Free Republic

A key construction project of the China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline was completed on Saturday. It will allow Russian gas to cross the Yangtze River to reach Shanghai, laying the foundation for the full completion of the landmark China-Russia energy cooperation project. The under-river tunnel across the Yangtze River, a key control project of the pipeline, was completed after 28 months of construction, according to PipeChina. The tunnel has a length of 10.226 kilometers and is designed with three natural gas pipelines with a diameter of 1,422 millimeters each, according to media reports. By adopting environmental protection measures such as...

Embattled IL GOP chair Don Tracy is using the few allies he has left to fight back against the tsunami wave of support from the grassroots, who are calling for his resignation following embarrassing losses during the midterm election and new revelations that his family-owned business, Dot Foods, where he is an owner, donated to Joe Biden in 2020 during the height of the pandemic and lockdowns. As the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board pointed out in a Nov. 11 editorial, “Republicans lost every state constitutional office – governor, attorney general, secretary of state, comptroller and treasurer – and 14 of...

More than a decade ago, Florida voters approved a ban in the state’s Constitution on same-sex marriages, ratifying a declaration that marriage is only between a man and a woman. With the multitude of state and federal policies at play here, what does the state Constitution’s ban on same-sex marriages mean for the future?Given the messy political context, it’s hard to say exactly.During the 2008 general election, Florida voters were presented the proposed constitutional amendment to exclude same-sex couples from the definition of marriage under the law.As a refresher in Florida politics during that election cycle, that is the same...

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday morning took a victory lap after Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) won his runoff election, declaring the Supreme Court’s decision striking down abortion rights and the House Jan. 6 hearings were key factors in Democrats expanding their Senate majority. “It is a good morning, a great morning!” Schumer exulted at a press conference Wednesday, pointing out that this year was the first time since 1934 that the president’s party did not lose a single Senate incumbent in a midterm election.

C40 is a network of mayors of nearly 100 world-leading cities collaborating to deliver the World Economic Forum (WEF) plan to confront the grossly exaggerated climate crisis. Their social engineering plan is an authoritative “vision of climate action that is rooted in equity because we know that climate, social and economic justice can only be achieved together.” Equity and economic justice are Marxism, aka communism or the collective. You can go to this map to find the cities worldwide that are C40 cities. ARUP published a report outlining some of the transformative changes needed across the economy to reduce consumption-based...

His vision of victory now extends beyond the liberation of territory. In our interview on the way back from Kherson, Zelensky stressed that this year’s invasion is just the latest Russian attempt over the past century to subjugate Ukraine. His intention is to make it the last, even if it takes a lot more time and sacrifice. It is far too early to gauge whether that goal can be reached, Zelensky told me. “Later we will be judged,” he says. “I have not finished this great, important action for our country. Not yet.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) on Wednesday defended the GOP’s crop of midterm Senate nominees and pushed back on accusations that candidate quality was the reason for their downfall. Scott, who led the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, lamented the party’s losses following Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-Ga.) victory over Republican Herschel Walker in the Georgia runoff on Tuesday. The race handed Democrats a 51-49 majority, marking a net gain for the party in power.

Shares of Carvana plummeted by more than 40% in Wednesday morning trading after the embattled online used car retailer’s largest creditors signed a deal binding them to act together in negotiations with the company. The pact, as first reported by Bloomberg, includes creditors such as Apollo Global Management and Pacific Investment Management that hold around $4 billion of Carvana’s unsecured debt, or about 70% of the total outstanding. The agreement will last at least three months.

ABC legal analyst Sunny Hostin told her co-hosts Wednesday on “The View” that Republicans’ concerns about the number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border were “political theater.” Hostin said, “It’s just a lot of political theater I see coming from the Republicans. They’re trying to reframe the conversation as to what is important to Americans, how abortion isn’t important to Americans. I don’t know. It was important at the voter booth for them, you know, it’s inflation, inflation, inflation, the price of gas is sky-high.” She continued, “You know, you see these Republicans going to the border and then taking...

A cartel leader and hitman fond of videotaping torture sessions and decapitating his enemies has gone missing from a federal prison in Florida, where he was serving a 49-year sentence. As of November, Edgar Valdez-Villareal, a Mexican-American cartel leader, had been mysteriously removed from the federal Bureau of Prisons web site. He is now listed as “not in BOP custody” even though his release date is not until July 27, 2056. Valdez-Villareal, 49, is known by his underworld moniker “La Barbie,” and headed up the the Los Negros, an enforcement group of the Beltran Leyva cartel — one of Mexico’s...

Twitter set up a portal for government officials and “stakeholders” to submit posts that allegedly contained COVID-19 misinformation for Twitter to review, according to documents released by America First Legal (AFL) on Tuesday. Twitter officials used the portal to track online posts for review, and invited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials to enroll, according to documents AFL obtained through its litigation against the CDC. Twitter’s Todd O’Boyle enrolled the CDC’s Carol Crawford in the portal in May 2021 after she sent an email labeled “COVID Misinformation” with links to several Twitter posts who wrote about microchips and...

ROME — Pope Francis employed his strongest rhetoric to date Wednesday in condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine, tying it to the attempted extermination of the Jewish people during World War II. In a greeting to Polish pilgrims following his weekly General Audience, the pontiff recalled that last Monday, the Center for Catholic-Jewish Relations at the Catholic University of Lublin commemorated the anniversary of Operation Reinhardt, codename for the secret Nazi plan in 1941-1943 to annihilate Polish Jews in German-occupied Poland. “During the Second World War, it caused the extermination of almost two million victims, mainly of Jewish origin,” the pope...

Peru’s President Pedro Castillo announced on Wednesday that he will dissolve Congress temporarily and install an emergency government – hours before lawmakers were due to make an impeachment vote in congress. In a televised speech from the Presidential Palace on Wednesday, Castillo said he will call for early parliamentary elections to work on a new constitution. The embattled president, who has survived two impeachment attempts, also declared a national curfew from Wednesday from 10 p.m. local (5 p.m. ET) to 4 a.m. local. Congress appeared defiant however, beginning its session on Wednesday with lawmakers singing the national anthem. Francisco Morales,...

Ministers have given the green light to a new coal mine, in a move described as "absolutely indefensible" by Lord Deben, the chairman of the government's official climate advisers. Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove waved through the plans to build the new Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria. The decision has dismayed environmentalists, who say it will obliterate the UK's image as a climate leader. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, called it a "climate-busting, backward-looking, business-wrecking, stranded asset coal mine," when the country needed a "a clean, green industrial strategy fit for the future". Alok Sharma MP, who led the COP26...

The German government has ordered farmers to slash their fertilizer use to ensure that the state complies with the green agenda of world leaders and power elites. The move comes despite the growing energy and food shortage crisis in Europe and other Western nations. As Slay News reported last week, the Dutch government has also revealed plans to shut down 3,000 farms and confiscate the land. Leaders in the Netherlands are enforcing a forced “mandatory buyout” scheme to seize the land from farmers. The anti-farming agenda in Europe is rapidly advancing as governments scramble to meet the global warming goals...

Disney CEO Bob Iger attended a Sandy Hook Promise Benefit and referenced people in influential positions and suggested that those who shape culture “have an extra responsibility” to push gun control. Sandy Hook Promise is the group with to whom country singer Tim McGraw donated concert proceeds for a gun control fundraiser in July 2015. On April 16, 2015, Breitbart News pointed to McGraw’s planned participation in the fundraiser and he responded to the coverage by telling MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, “I lead my life leading with my heart, I do the things that I can do and support the causes...

New Autopsy Report Reveals Those Who Died Suddenly Were Likely Killed by the Covid VaccineA major new autopsy report has found that three people who died unexpectedly at home with no pre-existing disease shortly after Covid vaccination were likely killed by the vaccine. A further two deaths were found to be possibly due to the vaccine.The report, published in Clinical Research in Cardiology, the official journal of the German Cardiac Society, detailed autopsies carried out at Heidelberg University Hospital in 2021. Led by Thomas Longerich and Peter Schirmacher, it found that in five deaths that occurred within a week of...

Senate Republicans who want to move on from Donald Trump are smelling blood after a series of self-destructive errors by the former president that they think is opening the door for GOP rivals to challenge and defeat him in a 2024 presidential primary. The GOP lawmakers say Trump looks increasingly vulnerable in a primary after what they describe as his erratic behavior in recent weeks, which has raised new doubts about his ability to beat President Biden or any other Democrat in a general election. Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said Trump’s most recent self-inflicted wound — in which...

Time magazine announced Wednesday it had chosen Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky its person of the year for 2022, calling it an obvious choice in light of the head of state’s ubiquity and his ability to “galvanize the world” around his cause. The “spirit of Ukraine,” a nebulous concept that apparently includes Spanish celebrity chef José Andrés, also earned recognition as a 2022 “person of the year.”

n the recent deposition of Anthony Fauci in Missouri v. Biden, a civil lawsuit against the Biden administration over alleged free speech violations, Fauci acknowledged that Dr. Clifford Lane, clinical director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was appointed to the February 2020 World Health Organization-China Joint Mission team, told Fauci that he was “impressed” with China’s successful management of the Covid outbreak. In doing so, Lane conveyed to Fauci his belief that “extreme social distancing policies” were essential to curtailing the spread of disease. During his deposition, Fauci stated that he had “every reason to...