Free Republic

<p>The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant—ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech.</p><p>Future disclosures will no doubt reveal similar FBI subcontracting with other social media concerns of Silicon Valley to stifle free expression and news deemed problematic to the FBI’s agenda.</p>

INDIANAPOLIS — A gut feeling shared by two Indiana mothers helped capture a kidnapping suspect and saved the life of a missing Ohio baby. Two Indianapolis women, mainly working with each other and their mothers' intuitions, rescued five-month-old Kason Thomas, the missing twin baby who was abducted last Monday night in Columbus. The story began when Shyann Delmar bought toys from a woman going by the name “Mae,” on Tuesday. She then gave Mae a ride to a dollar store, but her passenger's behavior was strange, according to Delmar. So strange that she took a video of her. The pair...

More than 1.5 million people in the US are waiting for their asylum claims to be heard, as the Supreme Court weighs the merits of the Trump-era Title 42 health policy — and could order it ended as soon as Tuesday. The number of pending asylum applications has exploded in the past decade, according to an analysis of federal data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, and fears have grown that lifting Title 42 could unleash a fresh surge of migration across the US-Mexico border The number of asylum seekers — 1,565,966 — is split between the...

Officials from the Biden administration were “angry” that Twitter didn’t ban several accounts it identified as tweeting coronavirus “misinformation,” according to the latest release of the Twitter Files. The latest batch of the Twitter files were released by author and journalist David Zweig and cover how Twitter suppressed debate about the coronavirs pandemic. “A December 2022 summary of meetings with the White House by Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of U.S. Public Policy, adds new evidence of the White House’s pressure campaign, and cements that it repeatedly attempted to directly influence the platform,” reported Zweig. Zweig then posted a screenshot of...

This situation is officially out of control, though it probably has been for a while and we simply weren’t hearing much about it. Only a few weeks after people shot up two electrical substations in North Carolina, someone took out three of them in Washington State. And they did it on Christmas morning. More than 14,000 buildings lost power in Pierce County, Washington. And at least initially, much like the situation in North Carolina, authorities don’t appear to have any idea who might have done it. Thankfully, utility workers were able to restore power to nearly all of the homes...

EL PASO, Texas — In the middle of the West Texas desert, a giant tent — bigger than a football field — is being thrown up by the US Border Patrol as El Paso prepares for a human tidal wave to cross the border with Mexico as soon as the Title 42 health policy comes to an end. The makeshift facility northeast of downtown will serve as an overflow processing center when Title 42 expires — which could happen as soon as this week, depending on whether the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the Biden administration from 19...

Home prices fell for the fourth straight month as high interest rates and stubborn inflation dampen the housing market, according to data released Tuesday. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, a gauge of home prices across the country, fell 0.3 percent in October from September after seasonal adjustments. It was the fourth consecutive monthly decline for the index after home prices peaked in June, said Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P Dow Jones Indices, in a Tuesday release. “Despite considerable regional differences, all 20 cities in our October report reflect these trends,” Lazzara said. “Prices declined...

Stories like this always grab my attention. Thieves exist everywhere but lately it seems thieves in some of our major cities have become convinced they can get away with anything. And, unfortunately, they often seem to be right. The NY Post reported yesterday that upscale Manhattan, retailers are being plagued by these brazen thieves.“There’s a true belief out there among criminals that they’re going to get away with it,” Jim Giddon, whose Rothmans men’s clothing store in Gramercy was once robbed twice in about a week by the same gang, told The Post…Grand larcenies have shot up about 27.6% citywide...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The co-leader of a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced Tuesday to 16 years in prison for conspiring to abduct the Democrat and blow up a bridge to ease an escape. Adam Fox returned to federal court four months after he and Barry Croft Jr. were convicted of conspiracy charges at a second trial in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They were accused of being at the helm of a wild plot to whip up anti-government extremists just before the 2020 presidential election. Their arrest, as well as the capture of 12 others, was...

Since the federal government, with the consent of both parties, just lit another 1.7 trillion dollars of imaginary money on fire, the generally quiet period between Christmas and the new year might be an opportune time to consider an important matter that has been almost completely ignored by both elected officials and the media. That would be the national debt. In case you hadn’t noticed, America’s debt has now reached a staggering level of 31.3 trillion dollars. That’s a figure so huge that it’s almost impossible to wrap your brain around it. In the Boston Globe this week, business and...

When Republican George Santos filed to run for Congress in New York’s 3rd Congressional District on Long Island, his profile seemed like a perfect fit in a city that leans decidedly liberal. He ticked all of the demographic boxes. He was young, gay, and Jewish. His grandmother had escaped the holocaust, moving to America for a new life. He had experience in the corporate world, having worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. He was a graduate of Baruch College, an affiliate of CUNY. What’s not to like?Santos went on to win a nail-biter of an election, riding the red mini-wave...

Economic conditions just keep getting worse. As we prepare to enter 2023, we find ourselves in a high inflation environment at the same time that economic activity is really slowing down. And just like we witnessed in 2008, employers are conducting mass layoffs as a horrifying housing crash sweeps across the nation. Those that have been waiting for the U.S. economy to implode can stop waiting, because an economic implosion has officially arrived. The following are 15 facts that prove that a massive economic meltdown is already happening right now…#1 Existing home sales have now fallen for 10 consecutive months.#2...

News 4 Tucson is learning more about a lawsuit filed by the Mexican government against five Arizona gun stores accusing them of participating in illegal gun trafficking that led to violence in Mexico. The lawsuit was filed in October and names the Hub, SNG Tactical and Diamondback Shooting in Tucson as well as Spragues in Yuma and Ammo AZ in the Phoenix area. Veerachart Murphy owns Ammo AZ and is the only shop owner to agree to do an interview with News 4 Tucson. He believes the lawsuit is purely political. In the lawsuit, Mexico claims it traced 19 firearms...

For much of his life, Roderick, a high school junior, did not enjoy reading...But recently, he said, he has made strides, in part because of an unusual and sweeping high school literacy curriculum in Memphis... The program focuses on expanding vocabulary and giving teenagers reading strategies - such as decoding words - that build upon fundamentals taught in elementary school. The curriculum is embedded not just in English, but also in math, science and social studies... The program in Memphis is an extension of a growing national movement to change the way younger children are taught to read, based on...

I ran across this video on Twitter (where cringe goes to multiply) and couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cringe in disgust. It perfectly encapsulates a form of White liberal virtue signaling that uses performative self-hatred to project an underlying sense of moral superiority. This video was filmed at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Brookfield WI, and features 3 White women playing Anti-Racist Jeopardy with a White man in the role of quizmaster. I love it because it features white people performing a kind of self-abasement that serves no purpose other than to elevate themselves above the hoi polloi. It...

The COVID-19 antiviral drug Molnupiravir helps speed up recovery from the virus but does not reduce the hospitalization or death rate in higher-risk vaccinated adults, a new study has found.Molnupiravir, from Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Merck & Co. is used to treat mild to moderate COVID-19 and can be taken at home, twice a day for five days, within five days of symptoms onset.It works by stopping the virus from replicating, keeping levels low in the body, thus reducing its severity.The study was published in The Lancet on Dec. 22 and has been peer reviewed.Between Dec. 8, 2021 and April 27,...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

There were several promising developments in the year of our Lord 2022, and a few honest-to-goodness wins. Staring down the end of 2022 burdened by rumblings of nuclear war, news of collusion between corrupt intelligence agencies and Big Tech to silence Americans, and the threat of a rabid Justice Department that’s trumping up charges against peaceful pro-lifers, plenty of Americans may feel they’re closing out the year with less hope than they began it. Radicals are trying to trans the kids, and conservatives’ most powerful officeholder is Mitch McConnell. But darkness in this world is nothing new, and until...

“The powerful are panicking, and so they should. Their secrets are leaking.” —Miranda Devine, The New York Post As the Yule log burns down, and the trivialities of the season melt into air, the nation might ask itself how the authorities who run things went to war against the citizens of this land. I will tell you, and, it will probably make you angry: It started when the women of the professional and managerial class watched their avatar, Hillary Clinton, lose the 2016 election against a man who seemed the quintessence of everything they hated about Daddydom. Donald Trump, flawed...

Did we think about Elon Musk more in 2022 than we did a year ago?That thought might seem inconceivable, considering that just 12 months after he was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2021, Musk has become even more of a global presence.Now that doesn’t mean life has been perfect for the world’s richest man: while he’s recently dominated headlines for his turbulent Twitter takeover, his other ventures have not gone unscathed.While still the darling of the EV industry, Tesla has lost nearly half its market value since Musk first made his bid for Twitter, potentially threatening his...