Free Republic

Left-wing Pew Research Center has released data that shows an increase of just under five million Hispanic American voters since fall of 2018, a number of whom are ditching the Democratic party. “While Democrats still outpace Republicans in terms of voter registration, a higher number of Latinos voted Republican in the 2022 midterm elections than they did in 2018,” ADN America said of the polling. “While Hispanic voters continued to favor Democrats over Republicans, a higher share of Hispanic voters supported GOP candidates in the 2022 election compared with 2018,” it added. “In November, 60% of Hispanic voters cast ballots...

Former President Donald Trump has gone 1-for-2 in his endorsements of challengers to incumbent members of Congress from South Carolina. Rep. Tom Rice, one of just 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Capitol riot, has been defeated in a GOP primary by a Trump-backed challenger. According to a race call by The Associated Press, South Carolina state Rep. Russell Fry, who had Trump's endorsement, easily topped Rice, a five-term U.S. representative, giving Fry the 7th District's Republican nomination. In the 1st District, meanwhile, GOP Rep. Nancy Mace bested her Trump-supported challenger, according to the AP. Fry...

The news business is in a state of flux. Newsroom employment has dropped by about 26% since 2008 and while many new digital outlets are adding jobs, others are struggling to survive. Journalists who have left traditional newsrooms for roles outside the industry — or for positions that defy easy categorization — are offering advice on LinkedIn to reporters and editors who might want to make the same jump. Question to journalists who have left newsrooms: What's the best advice you'd give to a reporter/editor leaving the traditional world of journalism (whether they're leaving industry altogether or moving to something...

Citigroup told employees on Thursday that it would require vaccination against Covid-19 as a condition of employment in the United States, making it the first major bank to issue such a mandate. “It has become crystal clear that Covid-19 will not be going away anytime soon,” Sara Wechter, the company’s head of human resources, wrote in a LinkedIn post describing the new policy. Ms. Wechter cited two catalysts for the decision. First, because the bank does business with the federal government, it has an obligation to comply with President Biden’s executive order requiring vaccination for people working on government contracts....

Over the last week, the media has hammered Joe Biden with relentlessly critical coverage of his pullout from Afghanistan, resulting in noticeable drops in his approval ratings. Put aside for a moment whether this reflects failures by Biden or biases by the media. One conclusion we can draw is that this sort of dynamic is a regular feature of Democratic presidencies, and — as the Trump administration showed — a near impossibility during Republican ones. Well, sort of. The mainstream media certainly gave Trump harsh and even overtly hostile coverage. But the mainstream media only describes roughly half the media...

Backers of President Donald Trump, some carrying guns, ramped up demonstrations on Thursday night against what he has baselessly called a rigged election, in battleground states where votes were still being counted. The demonstrations were largely peaceful, although Trump supporters occasionally shouted with counterprotesters. Trump says the election is being stolen but there has been no evidence of fraud. In Arizona, one of the closely contested states in the too-close-to-call race between Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, Trump and Biden supporters briefly scuffled outside the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix. Several heavily armed right-wing groups assembled on the...

Using local instead of general anaesthetic for hip, knee and other operations could help cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study. Drugs used for general anaesthetics contain greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide, which can stay in the atmosphere for up to 114 years and contribute to global warming. Switching the one million annual hip and knee replacement operations in the United States to local anaesthetic would save the equivalent of 7.3 million miles driven in a car, according to the study, which was based on a one-year experiment at a hospital in New York and published in...

Environmental factors play a critical role in enabling the spread of infectious diseases like Covid-19. President Trump, amongst others, claim warmer summer months may slow down the pandemic. However, though preliminary findings suggest the outbreak may be seasonal, the World Health Organisation argues there is “no reason to believe that this virus would behave differently in different temperatures”. Studies from previous outbreaks speculate that the prolific use of air conditioning would permit pathogens to spread throughout the summer months..... The impact of climate change on ecosystems will affect the behaviour of viruses, augmenting their capability to infect communities worldwide......... On...

Caught a case of the bad weather blues? If so, you aren't alone. Severe winter weather is rearing its ugly head across the country and chilling the U.S. economy. So far this month, four of six major economic reports have cited the harsh winter as putting the damper on output and sales. Three of the four reports blaming the weather came in worse than expected. (Read more: Is winter weather really burying the economy?) Here's a look at weather references in recent reports. January ISM manufacturing This report disappointed when it was released Monday, registering at 51.3 versus economists expectations...

We’ve seen quite a few rule changes discussed this week for Major League Baseball — from the universal DH to a three-batter minimum for relief pitchers. They might happen, they might not. Such is the process of baseball negotiating rule changes every year. One thing *is* changing this year, however — and it might surprise you. Major League Baseball confirmed to ESPN on Thursday that it’s changing the name of the “Disabled List” to the “Injury List.” The genesis of the rule? Disability advocates asked Major League Baseball to change the name because so people wouldn’t confuse “disabilities” and “injuries”...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California legislative leader announced Sunday he will challenge U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, setting up a 2018 contest between two Democrats that will highlight generational, geographic and ideological contrasts in the party that dominates state politics. The 84-year-old Feinstein, a former San Francisco mayor and grande dame of California Democrats, will face state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon, 50, a Los Angeles Hispanic who is largely unknown statewide. In a brief video announcement posted online, De Leon promised to work for job growth and economic security in Washington, recalling his single immigrant mother who...

The Trump administration would support legislation allowing illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children to gain lawful permanent status and eventually citizenship, a Department of Homeland Security official said in testimony to Congress on Tuesday. The Trump administration last month ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which began in 2012 under former President Barack Obama and offered nearly 800,000 young people who came to the United States illegally as children protection from deportation and the right to work legally in the United States. The administration said it ended DACA because Obama overstepped his constitutional authority...

As a conservative, I’m thrilled by the arrival of unified Republican government. But the politician I’m most grateful to in Washington today isn’t President Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It’s Chuck Schumer. That’s because the Democratic Senate minority leader is doing more than anyone in our nation’s capital to ensure the passage of the most conservative health-care and tax reform possible — while working overtime to make sure that Democrats who voted for Trump in 2016 stay in the GOP fold in 2018 and beyond. The biggest fear many conservatives had after the 2016...

The national unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent in February, the Labor Department reported Friday. But relying on that one headline number as an indicator for the economy as a whole ignores import information just below the surface. Each month on "Jobs Friday," the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out a trove of economic data, each of which provides its own perspective on the labor market and the employment situation. Economists look past the official unemployment rate — that 4.7 percent figure, also known as the "U-3" — to other metrics that give their own view of jobs in the...

Ad-blockers may seem like an answer to an internet user’s prayers. No annoying pop-ups, no promos before videos and no concerns about accidentally clicking on a virus. But for ad-driven websites, they’re a revenue leech that needs to be pried off. This is becoming one of the internet's biggest debates. More countries are cracking down on ad-blockers—the EU’s European Commission even proposed a rule this week that would allow media companies to ban users who use ad-blockers. The debate is no longer on the fringes with tech’s biggest names, including Facebook, weighing in. “Ads support our mission of giving people...

His presidency-to-be isn’t starting well. News that Donald Trump will be the 45th president of the United States has sent global stock markets plunging, with U.S. markets on track for a loss of 5% or more when they open the day after Election Day. Trump has promised to unravel free-trade deals, roust undocumented workers out of the country and perhaps even send Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen packing. This is bad news for big companies, small companies, ordinary investors and perhaps even the very workers Trump says he aims to help. When Moody’s Analytics analyzed Trump’s economic plan over the...

Sales of diet Pepsi have plunged after the soft drink company behind it changed the recipe. In a case with echoes of Coke’s disastrous introduction of ‘New Coke’, Pepsi has faced a huge backlash after replacing the sweetener in the drink. Pepsi chose to remove the controversial sweetener aspartame - linked to cancer in some studies - with sucralose. But customers aren’t happy. David Zimdars of Michigan said, ‘It has a nasty aftertaste, and it’s sickly sweet. You have to wash it out with water.' Pepsi’s choice of sucralose - known by the brand name Splenda - has been blasted...

In her breathtaking new memoir, Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer’s Search for Wonder in the Natural World published Tuesday, Leigh Ann Henion, 37, writes of the birth of her 5-year-old son Archer: “I love and marvel over him as if he were my own heart pushed into the world and, still beating, set on top of my chest. Yet I cannot help but mourn the loss of something I can’t quite place. I have an inner emptiness—literal and figurative—that I’ve never felt before.” What follows is a raw, sometimes gut-wrenching account of the dark and lonely place Henion finds herself in...

While the planet's surface temperatures over the past century have risen to unprecedented levels, records have shown a slowdown in the pace of warming over the past 15 years. Scientists have proposed several theories of natural climate variability and heat redistribution that may have contributed to the slowdown to varying degrees. A new study, however, suggests that the slowdown itself may be a mirage — the result of temperature records that have considerably underestimated the pace of warming since 1997. The global coverage of temperature measurements is incomplete, and that can cause biases in temperature records — research datasets deal...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — There's a new superpower growing in the Great Plains and the South, where bulging Republican majorities in state capitols could dramatically cut taxes and change public education with barely a whimper of resistance from Democrats. Contrast that with California, where voters have given Democrats a new dominance that could allow them to raise taxes and embrace same-sex marriage without regard to Republican objections. If you thought the presidential election revealed the nation's political rifts, consider the outcomes in state legislatures. The vote also created a broader tier of powerful one-party governments that can act with...