Free Republic

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said his sons almost drowned after he had dinner with former President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida last fall, according to a new profile on Johnson by The Atlantic. The Speaker visited Palm Beach, Fla., the week of Thanksgiving for a fundraiser, and he and his sons had dinner with the former president while on the trip, according to The Atlantic. The following day, Johnson’s security detail came into a conference room when he was meeting with donors at a hotel near the beach and told him “Mr. Speaker, we need you right...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) blasted conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on Tuesday for playing a leading role in demonizing the idea of sending military aid to Ukraine, saying the former Fox News host wound up “where he should have been all along” when he gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a megaphone during a fawning interview earlier this year. “I think the demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who in my opinion ended up where he should have been all along, which was interviewing Vladimir Putin,” McConnell said, referring to Carlson’s two-hour interview with Putin in February, which drew...

Nine Republicans and one Democrat in the Senate voted Tuesday to advance a package that includes aid for Ukraine and Israel, after opposing the legislation in a vote earlier this year. The package advanced toward a final vote Tuesday in an 80-19 procedural vote. Overall, 31 Republicans voted to advance the package. The package includes $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and global humanitarian assistance and $8 billion for allies in the Indo-Pacific. It also includes a series of national security items, headlined by a potential ban of the social media giant TikTok, or at least a forced...

The people were right. The 2020 Election results in Georgia never should have been certified. The 2020 election in Georgia was stolen. It’s a fact. Georgia’s Gabe Sterling who was involved in the certification of the stolen 2020 Election claimed that there were no issues with the Georgia election results. This was false and is false. Even Governor Kemp agreed that there were issues with the 2020 Election. Georgia citizen Joe Rossi looked into the 2020 Election and the recounts after the election and he found numerous issues with the election results in Fulton County.

After school on April 15, a fight broke out a couple of blocks from Washington Preparatory High School in South L.A. In a cellphone video of the incident, an adult can be heard saying off camera, just before the fight began: "Let them ... fight. If they want to fight, let the ... police [inaudible]. ... I’m not breaking up s—. I don’t give a f—." The adult who apparently declined to intervene was a member of the "safe passages" program designed to make sure students get to and from school unharmed, according to students and a senior union official....

Five migrants including a child have died during an attempt to cross the English Channel in a small boat. A seven-year-old girl, a woman and three men died in the incident off the coast of Wimereux in northern France, local official Jacques Billant said. The French coastguard said there was a failed attempt to cross the Channel and there were several "lifeless bodies". The tragedy came just hours after the UK government's controversial Rwanda bill - intended to deter migrants from crossing the Channel in small boats - was passed. Some 112 people were on board the overcrowded boat, Mr...

@elonmusk Our concern is that if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries, which is what the Australian “eSafety Commissar” is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet? We have already censored the content in question for Australia, pending legal appeal, and it is stored only on servers in the USA.

The parents at the centre of the Huw Edwards scandal said that they are "still suffering" and "still seeking answers" before he quit the BBC. The news anchor left his role on Monday on medical grounds after 40 years. Huw, 62, was suspended from the BBC last July after allegations were made that he sent a young individual thousands of pounds and received explicit images. He has since not appeared on screen since the claims. Speaking exclusively to the publication, the young person's parents voiced their concern that they "won't get answers" now that Huw has departed the BBC. The...

Despite being slapped down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for ordering a Jan. 6 probationer’s computer use be monitored for so-called “disinformation,” a senior federal judge in Washington D.C. appears ready to reimpose the restriction on Daniel Goodwyn of Corinth, Texas. Senior U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ordered Mr. Goodwyn to “show cause” for why the computer monitoring provision should not be reimposed. Judge Walton set a June 4 hearing date on the issue in Washington.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) is potentially staring down his closest race yet, against Republican David McCormick, in what will be one of the pivotal Senate contests in November. In Tuesday’s primary, McCormick is set to officially become the GOP nominee for the critical seat, setting up a battle with Casey, who is running for his fourth Senate term. The former hedge fund CEO is the candidate the Republican Party wanted to oppose Casey, after nominating disappointing general election candidates two years ago. “It’s an uphill climb, but if anybody can do it, [Republicans] have nominated the right person for it,...

A UK parliamentary researcher and another man have been charged with spying for China after allegedly providing information which could be "useful to an enemy". Christopher Cash, 29, the researcher, and Christopher Berry, 32, were charged under the Official Secrets Act. They are accused of giving "articles, notes, documents or information" to a foreign state, the Met Police said. China has called the allegations "malicious slander". Counter-terrorism police have described the allegations as "very serious". Mr Berry, from Witney in Oxfordshire, and Mr Cash, of Whitechapel, London, were arrested last March in connection with the investigation. It was previously reported...

New England Patriots team owner Robert Kraft announced Monday that he was pulling his support from Columbia University over the ongoing anti-Israel protest at the Manhattan campus.“It was through the full academic scholarship Columbia gave me that I was able to attend college and get my start in life and for that I have been tremendously grateful,” Kraft said in a statement. “However, the school I love so much – the one that welcomed me and provided me with so much opportunity – is no longer an institution I recognize.”“I am deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to...

UPDATE: A New York prosecutor told jurors that Donald Trump’s hush money trial was “about a criminal conspiracy and a cover up,” part of an effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo’s opening statement sought to elevate the criminal charges against Trump as no mere white-collar misdeed, but something that had an impact on the direction of the country.“No politician wants bad press, but the evidence at trial will show that this was not spin or communication strategy. This was a planned, coordinated ongoing conspiracy to influence the 2016 election,” Colangelo said.

Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) found himself in an unusual position for a minority leader last week: It was he, not the House speaker, who had the ultimate power to decide whether legislation came to the floor.Why it matters: Democrats got everything they wanted – a $95 billion foreign aid bill, the credit for passing it, and adversaries more divided than ever. In their telling, that total victory wasn't a sure thing.Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a master legislative tactician, heaped praise on her successor: "He is fabulous. We're so proud of him." One senior House Democrat told Axios: "It easily...

The Met Police has apologised after an officer said an antisemitism charity leader looked "openly Jewish" as he was threatened with arrest for being near a pro-Palestine march. Gideon Falter was wearing a kippah skull-cap when he was stopped in the Aldwych area of London on Saturday. He was told by police his presence was causing a "breach of peace", in a video posted online. Scotland Yard apologised for the officer's phrase. The force then withdrew its initial statement, after "reflecting on the strength of the response" to it, and issued a second apology for causing further offence. The original...

Santa Monica city officials last week approved a multimillion-dollar apartment unit for the homeless just days after the release of an audit which found California could not account for the $24 billion it spent on the state’s burgeoning homeless crisis. The 122-unit building for the homeless will include a mix of studio, one, two and three-bedroom apartments, along with ground floor retail and residential and commercial parking spaces. A design concept available on the city's website shows that the multi-apartment unit will cost more than $123 million, for a cost of just over $1 million each for the 122 apartments....

A Gen Xer who got $250,000 in student loans forgiven said he can now finally start saving for retirement — and consider his dream of studying in India

“We understand that there’s concern about the safety, security and sovereignty of Ukraine, but the American people have those same concerns about our own domestic sovereignty.”Words spoken by House Speaker Mike Johnson in response to a reporter’s inquiry as to why he was holding up aid for Ukraine, certainly, a challenge to both his political and Christian “bona fides.” I would submit that even a 100,000 Central American asylum seekers, including women and children, at America’s southern border do not measure up to 150,000 Russian soldiers armed to the teeth at Ukraine’s eastern border, as was the case on the...

The man who set himself on fire outside Trump's hush money trial in New York has reportedly died from his injuries. Max Azzarello, a 37-year-old from St. Augustine, Florida, reportedly died Friday night hours after the display, said to be 'an 'extreme act of protest...[against] a totalitarian con, and our own government' on the conspiracy theorist's own Substack. The reported revelation was offered to The New York Post late Monday, hours after he doused himself in accelerant outside the courthouse before going up in flames. Left in critical condition, Azzarello has since succumbed to those wounds, sources told the paper,...

After hours of stalemate, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced a deal Friday evening to vote on a package of amendments to a House-passed bill to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) warrantless surveillance program, putting it on a trajectory to pass before a midnight deadline. The expanded surveillance powers authorized by FISA’s controversial Section 702 were due to expire at the end of the day Friday and appeared to be headed for a lapse as senators wrangled over a package of amendments to require warrants to review the communications of Americans swept up in the FISA database...