Free Republic

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike will likely have brain damage after her botched execution, during which she chillingly lifted her head and asked if the pain she was feeling was normal. Pike, 50, was rushed to the hospital Wednesday after the Tennessee Department of Corrections administered two doses of the highly potent sedative, Pentobarbital, but it failed to kill her. The murderer, who was sentenced to death for the monstrous 1995 slaying of a classmate, was “being provided life-saving measures” in the hospital, her lawyers said – but she likely has a brain injury as a result. Emory University...

WASHINGTON — Iran’s beleaguered economy will soon have “nothing to trade” in about two weeks after it makes its final oil deliveries, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed. Bessent assessed that the Islamic Republic is becoming desperate to make a deal because of its collapsing economy, hastened by Operation Economic Outcast, and warned that its problems will get dramatically worse in two weeks. “I am confident, given that there’s only 15 million more barrels of Iranian oil on the water, that Iran will have nothing left to trade for anything,” Bessent told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “Probably within the next...

He just won’t die. Mojtaba Khamenei was rushed to a Tehran hospital after the February strikes targeting his father nearly killed him, only to be “pulled from the rubble” again after the United States and Israel bombed the medical center, an Iranian cleric revealed in an interview with Qatari television this week. After obliterating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Tehran compound to launch the war on Feb. 28 — killing the 86-year-old supreme leader and dozens of his top leaders — the allies also reportedly bombed three different hospitals in Tehran at some time in the days that followed. The younger Khamenei,...

A squad of Ukrainian “kamikaze ground robots” airdropped behind enemy lines have taken out 3,000 Russian soldiers and reclaimed 48 square miles of occupied territory in Donetsk, officials announced. The secretive mission, dubbed “Operation Vivaldi,” began in May and wrapped up last week, when the Third Army Corps of the Ukraine’s Armed Forces made details of the feat public. “An historic moment,” it boasted on Telegram Thursday. “The Third Army Corps has begun a new stage of the war with the landing of ground robots.” The operation recaptured five villages and three settlements in the contested region of Donetsk in...

Iman Dashti, a Michigan University student, confronted Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed this week about his habitual whitewashing and rationalization of Islamic terrorism. Dashti, who said his family is a victim of the Iranian regime’s theocratic persecution, pressed the candidate at a college town hall, asking him numerous times to denounce one of the world’s most odious tyrannies. Did El-Sayed regret not speaking out against the tyrannical clerics of Iran? Would he now renounce those who held vigils supporting the mass murderer Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Would he “unequivocally” condemn the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a group that’s not only...

The Army Reserve has asked its commanders whether military police, medics and other support units could be made available as soon as late December to back potential military action aimed at Cuba, according to a new report. An internal Army message reviewed by CBS News sought feedback by Friday about the status of those forces, which would be “possibly needed in 90-120 days.” The missive does not mention Cuba, but the outlet cited multiple US officials who claimed anonymously that the Communist island is the focus of military planning. The message also does not say how many troops would be...

Researchers have begun drilling into a mysterious, boat-shaped formation in the mountains of eastern Turkey, hoping an underground robot will unearth the answer to one of biblical history’s biggest mysteries. Members of the Noah’s Ark Scans expedition believe the Durupinar formation, located in eastern Turkey near Mount Ararat, could mark the final resting place of the vessel described in Genesis. “Good morning from the outer rims of Noah’s ark,” the project’s marketing and fundraising director, divisive Christian activist Lauren Witzke, wrote in a Tuesday update. “Core drilling has begun and the big bang evolutionists are already in damage control mode,”...

Christa Pike has “horrible nightmares.” Her “nerves are shredded.” In eight days, the 50-year-old who killed her friend when she was a teenager will have her worst nightmares realized inside the execution chamber in Nashville, Tennessee. Pike is set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee since 1819 if Governor Bill Lee does not put a stop to the scheduled execution before 10 a.m. local time on September 30.

Rep. Lauren Boebert gave a simple response to a viral claim that she had affairs with three staff members — including two women: she’s straight. Boebert (R-Col.), who famously pondered in April, “why is everybody so horny” in Congress after a slew of sex scandals, faces a sworn ethics complaint from a political action committee that has targeted her for years and is led by a political activist who has peddled dubious claims about her in the past.

President Trump announced he was creating a new “AI Force” and designating a new AI “czar” Saturday to keep the industry from engaging in bad practices – after doubling down that fears of AI superintelligence are just another “hoax.” Trump compared a brewing panic over AI to a series of other events he has branded hoaxes. “Over the years, there have been many Hoaxes, all generated by the Radical Left Dumocrats, for purposes of destroying our Country,” he posted on Truth Social. “RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, Global Warming, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, Men in Women’s Sports,...

The holdout juror who caused Lindsay Clancy’s mistrial has a history of alleged domestic violence such as grabbing his wife by the throat and punching his nephew, according to a report. The still-unnamed juror, only described as a black man in his 30s, faced a criminal charge in September 2021 for allegedly assaulting his wife, NBC10 Boston reported. A 13-year-old nephew of the man called 911, stating that his uncle grabbed his wife by the throat and threw her into a dresser, according to a police report obtained by the outlet. The juror’s own mom repeatedly screamed, “You’re evil!” as...

A male juror in the mistrial of Lindsay Clancy said the lone holdout on the 12-person panel wrapped one of the exercise bands the mom used to kill her children around a water bottle to mimic their strangulation in the deliberation room. Juror number 10 Nick Dargie said the holdout had every right to his opinion but that the reenactment using the same exercise bands left the room speechless. “I was so shocked. We’re not here to play detective – it’s not a game of Clue. This is serious,” Dargie, 25, the fifth juror to come forward in the macabre...

Iran announced Monday it will establish a new “restricted zone” near the Strait of Hormuz within the coming days — as the flailing nation desperately tries to expand its control over the critical chokepoint. The exclusion zone will span from where the US blockade of Iran begins to other areas of the Gulf, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Sunday in an interview with state TV. Rezaei said that any ship that sails into the restricted zone will be placed on a sanctions list. “Any ship that enters this area with the intention of...

President Trump is spending Labor Day flooding his Truth Social account with AI-generated images about conquering both the Earth and outer space alike. Trump on Monday posted a map of North America, where both Canada and Mexico are annexed to the United States — and shaded in stars and stripes.He dropped several posts suggesting the state of New Mexico be renamed “New America.” The posts carried various maps bearing the new name. In another, Trump claimed the moon for the United States. The president dropped about 40 posts over a 10-hour period on Sunday before taking it up again on...

Urine trouble, Mount Everest. After standing the test of time for 50 million years, the world’s tallest mountain is under threat from an unlikely source: our pee. Urine deposited on glaciers is enough to melt over 150 tons of ice and snow on Mount Everest every year, according to an a-thaw-calyptic study in the Regional Environmental Change scientific journal, as reported by the Independent. “Urine, with a temperature of around 37°C (human body temperature), causes the ice to melt,” wrote the study authors, who were sent by Nepal’s Survey Department to determine the impact of humans on Everest. The international...

A Marina Del Rey woman earned a slap on the wrist after she pled guilty to bombshell charges that she paid homeless people on Skid Row to register to vote in a 20-year scheme tied to illegal petition signature collection.Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, also known as “Anika,” even let homeless people use her own address to register to vote — meaning mail-in ballots could be sent to her home, a plea agreement obtained by the California Post states. Armstrong in May took a plea deal for one felony count of paying another person to register to vote in a...

Russia is shipping parts for drones, missiles and explosives to Iran to replenish its weapons stockpiles decimated by US and Israeli airstrikes during the war, according to a new report. More than two dozen Russian ships, many of them under US and European sanctions, traveled across the Caspian Sea to deliver the arms to Iran’s port in Amirabad, NBC News reported, citing documents and a Western official. While the development demonstrates Moscow and Tehran’s deepening alliance, it also proves that the US-Israeli strikes against Iran’s production plants have been largely successful, Jim Lamson, a former CIA analyst, told the outlet....

WASHINGTON — Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema opened up about the sordid details of her dalliance with her then-married ex-bodyguard during a deposition in the $75,000 “homewrecker” suit brought by his angry ex-wife. Sinema (I-Ariz.), the first openly bisexual person elected to Congress, fessed up to having repeated sex with Matthew Ammel in cities across America in an affair that upended his 14-year marriage. She confessed that she first had sex with Ammel, her then-bodyguard, around Memorial Day of 2024, two years after he began working on her security team. “We were staying at an Airbnb in Napa, California. We were...

Outgoing firebrand Rep. Nancy Mace used her new YouTube talk show to debut spicy tattoos on both arms — as she went sleeveless in public for the first time in months. Mace (R-SC) broke out her inked-up gun show while promoting “Get Maced,” a program where she will apparently address news of the day. The 48-year-old South Carolina Republican revealed in February that she got several tattoos, which provided her “the pain that I need to feel.” However, she had kept them almost entirely covered up in public until she took to social media late last week to tease her...

Ukraine on Sunday launched one of its largest aerial attacks on Russia since the start of the war, firing hundreds of drones and killing at least six people. A separate attack sparked a fire at a warehouse owned by the Russian online retail giant Wildberries in the town of Podolsk.