Free Republic

The House version of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill offers a tax credit for electric vehicles costing up to $74,000. The bill would offer a series of additional tax credits for electric vehicles for up to $12,500. Buyers get a $4,500 tax credit if they purchase union-made vehicles, putting electric car manufactures like Tesla, Toyota, and Honda at a competitive disadvantage with companies like Ford and General Motors who hire union labor. Elon Musk has previously criticized the special tax credit as a carveout for union lobbyists. The bill does include price limits on electric vehicles eligible for...

Just days ahead of the vote in the race for Virginia governor, Mark Levin is sharing a conspiracy theory that Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe is plotting to “steal the election.” In comments on his syndicated radio show Thursday (flagged by the progressive watchdog group Media Matters), the conservative host floated the wild allegation to his audience. “And I will tell you now that Terry McAuliffe is preparing to try and steal the election,” Levin said. The host cited a Fox News article that noted that McAuliffe has hired a law firm founded by Marc Elias, an attorney who has been...

The Philadelphia School District will spend close to a million dollars over the next three years to station members of the community in targeted communities in an effort to keep children safe on their way to and from schools. Based on a Chicago program, Philadelphia’s plan will start at four high schools: Lincoln, Motivation, Sayre, and Roxborough, and expand to others. The “Safe Path” program will pay trusted community members and equip them with radios and bright, reflective vests to serve as eyes and ears — not to take physical action against anyone armed with a gun. Kevin Bethel, the...

We take it for granted that people are free to use their abilities as they choose, and as a result, society as a whole benefits from their work and innovations. Progress depends on this. Today our lives are vastly better than those of our distant ancestors because individuals were free to try new ideas. For most of human history, however, there was little or no freedom for people to advance through work and innovation. Our societies were arranged in strict hierarchies where individual accomplishment wasn’t encouraged. Everyone had a place and was expected to do just as his forebears had...

President Joe Biden said Thursday that Pope Francis told him to keep receiving communion — even though he publicly supports killing unborn children through abortion. “We just talked about the fact that he was happy that I was a good Catholic and … keep receiving communion,” Biden told reporters after his private meeting with the pope at the Vatican. He said they did not discuss the issue of abortion.

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Hallie Jackson Reports,” White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy responded to concerns that increased regulations will cause increased gas and oil prices by stating “There’s a place for” regulation and “We’re going to use it.” McCarthy also touted hearings with oil executives on Capitol Hill as “a day of reckoning” for the oil and gas industry. Host Hallie Jackson asked, “[T]hat big oil hearing on Capitol Hill, significant, frankly, historic that they’re all coming together. There’s this sort of — argument that you’ve heard some Republicans make that more regulations could lead to higher...

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a critic of Donald Trump who is one of two Republicans on the panel investigating the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol attack, announced Friday that he will not seek re-election next year. He had previously declared his candidacy, according to Ballotpedia. The military veteran, who won a long-shot suburban congressional district a decade ago, became one of a handful of Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on the charge of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. He joins a small but growing list of GOP Trump critics in Congress deciding to bow out....

On Thursday, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson penned a letter to the Players Associations representing five major professional sports leagues, asking potential free agents to avoid signing with teams in Texas because of the state’s voting and abortion laws. The letter was sent to the Players Associations of the NBA, NFL, WNBA, NHL, and MLB, and urges professional athletes to “seek employment with sports teams located in states that will protect, honor and serve your families with integrity.”

“The climate is changing, and we are the cause.” That is a statement that is so often-repeated and affirmed that it goes way beyond mere conventional wisdom. Probably, you encounter some version or another of that statement multiple times per week; maybe dozens of times. Everybody knows that it is true! And to express disagreement with that statement, probably more so than with any other element of current progressive orthodoxy, is a sure way to get yourself labeled a “science denier,” fired from an academic job, or even banished from the internet. The UN IPCC’s recent Sixth Assessment Report on...

For Immediate ReleaseTuesday, October 5, 2021Office of Press Relationspress@usaid.govToday, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is launching an ambitious new project that will work with partner countries and the global community to build better preparedness for future global health threats. Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens - Viral Zoonoses (DEEP VZN), a five-year, approximately $125 million project (pending availability of funds), will strengthen global capacity to detect and understand the risks of viral spillover from wildlife to humans that could cause another pandemic.The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how infectious diseases threaten all of society, up-ending people’s lives and...

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved a vaccine mandate for all county employees that went into effect on Oct. 1, and Villanueva has previously said he does not plan to enforce the mandate. On Thursday, Villanueva took his concerns to the public, noting that “homicides continued to rise” and might continue to do so, while as much as “20%-30% of [the Sheriff’s Department] workforce is no longer available to provide service” with the mandate in place. “The Board’s vaccination mandate is causing a mass exodus within the Department, which is an absolutely absurd result … We are experiencing an...

The median U.S. home price just passed $400,000 for the first time ever, according to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. In the third quarter the median home price hit $404,700, jumping nearly 13% since third quarter of 2020, when the median sales price was $358,700. Though it’s an eye-catching number, the market has been hot of late, and a lack of inventory and high demand means foretold the rise in home prices. According to a recent note from Goldman Sachs, home prices could rise another 16% by the end of next year. Goldman economist Jan Hatzius pointed out...

Transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, isolated from a patient. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Credit: NIAID ========================================================================= Many COVID-19 patients have reported symptoms affecting the ears, including hearing loss and tinnitus. Dizziness and balance problems can also occur, suggesting that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may be able to infect the inner ear. A new study from MIT and Massachusetts Eye and Ear provides evidence that the virus can indeed infect cells of the inner ear, including hair cells, which are critical for both hearing and balance. The researchers also...

Elon Musk isn't happy. With a personal fortune that is flirting with $300 billion, the Tesla CEO — the richest person on earth — has been attacking a Democratic proposal to tax the assets of billionaires like him. The idea behind the Democratic plan is to use revenue from a billionaires tax to help pay for a domestic policy package being negotiated in Congress that would, among other things, help combat climate change, provide universal prekindergarten and expand health care programs. The proposal wasn’t included in President Joe Biden’s framework for the domestic policy package released Thursday, though that deal...

The rookie armorer in charge of weapons when Alec Baldwin accidentally shot dead his cinematographer has insisted she has “no idea” where the live ammunition came from — and is blaming the tragedy on her cost-cutting bosses. Lawyers for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed told NBC late Thursday that the 24-year-old former model “is devastated and completely beside herself over the events that have transpired” on the set of Baldwin’s “Rust.” “Safety is Hannah’s number one priority on set. Ultimately this set would never have been compromised if live ammo were not introduced,” her attorneys, Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence, said in a...

I’ve had an earworm or two lately. Since coming across this study, I keep hearing 4 Non Blondes in my head:“I cry sometimes when I’m lying in bed just to get it all out, what’s in my head. And I am feeling a little peculiar.So I wake in the morning, and I step outside, and I take a deep breath, and I get real high.And I scream from the top of my lungs, WHAT’S GOING ON?!”You may be asking the same question after understanding the results of a large study about vaccines and rates of COVID-19. S.V. Subramanian Ph.D., a...

The Biden administration is giving America gifts that will keep on giving for generations to come, and one of the foremost of these gifts is the newly-arrived group of Afghan evacuees: 70,000 are now in the U.S., and the total number is expected to exceed 124,000 before long. One of Biden’s handlers, unnamed in a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report, has admitted that ten of these evacuees have already been detained as risks to national security. Only ten out of 70,000 isn’t bad, right? Sure. But Biden’s handlers’ catastrophic mishandling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan makes it virtually certain that...

OAKLAND, Calif. - Rev. Ramon Price Sr. on Thursday identified the person killed in the Interstate Highway 580 shooting as his son, the second of his offspring to die by gun violence.

Nearly three-quarters of a million Virginians have voted ahead of the closely watched race between former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and former Carlyle Group chief executive Glenn Youngkin (R), a contest that will provide a critical read on the political mood ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Polling in the race is unanimous: Almost no matter the model a pollster uses to divine which voters will show up, McAuliffe and Youngkin are tied. It has been more than a month since any survey showed one candidate with an advantage outside the margin of error; the last six public surveys give...

It isn’t bad enough that Joe Biden opened the U.S. southern border to all manner of criminals, cartels, coyotes, terrorists, and garden variety illegal aliens; now he’s devising an insane plan to pay a small fortune to the would-be border crashers kept out of the country by his predecessor, Donald Trump. This is no Babylon Bee spoof; this is ripped from the pages of the Wall Street Journal.Though it’s tempting to shake your head in disbelief, read on. Oh, and make sure you shut your slack jaw because things are about to get worse and we don’t want any dribbling....