Free Republic

Colorado completed the transfer of 10 wolves into the state last week after the animals were captured in Oregon. For the people involved, it was framed as a success, a joyful occasion at an invitation-only event. For the rest of the public, the release details were kept secret, and many livestock producers were in the middle of a meeting with state wildlife officials when it was announced that the release of the first five wolves had taken place. Step 1: Ignore History On Monday, Dec. 18, Colorado Governor Jared Polis declared, “Today, history was made in Colorado. For the first...

A new year will bring more pay for millions of Americans, according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). On New Years Day, 22 states will raise their minimum wage, giving nearly 9.9 million Americans a pay raise. In total, workers will receive $6.95 billion in additional wages from the increases. In addition, 38 cities and counties will increase their minimum wages on January 1, rising above their state floors and adding to the number of workers who will see any increase in their paychecks.

The structures that bind the nations of the world together are breaking down before our eyes. Two savage wars are raging in volatile regions, either of which might at any moment blow up to involve additional belligerents and the potential use of nuclear weapons. The UN, established to prevent such disasters, has become a plaything of dictators: Iran, one of the bloodiest regimes on earth and a proud sponsor of terrorism, has just assumed the chair of the UN’s Human Rights Council. China has greatly accelerated production of nuclear warheads — and the Chinese media has begun to issue threats...

"We . . . see Him who has been made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone" (Heb. 2:9). In serving as our substitute, Christ humbled Himself supremely. Jesus' death on the cross was not easy or costless—it was a horrific death. It was not calm and peaceful; it was accompanied by outward torture and inward agony. The death He tasted was the curse of sin. In a few hours on that cross, He...

The steamship George Washington, Capt. GAWKH, and Mississippi Capt. TALBOT, arrived here yesterday morning, bringing advices from New-Orleans to the 19th inst. The Mississippi brings a number of rebel prisoners, among whom are Maj.-Gen. FRANK GARDNER, commander of Fort Hudson, and the following officers: Aid-de-Camp Alex. Dupree, Col. J.A. Jaquess, Lieut.-Col. M.I. Smith, all of Port Hudson; Capt. J.J. Slocum, Ninth Louisiana cavalry; Capt. Matcemp, Ninth Louisiana cavalry; Capt. J.C. Patterson, Twenty-third Arkansas; H.L.W. Johnson, Fourteenth Arkansas; Lieut. W.B. Burnett, Twelfth Arkansas; J.W. Geer, Tenth Arkansas; J.K. Milan, Seventeenth Arkansas. The George Washington brought $100,000 in gold. PASSENGERS. Col. T.R....

Taylor Swift’s performative activism is getting tiresome — and transparently hypocritical.Now that she is the Democrats’ official cultural vector for promoting their left-wing agenda, the mega pop star has become more than ubiquitous. She is being forcibly crammed down everyone’s throats. Her media saturation level is somewhere near Hurricane Katrina. Even NFL fans who just want to enjoy the game have no choice but to watch Clockwork Orange-style as she cheers on her Kansas City Chiefs boyfriend in cringeworthy style.Left-wing and establishment media can’t help fantasizing about how Swift’s massive pop culture sway could “save Joe Biden” in next year’s...

NATIONAL FRUITCAKE DAY Across the United States, fruitcake lovers young and old, commemorate National Fruitcake Day each year on December 27th. #NationalFruitcakeDay Made with chopped candied or dried fruit, nuts, and spices and sometimes soaked in spirits, fruitcake has been a holiday gift-giving tradition for many years. Dating back to ancient Rome, one of the earliest known recipes lists pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins mixed into barley mash. Records indicate that in the Middle Ages, makers added honey, spices, and preserved fruits. Recipes for fruitcakes vary from country to country, depending on available ingredients and tradition. In the 16th...

Because it spotlights the current state of affairs in the West -- and all the key players -- the recent uprising in Dublin should not be so quickly forgotten. Background: on Nov. 23, 2023, a Muslim man of Algerian origin, with a known criminal record, knifed a group of preschool children attending Saint Mary’s, a Catholic school in Dublin. Three children -- two girls and a boy aged between five and six -- and a care assistant who tried to defend them, were stabbed in the assault. Knifed near the heart, a five-year-old girl was critically injured and, as of...

President Biden on Thursday issued an executive order implementing his plan to provide civilian federal workers with an average 5.2% pay raise next month. As first proposed in his fiscal 2024 budget plan last March, the increase amounts to a 4.7% across-the-board boost to basic pay, alongside an average 0.5% increase in locality pay. As authorized in the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which Biden is expected to sign this week, military service personnel also will see an average 5.2% pay raise next year. An average 5.2% pay increase marks the largest authorized for federal workers since the Carter...

US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is set to visit Mexico City Wednesday to discuss the recent surge in illegal immigration as a migrant caravan said to number thousands of people inches toward the border. Blinken, 61, will meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador alongside Homeland Security secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall. Ahead of the meeting, Homeland Security officials have debated ways that Mexico can help lower the numbers at the US’ southern border – including controlling the railways that migrants use to travel north, moving migrants south, and providing...

As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier this year – the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia unsealed the 96-page Halderman Report in June 2023- the Security Analysis of Georgia’s ImageCast X Ballot Marking Devices. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was hiding this report from the public for two years. University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Halderman and Security Researcher and Assistant Professor at Auburn University Drew Sringall collaborated on the report where they discovered many exploitable vulnerabilities in the Dominion Voting Systems’ ImageCast X system.

[Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]The new Europe is vibrantly diverse, and that means it must be infinitely superior to the old Europe. Every paradise has its downside, however, and as Europe assumes its new status in the world as the globalists’ premier showcase of multiculturalism, there are some definite sour notes. One came on Saturday in Germany, as a jihad plot was foiled targeting the renowned Cologne Cathedral, on which construction began in the year 1248.The German-language publication Bild reported Saturday that there were “several...

The 18th-century epigrammatist and aphorist Nicolas Chamfort famously described his country, France, as “the perfected civilization.” Nowadays, the nearly six million Muslim economic migrants and their children in France have contributed much to the undoing of that civilization, spreading fear and insecurity. From the annals of Muslim mayhem, carried out against French people, here is one recent story: “‘Dirty White’ – Thugs stab young French father 9 times, leave him with 40 stitches,” by John Cody, Remix News, December 15, 2023:A young French father was stabbed by four to five perpetrators nine times and had a bottle broken over his...

Democratic strategist Paul Begala said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Source” that former President Donald Trump’s Christmas Truth Social post saying his opponents should “rot in hell” is “blasphemy.” Begala said, “He wants to be a dictator. He says just for a day, but let’s see. I think the way Democrats and Republicans running against him respond to this is important. I don’t think they should pearl clutch. they need to turn this against him.” He continued, “It’s like this comment about Christmas, telling people to rot in hell, you know I am a Christian, that’s blasphemy.”

And the word of the Lord came unto me the second time, saying, What seest thou? And I said, I see a seething pot; and the face thereof is toward the north.Then the Lord said unto me, Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land. – Jeremiah 1:13-14Strictly speaking, Israel’s Gaza war is not a tragedy, but rather a hideous accident. Many wars wait for years to happen until they can’t be stopped. Those are the tragedies. This one never should have happened. Israeli intelligence had the plans for the October 7...

[Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]Christmas used to be the season of joy, hope, and renewal, but all that is so pre-October 7. The new Christmas spirit is one of lies, rage, and hate. In that new spirit of the woke twenty-first century victimhood Christmas, the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem has set out a figure of the baby Jesus not in the traditional cradle in a manger, but surrounded by rubble meant to indicate buildings destroyed by the Israelis. Because nothing says Christmas more...

…Americans’ trust in the agency, and in science more broadly, was badly damaged by the coronavirus pandemic, …38% of Republicans said they had little or no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests, up from 14% in April 2020. At the same time, the CDC’s winter vaccination campaign appears to be falling on deaf ears. ..And partisan divisions over vaccination persist: A KFF poll in September found 7 in 10 Democrats but just a quarter of Republicans planned to get the updated COVID shot. … When (Dr. Mandy K. Cohen) speaks to reporters, she frequently brings up...

Tom Shillue hosted Gutfeld tonight. Great monologue.

A total of 77 sailors were on board the large landing ship in the eastern Crimean port of Feodosia when it was targeted by cruise missiles, Russian-language Telegram channel Astra reported. Of these, 33 are missing and 23 people were wounded, with one person killed in the strikes, Astra reported on early on Wednesday... Using Western-supplied cruise missiles and different types of drones, Kyiv has repeatedly targeted Moscow's naval assets, managing to sink the flagship Moskva in April 2022 and taking out a Russian submarine in September 2023. During the course of the all-out war in the country, Kyiv has...

Repetition of simple truths must meet the repetition of outrageous lies head-on. I believe in the KISS principle: keep it simple, stupid. I do my best to boil events down to their essential truths and then hammer those truths again and again. Repetition is my weapon of choice. The reason I stick to this strategy has nothing to do with who is reading. It has to do with the nature of the war we are already fighting. Never before in human history have people been so bombarded by lies and propaganda from their own political leaders. The information warfare that...