Free Republic

Risk tolerance, the River, and why Democrats struggle with young men Carrie Levande asks: "SBSQ submission: as you noted in Risky Business, the Democrats’ groupthink around protecting Biden is emblematic of their Village tendencies. Lately I’ve been feeling like a lot of the country’s rejection of the Democratic Party can be traced back to their Village-ness: seeming “fake”, the groupthink they foster in cultural institutions and the media, wokeness (and the forces that created it), generally being insufferable. I’m curious your take on viewing today’s political climate through the village/river lens. Do you think the rise of trump and tech...

Russian forces have continued to advance in the northern Ukrainian region of Sumy, bringing the regional capital within range of their drones and artillery, according to Ukrainian officials and analysts. A spokesman for the Ukrainian military in the area, Ivan Shevtsov, said that in addition to trying to advance towards Sumy city, Russian forces were constantly shelling the area and more evacuations of civilians were taking place. “At the moment, the territory that the enemy has already occupied is about 15 kilometers along the front line and about 6-7 kilometers deep,” Shevtsov said. He added that the Russians were trying...

ATLANTA (AP) — Before the oppressive summer heat descends on Atlanta, therapist Brittanee Sims usually gets her thick, curly hair braided at a salon to preserve her healthy mane. But it’s more expensive this year. So she’ll only pay for her teenage daughter and son to get their summer hairdos. Not having braided hair “creates more of a hassle for everything,” said Sims, who counts herself among the tens of millions of women who regularly spend on the Black hair care industry. Now, she said, she has to “go home and figure out what I’m gonna do to my hair...

The U.S. Department of Energy has ordered another power plant, this time an oil and gas plant in Pennsylvania, to keep its turbines running through the hottest summer months as a precaution against electricity shortfalls in the 13-state mid-Atlantic grid. The department’s order to the grid operator, PJM Interconnection, regarding the Eddystone power plant just south of Philadelphia on the Delaware River, is the department’s second use of federal power under President Donald Trump to require a power plant to keep operating on the mainland United States. Constellation Energy had planned to shut down Eddystone’s units 3 and 4 on...

It happened again yesterday, this time in Boulder, with peaceful Jewish demonstrators set ablaze with a makeshift flamethrower by a vicious antisemite named Mohamed Sabry Soliman. But Jews are somehow modern Nazis? Yeah, right. PJ Media's own Sarah Anderson has all the details, so I won't repeat them here. But there are still a few things we need to talk about — even while Soliman’s victims remain hospitalized. As many others pointed out, perhaps the most worrisome thing about Sunday's violence is that it was not met with immediate retaliatory violence — what decent and reasonable people call "justice." It...

Paperwork with the word "USAID" was found in the car of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who was accused of allegedly throwing the explosives at the attack in Boulder, Colorado. According to Fox News, an arrest affidavit said that officials found the paperwork with other paperwork with the words "Israel" and "Palestine" in addition to a red gas container and rags. "He specifically targeted the ‘Zionist Group’ that had gathered in Boulder having learned about the group from an online search," the affidavit stated. .....

Veteran broadcaster Chuck Todd, who left NBC News and launched a solo podcast earlier this year, said in an interview this weekend that someone slashed his car’s tires after President Trump criticized him during Trump’s previous White House stint. “There was direct correlation, right? He’d call your name out, [and] you’d get weird phone calls, you’d get weird death threats,” Todd said in the interview Saturday with Times Radio, a British station owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. “I got my tires slashed in front of my house.” Todd told Times Radio host Maddie Hale that he addressed the...

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials announced that a man has been arrested in connection with a shooting that left a civilian and a police officer from Baldwin Park dead. The man, described by deputies as “the person believed to have shot and murdered a male adult then shot and murdered a Baldwin Park police officer,” was detained on Saturday – the night of the shooting – LASD said Tuesday. He was identified as 22-year-old Eduardo Roberto Medina-Berumen. Medina-Berumen has been booked on suspicion of two counts of murder, LASD said, and he remains hospitalized in stable condition Tuesday. Upon...

YIV, Ukraine (AP) – A Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Tuesday, in which at least three people were killed and many others injured, was described by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “brutal.” According to authorities, a barrage of multiple rockets struck apartment buildings and a medical facility in the center of the northeastern city a day after direct peace talks made no progress on ending the 3-year war. Zelenskyy said one of the rockets fired at Sumy pierced the wall of an apartment building but failed to detonate.

New procedures and requirements — some implemented in the name of improving operations — are slowing down federal agencies. Somewhere in the world last month, a State Department employee began the routine process of hiring a vendor for an upcoming embassy event — but quickly ran into a problem. The vendor was refusing to sign paperwork certifying that it did not promote diversity, equity and inclusion, or “DEI,” a new requirement under President Donald Trump’s executive order eradicating DEI from the government. The State employee — who spoke on the condition that neither he nor the location of his embassy...

SBU agents reportedly attached explosives to the bridge's concrete pillars, which were detonated earlier this morning, damaging it

A California high school track star’s post-race celebration that paid homage to an Olympic gold medalist resulted in her disqualification and the stripping of her state championship title by outraged officials. North Salinas High School sophomore Clara Adams had just crossed the finish line as the winner in the 400 meters at Buchanan High in Clovis on Saturday when the excited teen ran over to her father to celebrate, the Mercury News reported. Her proud father, David, handed his daughter a fire extinguisher, and away from her competitors, she sprayed on her shoes as if they were on fire. However,...

Operation Patriot, the largest ever ICE operation, resulted in the arrest of nearly 1,500 illegals, including murderers, rapists, drug traffickers and child sex predators, in the deep blue sanctuary city-heavy state of Massachusetts. Operation Patriot concluded on Saturday after netting 1,461 illegal aliens throughout the Greater Boston area and the state of Massachusetts, which includes numerous sanctuary jurisdictions. Sources at ICE told Fox News that 790 of those arrested had criminal convictions or charges and 277 had final removal or deportation orders. The sources said that all the targeted criminals were roaming the streets of Massachusetts cities freely before being...

A deputy of the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office arrested in April for battering a [dude perturbed to be a] woman he met at E11even nightclub has been cleared of all criminal charges. On Monday, state attorneys announced they will not prosecute 54-year-old Lt. Daniel Chala.

Almost 20 years since Madeleine McCann went missing, police are scouring more than 20 plots of land in Portugal. Authorities are looking for her body or an indication she may have once been there.Around 30 German police officers, including forensic experts, will start searching today. According to reports, Portuguese police will also be on the ground. While the UK's Metropolitan Police is "aware of the searches" carried out by the BKA (German federal police), British officers will not be involved. "The Metropolitan Police Service is not present at the search, we will support our international colleagues where necessary," the force...

Texas lawmakers passed bills that will help build a Pro-Life culture, but House leadership ignored the biggest threat to women and babies: abortion pills. State officials began the 2025 legislative session in January with a major opportunity to stop the abortion industry. An estimated 30,000 Texan babies are killed each year by out-of-state procedures and abortion drugs, which also endanger mothers. Texas Right to Life urged the Legislature to save these children with two Pro-Life Priority Bills: 1 The Woman and Child Protection Act (SB 2880) to combat abortion pills; and 2 The Stop Tax-Funded Abortion Travel Act (SB 33)...

One of the major issues that President Trump ran on in the 2024 election was energy. "Drill, baby, drill" was the motto (even if Trump did borrow it from a famous Alaskan), and when he was back in office, the president set about putting our energy policy to rights When you're talking energy and mineral resources, you have to talk about Alaska. In the energy front, much of our development is and will be on the North Slope. On Monday, several key Trump administration members visited "the Slope" to see things for themselves. Three Trump Cabinet members began a tour...

The proposal is regarding 13 million acres of government-owned Arctic land that is part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.. The Interior Department on Monday proposed the restoration of oil and gas drilling in the Arctic after it had previously been restricted by the Biden administration. The proposal is regarding 13 million acres of government-owned Arctic land that is part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, which is a total area of 23 million acres that former President Warren G. Harding set aside in 1923 as an emergency supply of oil for the Navy. The Naval Petroleum Reserves...

While CNN might be trash when it comes to covering incidents of antisemitic terrorism, they still can hide everything Democrats are doing wrong. Remember that dismal 21 percent approval numbers the party had with voters? Well, it got worse. Two new figures from CNN’s polling showed that 16 percent of Americans felt the Democrats had strong leaders. Only 19 percent said Democrats get anything done. All this party does is whine about Trump, cater to their ‘woke,’ unhinged voter sects, and go on MSNBC to repeat pre-packaged and poorly communicated talking points. ... Some of these figures are driven down...

LONDON/KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine's finance ministry said on Friday it would not be paying more than half a billion dollars due to holders of its GDP warrants, marking the first payment default since it created the instruments. The war-ravaged country said it owes $665 million on June 2 to holders of the $3.2 billion worth of warrants, based on 2023 economic performance. Last year, Ukraine's parliament approved a payment moratorium on the GDP-linked securities from May 31. "Ukraine remains committed to implementing a comprehensive, fair and equitable restructuring of the GDP-linked Securities," it said in a statement, adding it must comply...