Free Republic

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to take the rare step of renaming a ship, one that bears the name of a gay rights icon, documents and sources show. Military.com reviewed a memorandum from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy -- the official who holds the power to name Navy ships -- that showed the sea service had come up with rollout plans for the renaming of the oiler ship USNS Harvey Milk. A defense official confirmed that the Navy was making preparations to strip the ship of its name but noted that Navy Secretary John...

In a reversal, President Trump appears to have backed off joining a European push for new sanctions on Russia, seemingly eager to move on to doing business deals with it. For months, President Trump has been threatening to simply walk away from the frustrating negotiations for a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine. After a phone call on Monday between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that appears to be exactly what the American president is doing. The deeper question now is whether he is also abandoning America’s three-year-long project to support Ukraine, a nascent democracy that he...

Vladimir Putin initially denied having anything to do with Russia's capture of Crimea in February 2014, when mysterious masked commandos in unidentified green uniforms seized the local parliament and fanned out across the peninsula. Those "little green men" marked the start of Russia's war on Ukraine, which culminated in the 2022 full-scale invasion. The future of Crimea is now at the centre of President Donald Trump's peace plan and has prompted Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky to rule out recognising Russian control of the peninsula. The exact terms of his plan have not been published, but reports suggest it would include the...

If you're wondering if we chose the right guy for the job of President of the United States, an illegal Haitian migrant just confirmed it. A Fox News Report captured video of the ICE raids currently happening in Boston. They're successfully capturing and transporting illegal migrants in the "sanctuary city," and one of them had some choice words to scream out of the window as he was being taken away.

Two people were found dead in the landing gear compartment of a JetBlue plane after it landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the airline said in a statement on Tuesday. The bodies, which have not yet been publicly identified, were discovered Monday evening during a "routine post-flight maintenance inspection" at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the airline said. "At this time, the identities of the individuals and the circumstances surrounding how they accessed the aircraft remain under investigation," JetBlue said. "This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this...

2024 marked the comeback of figures once dismissed, with Elon Musk and Donald Trump reclaiming dominance and Devin Nunes solidifying his role as a stalwart in intelligence oversight. 2024 proved to be the year of the reemergence of many once and unfairly pilloried public figures. SNIP Tesla’s rising stock prices ensured by year’s end that Musk was by far the richest man in the world with a net worth of well over $400 billion. His recyclable SpaceX Super Heavy starship rocket booster mesmerized the nation as it returned to the launch pad to be caught by a huge mechanical arm....

The dramatic rise in early voting has led many to think the election might be effectively over days or weeks before Election Day. The data thus far show that won’t be true — and the numbers aren’t comforting for Democrats. Early voting is nowhere near what some people estimated: 4.2 million Americans have already cast their ballots, per John Couvillon, a Republican political strategist who provides daily updates on early and mail voting. That sounds like a lot, but it’s a pittance compared with the 158.6 million votes ultimately cast in 2020. More important, it’s significantly less than this point...

A 62-year-old Staten Island resident declared he wants to move after he was brutally attacked by a mob of teenagers during his daily evening stroll last month, according to reports. The man was walking near the intersection of Howard Avenue and Clove Road in the Sunnyside neighborhood just after 7 p.m. July 15 when the group of delinquents began to harass him. Streetside surveillance cameras captured the moment when nine juveniles followed the man down the road, according to video obtained by silive.com. One of the delinquents rushed up behind the man, who jumped into the middle of a busy...

New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu (R) minced no words in his evaluation of his counterpart in California on Thursday. At an event held by the Ronald Reagan Institute on Thursday, Sununu concluded that Governor Gavin Newsom (D) is “just a prick” and asserted that none of his peers can stand him. “And I think look almost all the governors get along. I mean, in my eight years, I can honestly tell you there’s really only been two — maybe a third — but two real governors that really nobody liked, nobody cared for at all,” continued Sununu before being asked...

Alice Stewart, a CNN political commentator who worked on several GOP presidential campaigns, died Saturday at age 58. The frequent “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” guest was found dead outdoors in the Bellevue neighborhood in northern Virginia, law enforcement officials told the news organization. They believe she suffered a medical emergency and no foul play is suspected.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court struck down a West Virginia law that protects female athletes from male athletes who think they are women. According to NBC News, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to halt the law, which prevents so-called “transgender” athletes from competing on teams that align with their “gender identity” in the state’s public schools and colleges. Reportedly, Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 13-year-old “transgender” child, argued that the law prevented “her” from running on the girls’ cross-country team and track teams at her middle school (NBC News):The federal appeals court, which is based in Richmond,...

A paper at the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), founded by researcher John Lott, shows how faith in the police, arrest rates, and crime reporting are all interrelated. The paper is titled " The Collapse in Law Enforcement: As Arrest Rates Plummet, People Have Been Less Willing to Report Crime", published on April 5, 2024. As faith in the police collapses, reporting of crime drops, and so do arrest rates and clearance rates for both violent crimes and property crimes. This has the classic look of a positive feedback loop. The consequences are far from positive. It is not a...

Google's AI programs are still generating woke and controversial answers despite the company claiming to have stripped Gemini of its liberal biases. The initial outrage began last month when the tech giant's image generator depicted historically inaccurate figures including Black Founding Fathers and ethnic minority Nazis in 1940s Germany. Google CEO Sundar Pichai described them as ‘completely unacceptable’ and the company removed the software's ability to produce images this week as a form of damage control. But DailyMail.com’s tests show that the AI chatbot - which can now only provide text answers - still exposes where it leans on hot-button...

Civil liberties advocates have long argued that “geofence” search warrants are unconstitutional for their ability to ensnare entirely innocent people who were nearby at the time a crime was committed. But errors in the geofence warrant applications that go before a judge can violate the privacy of vastly more people — in one case almost two miles away. Attorneys at the ACLU of Northern California found what they called an “alarming error” in a geofence warrant application that “resulted in a warrant stretching nearly two miles across San Francisco.” The error, likely caused by a typo, allowed the requesting law...

The Chinese scientist who ran controversial experiments at the laboratory suspected of triggering Covid held a secret meeting with the US government to seek backing for a project that would go on to supercharge coronaviruses – shortly before the devastating outbreak started in her native Wuhan. The June 2017 meeting at America's National Institutes of Health (NIH) held by Shi Zhengli – known as 'Batwoman' because of her work on sampling and sequencing the animals' viruses – will bolster fears of Western collusion in a Chinese cover-up after Covid resulted from a reckless laboratory experiment. A new cache of documents,...

Abrielle Baldwin, 23, was shot and killed on Christmas Eve in Largo, Florida Police have charged her brother Damarcus Coley, 14, over her death Another brother, Darcus Coley, 15, then came out the house and shot and injured Damarcus: both brothers, sheriffs said, were known to carry guns all the time The family had been arguing over Christmas presents, with the 15-year-old saying his 14-year-old brother was getting more generous gifts than he was

Four teenagers charged as adults with the murder of fellow student Jonathan Lewis have had their mugshots released ahead of their next court appearance. Lewis, 17, had agreed to a fight in an alley outside Rancho High School in Las Vegas in an argument over stolen wireless headphones and a vape. He was set upon by a mob on November 1, in a fight filmed and shared on social media, and was taken to hospital with severe head injuries. He died on November 7. Eight were arrested and will all be tried as adults. Four of them, aged 13-17, remain...

Reportedly, the shooter is Kenneth Darlington 77, a lawyer and a professor with duel American and Panamanian Citizenship. A local lawyer and professor reportedly shot 2 climate protestors blocking The Pan American highway in Panama Wednesday. The Pan American Highway is a 19,000 mile road, goes from Alaska to Argentina. The protests are causing $80M/day losses to business and shuttered schools across the country for a week. Reportedly, the shooter is 77, a lawyer and a professor. A 77-year-old man shot dead two environmental protesters on Wednesday in an apparent outburst of rage over a roadblock in Panama. Reportedly, the...

What happens with the competent retire, burn out or opt out? It's a question few bother to ask because the base assumption is that there is an essentially limitless pool of competent people who can be tapped or trained to replace those who retire, burn out or opt out, i.e. quit in favor of a lifestyle that doesn't require much in the way of income or stress.

Rob O’Neill, the Navy SEAL who killed al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, blasted the Navy for using a drag queen, who is a Navy Yeoman 2nd Class, to serve as a “digital ambassador” to help recruit new enlistees.O’Neill’s tweets came after a TikTok video from drag queen influencer U.S. Navy Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley went viral among conservative commentators this week. The Navy has since confirmed that the enlisted active-duty Navy sailor was one of its “Navy Digital Ambassadors” in a pilot program that ran from October 2022 to March 2023.Kelley, who performs as “Harpy Daniels,”...