Free Republic

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned international corporate media and world leaders like President Joe Biden for publicly predicting imminent war with Russia on Friday, stating that the panic caused by these statements cost Ukraine 12.5 billion hryvnia (about $437 million) in foreign investment. Zelensky spent nearly an hour and a half with reporters at a press conference in Kyiv on Friday following what has become a controversial phone conversation with President Biden on Thursday night. While the official readouts from both Washington and Kyiv depicted the call as productive and friendly, a CNN report based on anonymous sources described the...

Is the former President's son a credible DeSantis alternative? One poll says yes. Most polling of the still hypothetical 2024 Republican presidential Primary race shows Donald Trump atop the field, with Gov. Ron DeSantis running second and winning outright when the former President is excluded from the field. The latest Morning Consult/POLITICO survey is consistent with both of those trends, yet it shows that if the former President does not run in 2024, his namesake son would be competitive even with DeSantis. Former President Trump was the choice of 49% of the 390 registered Republican voters surveyed last week, with...

The Missouri government board responsible for licensing doctors and other health care professionals is interested in criminal court matters related to Dr. David Smock, the longtime physician for Stockton-based Agape Boarding School. But under Missouri law, the State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts can't say why. Smock was recently charged with 11 felony sex crimes against children. Three of the charges originate from Greene County. Eight of the charges were issued by Cedar County, the rural home of Agape's Independent Fundamental Baptist boarding school campus, as well as one of Smock's clinics. Smock has pleaded not guilty to...

ABU DHABI, 27th January, 2022 (WAM) -- The Vatican has stressed that the UAE is a leading model of global human solidarity, and its humanitarian initiatives go beyond the limits of geography and encourage pioneering examples that promote peaceful coexistence, tolerance and peace in the whole world. This was stated during a phone call between H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's Secretary of State. Parolin expressed his solidarity with the UAE following the terrorist attack by the Houthi terrorist militia on civil facilities in the UAE,...

Things are heating up between Alaska's former governor and a longtime New York Rangers star, Page Six reports.Sarah Palin was the cause of controversy last week when she was spotted out to dinner in New York City just after testing positive for COVID-19, the outlet says.Her dinner date? Ron Duguay. The new couple apparently started seeing each other this winter. Palin became single in August 2019 after her high school sweetheart and husband of 31 years, Todd, filed for divorce. Duguay divorced model Kim Alexis in 2016 after 33 years of marriage. The NHL star was drafted to the...

Pope Francis praised the International Catholic Media Consortium on COVID-19 Vaccines, funded by Google and linked to George Soros and Bill Gates, for its work fighting 'misleading' information on COVID jabs.VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis on Friday met with the International Catholic fact-checking group catholic-factchecking.com, which promotes abortion-tainted injections and is linked to Bill Gates and George Soros, thanking them for combating “fake news and the manipulation of the consciences of the weakest.” The morning of January 28, Pope Francis met with members of the International Catholic Media Consortium on COVID-19 Vaccines, or “Catholic fact-checking,” in the Vatican’s Clementine...

Join with fellow FREEPERS across the world to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Agri-Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, Technology, and the Media. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. (1 Timothy 2:1-2) THE COLD REALITY OF THIS WORLD IS THAT EACH OF US IS MOVING TOWARD A FINAL DESTINATION. WHETHER THE CURRENT CRISIS WE ARE ALL EXPERIENCING ENDS QUICKLY OR STRETCHES OVER MONTHS AND YEARS,...

Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency Friday in light of the winter storm expected to pummel the Eastern Seaboard with snow throughout the weekend's start. The order will take effect at 5 p.m. Friday and includes a commercial vehicle travel ban. Murphy urged all residents to stay off the roads if possible. "We expect low visibility and tough travel conditions," Murphy said at the Friday morning press conference. "So, let’s leave the roads empty for crews to do their jobs."

I had to read this twice. Did a feminist really write this? Did a liberal really write this? Did the San Francisco Chronicle really publish this? Yes—and it's prime material to get the woke mob all huffy. The issue about COVID, masks, and schools continues to be an issue for liberal America. They want masks all the time, among other things. What is clear is that it’s screwing up kids. You all know this—the mental health crisis that will result of the adults overreacting to a virus with a 99-plus percent survival rate will last for generations. It’s not reported...

MSNBC host Joy Reid said Friday on her show “The ReidOut” that Republicans are attempting to rile up white voters with tactics used by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler while discussing laws banning books about race issues in schools and the teaching Critical Race Theory. Reid said, “Book burning and banning happened to be staples of fascism and communism. The Nazis did it, Hitler, imposing rigid censorship on newspapers and burning all literature he considered dangerous. The Soviets banned books, too, along with the Chinese Communist Party.”

Cop lives mattered outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral Friday. Perhaps not since America welcomed its victorious legions home from Europe in 1945 have New York’s streets seen a uniformed presence quite like the blue wall that stood tall in Fifth Avenue Friday. They had come to honor the sacrifice of NYPD Officer Jason Rivera — murdered at 22 in service to a too-often-ungrateful city. On Wednesday, Officer Wilbert Mora — mortally wounded alongside Rivera in a Harlem apartment last week — will himself be laid to rest from the cathedral. His sacrifice was no less profound, but it will be hard...

Joni Mitchell is joining her old friend and contemporary Neil Young in having her legendary music catalog pulled from Spotify over concerns about vaccine misinformation being spread on the platform’s popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast. In a brief note posted to her official website on Friday, the singer-songwriter wrote, “I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”

A former student of a Missouri boarding school has been identified as the suspect who shot and wounded three Houston police officers after an hours-long standoff Thursday night. Roland Caballero, 31, is in custody after the Thursday night shooting, according to ABC13 and KPRC 2 in Houston. Caballero reportedly was shot in the neck and was taken to the hospital. Two of the three officers had been released from the hospital as of Friday afternoon, according to Houston Police. The third is in stable condition, police said. Caballero attended Agape Boarding School in Stockton, Missouri, as a teenager from around...

SÃO PAULO – On January 21, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) released a joint statement with other civic organizations condemning the campaign against the vaccination of children in Brazil. Although the declaration does not directly mention President Jair Bolsonaro, its target is clearly his rhetoric against the COVID-19 vaccine, especially for the youth. On several occasions, Bolsonaro has expressed his opposition to vaccinating young people, claiming that the risk of death from COVID-19 among children and teenagers is “almost zero” and saying that he would not let his 11-year-old daughter be vaccinated. According to the news website...

Ian Anderson has a timely theory for the reason prog-rock — and his band Jethro Tull specifically — wasn't stopped by the rise of punk in the '70s. “I think the punks thought that they were the triple vaccination that would rid the world forever of the horrible virus of prog rock,” he said in a recent interview with The Telegraph. “Unfortunately, like in the real world, the virus tends to bounce back in a slightly revived or even re-energized form.” In a separate interview with The Guardian, Anderson noted that where other punk or rock bands were leaning into...

Does this look like normal behavior to you, America?

President Biden visited the site of a Pittsburgh bridge that collapsed hours before his arrival in the Steel City Friday and vowed to kick-start a national effort to repair faulty infrastructure. Biden’s motorcade reached the remains of the Fern Hollow Bridge just after 1 p.m. The span had crumbled about six hours earlier, injuring 10 people — three of whom were hospitalized. No fatalities were reported.

The Archbishop of San Juan de Puerto Rico, Roberto Octavio González Nieves, expressed his sorrow and repudiated the demolition of the city’s statue of Juan Ponce de León, a Spanish colonizer who was Puerto Rico’s first governor. “I would like to express my sadness over the acts that led to the demolition of the statue of the first governor of Puerto Rico, Juan Ponce de León. Said action must draw our strongest feeling of repudiation,” the archbishop said in a Jan. 24 statement. The statue was torn down the night of Jan. 23-24, shortly before the visit of Felipe VI,...

Places with highest daily reported cases per capita Seven-day average of daily new reported cases per 100,000 residents

Musicians have taken sides in the ongoing discourse surrounding Neil Young’s battle with Spotify. Young made headlines on Jan. 24 when he demanded his music be pulled from Spotify due to the streaming site’s support for The Joe Rogan Experience, a popular podcast which has been scrutinized for promoting lies about COVID-19 vaccines. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” the rocker wrote at the time. “I want all my music off their platform. They can have [Joe] Rogan or Young....