Free Republic

I'm just wondering, over a lifetime what the most ethical and right away to deal with money when it comes to being charitable or paying tithes? Should I just give the money once, by giving what I am able to give, or would it be better to give potentially more over the long-run, because money will tend to multiply over a lifetime and invested money can be given repeatedly.

Over the last year, these online witches have been credited with saving weddings, securing jobs, influencing basketball games and sparking outrage after Charlie Kirk’s death.Katie Begley needed “some good juju” this summer. Begley, a New York-based content creator and fitness instructor, was waiting to hear back about several big work opportunities, including a potential Little Caesars commercial with Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley. So she turned to a figure praised online for offering low-stakes help for the price of a latte: an Etsy witch. “It can’t hurt. I love witches. I love magic. I love all of that,” Begley,...

This is what you call bad timing. A Somali-born day-care owner recently announced he is running for state legislature in Minnesota — where his community and business field have been engulfed in an explosive billion-dollar fraud scandal. Abdi Daisane, who is not accused in the up to $9 billion web of alleged fraud, announced Christmas Eve that he plans to take another shot at the statehouse in the 2026 midterm elections after he was defeated by the Republican incumbent in 2024. He also suffered a failed City Council bid in 2016. Daisane has said he opened his day-care business, Blooming...

They say they’re Christians and are not occultists. Nor, he says, are they witches. Her husband, she swears, isn’t a warlock. But this Chesapeake couple does sell crystals, intended to help customers heal — their bodies, their auras — physically and metaphysically. Chris and Lindsey Thornhill own and operate Love and Crystals, marketing it specifically as a Christian crystal store and gift shop.

Minnesota officials are being accused of knowing about the massive alleged fraud involving daycare centers for years, and one reporter exposed the issue nearly a year ago. In a social media post on Sunday, the X account Libs of TikTok referred to a report from January when a daycare center in Minneapolis, the Quality Learning Center, was said to have received around $8 million in tax dollars since 2019. “Between 2019 – 2023 they had NINETY FIVE violations leading to them being placed on a conditional license. They got their license back in 2024 and continued receiving taxpayer dollars. No...

"Topline: A then-employee at the City of Austin’s energy utility allegedly paid $980,000 in taxpayer funds to fictional companies with bank accounts belonging to his family members, according to a new report from the city auditor. Key facts: Mark Ybarra was given a city credit card from 2018 to 2023 to hire repair companies for city buildings. He used it to pay 30 different vendors, but the city auditor could only verify that eight of them were real companies, according to the report."

They look like coins. They circulated like money. Yet the U.S. Mint never meant them to be coins at all. In the mid-1940s, the United States Mint struck one of the most unusual forms of American gold ever produced: anonymous gold disks made not for collectors or commerce, but to pay oil royalties to Saudi Arabia. These pieces sit at the crossroads of geopolitics, bullion, and numismatic mystery, and remain among the most counterfeited U.S.-minted gold items today. Saudi Arabia Oil Fields Unlike commemoratives or circulating coinage, these disks emerged from a quiet diplomatic crisis. Saudi Arabia demanded gold. The...

<p>When I heard that French actor and animal activist Brigitte Bardot had died at 91 on Sunday, my first thought was of blasting her song “Les Cheveux dans le vent” non-stop with my mom when I was a kid, and she was introducing me to the Gallic yé-yé pop and its various offshoots that had soundtracked her own childhood. My second thought, though, was somewhat less nostalgic and pleasant. I recalled Bardot’s late-in-life shift to supporting right-wing political candidates, her way of coldly dismissing actresses who came forward about their experiences of sexual harassment during the #MeToo movement, and how she was fined multiple times by the French government for “inciting racial hatred” with her blatantly bigoted comments about Muslims.</p>

White supremacist and MAGA influencer Nick Fuentes went all in over the weekend on supporting California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) over Vice President JD Vance because Newsom is more “handsome.” Fuentes, who has regularly attacked Vance in the past, calling him childish names like “gay” and “fat,” posted to social media on Sunday: “Physiognomy is real. Post physique, its handsome thursday. I only believe in beauty and aesthetics!!” JD Vance = fat subhuman. Newsom mogs him to death I would vote for him 100x over just because he’s handsome. “NOOOOOO NOT LIKE THAT!!!! YOU HAVE TO VOTE FOR THE REPUBLICAn!!”...

In a request for opinion filed to state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office on Dec. 12, Hancock asked whether schools could be excluded from the program if they were linked to a “foreign terrorist organization” or a “foreign adversary.” Hancock suggested schools that had hosted events for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group which Gov. Greg Abbott recently designated as a terrorist organization, would be affected. Abbott’s designation of CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization is part of an uptick in Texas politicians’ criticisms of Islam and the presence of Muslim organizations in the state. The...

Few topics are more distorted in public debate than slavery—especially its relationship to Scripture and Western history. When viewed through the lens of Scripture and credible historical research, the picture becomes far more complex—and, in many cases, radically different from the cultural narrative promulgated by many far-left progressives. Here are seven myths that need to be challenged, each grounded in biblical truth and supported with historical data. ===================================================================== The Bible Condones Slavery Scripture’s storyline consistently moves toward liberation, human dignity, and equality in Christ—not the perpetuation of bondage. Slaveholders in the American South understood this, which is why they forbade...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has claimed that President Vladimir Putin's state residence in the Novgorod region was the target of a Ukrainian drone attack overnight into Monday, and said it would have implications for the peace negotiations.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed the claim as "typical Russian lies" made because Moscow does not want to end the war.The allegation comes as U.S. President Donald Trump hailed progress toward peace following his latest talks with Zelensky at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday.Securing a long-sought deal on Ukraine would be a crowning moment for Trump, the self-styled global...

Let's Wrap Up This Quarter Soon!

Independent journalist Nick Shirley released a viral video on December 26, 2025, documenting visits to several state-funded daycare centers in Minneapolis. These centers, many catering to the Somali immigrant community, were found empty during operational hours, with no children present and signs of disuse, despite receiving substantial public funding through Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). Shirley’s investigation has uncovered over $110 million in suspicious payments in a single day, building on prior scandals like the Feeding Our Future fraud. The revelations have fueled criticism of Democratic Governor Tim Walz, with Republicans like Rep. Tom Emmer demanding answers and linking...

Minnesotans begged House Majority Whip Tom Emmer more than a decade ago to halt the flood of Somali refugees to the area, but the lawmaker scolded them for their concerns. Minnesota’s Somali population is back in the spotlight after YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video canvassing multiple Somali-run childcare centers accused of fraud. However, A resurfaced audio clip from “This American Life” shows that voters were concerned about mass Somali migration long before the recent controversy. In an episode that aired in October 2016, journalist Zoe Chace narrated portions of the story, including a reflection on a July 2015 town...

A new analysis of July temperatures in Death Valley between 1923 and 2024 suggests the world record near-surface air temperature of 134 F measured in July 1913 may be erroneous. ============================================================== Death Valley has held the record for the hottest air temperature ever measured near Earth's surface for 112 years, but now scientists are calling for the title to be rescinded. According to U.S. Weather Bureau data, the air temperature at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley reached a scorching 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 degrees Celsius) on July 10, 1913. This is still the highest air temperature on record, but its...

Posted on December 27, 2025 by Bill Glahn in Crime, Illegal immigration, Judiciary Rule No. 4 I spent countless hours in 2025 sitting in the back of federal courtrooms in Minnesota observing two types of cases play out: illegal immigration and welfare fraud. The one thing that both had in common was the application of Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals Rule No. 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” It’s a distillation of the Cloward-Piven “overwhelm the system” strategy. Federal bureaucracy was designed to handle a system where we had a few thousand illegal immigrants...

I’m absolutely flabbergasted, and you will be too. So, before I started writing for the day, I was looking for value in sports bets just to get a few in before the evening grind. One of the ways that I do this is by scrolling down my Twitter timeline, scanning for numbers and seeing if anything pops. From there, I get all scientific with it, but that’s another story for another day. I want to tell you what I came across while doing this, and it will absolutely blow your mind. (I actually took a break from looking for bets...

Activists’ claims that illegal aliens commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans do may appear convincing, but new data from New York state shows that those here illegally commit crimes at a rate more than three times higher than that of legal residents. And it’s costing us billions. It’s true that if you lump all immigrants together, relatively few of them are accused and convicted of crimes committed here in the United States. Legal immigrants commit crimes at very low rates, so combining their crime data with that of illegal immigrants masks the latter’s higher criminal activity.

ORLANDO, Fla. — In the past week, 12 swans were found dead at Lake Eola Park, according to Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan. The first two swans were found dead Dec. 23, and over the past five days, that number has risen to 12. Sheehan explained that the deaths happened during the holidays, and specialized veterinary experts were not available at the time. However, she said the deaths are suspected to have been caused by an avian flu outbreak. "We can't be certain until tests are completed," Sheehan said. The swans are currently stored in a secure location, awaiting necropsies...