Free Republic

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced Tuesday his new record-breaking fundraising total of nearly $60 million banked for the House Republicans in the first three-quarters of the 2022 election cycle. McCarthy revealed he brought in a record-breaking $57.8 million so far his cycle, in the first nine months of 2021, as the Republicans are trying to continue their momentum to unseat Democrats and take back the House in the midterms.

California has a long history of “firsts.” The Golden State was home to the first computer, the first movie theater, and the first McDonalds. Sadly, the state is now leading the nation in stripping parents of their childrearing authority. For starters, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a vaccine mandate on October 1, making California the first state to require that public and private school students age 12 or older be fully vaccinated for in-person instruction. (Unvaccinated students will have the option of enrolling in an online school or attending independent-study programs offered by districts.) The mandate will go into effect once...

Consumer prices increased slightly more than expected in September as food and energy price rises offset declines in used cars, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The consumer price index for all items rose 0.4% for the month, compared with the 0.3% Dow Jones estimate. On a year-over-year basis, prices increased 5.4% versus the estimate for 5.3% and the highest since January 1991. However, excluding volatile food and energy prices, the CPI increased 0.2% on the month and 4% year over year, against respective estimates for 0.3% and 4%. Dow futures were slightly positive following the news while government bond yields...

Right now there are four Mexican gents fixing my carport roof. I am amazed by the work ethic shown by these four men, they don’t chit chat, they don’t stand idle and smoke, they just work. My roof is going to get done today, weeks ahead of schedule by four men who barely speak any English. The jobs were there and they saw an opportunity and I hope they get paid well for their labors. For the record I’m 60 with health issues and had to hire this job out, I’m not lazy, just grateful there are still hard working...

A Pennsylvania mom admitted giving her teen daughter psychedelic mushrooms and marijuana during a “bonding experience,” authorities said. Brandy Lee Betz, 42, was charged with felony child endangerment after she was reported to cops in June regarding her drug use earlier this year with her 14-year-old daughter, according to an affidavit obtained by the Patriot-News. The referral indicated Betz gave the teen “shrooms” and marijuana while in her Middletown home. Dauphin County child welfare officials conducted a parallel probe and Betz confessed to smoking pot with the girl, according to the affidavit.

Oil and gas supply is too low to meet U.S. demand, due to a combination of factors, including halting of new leases on federal land, halting the Keystone Pipeline, and increasing regulatory burdens, industry analysts argue. "Average gas price: June 2020: $2.21 June 2021: $3.07 President Biden's economy!" Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tweeted during the summer. "You forgot to mention that gas prices are the same now as they were in June 2018," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki fired back. "Or that this time last year unemployment was 11.1% — today it's 5.8%. @POTUS agrees families shouldn't pay more...

The White House on Tuesday warned Republican governors of Texas and Florida that President Joe Biden would override their efforts to fight coronavirus vaccine mandates in their states.“We know that federal law overrides state law,” she said referring to state attempts to ban vaccine passports.She accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott of playing politics by issuing executive orders that fight vaccine passports.“Why would you be taking steps that prevent the saving of lives that make it more difficult to save lives across the country or in any state?” she asked.Psaki argued that the governors were “putting...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said the U.S. is partly to blame for the gas shortages Europe is currently facing. Putin, during an interview with CNBC at the annual Russian Energy Week, said that while European countries bear part of the blame for the gas shortages, the U.S.’s decrease in supplies has been “the cause of panic.” “You see the problem does not consist in us, it consists in the European side, because, first, we know that the wind farms did not work during summer because of the weather, everyone knows that. Moreover, the Europeans did not pump enough...

The following headline caught my attention the other day: “Parent complains when son returns home from school with Bible.” “I was out of town,” says Bonnie Matthews, mother of the boy. “I came home, and it was sitting there in my house…I questioned my son, and he said a man just handed it to him at school.” The Bible came from the Gideons International organization, but Matthews, who says she doesn’t believe in organized religion but is very spiritual and follows her own spiritual path, objects to the infringement of the hallowed principle of church/state separation. If you want to...

Some social media users have been saying that Merck’s experimental COVID-19 antiviral product molnupiravir is a rebranded version of the anti-parasitic Ivermectin. Two disease experts have told Reuters that this is not the case and that the chemical make-up of the two drugs is different. One tweet (here ) reads, “Ivermectin is a safe cure that was removed from CDC treatment protocol. Merck refurbishes it and *poof, it’s a miracle pill. Further proof that Big Pharma is in the business of creating customers.” Similar posts on Facebook are visible here and here .One reads, in part, “The pharmaceutical giant Merck...

They are attacking parents and having American workers fired in droves for not obeying them. News item: Oct. 7 release: Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization announces Vice President Kamala Harris to Give Keynote Address at 2021 Ripple of Hope Award Ceremony. Shouldn’t she have better things to do? Actually, no. This is the do-nothing Biden border czar’s real job: To cater to the powerful forces behind the curtain that have artificially installed her in her exalted position. The Biden administration doesn’t know the American people; it doesn’t interact with the American people. This is the world it inhabits. RFK...

President Biden’s nominee for a key Treasury Department post believes that the free market does not always “know best.” Saule Omarova — the Beth and Marc Goldberg Professor of Law at Cornell University and a 1989 graduate of Moscow State University — was tapped to serve as Comptroller of the Currency, which “charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks.” The Kazakh-American, however, has nodded toward the Soviet economic system’s purported gender equality. “Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world. Say what you will about old USSR, there...

Shiny nacre of Abalone washed ashore. Strongest and toughest glass known developed by McGill University scientists. Scientists from McGill University develop stronger and tougher glass, inspired by the inner layer of mollusk shells. Instead of shattering upon impact, the new material has the resiliency of plastic and could be used to improve cell phone screens in the future, among other applications. While techniques like tempering and laminating can help reinforce glass, they are costly and no longer work once the surface is damaged. “Until now there were trade-offs between high strength, toughness, and transparency. Our new material is not only...

The Port of Los Angeles will move to service 24 hours a day, seven days a week in order to try to address global supply chain bottlenecks, the White House announced on Wednesday. “The Port of Los Angeles is announcing 24/7 service. We have the CEO-level business commitments to back that up. And these commitments are critical. The supply chain is essentially in the hands of the private sector, so we need the private sector to up to help solve these problems,” a senior administration official said. The White House also announced on Wednesday that major goods carriers Walmart, FedEx...

A Loudoun County father smeared as a domestic terrorist by a leftist school board association says his school district covered up his daughter’s rape by a “gender-fluid” boy in a school bathroom, The Daily Wire reported. Scott Smith, a small business owner in Virginia, was smeared by the National School Boards Association last month in its letter begging President Joe Biden and his administration to use domestic terrorism laws to punish parents who were fed up with the radical indoctrination of their children in schools. In the letter, the NSBA used Smith’s viral June 22 arrest at a Loudoun County...

The structure of the material. (Li et al., Nature, 2021) Physicists have taken the first ever image of a Wigner crystal – a strange honeycomb-pattern material inside another material, made entirely out of electrons. Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner first theorized this crystal in 1934, but it's taken more than eight decades for scientists to finally get a direct look at the "electron ice". The fascinating first image shows electrons squished together into a tight, repeating pattern – like tiny blue butterfly wings, or pressings of an alien clover. The researchers behind the study, published on Sept. 29 in the...

Yesterday, another courageous Australian police officer took a stand against the government and media’s tyranny and lies about Covid-19, which has seen the country descend into authoritarian madness, the likes of which would make the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, proud – and all in the name of ‘health.’Article originally published on Ivan’s Substack.Senior Constable Craig Backman posted a statement on his Facebook page that outlined the issues that he has with the Australian government, the police force, public health, and the media.What is interesting about this police officer’s statement is that it is coming from an...

A former Democrat politician who voted to fund the nation’s largest abortion chain is slated to become President Joe Biden’s new United States ambassador to the Vatican. Breitbart reports Biden recently nominated former U.S. Sen. Joseph Donnelly to the role. Donnelly, who is Catholic, represented Indiana in the U.S. Senate from 2013 to 2019 and the U.S. House from 2007 to 2013. Donnelly’s nomination likely will be confirmed in the U.S. Senate in the coming weeks without controversy. Previously, Callista Gingrich, a pro-life Catholic appointed by President Donald Trump, served in the role. Though Donnelly says he is pro-life, he...

[h/t Red Badger] Russia’s top domestic security agency, the FSB, has aired a series of concerns about Facebook’s flagship wearable tech device, saying the camera-equipped glasses designed in partnership with Ray-Ban could be used for espionage. In a statement published on Monday, officials said that the American-designed ‘smart glasses’ “have design features that mean they can be classified as a special tool intended for secretly obtaining information.” The decision opens the door to a potential ban not only on their sale, but on their use in the country. Facebook describes the spectacles as “an authentic way to capture photos and...

A federal court has sided with college athletes seeking a religious exemption from a university’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, preventing the school from enforcing the mandate against the plaintiffs. A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit sided with a group of 16 student-athletes at Western Michigan University, upholding a lower court decision finding that the school violated their First Amendment rights by denying their requests for religious exemptions from the requirement that all student-athletes take the coronavirus vaccine. The decision noted that “in some cases, the university denied the student-athlete’s application” for a religious exemption...