Free Republic

A Texas woman pleaded guilty on Tuesday to smuggling unaccompanied illegal immigrant children into the United States from Juarez, Mexico. Dianne Guadian, 33, together with three other members of a smuggling organization, transported foreign children aged 5 to 13 into the country, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a July 28 statement. Candy laced with THC, the major psychoactive constituent in cannabis, was sometimes used to sedate the children. Drivers and co-conspirators would claim to be their parents and show the inspecting officers false U.S. documents. Once the group entered the United States, the children were transported to El...

Democrat James Talarico leads Republican Ken Paxton by five percentage points in a survey of likely Texas voters released Tuesday, marking a shift from earlier polling that showed the attorney general narrowly ahead or tied in the U.S. Senate contest. Discover more Legislative Branch Government Voter registration services Texas Public Opinion Research found Talarico leading Paxton, 45 percent to 40 percent, “marking the Austin state representative’s largest lead in any public poll taken during the general election period,” the Texas Tribune reported. The group surveyed 1,048 likely voters from July 15 through July 17. The poll has a margin of...

James Talarico, the radical Democrat nominee for the U.S. Senate race in Texas, once credited Islamic teachings and authors as an inspiration for his Christian faith. 🚨UNEARTHEDJames Talarico — who said he "hates Christianity" — praised Islam for inspiring his religious beliefs:"I’ve learned as much about my faith from Salman’s tradition, from the Islamic mystics, from poets like Rumi, as much as I have from Christian authors..." pic.twitter.com/2UeksY9Hko— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 27, 2026“I’ve learned as much about my faith from Salman’s tradition, from the Islamic mystics, from poets like Rumi, as much as I have from Christian authors,” Talarico...

A Texas appeals court on Thursday reversed a temporary injunction against a Houston-area woman accused of violating the state's abortion ban. Maria Margarita Rojas was arrested in March 2025 and accused of providing "illegal abortions" and practicing medicine without a license at a network of clinics in northwestern Houston, according to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Rojas' attorneys have argued that the allegations are not true and that the state has failed to prove any abortions were happening at the clinics or that any unlawful practice was occurring. A lower court in Waller County issued a temporary injunction against Rojas...

SpaceX to launch 13th Starship flight test What we know: SpaceX's latest test flight is currently scheduled for Thursday with the 90-minute launch window opening at 5:45 p.m. The latest test flight will test the company's Super Heavy booster with the objective of a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn and landing burn. SpaceX said the booster's hardware has been modified to improve relight reliability. For Starship, the company hopes to launch 20 Starlink satellites and have a successful relight of an engine while in space with a controlled entry, descent and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The company...

"She's a leader in this country, and she deserves the utmost respect," Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, said at a town hall in Houston.“If you claim to be my supporter, if you claim to be a part of this movement that we are building, please keep Congresswoman Crockett’s name out of your mouth,” Talarico demanded on Sunday during a town hall in Houston. The remarks were significant as the residue of Talarico and Crockett’s primary contest had continued to stain the Democratic nominee’s campaign as he worked to win over Black voters, most of whom backed...

Evangelical pastor Jeff Mullen recently posted this open letter to Texas State Rep. James Talarico, who is running for U.S. Senate in the state of Texas. Mullen’s letter addresses fundamental problems with the way Talarico and others interpret Scripture, and he calls Talarico and all of us to come under the authority of God’s Word instead of redefining it to fit our wishes:Dear Rep. Talarico,My name is Jeff Mullen. As a pastor who spent 30 years shepherding God’s people, I have learned that what we believe about God shapes everything else. That is why I am writing this letter.I do...

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is threatening to block two of President Trump’s ambassador nominees if the administration does not present evidence of progress on releasing funds to the President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief (PEPFAR), a government program which provides treatment for HIV and AIDS around the world. “The only way it seems like you can get the administration’s attention on some of these funding issues is by using the leverage to withhold votes on nominees,” Cornyn said in an interview with Semafor on Tuesday. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Cornyn sits, is scheduled to vote on the...

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D) received a harsh reception from an attendee at his town hall in Houston on Sunday. Video from the event, during which Talarico took questions for more than 90 minutes, captured by the Austin American-Statesman’s Faith Bugenhagen, shows a Black woman yelling, “So you stay here, you answer our questions or you suffer the consequences.” Other attendees clapped in support of the woman’s remarks, while one man said, “Say it with your chest.” When Talarico told the woman he appreciated her for traveling to attend the town hall, she replied, “I did it for my...

Fred Burton, the incumbent mayor of Arcola, was arrested and booked into Fort Bend County Jail on five felony charges around 10:30 p.m Tuesday, according to court records. Burton is facing various charges, including two counts of illegal voting, one count of misuse of official information, one count of tampering with government records with intent to defraud or harm, and one count of fraudulently securing the execution of a document. The illegal voting charges come from two different elections — the Arcola Municipal Runoff Election on June 7, 2025, and the April 23, 2026, City of Arcola General, Joint, and...

Under a bright sun, families and curious neighbors streamed through the arches of the Islamic Association of North Texas Saturday afternoon. The Richardson mosque’s copper-colored dome caught the light as volunteers greeted visitors at the entrance, welcoming many who were stepping into an Islamic house of worship for the first time. The “Open Mosque Day” event had been months in the making, following other open house events that took place in Plano Saturday morning and Austin last week. It aimed to dispel stereotypes and misconceptions, especially regarding Shariah, that some Muslims say have plagued communities across Texas. “There are many...

Democratic Senate contenders are dramatically out-raising their Republican peers, according to Federal Election Commission data — with Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and James Talarico in Texas leading the pack. Eight of the top 10 Senate candidate fundraiser this year are Democrats, whose top contestants have raked in $574 million, compared to the Republicans’ $336 million, per the FEC. Incumbent Sen. Ossoff (D-Ga.) is the biggest fundraiser on both sides, having raked in a jaw-dropping $77 million as of June 30, and has a staggering $42.5 million in cash on hand. He’s raised nearly $98 million as a Senate candidate, including the...

The New York Stock Exchange opened its doors over 230 years ago. It has been one of the iconic symbols of America's economic might for more than two centuries. But for how much longer? Now the challenge for supremacy isn't coming from London or Tokyo or Hong Kong or Beijing. It's coming from Texas. The Wall Street Journal reported in recent days that the Texas Stock Exchange is now officially open for business, and trading is expected to start soon. Everything is big in Texas, as the saying goes, so New Yorkers should take this rival stock exchange seriously. In...

Christians, according to Talarico, are ‘Christofascists’ who are practicing “Christofascism”. Christianity is far more violent than Islam, according to him, and has caused far more damage to Islam than the other way around. “Christianity is Season 2, and Islam is Season 3,” he told the New Yorker. “I’m Season 2—the most violent season. My religion has done more damage to both of those religions than they’ve done to each other.” And, beyond that, all religions are basically the same and Islam is just as true as Christianity. “I always think of all the world’s faith traditions as a circle, with...

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who recently lost his state’s primary due in part to President Donald Trump, ripped the president’s obsession with the 2020 elections as Republicans face an uphill battle in the November midterms. Trump spent Thursday night’s primetime address railing against foreign and “deep state” interference in past U.S. elections and presenting declassified documents that he said proved his point. Critics have claimed that Trump is gearing up to interfere in the midterms and usher Republicans to victory. At the yearly Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Politico’s Jonathan Martin asked Cornyn, “Does that speech last night give you...

The damage comes as questions continue over the growing use of this surveillance technology in public spaces.

It’s been a tough week for Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico on the sexual abuse front, who is now battling with the public learning that his largest financial backer is listed in the Epstein files, is facing condemnation from an abuse victim’s family for lying, and is refusing to condemn a political ally who consorts with a sexual predator. Earlier today, it was revealed that Talarico had been receiving millions from billionaire Epstein-associated Reid Hoffman. Hoffman was featured prominently in the Epstein files for making trips to Jeffrey Epstein’s island and to other Epstein residences, as well as exchanging...

After its unmanned vessels recently drew attention in the Iran war, Saronic Technologies, a shipbuilding start-up, announced on Thursday that it would open a new facility in the United States to make both naval and commercial ships. Saronic’s chief executive, Dino Mavrookas, said the company would break ground this year on an 850-acre shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, and begin building vessels there by 2028. Last month, the U.S. military used a Saronic drone boat to rescue the two-person crew of a downed Apache attack helicopter off the coast of Oman. This week, three of its vessels were used to attack...

The challenge the entire industry faces is that in every single location, I don't care whether it's Michigan, West Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, if you announce you're doing a data center, all of a sudden you get a plethora of misinformation, like it's three times the size of Manhattan, it's so hot it's gonna melt a hole in the ground, the amount of water it's going to use, it's gonna suck the ocean dry. All of this stuff is just not true. I think as we get the real facts out, we'll turn this around. There seems to be an...

With Lindsey Graham's death, and John Cornyn's defeat, Mike Lee is second in seniority, next to 92 year old Chuck Grassley (elected in 1980). Grassley has been maintaining the old blue slip tradition, preventing the confirmation of US Attorneys that Democrats don't like. If Grassley dies, or chooses to be chair of another committee come January, Mike Lee will be chair (assuming the Republicans hold the Senate). Thom Tillis (who also blocked nominees) will also be gone, and Ken Paxton will likely be added. On the Democrat side, Dick Durbin is retiring (moving Whitehouse to ranking member) and Amy Klobuchar...