Free Republic

Congressional Democrats have yet another thing to worry about going into this year's midterm elections.A temporary pandemic relief program aimed at lowering healthcare premiums under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, is set to expire unless Democrats can revive a reconciliation bill that extends the financial assistance past the end of the year. And that means striking a deal with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).If they can't, roughly 13 million Americans will be hit with steep price hikes amid crippling inflation, in what Insider describes as a "time-bomb.""There's no denying that if they are not extended, then there...

A shocker. Ray Liotta, the terrific actor whose career breakout came in the Martin Scorsese crime classic Goodfellas, has died. Deadline hears he died in his sleep in the Dominican Republic, where he was shooting the film Dangerous Waters. We will have more details when they become available. Liotta was 67 years old and leaves behind a daughter, Karsen. He was engaged to be married to Jacy Nittolo.

This film is a trifecta of graphic, creepy, and cheesy — but the worst part is how deftly it opens the door to a left-wing dimension.Witchcraft, torture, dead bodies walking, demon possessions — all horror trademarks you do not expect to see while watching a Marvel film. The May blockbuster, “Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” discontinued Marvel’s legacy of (decently) family-friendly entertainment in one rather grisly swoop. With this high-grossing sequel, Marvel traded a heroic superhero flick for a horror hybrid packaged in quality CGI but tacky morals and a woke aftertaste.In the three weeks since its release,...

Even if you think children should be able to pause puberty and take hormones, shouldn’t you at least want to make sure the drugs are safe?“Don’t do it,” yelled Dr. Anthony Fauci in August. “There is no evidence whatsoever that that works!” Fauci, of course, was referring to the use of ivermectin to treat Covid-19. For the moment, set aside that Fauci should have been fired years ago and has a long record of misleading and politicizing “science.” He and pretty much everyone else in America’s public health infrastructure pointed out that ivermectin had not been approved for treating Covid...

The Biden administration’s attempt to usurp Congress’s public health authority by rewriting international law may have just encountered an untimely grave. The Biden administration submitted a number of amendments for consideration at the World Health Assembly which would bolster the World Health Organization (WHO) Director General’s pandemic authority without the consent of member states. The World Health Assembly is the WHO’s decision-making body and is meeting in Geneva this week, but “the most interesting thing that happened did not happen at the assembly itself,” said Michael Alexander, co-chair of the Law and Activism Committee of the World Council for Health.“A...

The Indiana legislature has overridden Gov. Eric Holcomb’s veto of a bill banning biological males from participating in sports reserved for female student-athletes, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union to file a lawsuit seeking to block the legislation from taking effect. On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Indiana legislature overrode Holcomb’s veto of House Enrolled Act 1041. The bill proclaims that biologically male students who identify as females “may not participate on an athletic team or sport designated under this section as being a female, women’s, or girls’ athletic team or sport.”The Indiana House of Representatives overrode the veto in a 67-28...

Former President Donald Trump must answer questions under oath in New York state’s civil investigation into his business practices, a state appeals court ruled Thursday. A four-judge panel in the appellate division of the state’s trial court upheld Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 17 ruling enforcing subpoenas for Trump and his two eldest children to give deposition testimony in Attorney General Letitia James’ probe. Trump had appealed, seeking to overturn the ruling. His lawyers argued that ordering the Trumps to testify violated their constitutional rights because their answers could be used in a parallel criminal investigation. “The existence of a...

In a campaign ad announcing her bid for re-election, Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski branded her opposition from the right as an effort among D.C. partisans to buy the state’s Senate seat. “In this election, Lower 48 outsiders are going to try to grab Alaska’s Senate seat for their partisan agendas,” Murkowski said. “They don’t understand our state, and frankly, they couldn’t care less about your future.” An honest examination of the incumbent’s finances seven months into the race, however, reveals that, if anyone’s, it’s Murkowski whose loyalty is being purchased. According to public campaign finance data compiled by OpenSecrets,...

LONDON (AP) — British prosecutors said Thursday they have charged actor Kevin Spacey with four counts of sexual assault against three men.

I bet Don Lemon only prays when there is a mass shooting. “Please, God, let the gunman be white.” The lefty sitzpinkler at CNN came up with snake eyes yesterday because the shooter is Hispanic. That changes the narrative for the left. Here is their playbook: When the shooter is white, the problem is “white supremacy.” White people are evil and here is the proof.When the shooter is a minority, blame easy access to guns, usually by attacking the NRA, which is run by “selfish, conservative, white, gun nuts.” The race of the shooter has nothing to do with it....

Last October, a conscientious whistleblower at Abbott Nutrition wrote a letter directly to the interim chief of the FDA, acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock, and others. He claimed there were serious problems at the company’s Sturgis, Mich. plant.But the current head of the agency, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, will testify before a congressional committee today that the top levels of the agency weren’t aware of the whistleblower’s report because of “mailroom issues.”Dozens of infants are currently being hospitalized because the specialty formula they depend on to survive is out of stock.And the FDA had “mailroom issues.”Politico:Up until now, however, FDA officials...

Energoatom, the operator of Ukraine's nuclear power plants, has denied a report from IAEA head Rafael Grossi that there are stocks of 30,000 kg of plutonium and 40,000 kg of enriched uranium at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is controlled by Russian forces. At a discussion on nuclear safety at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Grossi voiced concerns about the Zaporizhzhia NPP having such nuclear materials and said this was grounds for a visit to the plant by IAEA officials as soon as possible. Grossi said the IAEA is seeking to visit the Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear...

A year ago this month, a comparison of military recruitment ads from China, Russia and the U.S. went viral on social media. Our foreign competitors wooed their potential enlistees with muscular appeals to national pride and protection of the traditional nuclear family. A U.S. Army promotional campaign, by contrast, featured a pastel-hued cartoon depiction of a female soldier named “Emma” who marched in a gay pride parade with her two mothers and became a soldier to “shatter some stereotypes.” Wokeness is a terminal cancer in our armed forces, eroding the foundational bones of its honor-bound institutions and ravaging the core...

The 13-year-old boy allegedly told a school bus driver numerous times that he was planning to "shoot up" Prescott Mile High Middle School, deputies said. PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office (YCSO) deputies arrested a 13-year-old boy on May 17 after he allegedly made several threats to shoot up a Prescott school. The boy, who has yet to be identified by police, repeatedly told a bus driver that he was planning to "shoot up" Prescott Mile High Middle School, deputies said. The bus driver reported it to school administrators, who then notified the teen's mother and YCSO.

President Joe Biden suggested Thursday that Americans were purchasing guns like AR-15s for the sake of killing people. “What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for except to kill someone?” he asked during his speech reacting to the school shooting in Texas.

Billions of years ago, a river flowed across this scene in a Mars valley called Mawrth Vallis. A new study examines the tracks of Martian rivers to see what they can reveal about the history of the planet’s water and atmosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL Caltech/University of Arizona Mars once ran red with rivers. The telltale tracks of past rivers, streams and lakes are visible today all over the planet. But about three billion years ago, they all dried up—and no one knows why. "People have put forward different ideas, but we're not sure what caused the climate to change so dramatically,"...

Former White House national security official Kash Patel said Thursday that the only tactic the defense had left in the Michael Sussmann trial was “jury nullification,” in which they would urge the jury to look past the evidence presented. Patel spoke to Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM Patriot 125, one day after the prosecution rested its case. The final piece of evidence was the interview that Patel himself had conducted with Sussmann four years ago, when he was helping then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) run an investigation into “Russia collusion” on the House Intelligence Committee....

Klaus Schwab is the head of the World Economic Forum; he founded the organization in 1971. Each year, the WEF hosts a massive conference in Davos, Switzerland, with thousands of world leaders, diplomats and experts on various topics gathering to trade ideas about how best to cooperatively run the world. Lest this characterization be seen as overstating the case, Schwab himself said as much this year in opening the conference: “The future is not just happening. The future is built by us, by a powerful community as you here in this room. We have the means to improve the state...

Perched in a helicopter some 650 feet up, scientists used light-based remote sensing technology (lidar) to digitally deforest the canopy and identify the ancient ruins of a vast urban settlement around Llanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amazon that was abandoned some 600 years ago. The new images reveal, in detail, a stronghold of the socially complex Casarabe Culture (500-1400 C.E.) with urban centers boasting monumental platform and pyramid architecture. Raised causeways connected a constellation of suburban-like settlements, which stretched for miles across a landscape that was shaped by a massive water control and distribution system with reservoirs and canals....

Colin Kaepernick has his best chance of returning to the NFL since his protest against social injustice effectively exiled him from the league, according to ESPN.