Free Republic

Tennessee Rep. Mark Green announced that he has resigned from Congress to take a mysterious new job — narrowing Republicans’ already ultra-slim majority by one seat ahead of messy fights such as the looming government shutdown battle in the fall. The retired US Army officer had revealed his intention to step down last month after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but had refrained from giving an exact date. On Friday, he tendered his resignation, which is effective July 20, per his letter to GOP leadership.

A Fourth of July boat trip on a “haunted” Georgia lake, where hundreds have died, turned tragic Saturday, after an explosion injured all seven on board, including a five-year-old. Dramatic video shows the boat engulfed in five-foot-high flames, with thick plumes of black smoke emanating into the Lake Lanier sky, just a few feet from the shore. The 23-foot cabin-cruiser was headed to the Margaritaville resort at Lake Lanier Islands when it exploded around 7 p.m., according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Music can be heard blaring in the background of the video, with revelers celebrating the holiday...

Elon Musk escalated his war of words with former CNN host Don Lemon, comparing him to a spoiled child. “Don “Veruca Salt” Lemon,” Musk posted Friday on X — likening Lemon to the outrageously indulged character in the Roald Dahl classic “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” The jab comes hours after The Post reported Lemon had made extravagant demands on Musk as part of a deal to host a talk show on the platform.

Black New York isn’t buying it. A slew of black Big Apple residents fumed Friday over mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani’s claim on an Ivy League college application that he is African American — with them raging the socialist pol is a “fraud” and “trickster.” “He’s just trying to get over,” an 86-year-old Harlem resident, identifying herself only as Marjorie, said of Mamdani, a socialist of Asian Indian descent. “You can look at him and see he’s not” black, she said. “Absolutely not. “I don’t like him. I didn’t like him from the first time I heard him. You can look...

Lefty firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spoke out on her suburban high school yearbook pic — but still continued to dodge her Westchester County upbringing. “I’m proud of how I grew up and talk about it all the time,” AOC said on X Friday. “My mom cleaned houses and I helped. We cleaned tutors’ homes in exchange for SAT prep. “Growing up between the Bronx and Yorktown deeply shaped my views of inequality & it’s a big reason I believe the things I do today!” But the Democratic congresswoman’s “Bronx girl” claims have repeatedly come under fire, with folks in...

Former President Joe Biden only signed one pardon by hand during his final weeks in office, and it was his most controversial one. The Justice Department is reviewing the list of people granted pardons by Biden amid new concerns about his use of an autopen to automatically sign documents and concerns about his state of mind and mental acuity in his final months in office. Biden used his final weeks as commander in chief to grant clemency and pardon more than 1,500 people in what his White House described as the largest single-day act of clemency by a U.S. president....

Mayor Eric Adams on Friday struck a handshake deal with the City Council on a record-breaking nearly $116 billion budget — which would create a new department to regulate e-bikes, sources said. The tentative agreement includes $6.1 million for a new “Department of Sustainable Delivery,’’ which would be staffed by 60 people and dedicated to e-bike regulation and enforcement after a recent push by the Adams administration to rein in the two-wheelers. City Hall also agreed to give the council a major boost in funding for immigration services to the tune of $54.5 million, a source familiar with the deal...

Andrew Cuomo is staying on the New York City mayoral election ballot — a move that prompted critics to slam the ex-gov as a “spoiler” candidate. Sources confirmed that Cuomo will not decline to run on an independent ballot line, ahead of a Friday deadline to pull his name from the November ticket. Cuomo’s defiant stance comes as he hemorrhages union support after his stunning loss to socialist contender Zohran Mamdani in Tuesday’s Democratic primary – and amid widespread consternation that he’ll give the Queens assemblyman an easier path to Gracie Mansion. “Cuomo’s name in the race is fantastic for...

Take heed, New Yorkers, and learn from San Francisco’s mistakes: The City by the Bay has discovered to its sorrow that charismatic leaders like Zohran Mamdani can dazzle — but their decisions can be disastrous. Just a few years ago San Franciscans, too, supported magnetic populists, then watched as their neighborhoods fell off a livability cliff. Regrets, we have more than a few — and many we want to mention. In 2017 London Breed, a brash and captivating city supervisor from the projects, became acting mayor when the mild-mannered Mayor Ed Lee died. With big promises of housing creation, downtown...

Trump administration officials on Tuesday slammed a leaked preliminary intelligence assessment of the damage done to Iran’s nuclear facilities by weekend US airstrikes that the president has touted as a massive success. The classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) bomb damage assessment — deemed a “low confidence” estimation of the effectiveness of Saturday’s strikes on the Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz sites — reportedly determined that Iran could bring its nuclear program back online as quickly as within one to two months, according to Fox News. On the high end, estimates indicate that Iran could restart uranium enrichment within a year, according...

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman brushed aside far-left “Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s clamoring to impeach President Trump over his Saturday strikes against three of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Socialist mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani refused to sign onto a pair of resolutions recognizing Israel and the holocaust — as the state lawmaker vies to lead a city with the largest concentration of Jewish people outside Israel. Mamdani skipped out on one resolution earlier this week that celebrated the Jewish state on its 77th anniversary. Last year, he declined to sign onto another resolution that denounced the holocaust. Thousands of resolutions are introduced each year and are almost always non-controversial signs of respect to groups or countries. Last month, the assembly honored Fort Drum with a measure when members of...

One person was killed and multiple others were injured in a mass shooting during a Juneteenth celebration at a VFW in South Carolina Saturday night, according to officials. The Anderson County Sheriff’s Office led a massive police response at the Veterans of Foreign Wars facility, outside of Greenville, where bullets flew Saturday before 11 p.m., WSPA reported. The VFW 1790 was hosting a Juneteenth celebration at the time of the shooting, Anderson County Sheriff’s deputies told the outlet.

Gov. Kathy Hochul shut down Democratic Socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s plan to hike taxes on some New Yorkers — as she admitted high costs were pushing residents to move out of state. Hochul was asked in a TV interview if she backed Mamdani’s plan to tax wealthy New Yorkers and up the corporate tax and flatly replied, “No.” “I’m not raising taxes at a time where affordability is the big issue,” Hochul told PIX 11. Mamdani has said he would impose a 2% income tax on Big Apple residents who make more than $1 million a year and inflate...

Progressive Squad Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a chorus of Democrats called on President Trump to be impeached after he decided to bomb top nuclear facilities of Iran — blasting the move as “unconstitutional.” “The President’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) declared not long after Trump announced the attack. “He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment.”

President Trump has launched the United States into the spiraling Israel-Iran war, ordering strikes on the latter Middle Eastern country in the middle of the night Saturday in an attempt to crush its nuclear program. “We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” Trump announced on Truth Social just before 8 p.m. ET, 3:30 a.m. Iran time. The president’s move to get the US involved in Israel’s military operations — now in their second week after large-scale airstrikes on June 13 took out 20 of Iran’s senior military leaders...

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is being mocked mercilessly over a slew of bizarre social media posts that resurfaced as the Israel-Iran war broke out — including his musings about treating a woman right and even being “naughty&playful” as a school kid. The odd posts date back at least a decade and are in stark contrast to the anti-Israel and war rhetoric that now fills the social media feed of the 86-year-old leader and most senior cleric in the extremist Islamic Republic. In one from 2013, Khamenei recalled his awkward school days. “I went 2school w/a cloak since1st days;it...

What’s another starving BS artist? Cynthia Nixon’s daughter Seph Mozes, who identifies as a man, is going on a hunger strike for Gaza — but really for attention. “He and five of his compatriots are doing a hunger strike in Chicago … ,” a proud Nixon told Newsweek, adding that her 28-year-old child has no “illusions that he’s going to end the war, but I think he wants to do everything he can.” To earn a merit badge in the art of self-congratulations, apparently. Maybe Nixon’s offspring had the misfortune of seeing the actress in bed with Rosie O”Donnell in...

Anti-Israel protester Mahmoud Khalil lamented leaving behind some “incredible men” on Friday as he left a Louisiana detention facility, which he hopes becomes a museum to what he described as “America’s racist policies.” “I leave some incredible men behind me, over 1,000 people behind me, in a place where they shouldn’t have been in the first place,” Khalil told reporters after walking out of the La Salle Detention Facility in Jena, La. “I hope the next time that I will be in Jena is to actually visit this as a museum on America’s racist policies against immigrants,” the former Columbia...

Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday lashed out at a key aide to President Donald Trump who was rumored to have played a role in contributing to the feud that broke out between the CEO and the president. Musk responded to a report by the New York Post that said Sergio Gor, who serves as the director of presidential personnel at the White House, has not yet submitted the paperwork required for him to obtain a permanent security clearance. "He's a snake," Musk wrote in a post on X responding to the story. The public feud between Musk and Trump began...