Free Republic

With the shock and awakening of Americans that the freedoms, rights and opportunities they had taken for granted for generations have been brazenly stripped away in the last few years, this President’s Day 2022 may well be one of our most significant holidays. Presidents Day is unique among American holidays in providing the opportunity to appreciate why George Washington and Abraham Lincoln—whose birthdays fall in February—were the two greatest U.S. presidents. While Washington was the founding father of the United States becoming the first President in 1789 after final success in the War of Independence, Lincoln would save the nation...

As President Biden travels and attempts to change up his media interactions amid low approval ratings, Mariel Saez, the White House’s director of broadcast media, is set to leave her post after a year on the job. CNN reports Saez, who has worked on both Biden’s presidential campaign and inaugural committee, will depart in the coming weeks. It comes after a tenure steering officials to U.S. television hits and a relatively stable White House communications team. It also comes in the wake of a string of departures from Vice President Kamala Harris’ office. The White House came out on record...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken direction from Russian spies. The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence. The officials did not say whether they thought Zero Hedge knew of any links to spy agencies and did not allege direct links between the website and Russia. Zero Hedge denied the...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press said Tuesday that it is assigning more than two dozen journalists across the world to cover climate issues, in the news organization’s largest single expansion paid for through philanthropic grants. The announcement illustrates how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism — at the AP and elsewhere — at a time when the industry’s financial outlook has been otherwise bleak. The AP’s new team, with journalists based in Africa, Brazil, India and the United States, will focus on climate change’s impact on agriculture, migration, urban planning, the economy, culture...

Big trouble potentially awaits America if the Russian-Ukraine tensions escalate into a Russian invasion. And that trouble is not limited to potential counter-attacks from only Russia should the US decide to step in to protect their NATO ally Ukraine, as a recent Russia-China alliance has declared a “new era” where the US will be challenged as a global power as well as NATO as the “cornerstone of international security.” While the potential for conventional military operations against the US remains small, the fact that these newly aligned powers have engaged in almost a decade’s worth of reconnaissance hacking has given...

Biden and The Fed have a seemingly never ending problem for Americans: Inflation. Today, the Final Demand Producer Price Index (PPI) printed at 9.7% YoY. Biden claimed inflation was caused by COVID. How about 1) Biden’s anti-fossil fuel policies combined with 2) excessive fiscal (Biden and Congress) and excessive monetary stimulus (Fed)? The Fed held its behind-closed-doors meeting on Monday, but nothing has been released about what they discussed. Suffice it to say, they have left the staggering monetary stimulus in play. I wonder if The Fed is concerned about a soft landing with proposed rate increases.

Washington (AFP) – The United States has urged its citizens to immediately leave Belarus, citing a buildup of Russian troops along the border with neighboring Ukraine. The travel advisory, issued Monday, came the same day that Washington announced it was closing its Kyiv embassy and relocating staff to the Ukrainian city of Lviv 335 miles (540 kilometers) away due to a "dramatic acceleration" in the buildup of Russian forces. “Due to an increase in unusual and concerning Russian military activity near the border with Ukraine, U.S. citizens located in or considering travel to Belarus should be aware that the situation...

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) continued to sound the alarm on special counsel John Durham filing a motion in federal court alleging that Hillary Clinton’s political allies paid a contractor to spy on Donald Trump as a sitting president and candidate. Jordan, who said the day before that the spying was “worse than we thought,” highlighted that Durham’s filing also shows the Democrats’ “number one election lawyer” was involved in spying on Trump. “What I do think is interesting is in that filing it talks about [Michael] Sussman who has been indicted and tech executive one speaking with another lawyer at...

Special Counsel John Durham's investigation isn't just imposing accountability for Hillary Clinton's 2016 political trick to dirty up Donald Trump with the FBI; it's also encroaching on the credibility of President Biden's current chief foreign policy adviser and point man for the current Russia-Ukraine crisis. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was a senior adviser to Clinton's 2016 campaign and, by his own admission, spread the word to reporters back then that Democrats believed Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin to hijack the election and had a secret computer channel to the Kremlin. Neither proved true. But long before that Russia...

As the 2022 midterm elections loom, Republicans appear to be in a solid position to win back the House and Senate and make gains in state legislatures across the country. But for Republicans to make the most of their opportunity, including laying the groundwork for actual, concrete legislative accomplishments and not just rhetoric, they would do well to harness genuine conservative principles, especially defense of free market values. A key pillar of a winning conservative platform is the notion that the government should have a limited and well-defined role in regulating business. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a backslide within some corners...

The Diocese of Phoenix said 'all of the baptisms he has performed until June 17, 2021, are presumed invalid'"The issue with using ‘We’ is that it is not the community that baptizes a person, rather, it is Christ, and Him alone, who presides at all of the sacraments, and so it is Christ Jesus who baptizes," Olmsted said.

Vice President Kamala Harris touts the Biden administration's efforts to get low-income Americans access to a $30 per month subsidy for broadband. .... The subsidy was made possible through the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill Congress passed last year. In remarks at the White House, Harris noted it was an important milestone as President Joe Biden and his administration work toward closing the digital divide and ensuring every American has access to high-speed affordable broadband service.

The Product Price Index (PPI) hit 9.7% in January. The expected number was 9.1%

Twitter has suspended the account of Angel Mom Sabine Durden Coulter, whose son Dominic Durden was killed by a twice-convicted illegal alien. Coulter had been a vocal online advocate for the American victims of illegal alien crimes as her son was killed in 2012 by illegal alien Juan Zacarias Tzun — a twice-convicted drunk driver whom sanctuary state California officials failed to deport from the United States. After spending less than 90 days in jail for killing Dominic Durden, Tzun was turned over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and deported to his native Guatemala. Since her son’s...

Russia pulls some troops back from Ukraine border, slams invasion reports Russia said Tuesday it is pulling back some of its troops from Ukraine’s borders as it slammed reports of an invasion as “ostentatious hysteria” by the West. “We’ve always said the troops will return to their bases after the exercises are over. This is the case this time as well,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, according to Reuters. However, it was unclear how many units were being withdrawn after a build-up of an estimated 130,000 Russian troops to the north, east and south of Ukraine. Peskov also accused the...

In doing research for my forthcoming book The Silencing of the Lambs: The Ominous Rise of Cancel Culture and How We Overcome It (due out March 1), I compiled a list of secular voices speaking out against cancel culture. In other words, this was not just a matter of Christian conservatives speaking up. This was a matter of people with very different worldviews and convictions speaking up as well. Among those quoted in The Silencing of the Lambs were Bill Maher, an outspoken, liberal atheist; Barri Weiss, former New York Times journalist and herself a lesbian feminist; Sarah Silverman, an...

VIDEO at link..................... Russian troops have completed their training drills in Belarus, close to neighboring Ukraine, and will begin returning to their places of regular deployment, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow has announced amid fears in the West that the exercises could have been a precursor to an invasion. Major General Igor Konashenkov, the chief spokesperson for the ministry, delivered the news in a. “As the forces complete their military exercises, they will, as always, complete a multimodal march back to their permanent bases. The divisions of the South and West Military Districts have finished their tasks and have...

Biden's decision — reportedly coordinated with Turkey but reached without consulting Israel, Greece or Cyprus, the main countries involved in the project — undercuts three of the strongest American allies in the Mediterranean region.EastMed's cancellation — variously described as a "disastrous decision," a "strategic mistake" and an act of "appeasement" of Erdoğan — represents a major geopolitical victory for the Turkish strongman.The EastMed pipeline has been in the works for more than a decade. The Israel-Greece-Cyprus project — joined by Bulgaria, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia — has long been seen as a way to diversify natural gas supplies...

The masks are coming off in Washington, D.C. - for most anyway. According to Mayor Muriel Bowser, beginning March 1, masks will no longer be required for indoor settings, such as restaurant and bars, gyms, entertainment venues, businesses, some government buildings, and houses of worship. While that’s welcome news to many in the district, there are still several areas where Bowswer is keeping her mask mandate in place, including schools and childcare facilities, healthcare settings, and public transit. The announcement comes as cases in D.C., driven largely by the Omicron variant, have dropped by more than 90 percent. Bowser’s order...

Four Senate Republicans bailed out Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Monday by voting to advance the nomination of Dr. Robert Califf as the head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Senate voted to invoke cloture, or limit debate, to advance the confirmation of the head of the FDA for a second time. The chamber invoked cloture 49-45 after Republicans gave Democrats enough votes to advance the Biden nominee’s confirmation. Sens. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Mitt Romney (R-UT) voted in favor of advancing Califf’s nomination. Califf’s nomination was controversial enough for...