Free Republic

Marian Morgan, for example, was sentenced in 2013 to nearly 34 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme and was ordered to pay $17.5 million to dozens of investors, most of which remains unpaid. In 2021, she filed a statement in court saying, “I want to pay restitution to my victims so they know I am truly sorry for the damage I caused.” But in May, Trump commuted her sentence “to time served with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions.”

The other day R. Bruce Dold, the great Pulitzer Prize winning editor of the Chicago Tribune, died. And our friend Cory Franklin wrote a beautiful column about Bruce. At the church there were many people there, people I knew, former colleagues at the Tribune who loved and respected Bruce. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were not there for Bruce alone, but that we also were mourning journalism itself. At least Chicago journalism, the Chicago newspapers. I’m not trying to redo Dr. Franklin’s great work about Bruce, but I did add an editor’s note explaining that while he...

The federal government will launch a new gun buyback scheme in response to the Bondi beach terror attack in what Anthony Albanese says will be the biggest collection of weapons since the Port Arthur massacre nearly three decades ago. It comes as New South Wales announced a suite of gun control measures including capping the number of firearms most recreational shooters can hold at four. Costs for the buyback, which is expected to see hundreds of thousands of weapons destroyed, will be split between the federal government and the states, the prime minister said on Friday. States and territories will...

Noise machines installed by LA Home Depot ‘torture’ for day laborers, advocates say Advocates call for removal of machines and demand that company speak out against ICE raids in parking lots Victoria Bekiempis Thu 18 Dec 2025 21.23 EST A Home Depot in Los Angeles installed three high-pitch noise-emitting machines outside to deter day laborers from seeking work there, causing them to suffer headaches and nausea, advocates alleged at a press conference on Wednesday. The Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (Idepsca), an advocacy organization that helps day laborers, called for the removal of these machines from Home...

During testimony behind closed doors, former special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers he believed he could prove President Donald Trump engaged in a "criminal scheme" in order to overturn the 2020 election. NBC News' Ryan Reilly reports on Smith's investigation and what members of Congress had to say. Summary Former special counsel Jack Smith testified in a closed-door House Judiciary Committee hearing on December 17, 2025, after being subpoenaed by Republicans. He defended his investigation into President Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, stating that his team found proof beyond a reasonable doubt of Trump's involvement in a criminal...

President Donald Trump made a series of false claims during his prime-time address from the White House on Wednesday night, most of which have been debunked before. Here is a fact check of some of his assertions. Inflation and the economy Inflation under Trump: Near the end of the speech, Trump falsely claimed, “Inflation is stopped.” Inflation hasn’t stopped; the most recent available year-over-year inflation rate at the time he spoke on Wednesday, 3.0% in September, was the same as the rate when Trump returned to office in January – in fact, if you go to multiple decimal places,...

The U.S. government admitted Wednesday that the actions of an air traffic controller and Army helicopter pilots played a role in causing the Jan. 29 collision between an airliner and a Black Hawk near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people, including a group of elite young figure skaters. It was the deadliest plane crash on American soil in more than two decades. The figure skaters, their parents and coaches who had just attended the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, were among those on the plane. The official response, made in court documents responding to the first lawsuit filed...

Reading political tea leaves three years before an election is a bit like predicting the weather for your 2028 summer vacation—entertaining, perhaps, but utterly useless for packing your bags. Yet here we are, with breathless headlines announcing that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has “taken the lead” over Vice President JD Vance in a hypothetical matchup. The progressive left is practically popping champagne.For those who haven’t followed their trajectories, the contrast between these two couldn’t be sharper. AOC burst onto the scene in 2018, unseating a longtime Democratic incumbent and quickly becoming the face of democratic socialism in America. The Green New Deal,...

Once the darling of American transplants, Florida’s appeal seems to have dimmed. Just three years ago, Florida ranked among the nation’s top destinations for people making a move. But that momentum seems to have faded. Florida still offers the warm climate and favorable tax structure that remain major draws, but it’s lost ground on the crucial affordability factor. In the year through November, just over half of global moving company Atlas Van Lines’ Florida-related moves were inbound, the firm said in its annual Migration Patterns Study — a near-even split between people moving in and moving out that marks a...

One of President Donald Trump's top aides has some thoughts on Elon Musk. In a series of interviews with Vanity Fair published on Tuesday, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles weighed in on Musk's time as the de facto leader of DOGE, her thoughts on the Musk-led shuttering of USAID, and Musk's personality quirks. "The challenge with Elon is keeping up with him," Wiles told the outlet, calling Musk an "avowed ketamine" user who "sleeps in a sleeping bag" in an office building adjacent to the White House during the daytime. "He's an odd, odd duck, as I think...

A NEW SOURCE SAYS ELLA COOK WAS SPECIFICALLY TARGETED IN BROWN UNIVERSITY ATTACK. WHY HAVE WE HEARD NOTHING PUBLICLY FROM THE OTHER KIDS IN THAT ECON STUDY SESSION. 7 Minute video at link................

Infowars Reached Out To Brown University, And Has Received A Statement That Is Covered In This Report SummaryThe transcript features a speaker discussing online speculation about a mass shooting at Brown University on December 13, 2025, which killed two students (including the head of the College Republicans) and wounded nine others.The speaker focuses on Mustafa (or Mustapha) Karbouch (or Kharbouch), described as a senior figure in the Islamic Studies Department (though sometimes called a pro-Palestinian student or activist), whose university profile, bio, and photos were removed the day after the shooting.The speaker highlights comparisons between surveillance footage of the shooter—a...

The person of interest, Mustapha Kharbouch, previously published a 2024 manifesto with the Institute for Palestine Studies—since deleted—in which he explicitly framed campus agitation as a form of revolutionary struggle and called for sustained confrontation. His own words are damning: “Our refusal to be complacent in the heart of the empire is the bare minimum of love and care we can show our people in Gaza,” and “Palestine is becoming a question of how we want to fundamentally rearrange our world.” This

In an extraordinary—and ominously underreported—announcement, the Department of Defense’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has openly revealed a biological research effort that could fundamentally redefine life itself. The program, called Generative Optogenetics (GO), is not science fiction. According to DARPA’s own descriptions, it aims to use light to directly write DNA and RNA sequences inside living cells, effectively turning biology into something programmable at the molecular level. This is concerning, and if it’s not obvious why then pay close attention. DARPA has publicly acknowledged the goal of directing the synthesis of DNA and RNA within living...

SummaryMarjorie Taylor Greene appeared on Alex Jones' show on December 16, 2025, to discuss her legislation, H.R. 3492, the Protect Children's Innocence Act, which aims to criminalize gender-affirming medical procedures (including puberty blockers, hormones, mastectomies, and genital surgeries) on minors under 18, making them felonies nationwide.She stated that the bill is scheduled for a House vote the following day after she delayed the NDAA by voting against its rule to force leadership (Steve Scalise and Mike Johnson) to schedule it. She accused Rep. Chip Roy of attempting to introduce an amendment in the Rules Committee that would limit the bill's...

Downing Street insists the $40bn Tech Prosperity Deal between the US and UK that is on hold is not permanently stalled. The BBC reported on Tuesday evening that the prime minister’s office claimed that the UK remains in “active conversations with US counterparts at all levels of government” about the wide-ranging deal for the technology industries in both countries to cooperate. The agreement, previously billed as historic, was paused after the US accused the UK of failing to lower trade barriers, including a digital services tax on US tech companies and food safety rules that limit the export of some...

President Donald Trump said filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner died from "Trump derangement syndrome." Reiner and his wife were found dead in their Los Angeles home on Sunday, and police are investigating the circumstances as an apparent homicide, authorities said. "A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP...

President Trump referred to the late actor and director Rob Reiner as having “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME” in a social-media post Monday less than a day after authorities said the Democratic activist and donor and his wife were found dead in their Los Angeles home. Trump said Reiner, a critic of the president, was “tortured and struggling” and attributed the death “to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump,...

Donald Trump has doubled down on his attacks on Rob Reiner after the Hollywood star and his wife were apparently murdered. The President appeared to blame Reiner and Michele's killings on the liberal director's 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' in a Monday post on Truth Social. Hollywood celebrities and Republicans pushed back on his statement, with some calling it 'disgusting and vile.' But the President seemed undeterred in his criticism of the late director. When pressed by a reporter in the Oval Office about his previous statement, he said: 'Well, I wasn't a fan of his at all. He was a deranged...

Two months after prominent members of a national Young Republican organization were exposed for their role in a hate-filled, private group chat, the city-based chapter showed it’s willing to welcome almost anyone. Inside Cipriani Wall Street, a lavish event space in the financial district, amid the sea of tuxedos and ball gowns, was white nationalist leader Jared Taylor. Across the room sat EmpathChan, an influencer who went viral recently for wearing blackface on Halloween. And appearing on stage was Markus Frohnmaier, a far-right German politician, whose political party the club had cheered with a German-language phrase popularized by the Nazis....