Free Republic

Ukraine's military spy chief said on Thursday that the threat of a Russian attack on the vast Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was receding, but that it could easily return as long as the facility remained under occupation by Moscow's forces. The intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, made the comment in an interview with Reuters after days of warnings by Ukrainian and Russian officials accusing each other of plotting an attack at Europe's largest nuclear plant.

A California man died from extreme heat at Death Valley National Park amid the highest temperature recorded on Earth this year, park officials said. The 65-year-old man from San Diego was found dead in his vehicle on Monday morning, Abby Wines, a spokesperson for the park, told SFGATE. This came the day after Death Valley reached 126 degrees, the hottest temperature anywhere on the planet in 2023. A maintenance worker noticed the man’s vehicle just after 10 a.m. Monday about 30 yards away from North Highway, park officials said in a news release. The worker found the man unresponsive, prompting...

On Wednesday evening, Meta released their “friendly” alternative to Twitter called Threads. Within seven hours of its launch, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg claimed that 10 million people have signed up. The Instagram-linked competitor (you currently need an Instagram account to sign up for Threads) currently looks more or less just like Twitter. Users can post text-based messages up to 500 characters, as well as videos or photos, and respond to or repost other posts. However, unlike Twitter, direct messaging is currently unavailable, and hashtags are nowhere to be found. Also, if you decide Threads isn’t for you, the only way...

To teach full time in a Wisconsin public school, one must jump through time-consuming, resource-draining hoops to obtain an occupational license. Our public schools are failing children by requiring strict, impractical licensing requirements and excluding highly qualified, would-be instructors from entering the teaching profession. We must create flexibility in licensing requirements to allow more experienced people to expand young minds. The kids will see the inherent value in this approach and respond. Our children are starving for people who can provide them with practical skills that will allow them to build a life for themselves. There are many adults who...

Four short horrorific tales are anthologized in this film as a tributeto rod serling and his popular tv series.

U.S. media should care about Americans’ First Amendment rights. Instead, outlets repeatedly insisted that online censorship wasn’t happening.Corporate media mocked widespread conservative outrage over online censorship as a “baseless” and misdirected ploy to gin up controversy and votes, but Missouri v. Biden proves Big Tech and the federal government colluded to suppress “millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.”There is hardly a lack of proof that Americans were the subject of years of government-led partisan purges on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. Emails, documents, files, and statements show that it was often at the prompting of...

Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time Matthew 9:1–8Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Lord heals a paralytic after first forgiving his sins. Jesus’ initial words to this paralyzed man are, “Your sins are forgiven.” Why does God forgive our sins? Because he wants us alive, he wants us moving, he wants us in action, realizing what we can be.Jesus comes to liberate us for deeper life, to open a new future to us. Sin is a refusal to live according to God’s purposes and desires. Our obsession with past sins paralyzes us. God is opposed to this obsession with the past, because...

In a 2017 video posted to his company’s YouTube channel, OceanGate Expeditions’ CEO Stockton Rush, who perished along with four passengers on the ill-fated Titan submersible in mid-June, described the glue holding the vessel together by comparing it to a popular food. The 2017 video showed the submersible being put together as Rush asserted, “It’s pretty simple, but if we mess it up, there’s not a lot of room for recovery,” Then he added, “The glue’s very thick, so it’s not like Elmer’s Glue; it’s like peanut butter.” Rush had been warned years before the tragedy that his vessel was...

Former President Obama's former AG Eric Holder condemns 1st Amendment ruling against US officials as 'pretty stupid

One of the obvious lessons from the tide of the war in Ukraine is that globalist economics has defeated globalist interventionism.It is hard to be the arsenal of democracy if you can’t make anything anymore. The war in Ukraine has deranged many people — Michael Rubin, a lunatic and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wants to give Ukraine nukes — but it may also teach us some hard but necessary lessons. For instance, as the tides of war turn against Ukraine, it seems that globalist economics is defeating globalist foreign policy interventionism.Ukraine’s much-hyped summer offensive has been disappointing....

Ben & Jerry’s parent company has lost roughly $2.5 billion in market cap amid calls to boycott the Vermont-based ice cream maker over a July 4 tweet condemning the US for existing on “stolen Indigenous land.” Shares of Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch multinational firm, slid as much as 1% at Thursday’s opening bell after closing down .5% the previous day. The company’s stock price has fallen to roughly $51 after closing at $52.28 during Monday’s shortened trading — and the day before Ben & Jerry’s posted its unpatriotic tweet. The result has seen its market cap drop to $131 billion from...

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was expected to sign a bill Thursday giving a tax break to Danish offshore wind developer Orsted for the first of two energy projects it plans to place in the waters off the Jersey Shore. Before the ink is dry on that bill, he will face pressure from another offshore wind company looking for similar assistance. The governor’s office said he would sign the bill, allowing Orsted to keep federal tax credits that it otherwise would have been required to pass along to New Jersey utility ratepayers. Lawmakers who narrowly approved the bill last week...

French authorities have estimated that rioters have burned or looted more than 1,100 public and private buildings over the past week in their violent response to a police shooting involving a 17-year-old French citizen of Algerian descent. On Wednesday, a French news outlet reported that, according to the country’s Ministry of the Interior, roughly 1,105 buildings including police stations, town halls, and schools have been assaulted since riots began on June 27. French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire told a CNN affiliate that more than 1,000 businesses have been “vandalised, attacked or set on fire.” The damages are estimated to...

Florida Republicans are requiring 2024 presidential candidates to sign a loyalty pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee in order to qualify for the primary ballot next year. The new pledge in Florida is similar to a Republican National Committee requirement to qualify for next month’s first presidential debate, under which participants have to sign a pledge “agreeing to support the eventual party nominee.” Several other candidates have also bristled at signing the RNC’s pledge, and Trump and DeSantis have both sidestepped questions about whether they would commit to backing the other if that person wins the party’s nomination.

The Guardian published an editorial criticizing El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for his hard crackdown on the violent gangs that terrorized the Latin nation for years because it does not address the root causes of the violence. The editorial said the government crackdown has resulted in positive results in making the country, once the most dangerous in the world, much safer, leading to historically high popularity for Bukele. People in neighboring countries are now demanding their governments copy Bukele's plan to tackle the gang and cartel problems. Still, The Guardian writes, the peace has come at a high price and...

The culprit responsible for bringing cocaine into the White House will be “difficult” to find, an official familiar with the investigation reportedly said Wednesday, despite the high security of the grounds. “It’s gonna be very difficult for us to do that because of where it was,” the anonymous official reportedly told Politico while speaking about the chances of finding the person responsible. “Even if there were surveillance cameras, unless you were waving it around, it may not have been caught” on tape, the official added, according to the outlet. “It’s a bit of a thoroughfare. People walk by there all...

On Independence Day Judge Terry Doughty released a 155-page opinion slamming the Biden administration for widespread censorship of conservative speech online. "The present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech," Doughty wrote. "Although the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech, the issues raised herein go beyond party lines. The right to free speech is not a member of any political...

US expected to announce Ukraine weapons aid package including cluster munitions on Friday — Reuters

It was a normal Wednesday commute, crawling across the 14th Street Bridge with thousands of other frustrated D.C. drivers — until out the corner of my eye, I saw the metro glide across the tracks next to us. There, suspended above the Potomac, were eight cars — all wrapped in transgender and rainbow flags — speeding into the most powerful city in the world.Even now, weeks into this contrived celebration, it was a jarring picture of how insufferable the Pride movement has become. Deep into June, you can’t blame Americans for wondering: When will this train of extremism end?Like me,...

"The reality is that you have a president and a White House that have a disregard for the law, they really don't care," says a former assistant secretary of state handling narcotics issues Mark Morgan, a former FBI agent and acting commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection Agency, told Just the News that it should take the U.S. Secret Service about 30 minutes to figure out how cocaine came into the White House and who brought it there. "I was there countless times, I put my cell phone in that exact box that they're talking about. I know it...