Free Republic

Oliver Darcy had a sad announcement about CNN’s future. It involved a boatload of pink slips. Maybe if they hadn’t been so indifferent to the lives destroyed by shutdowns, people would be more sympathetic. You remember Oliver, don’t you? He and Brian Stelter were tip-of-the-spear in the Cancel Culture game and may have been the ones who personally kicked the deplatforming game into high gear by having Twitter put a hit out on someone who got an army of meme-lords to mock CNN’s remaining credibility into oblivion. ClashDaily covered THAT story long before nuking accounts from orbit had become an...

Elon Musk’s noble crusade to restore free speech to the global public square has so far been everything patriots dared hope for: a declaration of war against our corrupt regime and the censorship required to sustain it. So far Elon has met and exceeded our expectations, having restored President Trump, announced a “general amnesty for banned accounts,” and done away with the site’s old Orwellian Covid “misinformation” policy. We predicted in a now-classic piece (which Elon read) that the Regime would respond ruthlessly to such a provocation. Real free speech is simply too dangerous to be allowed, and any effort...

First Week of Advent Matthew 9:27–31 Friends, today in our Gospel, two blind men beg Jesus to heal them.Blindness in the Bible is very often a symbol of spiritual blindness: the incapacity to see what truly matters. Focused on the worldly goods of wealth, pleasure, power, and honor, most people don’t see how blind they are to the truly important things: giving oneself to the grace of God and living a life of love. If you have not surrendered to the grace of God, you are blind. How wonderful it is, then, that these men in the Gospel can cry...

The CDC took nearly two years to formally recognize distinctions between masks for mitigating COVID-19 spread, finally saying in January that cloth masks offer "the least" protection and N95 respirators, which meet strict federal standards, "the highest." The agency's slight nod to the largely symbolic value of cloth masks, predominantly worn in school settings, followed months of calls by onetime White House COVID advisers, among others, to promote masks actually designed to stop aerosolized transmission. It also spurred a run on N95s, sending prices skyward. But a new peer-reviewed, randomized controlled trial (RCT) of N95s versus surgical masks, considered the...

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) joined Jesse Watters on Thursday night to discuss the arrogant and misguided Dr. Fauci. Rand Paul, a medical doctor and US Senator, has never hesitated to call out Dr. Fauci on his numerous lies and dangerous policies. On Thursday Senator Paul weighed in on Dr. Fauci’s exit tour. Senator Rand Paul: There is no public figure or public health figure who has made a greater error in judgment than Dr. Fauci. The error in judgment was to fund gain of function rsearch in a totalitarian country. Fund research that allowed them to create super viruses that...

A missionary carrying a cross on his shoulder was arrested for getting into a fistfight with a Montana motorist after walking 5,000 miles across America. Jesse Michael Boyd, 46, was with his two children and two other missionaries, 27-year-old Eric Trent and 20-year-old Cater Phillips, when the group got into a scuffle with a man in Cameron, Montana, on November 12 that led the missionary to pull out a gun. The group had been on a journey from North Carolina to walk and drive to the Pacific Ocean to pass out a gospel-related book through Full Proof Gospel Ministries. They...

The New Georgia Project had $11 million in its investment account in August when it set out to pay $2.45 million in cash for a sprawling Atlanta compound. Less than two months later, the organization dismissed half its leadership staff, citing a lack of funds. A series of internal documents and correspondences obtained by the Washington Free Beacon reveals the bizarre circumstances surrounding the real estate deal, which several parties close to the matter say are indicative of a leadership crisis within the Stacey Abrams-founded group. The deal was spearheaded by Erin Ferguson, a junior New Georgia Project staffer who...

Democrat Raphael Warnock has a slight edge in the Georgia runoff race, where he will, again, face off against Republican Herschel Walker, a SurveyUSA poll released this week found. The survey, taken days ahead of the December 6 runoff race in the Peach State, shows Warnock leading Walker with 50 percent support to the Republican’s 46 percent and another four percent of voters remaining undecided. However, Walker moves toward closing the gap when undecideds are asked to choose who they lean toward, reducing Warnock’s lead to three points, or 50 percent to Walker’s 47 percent: Georgia Senate Runoff: Warnock (D-inc)...

Here we go again. Los Angeles County is set to reinstate indoor-mask mandates as local COVID-19 infections and related hospital admissions continue to surge. “There is this common line of thinking that the pandemic is over and COVID is no longer of concern, but these numbers clearly demonstrate that COVID is still with us,” County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said at a press conference Thursday. The county now averages more than 2,700 new COVID infections per day, up 180% since Nov. 1. Virus-related hospital admissions are now at 192 per day, a 200% increase from the same date, she...

The U.S. ambassador to Lebanon is facing criticism within the State Department for wearing a hijab earlier this month during meetings with pro-Hezbollah officials at a time when Iranian protesters are rallying against such draconian religious displays. Dorothy Shea, who has served as the top U.S. diplomat in Lebanon since 2020, was recently pictured in regional media outlets meeting with Lebanon’s Higher Shiite Islamic Council, a religious body that experts view as allied with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terror group that wages outsized political influence in Lebanon. One senior diplomatic source told the Washington Free Beacon the gesture undermines U.S. efforts...

Reverse Mortgage Funding has filed for bankruptcy. The voluntary petition was registered with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware earlier this week. The Starwood Capital-backed company listed assets and liabilities of approximately $10 billion each in the Chapter 11 filing. The bankruptcy classification will allow the firm to continue operating while they work on a plan to repay creditors. Speaking about the mortgage firm's bankruptcy filing, a representative for Starwood said the decision to file for Chapter 11 protection is necessary and appropriate for RMIT given the adverse trends in the mortgage industry. "We will continue to...

(NEXSTAR) – One week after the Thanksgiving holiday, and chances are good that you are sniffling, coughing or feeling a little scratch in your throat. It’s not just you – the country is contending with a “tripledemic” of viruses (not to mention, a whole lot of common cold). As of late November, reported COVID-19 cases in the U.S. were stable, but high. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded about 300,000 new cases over the past week, but that number is likely an undercount, as home tests often aren’t reported to public health agencies. Meanwhile, influenza is rising rapidly...

They say “Follow The Money”. So we did, and found a massive number of “Campaign Finance Mules” making hundreds, even thousands of donations per year. NBC recently reported on the donations received in the Georgia runoff for Senator. Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock raised $52.2 million for his re-election between Oct. 20 through Nov. 16, more than doubling the fundraising total of his opponent, Republican Herschel Walker. Warnock, the top fundraising federal candidate of the 2022 election cycle by a long-shot, spent $39.2 million over the same period, which almost doubled Walker’s spend too. The incumbent closed the period with...

The US labor force participation rate fell for a third straight month in November, underscoring businesses’ ongoing struggle to find enough workers. The share of Americans either working or actively looking for a job fell to 62.1%, according to government data released Friday. The rate had risen to 62.4% in August, matching a post-pandemic high reached in March, but remains significantly below where it was before the pandemic. “We got no help from the participation rate, which continues to move in the wrong direction and will keep competition for labor high until the economy inevitably rolls over sometime next year,”...

The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the government will draw up a law banning churches affiliated with Russia, saying the move is necessary to prevent Moscow being able to "weaken Ukraine from within." The National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, which groups top security, military and political figures, told the government to draft the law following a series of raids on parishes that Kyiv says could be taking orders from Moscow. ...

WASHINGTON — President Biden signed legislation Friday forcing railway unions to accept a labor agreement despite worker objections to a lack of paid sick days — hours before hobnobbing with visiting British royals. Biden regularly calls himself the “most pro-union president” in history but asked Congress to intervene Monday, saying the US economy could not bear a railway shutdown. The president will meet Friday afternoon in Boston with Prince William, the heir to the UK crown, and his wife Kate Middleton — creating awkward optics after the president also hosted billionaires and Hollywood stars Thursday night for a lux state...

The future of a program aimed at helping formerly incarcerated Chicago residents hangs in the balance after the company that was supposed to pay for it, cryptocurrency giant FTX, has imploded amid accusations of fraud before paying most of its promised $1 million grant. FTX’s participation was announced by Mayor Lori Lightfoot in May, when the cryptocurrency exchange moved its U.S. headquarters to Fulton Market. Brett Harrison, the now-former president of FTX US, pledged that the company would give at least $1 million to help expand a universal basic income program run by the not-for-profit organization Equity and Transformation. The...

Hunter Biden, under investigation for tax fraud and gun-related violations, attended the state dinner at the White House on Thursday with more than 300 influential guests celebrities, foreign dignitaries, and politicians. The dinner was hosted by President Joe Biden in honor of French President Emmanuel Macron. Why Hunter appeared at the dinner is unknown. He does not officially work in his father’s administration or hold elected office, nor is he known to have any business dealings with the French government, as he has conducted with the Chinese, Ukrainian, West African nations, and South America governments.

On Saturday the U.S. Men’s National Team plays the Netherlands in the “knockout stage” of the World Cup, with at stake the opportunity to become one of the elite eight of global soccer. Conservative commentator Matt Walsh, who has dubbed soccer “communist,” is not as impressed with the USMNT’s play as he is with their crappy prowess at dealmaking.

A physics teacher in Scotland has resigned after students discovered her racy images on OnlyFans – a side hustle she said she needed so she could raise cash for her sick son. Kirsty Buchan, 33, of Coatbridge, quit her job at Bannerman High School this week after her X-rated content was uncovered, but defended her after-hours gig on the adult site. She told the Daily Record that her 11-year-old son is waiting for an operation after he developed a serious stomach ailment. “Some people are saying I must be mad to go from being a physics teacher to selling nude...