Free Republic

Donald Trump - 53% Ron DeSantis - 23% Mike Pence - 7% Ted Cruz - 3% Nikki Haley - 2% Mitt Romney - 2% Liz Cheney - 2%

Russia said Thursday it was not close to a trade for the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner, just a day after the U.S. revealed it placed an offer on the table for her freedom. The U.S. initially proposed a prisoner exchange in June, offering to release notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout for Griner, according to CNN. While both sides have been in negotiations for months, Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, said little progress had been made, according to Reuters.

Bit by bit, year by year, America has put itself in the crosshairs of weapons of war, inviting carnage. In one tragedy after another, increasingly common military-style assault weapons are used to end the lives of unsuspecting innocents. Now, bit by bit, year by year, America must reverse course. We need not live in a nation where everyone at a church, theater, school, parade or other gathering fears they or their loves ones may be the next to die. It won’t be easy. Too many people own assault weapons. Too many businesses profit from selling them — more than $1...

WASHINGTON — A right-wing activist who spoke at Freedom Plaza on Jan. 5 and then joined the assault on the Capitol the next day provided information to the FBI about rally organizers and more than a dozen other members of the “Stop the Steal” movement as part of a plea deal to avoid a felony charge, according to court filings newly unsealed this week. At his sentencing hearing, assistant U.S. attorney Brittany Reed told a federal judge Straka’s conduct on Jan. 6 was “egregious” and, despite a cooperation agreement that got him out of a felony civil disorder charge, he...

153 ships stuck in queues off North American ports, up 66% from early June.. ... North American port congestion has just re-entered record territory. The offshore traffic jam is once again as bad as it’s ever been. In January and February, when North American congestion previously peaked, there were just under 150 container vessels waiting off the coastlines. Two-thirds were in the Los Angeles/Long Beach queue. As of Thursday morning, there were 153, the majority off East and Gulf Coast ports. Whereas the earlier West Coast pileup was centralized, highly publicized and relatively easy to track, today’s ship queue is...

Hollywood actor Johnny Depp has made about £3m in just a few hours through a sale of his debut art collection. Depp sold 780 prints through Castle Fine Art's 37 galleries, including in London's Covent Garden, within hours of announcing the sale on Instagram. The Friends And Heroes collection depicts people who have inspired him, including Rolling Stone Keith Richards and Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor. "I've always used art to express my feelings," the 59-year-old said. "My paintings surround my life, but I kept them to myself and limited myself. No one should ever limit themselves." The actor said he...

More than two months after the ongoing global monkeypox outbreak began, corporate media outlets are finally addressing the fact that gay men are most at risk of contracting the virus.Government agencies and healthcare authorities have already been prioritizing men who have sex with men in their monkeypox response. The U.S. allocated its first batch of vaccines to that group, and the World Health Organization (WHO) is recommending that gay men limit their number of partners to reduce risk. But some journalists were first preoccupied with addressing the “stigma” that could come from openly discussing that gay men are accountable for...

A week into Moscow's war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a gesture of solidarity with his soldiers at the front: injured men could claim compensation of three million roubles, equivalent to about $50,000 or the amount an average Russian worker would earn in four years. "It's our duty to support the families of our fallen and injured war comrades," said Putin when he announced it in early March. But with the numbers of wounded servicemen mounting, some of them are finding that Putin's gesture is not as generous as it initially seemed. Reuters has found that some injured...

More than 20 Republican attorneys general have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over the Department of Agriculture’s threat to withdraw funding from school meal assistance programs unless the schools submit to the regime’s “expansive and unlawful interpretation of federal antidiscrimination laws.” The lawsuit, led by Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery, was filed on Tuesday. The coalition of 22 State AGs claim that the federal government has adopted “a new and unlawful application of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County as it applies to antidiscrimination requirements.” In a statement Tuesday, Slatery said, “these transformative changes were...

Don’t drink and scoot! A Florida man was charged with DUI for allegedly zipping around on a motorized shopping cart while wasted in a Walmart, according to police. Aaron Gregory, 39, swerved through the store in Melbourne, ran into shelves and nearly mowed down customers on Sunday, WFTL reported, citing cops.

IPray For The Peace of JerusalemGenesis 48Manasseh and Ephraim 48 Some time later Joseph was told, “Your father is ill.” So he took his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim along with him. 2 When Jacob was told, “Your son Joseph has come to you,” Israel rallied his strength and sat up on the bed. 3 Jacob said to Joseph, “God Almighty[a] appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and there he blessed me 4 and said to me, ‘I am going to make you fruitful and increase your numbers. I will make you a community of peoples,...

If my posting has been a little light for the last month or so, it’s because I’ve been working on a big Report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation on the subject of energy storage as a means to back up electricity generation from wind and solar facilities. The Report is basically finished, and now going through an editing process. It will probably be published some time in September. In doing the research for the Report, I have had occasion to look carefully into the plans of many countries and U.S. states that claim to be the “leaders” in climate...

Portland Public Schools has launched a war against the “gender binary” and adopted a radical new curriculum teaching students to subvert the sexuality of “white colonizers” and begin exploring “the infinite gender spectrum.” -snip The lessons seek to turn the principles of academic queer theory into an identity-formation program for elementary school students; it has been adopted in many of the district's K-5 classrooms. -snip As the curriculum explains, “gender is colonized,” and Western societies have used language to erase alternative sexualities. “When white European people colonized different places, they brought their own ideas about gender and sexuality,” the curriculum...

On February 14, 2022, at about 9:45 p.m., in Houston, Texas, Tony Earls and his wife were robbed at an ATM machine. They were depositing money, from the inside of their car. The robber stuck a gun in their faces and took $20 and a check, their car keys and a wallet, according to KHOU.com:Surveillance video captured the armed robber approaching Tony Earls and his wife as they were depositing money into an ATM. He pointed a gun at the wife’s face and demanded money, their car keys and wallet, investigators said. Both Earls and his wife complied.As shown in...

Kramatorsk (Ukraine) (AFP) – The daily strikes on residential areas in eastern Ukraine have raised sensitive questions about military personnel deploying in civilian areas, as well as the activities of local informants. AFP has visited many villages and towns in the Donetsk region, which Russian troops are trying to capture, where civilian areas with no apparent military significance are regularly being attacked. In Pokrovsk, 85 kilometres (53 miles) to the south of Kramatorsk, the main city in the Ukrainian-held part of the region, a strike destroyed or damaged a dozen homes on a single street last week. There have been...

“And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing!’ He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?’” (Matthew 8:25–26). Sometimes God has to bring us to a point of desperate need before He can get us to turn to Him. That’s what happened to the disciples when the storm was about to swamp their boat. They had no other human solutions for their emergency and had to come to Jesus with their need. If He could cleanse lepers and heal every other sort of disease, maybe He could control...

... Japan became a financial hub for the church, which taught Japanese believers they needed to atone for their country's wartime occupation of Korea. "They allocate different roles to each country intentionally," said Hotaka Tsukada, an associate professor of the sociology of religion at Joetsu University of Education. "They have (sales) manuals to exploit believers," he told AFP. The church offered "spiritual sales" of exorbitantly priced goods including a 43-million-yen ($350,000) statuette, which Japanese believers were told would absolve them or their ancestors. Huge outlays by members led to a backlash. Japan's National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales says...

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A recent University of Chicago Institute of Politics poll showed that a majority of Americans think our government is corrupt and rigged against them. And almost a third of respondents also feel it may eventually be necessary to take up arms against the evil empire currently running the show. Subtract from that poll the bleeding-heart libs who think feelings matter more than facts, and the numbers are scarier still. Big Government, including their toadies in the mainstream media, has clearly blown its cover. And it appears, based on this poll, that the American people are mad as hell and not...

A deluge of outside PAC money is saturating two of Washington’s top congressional primaries, aimed at helping Republican Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse survive their votes to impeach then-President Donald Trump last year. More than $3.4 million — fueled in part by hidden donors — has been spent in the past few weeks backing the incumbents and targeting their Trump-endorsed challengers, Joe Kent and Loren Culp, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The cash influx comes at a high-stakes moment for Republicans, and the country, as voters choose whether to oust two representatives who broke with most of...