Free Republic

Some things in life are hard to understand and explain. The theory of relativity, for example, or the origins of black holes. Other things are easy to grasp, however. Such as: California’s wildfire woes. In the past five years summer and fall firestorms have killed dozens of people, wiped out homes, businesses and entire communities, torched millions of acres of forestlands, caused billions in property losses, and swept away untold numbers of animals and wildlife. The cause of all this wreckage is easy to pinpoint. It’s simple as two words: spotted owl.

Nearly 130,000 migrant children entered the U.S. government's shelter system in fiscal year 2022, an all-time high driven by record arrivals of unaccompanied minors along the southern border, according to internal federal figures obtained by CBS News. The tally surpassed the 122,000 unaccompanied minors that federal shelters received in fiscal year 2021, when the Biden administration found itself unprepared for a sudden, sharp increase in child migration that led to severe overcrowding in border facilities, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data show. The record number of unaccompanied minors processed by federal immigration officials over the past 12...

LONDON — British Prime Minister Liz Truss has fired her finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, as she fights to hang on as prime minister after her budget crashed the markets. Truss will give a press conference later Friday, amid reports of another imminent U-turn on significant parts of her plan to cut taxes. Downing Street announced Jeremy Hunt, who has previously served as health secretary and foreign secretary, would replace Kwarteng as chancellor. Despite several attempts to calm the markets, including reversing a plan to cut tax for the highest earners and bringing forward a more detailed budget statement, Truss has...

Republican candidate Christine Drazan now leads in the Oregon gubernatorial race by a margin of 6%, per a new opinion poll by Clout Research released on Thursday. The poll showed Drazan gaining 44% of the vote to the Democratic candidate Tina Kotek’s 38%. Meanwhile, independent candidate Betsy Johnson is garnering 11% support among respondents. Drazan’s lead in Oregon, a heavily Democratic state that hasn’t voted for a GOP presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984, comes as a significant surprise. Drazan, a former State Representative, has run a largely conservative campaign, focusing on the cost of living and ending homelessness...

A freshman football player, who had no prior issues, suffered a cardiac arrest and collapses during practice on Wednesday at Benedictine Military School in Savannah, Georgia. Head athletic trainer Jack Holland said the freshman, who was not named by the school in accordance with HIPAA regulations, was unable to breathe on his own for 38 minutes and was shocked three times by an automatic external defibrillator (AED) in an effort to revive him, Savannah Now reported. According to Benedictine’s head coach, Danny Britt, the athlete is in the intensive care unit of a local hospital and has begun responding to...

Nearly three-fourths of Portland voters believe their city is on the wrong track, according to a new poll commissioned by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Only 13% of Portland voters said the city is headed in the right direction, according to the poll of 600 people conducted by DHM Research from Oct. 5 through Monday. Residents in the three-county metro area who live outside of Portland were even more sour. Fully 84% said things in the Portland area are on the wrong track, while only 9% said they are headed in the right direction. Southeast Portland resident Kierstin Buchner, who was among the...

Democratic Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin was secretly caught dressing down her own hand-picked moderator for not asking questions about abortion in an Oct. 6 debate, to the point that the local reporter was reduced to apologizing to the representative. Slotkin, who is running against Republican state Sen. Tom Barrett, cornered Tim Skubick of WLNS after their debate to remind him that she “chose” him to host the forum. A recording of the encounter, obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller, provides a window into the Democratic Party’s desire to frame the midterm elections as a referendum on abortion. One of the...

The House Speaker said she would happily go to jail if it meant punching the former president for trespassing on Capitol Hill

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – If you didn’t know who Tudor Dixon was before Thursday night, you know her now. The GOP gubernatorial candidate took the debate stage at WOOD-TV8 in Grand Rapids on Thursday night with impressive gusto. She appeared smart, calm, and well-versed in the issues in the first of two debates this election season. Nothing seemed to rattle Dixon. For Democratic incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, things appeared to reflect a different story. The governor, who is used to controlling press conferences virtually and surrounding herself with people who prop up her own political beliefs, appeared...

The Bible In Paintings 2 ENCOURAGEMENT FOR APPRECIATING AND APPLYING GOD'S WORD IT’S A BOY! L U K E CHAPTER 2 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with...

TULSA, Okla. — Tulsa Police arrested a man for choking a hospital worker on Tuesday. The arrest came after Armando Villegas choked the Saint Francis worker until she was unconscious, according to police. “It’s a dangerous thing,” Tulsa Police Officer Danny Bean told FOX23. “He was able to choke her unconscious.” Villegas is charged for attacking the hospital worker, but police said the case started earlier that day. Police got a call from Jackie Cooper Mercedes Tuesday, and officers responded to reports that a man came into the dealership and tried to put a customer in a chokehold. Police arrived...

PayPal is reportedly bribing $15 worth of vouchers to account holders to prevent them from canceling their accounts, that only tells you how bad the situation is.The Gateway Pundit reported that PayPal will begin fining users $2,500 directly from their accounts if they are found to be spreading “misinformation” in its newly updated policy.

President Biden took office with grand plans to launch the first-ever Civilian Climate Corps, a federally funded initiative aimed at employing tens of thousands of young people to fight climate change. But those plans face an uncertain path forward on Capitol Hill after the program was dropped from Democrats' landmark climate bill this summer. Regardless of the gridlock in Washington, states across the country have already launched similar programs to hire young people to tackle climate issues within their borders. These state programs could eventually provide a powerful model for a Civilian Climate Corps at the federal level, advocates say....

We all expected the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would drop an October surprise–but most of us suspected a partisan-tinged election-eve report warning about those insurrectionist Republicans (hint, hint, keep Democrats in majority). Instead, we get a nice headline-grabbing subpoena of President Donald Trump that will never be enforced. The subpoena prompted a predictable tirade from the 45th president. The headlines and the tirade both accomplish the underlying political goal of thrusting Trump into the news cycle as much as possible before the November midterm elections. Rep. Liz Cheney proposed the resolution (of course) to subpoena...

ODESSA, Texas (KOSA) - ECISD police arrested a 5th grader after making a threat to bring a gun to school. Students reported the threat on Thursday, and upon investigating it, ECISD police arrested the boy on the Class A Misdemeanor Charge of Threat of Exhibition of Weapon on School Property or Bus. ECISD would like to reiterate that school and school district leaders will continue to treat any mention of school violence seriously, and will continue to charge students criminally as well as apply school discipline if threats like this are made.

Questions about the role of the FBI and other prominent government agencies in the events of January 6, 2020 remain unanswered because they were not asked. The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol conducted its final televised performance on Thursday afternoon, an event dutifully carried live by every cable and broadcast news station. Representatives Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) now plan to exit stage left as their congressional careers come to an end—the former at the hands of disgruntled Wyoming Republican voters and the latter at the hands of gerrymandering Illinois...

Three people were killed and seven others were wounded by gunfire Thursday in Chicago. A man, 22, was killed during a home invasion in South Shore. He was in an apartment about 2 a.m. in the 2000 block of East 72nd Place when a man entered through a backdoor and began arguing with him, Chicago police said. The intruder fired and hit the man several times in the chest. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A man was found shot to death inside a home in Greater Grand Crossing on the South Side. He was found with a gunshot...

Pray For The Peace of JerusalemMatthew 6 Fasting 16 “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you._______________________________________________________New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®...

The jury in the Parkland school shooting case shocked many observers — and outraged the victims’ families — when they issued a recommendation of life in prison without the possibility of parole, forgoing the death penalty for the shooter who killed 17 people and wounded 17 more. A note from one of the jurors that was submitted to the judge reveals some of the tension behind the scenes in the deliberation room, including a denial that she made up her mind before the trial to oppose a death sentence. Nikolas Cruz was 19 years old on February 14, 2018 when...

I'm seeing a lot of folks on here commenting that Alex Jones deserves bad things "because he slandered those people". Clearly some Freepers (who should know better) are believing what they see on the news, and it would be a good idea to get some better info out there. I've got no experience of listening to AJ, but the railroading is obvious. I've only seen short clips from both trials, and it's clear to me (*not* an attorney) that those judges are biased and out of control. This isn't just about AJ- This is about our courts working properly. They...