Free Republic

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives. The court’s order is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.

President Donald Trump divulged how Chinese President Xi Jinping responded to his inquiry about releasing Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong businessman imprisoned after his outspoken criticism of the Chinese government. Lai, 78, is serving a 20-year sentence after the communist regime found him guilty of sedition and conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign forces. "I brought up Jimmy Lai. I would say the response to that was not positive. He said that he's been, you know, he said it's been sort of his worst nightmare," Trump told "Special Report" in an interview airing Friday. Trump said he spoke with Xi...

Guest post by Isaac Thomas President Trump is set to launch a massive $1.7 billion compensation fund aimed at helping Americans who were targeted by the Biden Regime's weaponized Department of Justice. According to a report from ABC News, the fund would compensate individuals who were politically targeted during the Biden years, including many January 6 defendants, conservative activists, and other Trump allies caught in what critics have called one of the largest political persecutions in modern American history. The move is already sending shockwaves through Washington. For years, conservatives have argued that the Biden DOJ operated with a two-tiered...

For years, the so-called lab leak hypothesis was labeled by top public health officials as a conspiracy theory or at least a fringe idea. But a senior officer inside the Central Intelligence Agency, subpoenaed by the Senate Homeland Security committee, said it was always the prevailing theory in the intelligence community, but many of the officers' reports and analyses were buried or even rewritten.

Mossad Commentary: @MOSSADil 🚨 CONFIRMED: Hamas chief, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, has been eliminated. Quote Mossad Commentary @MOSSADil· 🇮🇱 BREAKING: The IDF reportedly carried out a targeted strike against a hideout where Hamas chief Izz al-Din al-Haddad, was hiding in Gaza. al-Haddad was one of the architects of the October 7 massacre.

We are in the midst of a headlong global birth crash—a plunge underway all around the world, in rich and poor regions alike, very possibly presaging an indefinite global depopulation, with our “peak human” moment coming much sooner than almost anyone imagined even a few years ago. This is not what demography’s experts long predicted. For decades, demographers simply assumed that the postwar drop in worldwide birth rates would lead to an eventual equilibrium, with childbearing converging in one region after another at a little over two births per woman, the level required for long-term replacement. They envisioned a mere...

Letter from King Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem to the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin The seven Jerusalem-Amarna Letters (EA 285–291) tell us about the local ruler ‘Abdi-Ḫeba, “Servant of Ḫebat,” a Hurrian goddess, and his struggles to keep control of this city.[1] Similarities in the language, orthography, formulae, paleography, and the scribal marks in these letters suggest that they were the work of a single scribe, who was not trained in Canaan. Petrographic analysis, conducted after Moran’s work on this scribe, showed that the clay of letters 286–290 was made from local materials around Jerusalem. Yet two letters...

A convicted child sex offender is now a fugitive after a California judge allowed him to remain free on $1 million bail following his conviction, a decision that prosecutors are now sharply criticizing after the man disappeared before sentencing.Carl Cacconie was convicted on July 17 at the South Lake Tahoe Courthouse of six felony sex crimes involving an 11-year-old girl. Despite the verdict, Judge Michael McLaughlin, a registered Democrat, permitted him to leave court pending sentencing, which was set for Aug. 25. He never returned. SNIP “To expect that a person on $1 million bond, who has now been convicted,...

The hunt for the next James Bond has officially kicked off. Amazon MGM Studios started auditioning actors for the part of 007 in the past few weeks, Variety has learned, with the studio enlisting the help of Nina Gold to find the man with the suaveness and danger necessary to replace Daniel Craig as Ian Fleming’s super-spy. “The search for the next James Bond is underway,” Amazon MGM Studios said in a statement. “While we don’t plan to comment on specific details during the casting process, we’re excited to share more news with 007 fans as soon as the time...

A Democratic strategist stunned a CNN panel into silence after claiming a new congressional map set to make a black Republican the odds-on favorite to win the election is racist. Democratic strategist Tezlyn Figaro made the argument on Thursday's NewsNight after journalist Lydia Moynihan pointed out how the redistricting bid will help the odds of GOP candidate Charlotte Bergmann, a black woman, in Tennessee. The new map made it through the state's general assembly hours before. Moynihan framed the situation as 'ironic', given that many critics have called the redraw racist. They say it dilutes the state's only black-majority district,...

EVERMAN, Texas — The human remains recovered this week during a multi-department excavation at a home in Everman have been positively identified as those of 6-year-old Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez, the Tarrant County District Attorney confirmed Friday. This home in the 3400 block of Wisteria Lane has been searched before in connection with the disappearance of 6-year-old Noel Rodriguez Alvarez. Noel's mother, Cindy Rodriguez-Singh, who is charged with capital murder, was found incompetent to stand trial last month. Noel was reported missing in March 2023, months after he was last seen alive in October 2022. At the time of his disappearance, investigators...

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday cut former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ nine-year prison sentence in half, and ordered the 70-year-old, who has become a national martyr for election conspiracy theorists, to be released on parole June 1. Peters’ sentence for orchestrating a security breach of her county’s election system in 2021 in a failed attempt to uncover voter fraud is now four years and four and a half months under a clemency order issued by the governor. “She, because of her incorrect and unpopular speech, got an unduly harsh sentence,” Polis said Friday in an interview with The...

Jared Polls, the Democrat governor of Colorado, reduces the sentence of election denier Tina Peters. She will be released the 1 June, says the Governor.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that Russia was seeking to draw Belarus deeper into its war in Ukraine and was weighing plans to attack Ukraine's north or a NATO country from Belarusian territory. "We continue to document Russia's attempts to draw Belarus deeper into the war against Ukraine," Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messaging app after meeting military and intelligence officials. He said Ukraine knew of additional contacts between Russia and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to persuade him to join "new Russian aggressive operations". "Russia is considering plans for operations to the south and north of Belarusian territory –...

SSPX responds: ‘Excommunicated? But by whom? By those who kneel before Pachamama?’The Society of Saint Pius X responds to the Holy See's recent statement regarding excommunication if episcopal consecrations are carried out on July 1.Fri May 15, 2026 - 2:54 pm EDTFri May 15, 2026 - 4:18 pm EDT (Society of Saint Pius X) — “Physician, heal yourself” (Lk 4:23).1. The Vatican Press Office published, on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, the following statement from Cardinal Fernandez, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith:Regarding the Society of Saint Pius X, we reiterate what has already been communicated. The...

According to a report from the Daily Mail, several Christian leaders who attended confidential briefings on impending UFO revelations are sounding alarms that the released materials could align with end-times warnings in Scripture. Pastor Joseph Zupetz and evangelist Tony Merkel were among a small group of faith influencers invited to a private gathering in a remote mountainous Airbnb in Tennessee in February. There, former military personnel and investigators into non-human intelligence shared details about upcoming government disclosures of UAPs, reverse-engineered craft, and encounters with otherworldly entities.

Leading Catholic convert says Vatican Synod’s pro-LGBT move mirrors Anglican ‘schism’A former Anglican chaplain to the Queen said the pro-homosexual Synod report strikingly echoes the Anglican Church’s embrace of sexual depravity and descent into schism.A Catholic convert and former Anglican chaplain to the Queen said the Vatican Synod on Synodality’s recent pro-LGBT final report mirrors the Anglican Church’s descent into relativism and “schism.”Gavin Ashenden on Tuesday published a piercing critique of the Vatican’s Study Group 9 report on “doctrinal, pastoral and ethical issues” that scandalously gave the impression of condoning the grave sin of homosexual acts. Referencing the testimony of...

Authorities are investigating after a fiery explosion Friday at a lumber mill in Searsmont, Maine. Officials have not yet released the number of injuries or fatalities. Camden Fire & Rescue confirmed it has a crew providing assistance. "Our thoughts are with the injured, medical professionals providing care and first responders working to control the situation," the department wrote in a statement on Facebook. "We anticipate having personnel committed to helping for several days." Ben Hamel, the mill's purchasing manager, told the Bangor Daily News that the fire started in an area where wood shavings are packaged. The fire then spread...

The stretch between Svalbard and the North Cape of mainland Norway constitutes the Bear Gap, which is the Arctic Circle analogue to the better-known Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap.4 Svalbard’s proximity to the Kola Peninsula and Novaya Zemlya—home to Russia’s Northern Fleet and its nuclear weapons test site, respectively—further helps explain Moscow’s enduring interest in Svalbard. The archipelago’s importance is likely to grow as maritime trade increases in the Arctic. The Pentagon’s 2024 Arctic Strategy notes, “Reduction in sea ice due to climate change means chokepoints such as the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia and the Barents Sea north of Norway are...

The 2025 article marks a significant evolution. It adapts Maoist strategy as a framework for far-seas operations, showing how a weaker force might offset U.S. advantages through asymmetric means. In doing so, it envisions not only countering intervention in a Taiwan conflict, but also protecting China’s global maritime interests. The application of Mao’s doctrine at sea signals ambitions well beyond regional defense—toward a PLAN capable of contesting influence across the world’s oceans.Once in place, these seemingly civilian platforms, operating in coordination with military forces, would be poised to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities in wartime. They would target critical nodes and weak...