Free Republic

We on the right knew for years that it was happening. Twitter was not just blocking conservatives outright when they hadn’t actually violated terms of service, but it was also shadow-banning them and subjecting them to a host of other secret machinations – such as a “trends blacklist,” or a “search blacklist” – that inhibited their traffic and stifled their message. It was widespread and utterly purposeful, and because Twitter has a huge audience and enormous political influence, it mattered. Of course it mattered, and the high-ups at Twitter denied it was happening for the most part. Yesterday Bari Weiss...

Elon Musk was drowned out by boos when he joined Dave Chappelle onstage at a gig in San Francisco — and laughed off the snub Monday as the cries of “unhinged leftists” he’d recently “offended.” Musk, 51, made the surprise appearance at the Chase Center late Sunday after Chappelle asked his audience to “make some noise for the richest man in the world” — the title the Tesla boss and Twitter owner has just regained. Wearing an “I love Twitter” T-shirt, Musk then held his hands up in apparent confusion as Chappelle noted the loud “cheers and boos.” As the...

Before the Elon Musk buyout, Twitter looks like the worst-run tech company ever with new revelations about lax security, no oversight, and a corporate culture geared towards hiding the ugly truth from the company’s own board of directors and the FTC. Former CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal have some ‘splainin to do. Almost unnoticed among the more salacious #TwitterFiles reveals from Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger, “the stuff uncovered in the Twitter whistleblower report is much crazier,” according to Twitter user Avid Halaby. Halaby did a deep dive into the newly released insider materials, and his Twitter...

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is now recommending that everyone, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, wear masks “at all times when in an indoor public setting,” citing the risks of flu-like illnesses, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), and the Chinese coronavirus. The department put out the advisory, which points to “several indications of increased incidence of respiratory viruses in New York City,” late last week. Flu cases, local officials said, have been increasing since October 29, and flu-like illnesses reportedly “made up 12% of all weekly emergency department visits in NYC” for the week ending shortly after...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Knestout Made a Public Sex Offender Pastor Without Informing the CongregationFrom George Neumayr on Facebook:In 2018, Knestout selected Fr. Wayne Ball pastor of St. Augustine parish in the Richmond diocese despite Ball’s 2003 guilty plea in public sex case.“Leave me out of your article,” Fr Wayne Ball, pastor of St. Augustine parish in Virginia’s Richmond diocese, barked at me. I had called Ball up to inquire as to whether he and the bishop who selected him for that position in 2018 had informed the congregation at St. Augustine about Ball’s criminal past. In 2003, Ball quietly pled...

Texas men's basketball coach Chris Beard was arrested, charged with felony assault and now is in jail...Beard was booked into Travis County Jail at 5:18 a.m. Monday. He was charged with assault on family/household member, impede breath circulation," which implies a claim of strangulation, according to Travis County Sheriff's Office records.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been learning a lot about how screwed up and quite frankly corrupt everything was at Twitter in the pre-Musk days. Especially when it came to their whole ‘Trust and Safety’ efforts. One name that keeps coming up is former head of Twitter Trust & Safety, Yoel Roth. Besides seeing his obvious bias against the Right … it sounds like he had a ‘secret dirty Twitter account’. He said so himself. Take a look. Apparently former head of Trust & Safety at Twitter had a “secret dirty twitter account” which has since been scrubbed. Read...

The terrorist plot foiled by German security services makes abundantly clear that far-right extremism is not a uniquely American problem, but a pervasive threat to Western democracy. In a series of raids across Germany, 3,000 members of law enforcement apprehended 25 people suspected of plotting a coup. Eerily reminiscent of certain aspects of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. capitol, the plan called for storming the Bundestag (parliament), murdering the chancellor and seizing ministers. The plotters are associated with the Reichsbűrger movement, an anti-government group with approximately 21,000 followers that denies the legitimacy of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic...

Richard “The People’s Pundit” Baris recently shared an interesting picture during his podcast—Inside The Numbers (Episode 307)—and in his Locals.com community. The photograph was one he took while inside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) soon after the recent Arizona midterm election. It showed a “Heat Map” reportedly hung on the wall inside the vote counting center titled: General Election 2020 In-Person Republican Vote Dot Density Election Day and Early Vote Sites | Metropolitan Maricopa, Arizona

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not hold his annual year-end press conference for the first time in a decade, prompting speculation that the Russian leader is sick or running scared from answering questions about Ukraine as the war enters its 10th month. “As for the big press conference, yes, it won’t happen before the New Year,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday. “But we hope that the president will still find an opportunity to talk with [journalists], as he regularly does, including during foreign [visits],” Peskov added. While Peskov gave no reason behind the move, the war in Ukraine...

(NewsNation) — Concerns are growing nationwide for rapidly increasing cases of what health officials have deemed a tripledemic: the flu, RSV and COVID-19, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is once again urging the public to wear face masks indoors. According to the agency’s Dec. 8 report, 13.7 percent of Americans now live in communities now rated “high” COVID-19 Community Levels, up from 4.9 percent of the population last week. An additional 38.1 percent of Americans are in “medium” areas and 48.2 percent are in “low” areas. A number of major cities are now mulling a return to...

America First State Senator Amanda Chase is calling for Virginia to use paper ballots, and count votes by hand to combat election fraud.Virginia State Senator Amanda Chase is calling on GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin to issue an executive order banning fraud-ridden electronic voting equipment and for all of Virginia’s elections to be conducted on paper, hand-counted ballots. Chase’s call to secure elections comes on the heels of the arrest of a Northern Virginia elections official and after hundreds of thousands of votes across the state’s 2020 contests have been called into question by way of credible fraud evidence.America First State...

The New York Times is being mocked after its editorial board published an op-ed criticizing “toxic gun culture” and used a photo of shotgun shells while referring to AR-15s. NYT Opinion tweeted: The AR-15 has become a talisman for some right-wing politicians and voters. “That’s a particularly disturbing trend at a time when violent political rhetoric and actual political violence in the United States are rising,” writes the editorial board. https://t.co/xLqthLEkSA — New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) December 10, 2022

The ABC, CBS and NBC evening news networks chose to whitewash news that the world’s second largest investment firm left a woke “climate alliance” of elitist money managers. Financial Times reported Dec. 7, that Vanguard Group departed from the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, “the main financial alliance on tackling climate change.” The Times said that Vanguard cited “investor ‘confusion’ amid increase in criticism from Republicans” as the reason behind the defection. In November, 13 Republican attorneys general led by Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes “filed a rare motion” asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) “to prevent” Vanguard...

As more information trickles out about how President Joe Biden agreed to swap Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for WNBA player Brittney Griner, former President Donald Trump revealed that Russia had tried to get him to release Bout in a proposed prisoner exchange that Trump rejected over his objections to freeing the "Merchant of Death." In a post on Truth Social, Trump said "I turned down a deal with Russia for a one on one swap of the so-called Merchant of Death for Paul Whelan," the former U.S. Marine who was arrested by Russian authorities in 2018 and charged with...

In no particular order, here are the top 10 elitists who deserve to get coal in their stockings this Christmas.After a long and draining 2022, the Christmas season has finally arrived! With bells ringing, Michael Bublé on the radio, and the smell of pine in the air, it is indeed the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Although Christmas offers a chance to unwind and spend quality time with our closest friends and family, it’s also a time to laugh. And what better way to put smiles on faces than to run through a list of some of the political...

Car thefts in Colorado are on track to outpace every other state in the country for a second straight year, and public safety experts say the crimes are also growing more violent. Driving the news: Just over a week ago, a Denver officer was shot in the back of the neck after apprehending a suspect who allegedly stole a car. A Denver man accused of stealing a Jeep on Sunday in Lakewood crashed the vehicle into an ambulance, injuring four people — including two firefighters. The man later told police he was forced by a female passenger to drive the...

Inspired by the recent actions of new Twitter owner and chief executive Elon Musk, more business leaders in California’s Silicon Valley are dismissing surplus employees. The startup and venture capital industries appeared to take note as Musk acquired the social media company and dismissed two-thirds of employees with no apparent impact on the platform’s operations. According to the billionaire entrepreneur, the number of new Twitter users and the amount of time users spend on the site have increased under his leadership. “The fact that Twitter is running well with headcount down significantly really matters,” Atreides Management Chief Investment Officer Gavin...

Old Joe Biden is 80 now, and even after the Democrats’ triumphant (albeit highly suspicious) showing in the midterms, some on the Left still believe that the foggy-minded old liar is well past his sell-by date. The putative president himself has not made any official announcement that he is running again, but last week, at a state dinner with the callow, wet-behind-the-ears 44-year-old French President Emmanuel Macron, Biden joined in a toast to a 2024 run. Nevertheless, the 2024 campaign is still a long way off, and if the alleged president is ultimately judged to be too old to continue...

Two ISIS officials were killed in a US military operation in eastern Syria, US officials confirmed Sunday. The “successful helicopter raid” executed by US military forces followed “extensive planning” and resulted in no civilian deaths or injuries, according to US Central Command (CENTCOM) press release. Officials confirmed the identity of one of the two terrorists as Anas, an ISIS Syrian province official with involvement “in the group’s deadly plotting and facilitation operations in eastern Syria.” “The death of these ISIS officials will disrupt the terrorist organization’s ability to further plot and carry out destabilizing attacks in the Middle East,” said...