Free Republic

State ecology and environmental panels in Oregon and Washington have approved plans to transition vehicles in their states to meet zero emission standards by 2035. The Oregon Environmental Quality Commission voted on Friday to require all new cars, trucks and SUVs sold in the state to be zero emissions, while the Washington Department of Ecology updated its Clean Vehicles Program to require all new, light-duty vehicles sold in the state to meet zero emissions by that year. Both states are following California’s lead in moving toward zero-emission vehicles, adopting identical policies. The Clean Air Act allowed California to establish emissions...

Devin Nunes and his Foreign Intelligence Committee caught the DOJ/FBI spying on Donald Trump and were subpoenaing records from the top law enforcement agency in 2017. The FBI reacted by turning it around and spying on Nunes’s staff and Devin Nunes. Specifically, the Special Counsel handled the spying. The Justice Department’s Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Andy Weissman used grand jury subpoenas to secretly obtain the personal email and phone data of at least two top House Intelligence Committee investigators – Devin Nunes’s lawyers – back in November 2017, reports Just the News. It’s likely more than two. This was...

On Monday, the partisan January 6 committee declared that it would refer former President Donald Trump—and others they claim are culpable for the Capitol riot—to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.This was hardly surprising. The entire purpose of the J6 Committee was not a legitimate investigation of the events of that day but rather a taxpayer-funded partisan witchhunt with the sole intention of preventing Trump from becoming president again.Outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) admitted it earlier this year when she said, “the single most important thing, though, is to ensure that Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee and...

The nation's largest annual conference for Millennial and Gen-Z conservatives, AmericaFest, drew tens of thousands of attendees who seem divided on who should win the 2024 nomination—a troubling sign for the former president. As Trump acolytes, like his eldest son Donald Trump Jr. and unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, sang praises for Trump's 2024 campaign, many event speakers avoided endorsing the former president and interviews with attendees revealed that many aren't prepared to commit to another Trump term just yet. The four-day event in Phoenix, Arizona, is a glaring red flag for Trump's campaign. It signals there may not be...

The big news today is that Elon Musk has agreed to step down from running Twitter because 57% of over 17 million poll respondents said he should go. There’s no doubt that Musk will keep his promise, but you can be sure he’ll do it in his own time and his own way. After all, he’s already shown that he has a puckish sense of humor and a chaotic but highly effective management style. The moment Musk took over Twitter, he had the place in an uproar. He instantly fired many people and then fired people he’d initially said he...

It never even mentions NINETEEN twenty-one, as opposed to 2021. I think this must've been secretly the Biden campaign's theme song. If you don't recognize it, it's from The Who's rock-opera, "Tommy." It's how Tommy, the "Pinball Wizard" ended up rendered psychologically "blind, deaf and dumb.": Got a feeling '21 is going to be a good year Especially if you and me see it in together So you think '21 is going to be a good year? It could be good for me and her but not for you, no never! I had no reason to be over optimistic but...

@ChadPergram Senate to take procedural vote at 2:30 pm et to begin debate on omnibus spending bill. This procedural vote comes 13 hours after appropriators released the bill. The Senate's goal is to pass the bill by Thursday & send it to the House by Friday

A man was arrested Sunday night after Nazi symbols were found carved into the base of a large menorah in Beverly Hills on the first night of Hanukkah. Officers responded to reports of a man vandalizing a menorah near Sunset Boulevard and Foothill Road, according to a statement released by the Beverly Hills Police Department. The suspect, Eric Brian King, of Dallas, Texas, was captured on surveillance cameras hurling objects at the menorah, police said, and is now under investigation for felony, vandalism and a hate crime.

Video footage on social media shows Ukrainian forces continuing capture and redeploy Russian tanks – even using captured Russian tanks to commandeer more of them. In one video recorded from inside of a car, a captured Russian tank towing a recently-captured Russian MT-LB armored personnel carrier. In the footage, multiple Ukrainian soldiers can be seen sitting on top of the tank as it tows the captured MT-LB personnel carrier. One soldier appears to wave as they pass the individual recording from inside their car. The video, shared on Ukrainian social media channels and then re-uploaded to Twitter by Ukraine Weapons...

Kelly Conlon and her daughter came to New York City the weekend after Thanksgiving as part of a Girl Scout field trip to Radio City Music Hall to see the Christmas Spectacular show. But while her daughter, other members of the Girl Scout troop and their mothers got to go enjoy the show, Conlon wasn't allowed to do so. That's because to Madison Square Garden Entertainment, Conlon isn't just any mom. They had identified and zeroed in on her, as security guards approached her right as he got into the lobby. "They knew my name before I told them. They...

"...There are numerous reasons that unemployed Americans aren't entering the workforce, including ongoing fears of COVID-19, disabilities such as "long COVID," and other care responsibilities. One factor that is contributing to the relatively low labor force participation rate is the combination of unemployment benefits and recently expanded Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, according a new study by the nonprofit Committee to Unleash Prosperity. In 14 states, unemployment benefits and ACA subsidies for a family of four with two people not working amounts to an annualized equivalent of $80,000 a year in wages and benefits, the study found. Those benefits come...

It turns out that not only did the Ministry of Truth brigade at the FBI push Twitter to censor the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, but it also reportedly paid the Big Tech platform millions of dollars. Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger, who reported on the latest batch of Twitter files Dec. 19, noted that “The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.” An associate of former Twitter Deputy General Counsel James Baker told him and Twitter General Counsel Sean Edgett in a February 2021 email: “I...

Germany Has Provided The Means To Quantify The Human Cost Of The Experimental Vaccination Program ... Most sane people believe that the burden of proving safety should lie on the party conducting a questionable action, rather than their victim. For example, if a criminal shot someone, the prosecution would not be required to prove that the victim’s sudden death after the gunshot wound was not just a spontaneous coincidence, a result of extreme stress from the situation, or due to a pre-existing medical condition. Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical industry has been able to establish a special type of privilege within the...

Stanford University released a guide this week on “harmful” language that it wants to remove from its online properties — noting that the term “American” is a no-go. The language guide, which was published Monday, aims to “eliminate many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased … language in Stanford websites and code.”

A mysterious shock wave in a gust of solar wind has sent a barrage of high-speed material smashing into Earth’s magnetic field, opening up a crack in the magnetosphere. The barrage of plasma could lead to a geomagnetic storm today (Dec. 19), according to spaceweather.com. The shockwave’s origins aren’t exactly known, but scientists think it could have come from a coronal mass ejection launched by the sunspot AR3165, a fizzing region on the sun’s surface that released a flurry of at least eight solar flares on Dec. 14, causing a brief radio blackout over the Atlantic Ocean. Sunspots are areas...

Lawmakers have come to a $1.7 trillion deal to avoid a government shutdown Package includes $44.9 billion for Ukraine - the largest amount of assistance yet Ban on federal employees from using TikTok on government-owned devices Bill runs for 4,155 pages and had details released about 2 a.m. on Tuesday

Those who see the madness for what it is have only one escape: go to ground, fade from public view, become self-reliant and weather the coming storm in the nooks and crannies. A great madness sweeps the land. There are no limits on extremes in greed, credulity, convictions, inequality, bombast, recklessness, fraud, corruption, arrogance, hubris, pride, over-reach, self-righteousness and confidence in the rightness of one's opinions. Extremes only become more extreme even as the folly of previous extremes wearies rationality. Imaginary sins are conjured out of thin air to convict the innocent while those guilty of the most egregious fraud...

The owner of an exotic animal breeding business in Florida has been sentenced to five years' probation for illegally selling a capuchin monkey to singer Chris Brown. A federal indictment doesn't name Brown, only identifying the buyer as a celebrity in California, but key details match an Associated Press report that wildlife agents seized the singer's pet monkey after serving a search warrant on his Los Angeles home in early January 2018. Brown also was identified in court Wednesday at the sentencing hearing in Florida for the monkey breeder, Jimmy Hammonds. Wildlife agents moved in after Brown shared a picture...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made an unannounced visit to the front-line city of Bakhmut, where Ukrainian and Russian forces have fought a fierce, months-long battle. He met troops and handed out awards to soldiers, the presidency said. For months, Bakhmut has been a key target for Russian forces in the Donetsk region, and has been extremely badly damaged. However, Ukrainian forces have been able to hold back the advance. The visit is a significant show of defiance - and a demonstration of support for Ukrainian forces engaged in some of the fiercest battles in recent weeks.

The Second Amendment protects the right to people to "keep and bear arms," and at its core the right to self-defense, [judge] McConnell observed. [Reporter]The ban was a reasonable and measured approach to restricting large-capacity magazines, which in practice easily convert handguns into semi-automatic weapons capable of rapid fire, he said.