Free Republic

The more than $40 billion in additional aid to Ukraine approved by Congress on Thursday brings the total U.S. commitment during the Russian invasion to roughly $54 billion, when combined with the aid package passed in March..[which] includes money for logistical support and training for Ukrainian military and national security forces, and for a fund intended to secure the continuity of Ukraine’s government... Forty percent of the aid has been directed to weapons transfers, to provide medical and intelligence support to allied countries in Europe, and to deploy troops there. The bill passed Thursday allows President Biden to authorize the...

A consumer is suing candy maker Mars, alleging Skittles contain a "known toxin" that makes the rainbow candies "unfit for human consumption." In a lawsuit seeking class-action status filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Thursday, attorneys for San Leandro resident Jenile Thames said that Skittles were unsafe for consumers because they contain "heightened levels" of titanium dioxide. Mars Inc. uses titanium dioxide to produce Skittles' well-known array of artificial colors. In 2016, the candy maker publicly shared its intention to remove titanium dioxide from its products in the coming years, the Thursday complaint noted...

The story was a perfect liberal talking point. Just days after Roe v. Wade was overturned, news media breathlessly reported that a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio was forced to leave the state to seek an abortion. It was catnip for MSNBC Boomers and liberal white women. The story spread like wildfire; Joe Biden referenced the case in public remarks, asking Americans to “imagine being that little girl.” I myself even overheard one large middle-aged woman loudly yelling about the case while on speakerphone here in rural Hillsdale, Michigan. But the actual initial reports about the case were so extreme...

Leaked audio from 2016 shows then-Vice President Joe Biden threatening former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko with assassination should he cooperate with the incoming Trump administration. A One America News Network (OAN) report of a phone call recorded on November 16, 2016 – two weeks after Donald Trump’s shock electoral victory against Hillary Clinton – revealing Biden’s voice warning Poroshenko about working with Trump began circulating social media on Wednesday. “This is getting very, very close to what I don’t want to have happen. I don’t want Trump to get in a position where he thinks he’s about to buy onto...

18 July 2022Monday of week 16 in Ordinary Time Sanctuary of St. Jadwiga, Trzebnica, Poland Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green. Year: C(II).First readingMicah 6:1-4,6-8 ©The Lord asks only this: to act justly, to love tenderly, to walk humblyListen to what the Lord is saying:Stand up and let the case begin in the hearing of the mountains and let the hills hear what you say.Listen, you mountains, to the Lord’s accusation, give ear, you foundations of the earth,for the Lord is accusing his people, pleading against Israel:My people, what have I done to you, how have I been a burden to...

“Jesus said to him, ‘I will come and heal him.’ But the centurion said, ‘Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed.’ . . . Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, ‘Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel’” (Matthew 8:7–8, 10). The centurion here—an officer in charge of a hundred soldiers—was undoubtedly a God-fearing Gentile. Jesus knew his heart and did not need to hear a direct request...

Before the confrontation between Elijah and the false prophets took place on the top of Mount Carmel, the Lord gave Elijah specific instructions… He had just declared that there would be no rain for the next few years, and now he heard God telling him, “Go to this brook and camp out there. Birds are going to come and feed you” (see 1 Kings 17:1-4). How many of us would rather come up with a plan that sounds a bit more logical? Yet at these very moments we must remember that God’s ways are not our ways; his thoughts are...

Prepare to vote! In addition to voting for Trump-endorsed Dan Cox, below is a link to a list of vulnerable incumbents. Help an incumbent out the door tomorrow if you live in Maryland!

Nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushed to a mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school, but “egregiously poor decision-making” resulted in more than an hour of chaos before the gunman who took 21 lives was finally confronted and killed, according to a damning investigative report. The nearly 80-page report was the first to criticize both state and federal law enforcement, and not just local authorities in the South Texas town for the bewildering inaction by heavily armed officer “Law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own...

The latest cause celebre for leftists in Minnesota is the case of Tekle Sundberg. Sundberg tried to murder a young woman, Cassandra Yarbrough, whom he apparently did not know. Police were called, Sundberg fired repeatedly from within an apartment, there was a standoff that lasted for hours, officers tried to negotiate with Sundberg and brought in family members to try to persuade him to surrender. Under circumstances that are not yet clear, officers eventually shot and killed Sundberg. My colleague David Zimmer, a veteran of 37 years in law enforcement, has a sober and unbiased review of the facts as...

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The Biden regime is decoupled from both the past and reality, and quite capable of destroying Americans’ lives as they have known them. There used to be an agreed-on body of wisdom, which both Left and Right, Republicans and Democrats, generally accepted. Heated arguments and invective centered on implementations and methods of solving problems, which at least both sides agreed were problems. Both ideologies accepted a common core of wisdom, despite their radical differences in interpreting it. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and especially Biden’s strange cabinet of loud Jacobin amateurs, reject the very hallowed knowledge upon which civilization is based....

The chances that Biden could attract a primary challenger are rising amid devastating polling numbers with Democrats and particularly young voters. His loyalists have defended him against the increasingly negative headlines. They say he stepped into a mess made by former President Trump and that some of the lawmakers in Congress who were supposed to help him turn things around have been difficult and disappointing. But that willingness to prop up the sinking president has been wearing thin. Day by day, Democrats are considering a possible new scenario: challenging the sitting president for the 2024 nomination. “Unless Biden comes to...

Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator for President Trump, launched her book about her one-person attack on our form of government and our economy under the guise of saving us from the Wuhan virus. Though it has been out for a couple of months, it is only now attracting the attention it deserves. The book is called Silent Invasion and, to quote Michael Senger, “reads like a how-to guide in subverting a democratic superpower from within, as could only be told through the personal account of someone who was on the front lines doing just that.” (snip) The...

The Supreme Court’s West Virginia v. EPA decision a couple of weeks ago has brought forth a big wave of hand wringing in the precincts of the left. How oh how are we now going to save the planet, if our friends at the EPA can no longer order up a nation-wide energy system transformation on their own authority? A couple of examples of the genre come from Ron Brownstein in the Atlantic, and from Coral Davenport in the New York Times, both from Friday July 15. The funny thing about these pieces, and many others like them, is that...

On June 25th, 2022, the gun control compromise was placed into law. The legislation was initiated in the Senate and passed so fast it was unlikely to have been read by most of the representatives and senators voting for it. It will likely be years before all the changes made in the bill are understood in their effect on the administration of firearms law in the United States. One of the ways the bill was sold was by claiming it calls for “clarifying the definition of federally licensed firearms dealer“.The objective has not been achieved. The bill changed the definition...

From a Wall Street Journal story by Ben Cohen headlined “The Secrets of America’s Greatest High School Math Team”: It was a sticky Thursday afternoon in the middle of summer break when dozens of teenagers walked through the doors of their high school. One of the world’s most dominant teams was about to start math practice. There was probability in one classroom and pre-algebra next door, code-breaking down the hall and number theory around the corner. And there were few adults to be found anywhere. The students would spend the rest of the day teaching each other. I had also...

A damning Texas probe into the Uvalde school massacre reveals in excruciating detail how easily and quickly the killer amassed his ammo and weapons. Fiend Salvador Ramos had tried to convince kin to buy him weapons before he legally turned 18 on May 16, to no avail. So he busied himself purchasing firearms accessories about three months before — “including 60 30-round magazines, a holographic weapon sight, and a Hellfire Gen 2 snap-on trigger system” — and on his 18th birthday, began stockpiling the other crucial elements to his slaughter, the report found. That day — a week before he...

After shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline and issuing 30-some regulations to halt domestic energy production, Joe Biden went to Saudi Arabia, hat in hand, to beg the Arab sheiks to pump more oil for him. Result? They laughed him out of the park. According to this scathing report just out from Reuters: JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, July 16 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden told Arab leaders on Saturday that the United States would remain an active partner in the Middle East, but he failed to secure commitments to a regional security axis that would include Israel or an immediate oil...

@AnthonySabatini: Proud to be endorsed by Senator Rand Paul