyy posted on X. The fundamentals of the agreement are said to give the U.S. preferential access to new minerals deals in Ukraine, which will also be...

Workers throughout China are flooding the streets in revolt as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs slam the fragile Chinese export economy. From the cramped streets of Sichuan in the southwest to the cold outskirts of Inner Mongolia in the northeast, furious workers are demanding back pay and protesting mass layoffs as factories shutter under pressure from Trump’s tariffs. Outside a LED light manufacturing plant near Shanghai, thousands of unpaid workers shouted furiously at company managers over wages that haven’t been paid since January. In central China’s Dao County, a similar scene unfolded outside a sporting goods store after the company...