Free Republic

Preaching climate justice while arriving in a half-a-billion-dollar superyacht? That’s the kind of cinematic irony Lauren Sánchez served at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, pulling off a Leonardo DiCaprio moment of her own. The Amazon founder’s fiancée made her Cannes debut while being honored at the prestigious Global Gift Foundation charity gala for her environmental efforts through the Bezos Earth Fund and her work in social justice with This Is About Humanity, an organization that reunites families separated at the US-Mexico border. Interestingly, the soon-to-be Mrs. Bezos was joined by tech tycoon Jeff Bezos and their permanent third wheel, the...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Tuesday it was aware of two instances of its name and insignia being used to spread misinformation surrounding the 2024 presidential election. The videos were among a number of fabricated clips mimicking news organizations and officials circulated online on Monday, spreading false information about security threats and election integrity as tens of millions of Americans head to the polls. The videos were likely created by a Russian disinformation group, researchers say. Two videos, created to look like they were released by the FBI, made false claims about voter fraud, alleging that the management of...

WASHINGTON — Today, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated 16 Maduro-aligned officials who obstructed a competitive and inclusive presidential election process in Venezuela and violated the civil and human rights of the people. The individuals sanctioned today pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13692, as amended, include leaders of the Maduro-aligned National Electoral Council (CNE) and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) who impeded a transparent electoral process and the release of accurate election results, as well as the military, intelligence, and government officials responsible for intensifying repression through intimidation, indiscriminate detentions, and censorship. The...

A Florida therapist who specializes in anger management has been charged with murder for allegedly shooting a man to death as part of an ongoing dispute and then stuffing his body in his car. “We got a couple of eyewitnesses, and I believe … the person right now he’s looking at the road, cleaning up the blood off the ground.” The caller told the 911 dispatcher: “I just saw him drag the body across the road. He put it in his car, and then he left. “And then he came back, and not even 10 minutes ago he started scrubbing...

The billions of dollars in military aid the United States has sent Ukraine includes some of the most advanced and lethal weapons systems in the world. But Ukraine has also scored big successes in the war by employing the weapons and equipment in unexpected ways, and jury-rigging some on the fly, according to military experts. From the sinking of the Moskva, Russia’s Black Sea flagship, in April to the attack on a Russian air base in Crimea this month, Ukrainian troops have used American and other weapons in ways few expected, the experts and Defense Department officials say. By mounting...

President Joe Biden issued a statement on Sunday slamming Nicaragua's "sham elections," in which President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, are expected to claim victory. In the statement, Biden accused Ortega's government of conducting "a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic." Biden said the imprisonment of nearly 40 opposition figures and preventing other parties from competing in the election "rigged the outcome well before election day." He also noted that independent media has been shuttered, journalists jailed, and civil society groups bullied. "Long unpopular and now without a democratic...

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Kenyell Wilson, an outreach worker with the Safe Streets program, was shot and killed Thursday in Baltimore, police said. Wilson walked into Harbor Hospital with gunshot wounds at 4:41 p.m. and died a short time later, police said. Police have not determined where in the city the shooting occurred.Mayor Brandon Scott released a statement on Thursday evening following the news: “Safe Streets has a special place in my heart and I consider the Violence Interrupters who bravely serve this program as a part of my family. Tonight, our brother Kenyell Wilson became a victim of the gun...

NEW YORK -- It was an ethics exam in a journalism class, and someone may have cheated. Ironic? Yes. Unfortunate? Certainly. But what made the incident particularly notable was where and when it took place: at Columbia University, one of the premier journalism schools in the country, at a time when media ethics are much in question. On Friday, Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism convened a meeting to discuss misconduct in the final exam for the required ethics course "Critical Issues in Journalism." But the school was so wary of making specific accusations that, afterward, it was not even clear...

This is exquisitely rich. Today The New York Times is accusing the Bush administration of an illegal leak of secret information, which may endanger American lives. Wow. No sense of irony over there at The Times. They can leak the NSA secret wiretapping program, they can leak the Treasury Department's secret program of following terrorist money, they can leak secret memos on the progress of the war, but none of that, evidently, seems to Times editors to endanger Americans. But this latest so-called leak by the Bushies does. And worse, the so-called leak is — get this — an Iraqi...