Free Republic

Regional bank stocks fell sharply Tuesday as the fallout from the third major bank failure this year continued to put pressure on the sector. Shares of PacWest fell more than 39% on Tuesday and was on track for its fourth-straight negative session. The stock was halted for volatility multiple times. The California-based bank was not the only regional lender under pressure. Shares of Western Alliance dropped 20%. The SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) sank 7.6%. The steep declines deepened losses in the sector from Monday. Over the weekend, regulators seized troubled regional bank First Republic and sold it to...

In the Treasure pawn shop in Kyiv, Oleksandra, 40, a well turned out woman in a hooded wool coat and Nike trainers, has come to redeem her sewing machines. Like all those visiting the store, she does not want to give her family name.She says that when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, she was working as an accountant for a firm that employed 14 people, who were all laid off because of the conflict. Since then she has struggled to find regular work. With savings running out, like many others in Kyiv, she turned to pawning her possessions to...

Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) is preparing to announce he will run for the U.S. Senate in Texas as early as this week, according to reports. The former NFL player-turned-civil rights attorney has been preparing a run for the Democrat nomination in Texas to challenge Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Politico reported Monday, citing two sources, as did the Dallas Morning News, citing four sources. The congressman is in his third term after unseating Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) in 2018. He is reportedly well-liked within the House Democratic Caucus and has also held positions in leadership. He currently serves House Minority Whip...

A rare pink elephant was spotted with its mother at MalaMala Game Reserve in South Africa. Photo courtesy of LatestSightings.com A pink elephant goes for an afternoon swim with its mother and herd, and despite its unique color, the herd passionately cares for it. Jaco Joubert, a guide at Mala Mala Game Reserve in South Africa, captured the cute scene and shared it with LatestSightings.com. "It was late afternoon when we headed down to the river to see what we could find. Expecting to find regulars at the water's edge, cooling down from the day's heat, we were pleasantly surprised...

In 2014, Abdullah Hasan was a recipient of the CAIR-SFBA Islamic Scholarship Fund. He went on to defend BDS for the ACLU. Now he’s an assistant press secretary at the White House. CAIR is an Islamist organization that was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in one of the largest terror financing trials in America. Its founders were linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and it has opposed efforts to protect the United States against Islamic terrorism. “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant,” CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad had declared. When Hasan...

Woody Harrelson isn’t too concerned about the backlash he received following his “Saturday Night Live” monologue in February, which included criticism of COVID vaccine mandates. “Well, people told me it was, shall we say, ‘trending.’ No, I don’t look at that s***,” the 61-year-old actor told Esquire during a recent interview when asked about the controversy surrounding his monologue. “I feel like, ‘I said it on SNL.’ I don’t need to go further with it … other than to say — well, no, I won’t. Never mind. That’s enough. … But it don’t change my life one bit. Not one...

Political commentator Tomi Lahren has said conservatives will continue to boycott Bud Light until they 'acknowledge' the mistake they made after their disastrous partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The beer brand presented Mulvaney with personalized cans showing her face, which she promoted on April 1st. Fans of the beer erupted in fury with a boycott was declared, Kid Rock used Bud Light cans as target practice, and $5 billion was wiped off the value of the brand. Two senior marketing executives have taken leave of absence amid the fiasco. Now, Lahren has weighed in on the fury saying that...

Pfizer’s revenue dropped in the first quarter of 2023 primarily due to flagging COVID-19 vaccine sales. The company reported $18.3 billion in revenue, down from $25.6 billion in the first quarter of 2022. Pfizer made just $7.1 billion from its COVID-19 vaccines and the COVID-19 pill after reaping more than $56 billion from the products in 2022. The drop in COVID-19 product sales was expected, company officials said. As Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was expected to tell investors in an earnings call: “Our financial results were as we anticipated. Our non-COVID revenues grew 5 percent operationally compared with the year-ago...

USA Today is raising the eco-warrior cry over the new “battleground” in the fight against the climate bogeyman: Americans’ lawns. No, we’re not kidding. The liberal newspaper doom mongered how “[g]as leaf blowers and lawn mowers are shockingly bad for the planet” and praised how “[b]ans are beginning to spread.” USA Today immediately kicked off its nutty April 30 climate agitprop by making it seem like the fight against lawnmowers was a noble crusade against Thanos’ minions in Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame (2019): “Your lawn may be the next climate change battleground. And parks. And playgrounds.” The newspaper ludicrously propagandized that...

The Pentagon is tracking another balloon that flew over Hawaii and is moving toward Mexico, U.S. officials said, according to NBC News. Three U.S. officials told NBC that the object did not fly over any sensitive locations. It’s unclear who is behind the mysterious aerial object. The U.S. military, which has been tracking the balloon since last week, said it is not a threat to national security or air traffic, one official added.

Globalist social engineering took another step forward in New York City as Mayor Eric Adams (D) rolled out his new emissions goal that led one expert to conclude, “They’re coming for your food. Often boasting of his own “plant-based centered life,” Adams has continued to champion his lifestyle choices as the path forward for residents of the Big Apple. Last week, that included his announcement with the NYC Department of Environmental Protection that the city would be aiming to cut food-based emissions by 33 percent by the year 2030 by keeping a greenhouse gas inventory. Joining “Fox News Tonight,” Marc...

Sarasota’s Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium announced that one of its beloved manatees, Hugh, died Saturday at age 38. [Snip] After showing a behavior change Saturday, animal care staff at Mote monitored him before he became unresponsive in his habitat late Saturday afternoon, Mote said in a Facebook post. [Snip] “Hugh’s indelible and lasting legacy will be one of an invaluable contribution to the scientific understanding of manatee behavior and contributions to the conservation of his species,” Mote Marine’s Facebook post read. “Our team is forever grateful for the time we had with Hugh and his contribution to manatee conservation,...

In response to a new law that requires porn sites to verify users’ ages, Pornhub has completely disabled its websites for people located in Utah. As of today, anyone accessing Pornhub from a Utah-based IP address doesn’t see the Pornhub homepage, but instead is met with a video of Cherie DeVille, adult performer and member of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, explaining that they won’t be able to visit the site.

Have you ever been to a densely populated, unfamiliar city and struggled to find a parking spot? It happened to me today when I visited a nearby college town for a “Mom’s weekend” when parents of all college students descended there. Parking was so hard to find! If the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) gets its way, you will have trouble finding parking every day, everywhere! It turns out that the WEF has found a new enemy: parking spaces. You see, parking spaces slow down climate progress and “hold back urban mobility.” While it is hard for me to understand why...

The biggest companies in the United States are giving the axe to hundreds of thousands of workers, but this should not come as a shock to any of us. Officials at the Federal Reserve were warned over and over again that they were going to create an extremely harsh economic environment if they aggressively raised interest rates, and that is exactly what has transpired. We haven’t seen a tsunami of layoffs like this since 2008 and 2009, and the outlook for the months ahead is extremely bleak. Many of us warned the Fed that it would be mind-numbingly stupid to...

The University of California, Davis advised students to stay indoors on Tuesday, as police search for a suspect involved in a stabbing that occurred early in the morning, the third knife attack in less than a week. Police received a call about a stabbing late Monday night and located the female victim, according to a press release from the university. The incident occurred in a “known transient camp” near 2nd and L streets, according to police. She reported that she was stabbed multiple times through a tent.

No, not the Dylan Mulvaney / Bud Light type of trans. But US Factory Orders Ex-TransPORTATION fell -0.7% in March from February. I am dying to hear Resident Biden talk about declining factory orders. Then again, maybe not.

At first glance, a lot of the social problems and resource waste emerging from government intervention seem pretty easy to fix: the government should just stop doing whatever it is doing that is creating the problems and the waste. The stubborn persistence of institutions and organizations that keep societies poor is a vexing problem for social scientists. In Political Capitalism, the economist Randall Holcombe takes on this problem by analyzing “political capitalism” as a distinct economic system with its own logic and features rather than as some kind of midpoint between capitalism and socialism. As he points out, people do...

Warren Buffett has long been known as a liberal executive. The Omaha billionaire has contributed millions to pro-choice organizations, he has raised money for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and he often calls for higher taxes on the wealthy. Mr. Buffett’s recent annual letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate he has run for 58 years, boasted that Berkshire had paid $32 billion in taxes over the past decade. He said he hoped to pay more in the future: “We owe the country no less,” wrote Mr. Buffett, a Depression-era baby in his 93rd year. Yet as the Berkshire...

Tucker Carlson isn’t flaking on a personal obligation — even after his career-changing departure from Fox News. The longtime ratings kingpin and now-former host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” will appear at a fundraiser in Alabama on Thursday. This fundraiser isn’t intended to buff the chances of a Republican hopeful in a state primary. Carlson is appearing on behalf of Rainbow Omega — a RESIDENTIAL CARE HOME intended for ADULTS WITH MENTAL DISABILITIES near Oxford, Alabama, a city in the northeastern part of the state. The fundraiser is taking place in the Oxford Performing Arts Center. Carlson’s appearance was scheduled long...