Free Republic

LGBTQ advocates condemn president's rhetoric in tight Senate race in South Carolina President Trump's latest Truth Social broadside is drawing attention not just for who he targeted, but how, NBC News reports. In a Monday post backing Republican Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina, Trump repeatedly used an anti-trans slur to describe her opponent, Democratic Senate nominee Annie Andrews, who is not transgender, and said she is "not for South Carolina" and voters should show her that the state "is not for her." The White House, asked why he used the term, simply pointed reporters back to his post. CNN...

We got along without it all this time, so let's put it to good use!

DA says 20 surrogate-born children suffered abuse in California 'house of horrors' A California mansion packed with young children was a "house of horrors," prosecutors say. Authorities on Tuesday arrested Guojon Xuan, 65, and his wife, 38-year-old Sylvia Zhang, on child abuse charges after a yearlong investigation into what officials describe as a tightly monitored "home school type" compound for more than 20 children, most of them born to surrogate mothers, the Los Angeles Times reports. Fifteen children, most of them between 1 and 3 years old, were removed from the home in the Los Angeles County city of Arcadia...

Christa Pike, a Tennessee inmate who survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, is conscious and speaking as she continues to receive medical care at a hospital, according to a statement from her attorneys. “Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care. Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery,” her attorneys said in a statement. Pike survived two ostensibly lethal doses of pentobarbital last week...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Mutsaerts: Go to Latin Mass instead of trying to fix your own parish 'If there's a bad Novus Ordo Mass, you can't improve those priests, I'm afraid. So just go anywhere else,' Mutsaerts told LifeSite at the Catholic Identity Conference.Bishop Robert Mutsaerts said that Catholics who attend parishes with irreverent Novus Ordo Masses should find a Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) or another reverent liturgy instead of attempting to transform their home parish.During a brief October 3 interview with LifeSite after his talk at the 2026 Catholic Identity Conference (CIC), Mutsaerts responded to a question about whether the...

Archbishop George Leo Thomas is urging Catholics to vote no on Nevada Question 6, warning that the measure would allow abortion into the ninth month and take parents out of a minor’s decision. From the pulpit Sunday, the Archdiocese of Las Vegas asked Catholics across five counties to reject the ballot question, which would write abortion into the state constitution. Abortion is already legal in Nevada but this would expand it in the extreme. Thomas’ pastoral letter was read at Mass in the archdiocese’s 34 parishes. “This question is not whether abortion is legal in Nevada; it already is under...

Retired NFL icon Jason Kelce found himself in an embarrassing situation in the broadcast booth during Sunday's matchup between the Washington Commanders and the Indianapolis Colts, prompting an on-air apology to viewers at home. Kelce joined Dave Pasch and Kurt Warner in the booth for the international fixture, with the Commanders and Colts squaring off in London. It proved to be a rough day for Washington, who lost wide receiver Jaylin Lane and quarterback Marcus Mariota to injury. Matters deteriorated further when Kelce inadvertently referred to the team as the Redskins, a moniker the organization has been actively distancing itself...

Sometimes, it takes five years for the U.S. federal government to even begin to correct a miscarriage of justice. On October 4, 2021, then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued an infamous memo vowing to commit federal resources to investigate, as domestic terrorists, concerned parents over constitutionally protected speech against local school board policies. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Weaponization Working Group finally published a scathing report on the “Garland Memo,” along with proposed steps to provide justice for the parents whose constitutional rights were so egregiously ignored. Over the past five years, independent and congressional investigations revealed...

An Arizona man's 10-year manslaughter sentence has been tossed in a case where a video generated by artificial intelligence portrayed the deceased victim addressing a judge before the punishment was imposed. In a decision released Wednesday, the Arizona Court of Appeals concluded Gabriel Paul Horcasitas must be resentenced in the 2021 shooting death of Christopher Pelkey because the AI video wasn't reliable. The court found the video crossed the line, saying it didn't reflect actual events and presented statements made in the footage as coming directly from the victim. "Indeed, rather than document an event or recording a particular moment,...

I was -1. I wonder what it was like to see live. It likely cost him the Election and led to President Reagan.

"Americans could pay far more to heat their homes with oil this winter than last, a new analysis reviewed by Axios shows, as volatile energy markets and the Iran War deepen the affordability crisis. Why it matters: Heating bills are eating into household budgets before winter sets in, with stark divides between fuel types. By the numbers: Families that heat with oil could pay about 50% more this winter than last, according to estimates from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), up from its 31.3% projection in mid-September. The average cost of heating a home with oil is expected...

France is on the precipice of a dangerous financial spiral. The global surge in interest rates has exposed the country, once considered an oasis of relative stability in Europe’s financial markets, as one of the continent’s weakest links. France now pays more to borrow than former crisis hot spots like Greece and Italy. Its government is running a budget deficit surpassed only by the United States among its peers. Last week, a slow-burning selloff in France’s government bond market took an alarming turn as it spread across the continent, reviving memories of the eurozone debt crisis last decade. France’s 10-year...

The US debt load crossed $40 trillion in August 2026. The Treasury publishes the number and updates it every business day. $32.4 trillion of it is borrowed from investors, pension funds, and foreign governments. Another $7.7 trillion is owed to the government's trust funds, including the funds that pay Social Security and Medicare. I spent two terms chairing the House Financial Institutions Committee, reading numbers like these, page after page. The pace worried me more than the total ever did. Everyone quotes the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline when they talk about where the debt is headed. CBO is the nonpartisan...

Video posted by government forces in Yemen showed them driving armoured cars over Houthi ⁠fighters ⁠as they recaptured areas around the vital Bab el-Mandeb Strait from ⁠the Iran-backed group on Monday in a deadly new phase of the fragmented country's war. The videos gave a glimpse into the brutal closing stages ​of a pitched battle for control of territory near the strait that the Houthis had captured last month. The Houthi advance sent shockwaves through the oil market and pushed up petrol and diesel prices worldwide. Fighting continued near Bab el-Mandeb ‌on Tuesday as Saudi-backed government forces battled to consolidate...

While inflation has been running stubbornly high, American paychecks are growing even faster than prices are rising. Inflation-adjusted weekly wages have risen in 16 out of the 18 months for which the government reported data since President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2025. There was no data for October because of the government shutdown last year. To put it differently, real weekly wages have been positive 89 percent of the time since Trump took office. By contrast, real weekly wages rose less than half of the time—46 percent—during Biden’s presidency. During Trump’s first term, real weekly wages were positive...

NASHVILLE, TN — Prison officials admitted they were unsure how to go about executing a woman who was currently being kept alive by a ventilator that is plugged into a power outlet in the wall. After surviving two botched lethal injections, convicted murderer Christa Pike is now in critical condition and is solely being kept alive by a machine that breathes for her, which is powered by a standard 120-volt power outlet in the wall. Prison officials, who ordered the medical interventions that are keeping her alive, are baffled as to how they could execute the vulnerable death row inmate...

With just 28 days remaining until he faces off against Republican candidate Ken Paxton, Democrat James Talarico is nowhere to be found. Talarico has not been seen publicly in Texas in over a week, with his last appearance occurring on Saturday, September 26, before he took a fundraising trip to New York City.

When a federal appeals court known for its rock-bottom track record in Supreme Court reviews reinstated California's so-called gender secrecy policies in schools, parents and teachers ran to SCOTUS for an emergency injunction. The gambit worked, prompting a broadside by six justices against lower courts for ignoring a century of precedents. Now a mother and daughter in Washington state are seeking the same shortcut around the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected their plea to force a school district and state athletic association to warn them before the girl unwittingly competes against another male in girls' wrestling, as...

SEATTLE (AP) — Federal authorities arrested and charged a 30-year-old from Washington state on Tuesday in connection with a February school shooting in British Columbia. The U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle says James Cody Bryant of Bellingham, Washington, communicated with the 18-year-old shooter for six months ahead of time. Bryant, who identifies as female, did not report the shooter’s plans to authorities and conspired with her to broadcast the attacks, authorities allege. “Without Bryant’s misplaced loyalty and willingness to operate the livestream, we don’t ultimately know if the shooter would have gone through with the crime,” said W. Mike Herrington,...

Zion Teasley, the man who stabbed Phoenix hiker Lauren Heike 15 times on a trail in 2023, has pleaded guilty to her murder in a deal that takes the death penalty off the table and sends him to prison for life. Teasley, 25, killed Heike, a 29-year-old beauty technician, after stalking her on a hiking trail near her home. Neighbors found her body at the foot of a barbed wire fence. Police said he chased her, killed her with a pocketknife, and jumped the fence to get away.