Free Republic

The widespread adoption of electric cars in California is reducing gas tax revenue by millions of dollars a year. That's money that would have been used for road repairs. Now, drivers of those cars are coming under increasing criticism for not paying their fair share to maintain the state’s roads. “Electric cars cause as much wear and tear to highways as traditional cars,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a nonprofit lobbying and policy organization. When California’s controversial gas tax measure Senate Bill 1 was passed in 2017, lawmakers included a $100 annual fee for zero...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Vice President Joe Biden ramped up attacks on each other Tuesday night as part of an escalating battle over their records on Social Security. Sanders has hammered his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, arguing that he backed proposed cuts to Social Security during his years as a senator. Biden said he was committed to not only maintaining but also strengthening the program and released an attack ad Tuesday dinging the Vermont Independent as “flat-out wrong.” “Democrats, we can’t launch dishonest attacks against fellow Democrats. We have to beat Donald Trump,” says a narrator...

Tim Walker and his daughter Carolyn Walker were taking the trash out Sunday evening at their Bethel home when they saw a flash in the sky. You can see on their Ring camera the colors in the sky are red and orange with a little pink and purple too. The father-daughter duo admits it scared them at first. They also say, despite the bright colors and length of the incident, they never heard a sound. So what caused the flash? We contacted Clermont County Emergency Management. They have no explanation but did hear from plenty of people reporting the flash....

In an abrupt about-face, Hillary Clinton said Tuesday night that she would endorse her 2016 rival Bernie Sanders if he wins the Democratic nomination to face President Donald Trump in November. The former secretary of state had earlier refused to say whether she would endorse Sanders in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Tuesday, instead telling the outlet: “I’m not going to go there yet.” She had also offered a broad condemnation of the progressive candidate’s style of politics. “I thought everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views!” Clinton tweeted Tuesday night. “But, to be serious, the number one priority...

'It seems that we may also have to think of atrial fibrillation as an atrial cardiomyopathy -- that is, a challenged heart -- rather than as a purely electrical disorder', she says. Defects in muscle fibres and mitochondria Contrary to expectations, the researchers did not find any disturbances in the ion channels that spread electrical signals between the heart's muscle cells. Instead, they found defects in the structure of the heart muscle itself and in the mitochondria that normally function as the cell's power plant. The defects already occurred in the foetal stage of the fish and deteriorated exponentially with...

Nothing the Clintons do is accidental. And so when the news broke less than two weeks before the Iowa caucuses that in a forthcoming Hulu documentary, Hillary Clinton badmouths her 2016 rival Bernie Sanders as a “career politician” whom “nobody likes,” it didn’t just call attention to the ill feeling still lingering from that year’s bitter primary campaign. It also signaled that Clinton has thrown her weight behind the nascent “Stop Sanders” movement gaining steam among Democratic power brokers.

KANNAPOLIS, N.C. -- A father was arrested and is charged with simple assault after he rushed and tackled a high school student-athlete during a wrestling match, according to a Kannapolis Police Department news release. Barry Lee Jones, of Harrisburg, was arrested on Saturday at 415 East 1st St. He is charged with simple assault and disorderly conduct. The student-athlete he tackled was from Southeast Guilford High School and was wrestling Jones' son, who is a student from Hickory Ridge High School, the release says. Jones was processed at the Cabarrus County Jail and received a $1,000 secured bond. The SGHS...

The 2020 ballot initiative would amend the state constitution to require commercial and industrial properties, except those zoned as commercial agriculture, to be taxed based on their market value. Under the new initiative, residential properties are excluded from this potential policy and would continue to be taxed under the original requirements of Proposition 13, when property ownership changes or when new construction is done. Property tax rates would not change, and there would be a qualified exception for some small businesses, according to official documents. First set in 1978, Proposition 13 places a cap on tax rates for residential, commercial...

by Joe Callen | Washington Editor A bombshell new report is derailing the Democrats' momentum against President Trump on Day One of the Senate impeachment trial. The article -- in the left-leaning Politico of all places -- on Tuesday night alleges that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff appears to have “mischaracterized” evidence that was used in House Democrats’ impeachment investigation. But Republicans are calling the report "soft-pedaling", insisting that Schiff "fabricated evidence" in a naked attempt to "frame" Trump. Either way, the shocking late-night report has thrown the Democrats' Senate plan into complete chaos. The stunning report focuses on...

The state of California is intervening in a class action settlement over alleged gender discrimination and sexual harassment at Riot Games, the video game developer behind “League of Legends,” The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The company reached a preliminary settlement with former female employees who brought a lawsuit last year, agreeing to pay them $10 million. However, the state believes that figure is far less than what the women deserve. After two state agencies weighed in, California is now asking the gaming company to pay the women $400 million.

New treatment for killing cancer cells may have accidentally been discovered by a group of British scientists, according to reports. Cardiff University’s research team found a T-Cell that attaches itself onto human cancers, and kills them while ignoring healthy cells. Although in its early stages of development, the treatment successfully destroys bone, lung, breast, colon, prostate, and other cancers, The Telegraph reported. (RELATED: Alex Trebek Announces He Was Diagnosed With Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer) Originally, researchers were only looking for immune cells that were capable of fighting bacteria, before they discovered the T-Cell virus. Their findings were made available on...

It’s the Family, Stupid Government is no substitute. Tue Jan 21, 2020 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. "I had a job teaching at a law school in Houston when the babysitter quit. Over the next few months I tried all sorts of child care options: another babysitter, a neighbor with kids, and a couple of daycare centers," Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote, introducing her Universal Child Care plan. “One day I picked up my son Alex from daycare and found...

The worst brawl college basketball has seen in years broke out at the end of No. 3 Kansas' 81-59 victory vs. Kansas State at Allen Fieldhouse on Tuesday night. It was a scary sight, one that led to dozens of players, coaches and support staff caught up in a brouhaha that lasted nearly a minute. Here are two videos of the fight, one from ESPN and one from the court, right up against the developing donnybrook.

On our campaign, we talk all the time about meeting people where they are at. Many of the approaches we use — door knocking, phonebanking, texting — don’t do that for everyone. There are a set of voters we’ll never reach through those methods. We need a way to bridge this gap. We need a way to turn every day conversations into real data to help us build our universe of supporters to turn out on election day. That’s where Reach comes in. Reach is a new type of canvassing tool. Now from any of your spontaneous interactions (at the...

CLAIM: If President Donald Trump really cared about corruption in Ukraine, he would have raised it before. But he never did. VERDICT: False. Trump raised it specifically — even lecturing the former Ukrainian president about it in 2017. Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) claimed on Tuesday in President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial that Trump did not care about corruption in Ukraine except when it allegedly involved his potential rival in the 2020 presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden. Schiff said: You might ask yourself: if the president was so concerned about corruption, why didn’t he...

(h/t HoneysuckleTN) Q is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation. Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding ‘mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased media) to endure future events through transparency and regeneration of individual thought (breaking the...

With 4,310 voters showing up to the polls today, the results are in and clear. Harry Arora is the winner of the contest to replace Fred Camillo as the State Representative from the 151st. Arora, who ran on a fiscally conservative, no tolls platform, has won with almost 55% of the vote, a margin of 360 votes; winning every polling district with the exception of district 1.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's defense failed him at the opening of his Senate impeachment trial on Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had one job. He just had to collect 51 votes for the trial rules he had written, in close consultation with White House officials, to deliver Trump an acquittal quickly, quietly and with as few surprises as possible. He couldn't do it. Fellow Republicans balked at his plan so late in the game — moments before the start of the trial — that he had to order up handwritten changes sought by Democrats just to secure...

The number of cases of a new virus has risen to 440 in China and the death toll has risen to 9, Chinese health authorities said Wednesday. Deputy Director of the National Health Commission Li Bin told reporters that the figures were current as of midnight Tuesday. All the deaths had been in Hubei province, home to Wuhan city where the first illnesses from coronavirus were reported in late December. Li said that marked an increase of 149 confirmed cases. He said Japan and South Korea had confirmed one case each and Thailand three. The U.S. and Taiwan also confirmed...

NEW YORK - One U.S. prelate has gone where none have dared to go before: Directly condemning President Donald Trump for racism. In a series of tweets on Monday evening, San Antonio’s Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller pleaded with Trump to “stop hate and racism, starting with yourself.” In several follow-up messages, the Mexican-American archbishop directly called out the president saying: “President stop your hatred. People in the US deserve better.”