Free Republic

Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos' A-list guests like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner were forced to take cover on Thursday as the couple's pre-wedding party was hit by a huge freak thunderstorm. The lavish event held at the Madonna dell Orto cloisters marked the start of the billionaire couple's lavish three-day wedding in Venice, Italy, which will come to a close on Saturday. However, Thursday night's star-studded soiree was brought to an early end due to the intense downpour. Guests dived for cover under the vaulted cloisters as lightening bolts flashed across the sky and thunder rumbled overhead at the...

A new culture of secrecy in government is taking root – among career staffers and new political appointees alike.At the Department of Veterans Affairs, some employees had to sign nondisclosure agreements before reviewing plans for firings and organizational shake-ups. At the Administration for Children and Families, career staff were told not to respond in writing to panicky grant recipients whose funding had been shut off to avoid a “paper trail,” one employee said.And at the Environmental Protection Agency, several months after Elon Musk began requiring federal workers to submit weekly emails detailing five things they’d accomplished, some managers began calling...

Emboldened by Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the president said his administration will flex its authority on issues ranging from immigration to higher education.An emboldened Trump administration plans to aggressively challenge blocks on the president’s top priorities, a White House official said, following a major Supreme Court ruling that limits the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions.Government attorneys will press judges to pare back the dozens of sweeping rulings thwarting the president’s agenda “as soon as possible,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.Priorities for the administration include injunctions related to...

The Trump administration’s plan for mass layoffs at the State Department has left much of the workforce exasperated and embittered, tanking morale as extra demands were made to assist U.S. citizens seeking to flee the Middle East amid Israel’s war with Iran, employees say. At the direction of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department informed Congress in May that it planned to reduce its U.S. workforce by more than 15 percent — almost 2,000 people — as part of a sweeping reorganization intended to streamline what he has called a “bloated bureaucracy that stifles innovation and misallocates scarce...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist was arrested and charged after authorities allegedly discovered child porn on his work computer, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Friday. Thomas Pham LeGro, a 48-year-old video editor at the news outlet, was taken into custody on Thursday after FBI agents raided his Washington, DC, home and discovered a folder on his work laptop which contained 11 videos depicting child sexual abuse material, according to Pirro’s office.

WaPo had a reporter arrested yesterday and his alleged crimes are quite shocking. Thomas Pham LeGro, 48, made his first appearance today in U.S. District Court for allegedly possessing child pornography. LeGro, a journalist at the Washington Post and resident of the District of Columbia, was arrested yesterday and taken into custody following a search of his home. The charges were announced by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro. Pirro thanks FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven J. Jensen and Chief Pamela Smith of the Metropolitan Police Department for their ongoing efforts in this investigation. On June 26, 2025, FBI agents...

A Washington Post editor who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Senate candidate Roy Moore and his alleged attraction to minor teen girls, was arrested for possessing child pornography. Thomas Pham LeGro, 48, was arrested on Thursday and made his first appearance in US District Court on Friday. According to federal prosecutors, a review of LeGro’s laptop revealed a folder that contained 11 videos depicting child sexual abuse material. Thomas Pham LeGro’s bio at the Washington Post bragged about his coverage of GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore. Recall that Roy Moore was lambasted over his alleged attraction...

For many people, a trip to the airport is simply a means to an end. Whether you're traveling for vacation or business, you'll need to catch your flight in order to get there - and that's where the airport comes in. All airports have the same goal, but any traveler knows that all of them aren't created equally. Some airports are sprawling ecosystems with multiple terminals and acres of space, while others can be traversed entirely on foot. One airport may have more opportunities for scenic views, while others offer better food options. The Washington Post recently ranked the best...

A CDC panel’s vote to stop recommending thimerosal containing flu shots would have limited impact, but it illustrates how the anti-vaccine movement is achieving its goals.ATLANTA — Federal vaccine advisers installed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted Thursday to effectively remove an ingredient from flu shots, achieving a longtime, controversial goal of anti-vaccine activists and illustrating how their priorities are becoming official government guidance.The vote to no longer recommend influenza vaccines that contain the preservative thimerosal, based on the presentation of a single vaccine critic, is likely to have limited impact because the vast majority...

Top officials will brief lawmakers on Thursday amid a political battle over what intelligence reveals about the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities.The White House plans to limit classified intelligence sharing with Congress after leaks to the press of an early assessment undermined President Donald Trump’s claim that U.S. airstrikes obliterated Iranian nuclear facilities, a senior Trump administration official said, setting the stage for a contentious classified briefing before senators Thursday. Amid a political battle over what the intelligence shows, the White House is expected to send four of its top national security officials to brief lawmakers: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,...

An audio recording obtained by The Washington Post is a window into the covert campaign by Israeli intelligence to intimidate and divide Iranian military officials.In the hours after Israel launched its first wave of strikes against Iran on June 13, killing top military leaders and nuclear scientists, Israeli intelligence operatives launched a covert campaign to intimidate senior officials with the apparent aim of dividing and destabilizing Tehran’s theocratic regime, according to three people familiar with the operation. People working for Israel’s security services who speak Persian, Iran’s primary language, called senior Iranian officials on their cellphones and warned them that...

Formally backing a Palestinian state is no longer a symbolic gesture. It’s a strategic imperative.Ali Shihabi is a Saudi author and commentator and member of the advisory board of the new Saudi region of Neom planned by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.The world should wait no longer to formally recognize the State of Palestine. This is not about sentiment or symbolism. It is about urgent, necessary action to rescue a peace process on life support. Recognition is a critical diplomatic tool to shift a stagnant and increasingly dangerous status quo. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has persisted for more than seven decades....

Saudi Arabia has executed a prominent Saudi journalist who was arrested seven years ago and convicted on terrorism and treason chargesA prominent Saudi journalist who was arrested in 2018 and convicted on terrorism and treason charges has been executed, the kingdom said. Activist groups maintain that the charges against him were trumped up. Turki Al-Jasser, who was in his late 40s, was put to death on Saturday, according to the official Saudi Press Agency, after the death penalty was upheld by the nation’s top court. Authorities had raided Al-Jasser's home in 2018, arresting him and seizing his computer and...

The Los Angeles Police Department also urged people to steer clear of downtown because burning lithium-ion batteries can release toxic fumes.Waymo has cut off taxi service to parts of Los Angeles after five of its self-driving vehicles were torched during weekend protests about immigration raids.Images Sunday of downtown show Waymo vehicles covered with graffiti. One photo shows protesters waving Mexican and Guatemalan flags while standing atop a Waymo vehicle, while another appears to show a protester hitting the vehicle with a skateboard. The Los Angeles Times reported that some Lime e-scooters also were tossed into the blaze.Waymo confirmed Monday that...

Cabinet officials and senior staffers across the Trump administration are reclaiming power from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, a trend that began long before the billionaire’s relationship with President Donald Trump exploded in public acrimony days after Musk formally left his White House post.As Musk departed, some of his top lieutenants were streaming out of government. Among those heading for the exits even before Musk and Trump began feuding, according to a White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information: longtime aide Steve Davis, who was overseeing cost-cutting efforts; lawyer James Burnham, DOGE’s general counsel;...

Legal experts questioned the president’s response to unrest in Los Angeles, saying the military personnel involved will face strict limitations under the law.President Donald Trump’s order to deploy 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles is unprecedented, relying on an unorthodox use of a law aimed at quelling serious domestic unrest or an attack on the United States by a foreign power, some legal experts said Sunday.Trump invoked a section of the Armed Forces Act that allows the president to bypass a governor’s authority over the National Guard and call those troops into federal service when he considers it...

Ukraine is increasingly worried about securing more U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, as stockpiles sent during the Biden administration are drying up and the new administration is resistant to sending more, according to six Ukrainian and Western officials. While Russia bombards Ukraine with drones and cruise missiles, it is the ballistic missiles that are the most feared, and they can be reliably countered only by Patriot missiles. Ballistic missiles travel several miles per second, and they obliterated half of Ukraine’s power capacity in strikes on power plants. Their speed and size, plus the fact that they are difficult to intercept,...

The comments, in an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, were Trump’s clearest indication to date that he was unsure he would be able to quell Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Ukraine and Russia may need to keep fighting, President Donald Trump said Thursday, comparing the warring nations to squabbling children in what appeared to be a signal that the U.S. leader was losing interest in brokering peace in a conflict he once promised to end in a day. The comments, in an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, were Trump’s clearest indication to date that...

In 2024, a majority — 58 percent — of antisemitic incidents “contained elements related to Israel or Zionism,” according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual antisemitism report released earlier this year.

MEMPHIS — For decades, this storied American city has watched companies come but mostly go, its vacant storefronts and blighted buildings a reminder of its days as a thriving manufacturing hub and the painful decline that followed as those jobs vanished.As Paul Young, the city’s mayor, puts it, Memphis has been “the city people forgot about.”Then last summer, Memphis landed what Young and local business leaders called the city’s largest corporate investment in a generation — a “transformative” development for a place that has struggled to convince outsiders of its continued potential.The project was something every city dreams of, Young...