Free Republic

A majority of U.S. senators and representatives receive campaign funding from pharmaceutical companies — an important part of the expanding national conversation about navigating conflicts of interest. ... Open Secrets (formerly the Center for Responsive Politics) is a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on providing trustworthy data about money in U.S. politics. And STAT is a media company started by Boston Globe Media. These two organizations aggregate and publish some of the most reliable numbers to help answer these questions. Congressional payments... A 2020 STAT analysis found more than two-thirds of Congress receiving a check from pharmaceutical companies that year. More recent...

A homeowner on Long Island made a shocking discovery when uncovering his pool for the summer, finding a body floating in the water after pulling off his pool cover.The East Shoreham, New York, homeowner called 911 Sunday afternoon after making the disturbing find of a man's body in his pool. He did not wish to comment Monday, though neighbors are now trying to figure out who the person may have been and what could have happened.

President Trump is unhappy with Vladimir Putin. The Russian isn’t heeding the President’s entreaties to stop the killing in Ukraine, and Mr. Trump is nonplussed. “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social. Separately, Mr. Trump told reporters: “I’m not happy with what Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot...

A man suspected of domestic violence was arrested Monday following a lengthy pursuit through multiple cities, an officer-involved shooting and a vehicle collision that injured an officer, police said. ... The man eventually stopped in 4400 block of Parks Avenue and backed into the front of the police vehicle stopped behind him. The impact caused the passenger officer preparing to exit the vehicle to hit his head, injuring him, authorities added. Police said the officer then fired his handgun multiple times in the direction of the suspect vehicle, but the suspect was not struck. ... The pursuit concluded in the...

President Donald Trump on Monday again trained his ire on Harvard University, accusing the school of “judge shopping” during its legal battle with the administration and threatening to cut off $3 billion in federal grant funding over the university’s handling of anti-Israel protests. “I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,” Trump wrote on social media. “What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!” Trump’s newest threats come as Harvard begins its spring commencement week in...

Free speech and Grooming Gang fighter, Tommy Robinson, has been released from prison. Now the State has charged him with 'causing fear' of two 'journalists' from the Daily Mail, that doxed him and his family while on vacation, for merely naming who doxed him.

Harvard Law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe said Monday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” that “obviously unhinged” President Donald Trump was attacking Harvard University because he “hates intellect.” Host Lawrence O’Donnell said, “What is your response to Donald Trump’s latest attack?” Tribe said, “Well, it’s really hard to know where to begin. He’s obviously unhinged. He has no idea what he’s talking about. He just thinks that slinging around frankly, BS about the people at Harvard and other institutions will somehow substitute for taking the law into account. He has been throwing everything he can at Harvard and courts have put...

Ghana's embassy in Washington, D.C., has been temporarily shut down after an investigation found that staff members were collecting illegal extra charges for at least five years. The country's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, posted about the probe on Facebook on Monday, calling his actions "drastic and decisive." Why It Matters Some 172,558 Ghanaians live in the United States, according to 2023 figures published in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Many of them will rely on the Washington embassy for passport services, visa services, citizenship matters and emergency assistance. Besides not having traditional access to these...

A U.S. district judge has ruled that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) exceeded its authority when it inserted abortion accommodations into the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) — and must now remove them. KEY TAKEAWAYS: A U.S. District judge said changes made to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act by the Biden administration were ‘unlawful’ and must be removed. The lawsuit was brought by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which had originally supported the Act as written and passed in 2023. The USCCB argued that if Congress had intended to include abortion in the PWFA in 2023,...

Legislators in Illinois are working to quietly legalize assisted suicide by attaching pro-assisted death language to a food preparation sanitation bill as an amendment. The move comes after a proposed assisted suicide bill appears to have stalled in the House and Senate as the 2025 legislative session comes to a close. KEY TAKEAWAYS: An assisted suicide bill introduced in Illinois in January appears to have stalled in both the House and Senate, and the legislative session will close on May 31. Democratic Rep. Robyn Gabel has attached the stalled assisted suicide bill’s language to a food preparation safety bill as...

A Nevada bill that would have legalized assisted suicide in the state is no longer moving forward after Governor Joe Lombardo stated that if lawmakers passed it, he would not sign it. KEY TAKEAWAYS: Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo says he would not sign a bill legalizing assisted suicide because it is “unnecessary” due to palliative care expansion and improvements in pain management. The bill’s sponsor has attempted multiple times to pass the bill and vowed to continue trying. Eleven states plus Washington, D.C., have legalized assisted suicide, with Delaware the most recent. THE DETAILS: Assembly Bill 346 would have legalized...

A private attorney who worked as an attorney and public policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin announced she is running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The announcement follows another former Planned Parenthood’s successful bid to be elected to the same state Supreme Court earlier this year. KEY TAKEAWAYS: Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor is running to unseat current Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, who is running for reelection. Taylor has spent her career as a private attorney, judge, state legislator, and an attorney and pubic policy director for Planned Parenthood. She implied she may not...

A secret recording, leaked to the BBC, reveals a senior police officer had serious concerns over the controversial arrest of a woman who took abortion pills when about 26 weeks pregnant - when she believed the pregnancy was only about six weeks along. Nicola Packer was arrested in hospital at the height of the Covid pandemic, a day after delivering a stillborn baby at home. The day after her arrest she was taken into custody in the back of a police van, still bleeding, having had major surgery. In April this year she went to court accused of having an...

Three major unsolved mysteries are being reviewed by the FBI, according to Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, NYPD officer and conservative commentator, posted on X that he and FBI Director Kash Patel have decided to “either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention” to the leak of a draft of a Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, the discovery of cocaine in the West Wing of the White House in 2023, and the planting of pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican national committees shortly before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, according...

Syria’s new government will relocate ISIS families from camps, with Kurdish and US support. The new Syrian transitional government is seeking to find a way to deal with thousands of ISIS families who have been housed at camps in eastern Syria since ISIS was defeated in Syria in 2019. When ISIS was defeated in several villages near the Euphrates River in 2019, some of the terrorist group chose to surrender, and thousands of families of ISIS fighters ended up in the hands of the US-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The thousands of families were sent to several camps and detention facilities...

Germany's chancellor said Monday that his government will lift all range restrictions on weapons it sends to Ukraine, meaning that all of Kyiv's major western allies have now relaxed red lines on the use of their weapons inside Russia to fight Moscow's offensive. The decision from Chancellor Friedrich Merz comes as Europe seeks to bolster Kyiv’s war efforts amid uncertainty over U.S. security guarantees even as President Donald Trump appears to be losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin, for stalling peace talks and his bombardment of Ukraine's cities. “There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons delivered to...

Poland votes on Sunday in a hotly contested presidential runoff that will pit the pro-EU Warsaw mayor against a nationalist historian in a tight race ...

The summer season in Seaside Heights, Ocean County, has begun with a surge of violence, prompting police to deploy SWAT teams and backup officers to maintain safety on the boardwalk. ---SNIP--- What they're saying: Locals attribute the chaos to large groups of teens and young adults. "We call them gangs. I don’t know what they are, just groups of kids, some tougher than others, and we’ve seen them pushing and stuff," said Karen Singh, a visitor.

In the swish hotel conference rooms and cafés of the Brussels EU quarter, the indignation was palpable: Why had poor Henrik been singled out? Henrik Hololei, a gregarious Estonian who had reached the heights of director-general in the EU’s civil service, had been caught accepting freebies from the government of Qatar while his department was negotiating a lucrative aviation deal ― with, ever so coincidentally, Qatar. It was fine, the European Commission said when the matter came to light in 2023: All his free flights had been signed off by a senior person in the department. Trouble was, the senior...

Moscow makes comment after US president’s criticism of record drone strikes on Ukraine Russia has suggested that Donald Trump is suffering from “emotional overload” as it deflected his criticism of its record drone strikes on Ukraine at the weekend.