Free Republic

President Donald Trump wants the “big, beautiful bill” at his desk by the Fourth of July he made clear Monday evening ahead of the U.S. Senate reconvening. Passing the bill, which received approval in the U.S. House of Representatives in a 215-214-1 vote on May 22, is what Trump described as a “Historic Opportunity to turn our Country around after four disastrous years under Joe Biden.” Trump touted a few of the benefits, including balancing the budget by “enacting the largest mandatory Spending Cut, EVER,” and the tax cuts, which will result in more Americans keeping their own hard-earned money....

A man has been acquitted of murder in a deadly shooting near downtown Grand Rapids a year ago. Xavier Ramos of Grand Rapids stood trial last week on charges of open murder and felony firearms in the death of Eliot Flores. Late Friday afternoon, jurors returned a verdict of not guilty. Ramos has since been released from jail. Flores was shot in the early hours of June 2, 2024, near the intersection of Cesar E. Chavez Avenue and Cherry Street SW and died at the scene. Ramos claimed self-defense. ...

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) trails Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) by 22 points in the state’s Republican Senate primary, according to a poll released Tuesday. The survey, which was conducted by pollster Robert Blizzard on behalf of the Educational Freedom Institute and first obtained by Punchbowl News, showed Paxton leading Cornyn 50 percent to 28 percent among Republican primary voters. Paxton expanded his lead among voters described as “very conservative GOP primary voters,” leading Cornyn 60 percent to 22 percent. Among voters described as “high propensity 3/3 GOP primary voters,” Paxton leads Cornyn by 30 points. The poll also...

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Ukraine has detonated a massive underwater blast targeting the key road and rail bridge connecting the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula to Russia, damaging its underwater supports. The operation, claimed by Kyiv’s SBU security service, is the second high-profile operation by Ukraine in days striking significant Russian assets after a sophisticated drone raid on Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet on Sunday. The attack came as Ukraine confirmed it had been invited to the Nato summit later this month, after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned it would be a “victory” for Russia if it was not present. The latest strike on the 12-mile-long Kerch bridge...

A Romanian national pleaded guilty on Monday to charges related to his role in a “swatting” ring that targeted dozens of public officials, including a former US president. Going by the aliases “Plank,” “Jonah” and “Cypher,” 26-year-old Thomasz Szabo took part in a years-long conspiracy to place bogus 911 calls, claiming emergencies were taking place at the homes of top government officials, and make bomb threats against government buildings and houses of worship, according to Justice Department. Szabo and a co-conspirator, 21-year-old Serbian national Nemanja Radovanovic, allegedly targeted about 100 people, including members of Congress, governors, cabinet-level executive branch officials...

President Donald Trump has privately complained that the Supreme Court justices he appointed have not sufficiently stood behind his agenda, according to multiple sources familiar with the conversations. But he has directed particular ire at Justice Amy Coney Barrett, his most recent appointee, one of the sources said. The behind-closed-doors grievances have been wide-ranging, and while many have been about Barrett, Trump has also expressed frustration about Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the sources familiar with the matter said. The complaints have gone on for at least a year, the sources said. The president’s anger, sources said, has been...

MADRID (AP) – Spain has cancelled a deal for anti-tank missile systems that were to be manufactured in Madrid by a subsidiary of an Israeli company, in a bid to move away from Israeli military technology, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday. The decision will affect the license for 168 SPIKE LR2 anti-tank missile systems with an estimated value of 285 million euros ($325 million). The systems would have been developed in Spain by Pap Tecnos, a Madrid-based subsidiary of Israel´s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, according to local press. “The goal is clear…a total disconnection from Israeli technology,” government spokesperson Pilar...

Did FBI headquarters bury Hunter Biden laptop in “Prohibited Access” black hole? The United States attorney screening evidence related to Ukrainian corruption in the lead-up to the 2020 election did not know the FBI’s Sentinel case management system had a stealth feature to render files invisible during search queries. Nor did anyone from FBI headquarters reference the existence of such “Prohibited Access” files during discussions over access to relevant material related to Burisma and Hunter Biden. These new facts add to the growing scandal surrounding last week’s revelation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team placed documents related to the Russia...

Russian authorities formally classified recent bombings targeting railway infrastructure in the Bryansk and Kursk regions as acts of terrorism on Tuesday, following deadly explosions between May 31 and June 1. "The Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia has classified the bombings of sections of the railway and bridge structure in the Bryansk and Kursk regions... as terrorist acts," Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko told reporters. "It is obvious that the terrorists, acting on the instructions of the Kiev regime, planned everything with maximum precision so that hundreds of civilians would be hit," Petrenko emphasized. According to investigators,...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said the debt limit increase included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is still a deal-breaker for him, saying it goes against conservative values, despite discussions with President Donald Trump about his concerns. Paul told reporters on Monday that the bill will increase the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, the largest debt increase in the U.S."We have never raised the debt ceiling without actually meeting that target," he said. "So you can say it doesn't directly add to the debt, but if you increase the ceiling $5 trillion, you'll meet that. And what it does...

A Native American Church affiliate in Southern California says a sheriff’s department seized and destroyed “thousands” of psychoactive plants revered as sacred, interfering with members’ religious practices.

A Supreme Court more interested in playing politics than faithfully upholding the Constitution is one that will lose Americans’ trust. If there was any doubt left that a majority of Supreme Court justices are more interested in playing politics than upholding Americans’ constitutional rights, it was all flushed down the drain following the Monday release of the high court’s weekly order list. A week after refusing to defend the free speech rights of a Massachusetts minor, the nation’s highest court declined to take up two pertinent cases involving the Second Amendment. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported, one involved a...

Key Points The Party for Freedom will be departing the ruling coalition over the alliance's lack of support for their asylum proposals. The PVV won a landslide victory in the Netherlands' general election in 2023, knocking former Prime Minister Mark Rutte's party off the top spot. ======================================== The Dutch government collapsed on Tuesday after disagreements over immigration proposals led to far-right leader Geert Wilders withdrawing his party from the ruling coalition. Wilders said in a CNBC-translated post on the X social media platform that his Party for Freedom (PVV) party would be departing over the alliance's lack of support for...

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. .....