Free Republic

Everyone always has new hacks and tips on how to save money. But it isn’t necessary to reinvent the wheel to change your financial situation. Instead, you can look to the frugal living tips from the Great Depression that a lot of our grandparents used. The Great Depression from 1929 to 1939, was the gravest economic downtown in U.S. history. The stock market crashed; the unemployment rate reached new heights; and industrial production was severely impacted. During the Depression, everyone had to learn how to scrimp and save and there’s a lot we can learn from that era today. Even...

A petition to remove Donald Trump’s star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame has received thousands of signatures, but the decision on whether to remove the star is just as controversial as the man whose name is on it. Trump’s star, which he received in 2007, has been destroyed and replaced several times, but no star has ever been permanently removed from the Walk of Fame despite several celebrities’ fall from grace. The man who started the petition to get rid of Trump’s star for good, Andrew Rudick, says that while he has garnered more than 3,800 signatures for his...

Police arrested a man suspected of using a sledgehammer to kill a woman in her 60s at El Camino College in Torrance on Christmas Eve, authorities said. The attack was reported just after 7 a.m. Sunday in the 16000 block of Crenshaw Boulevard, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Authorities said the victim was collecting recyclables at the campus when she was assaulted. The woman was taken to a hospital, where she died the next day. She was described as an Asian woman between the ages of 60 and 65. Her name has not been released. An investigation...

Scanning electron microscopy image of a chigger. Credit: Loganathan Ponnusamy, NC State University A study in North Carolina has detected the bacterium responsible for scrub typhus, a serious disease, in local chiggers. The findings prompt concerns about the disease’s origins and potential health risks, with further research underway to assess the implications. A bacterium that causes a disease called scrub typhus – a disease not previously reported in the United States – has been detected in North Carolina, according to a new study by researchers at North Carolina State University and UNC-Greensboro. The researchers stress that scrub typhus, which can...

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has renewed his call for the General Assembly to end general election runoffs in the Peach State. In a statement released last week, Raffensperger said getting rid of runoffs following the November elections would give Georgians a holiday-season pause from politics. “Next year, there will be a contentious presidential election — and families across Georgia will be settling down for the holidays shortly after,” he said. “Let’s give them a break and take another costly and unnecessary election off the Thanksgiving table. I’m calling on the General Assembly to visit this topic next session...

After the former South Carolina governor spent Thursday morning explaining why she didn’t mention slavery as a chief cause of the Civil War at an event the previous evening, she was called on the carpet in the afternoon by a 9-year-old boy who questioned her decision to serve in President Donald Trump’s administration. ... during her presidential campaign, Haley has argued that Trump would be ineffective in a second term due to the “chaos” he causes. ... “Chris Christie thinks you’re a flip-flopper on the Donald Trump issue, and honestly, I agree with him. You’re basically the new John Kerry,”...

A University of Minnesota associate professor who has denied that Hamas-led terrorists committed rape and sexual violence during their devastating onslaught on October 7 in Israel is a candidate for a senior position at the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) department, according to a Friday report. Sima Shakhsari, who works at the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, said she had not seen evidence of Israeli victims of rape and sexual violence while testifying last Thursday to the university review panel, part of the application process for the associate dean role at the office, Jewish Insider said. “Of...

Louisiana is the latest on a growing list of states considering removing former President Donald Trump from the state's primary ballot on the grounds of the 14th Amendment. Ashley Reeb filed a lawsuit against Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, demanding that Trump be removed from the ballot over his actions surrounding the Jan. 6 riot, WVUE-TV Fox 8 reported. The lawsuit was filed last week but first reported on Wednesday. “Both Trump’s actions (engaging in insurrection) as well as his inaction (giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists) on Jan. 6, 2021, disqualify him from holding any office of/under the...

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has extended its residential No-Burn alert, the agency announced Wednesday. The alert is now set to expire on Dec. 28 at 11:59 p.m. **SNIP** The alert also prohibits using manufactured fire logs, such as those made from wax or paper, from burning on No-Burn days. The notice doesn’t apply to communities above 3,000 feet in elevation, the Coachella Valley, High Desert, homes that rely on wood as the main source of heat, or low-income households without natural gas services. “Smoke from wood burning can cause health problems. Particles in wood smoke — also...

A migrant caravan numbering thousands of people from Central and South America is making its way through southern Mexico this week en route to the U.S. The caravan, which is estimated to include 8,000 migrants, comes as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a senior U.S. delegation are meeting with Mexican officials, including Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to discuss the current migrant surge at the U.S.-Mexico border. On the social media platform X, Blinken said both sides discussed ways to discuss the "irregular migration."

The NYPD’s controversial practice of raiding Big Apple nightspots is being put to bed, city officials said Thursday — following years of complaints from local businesses. A new policy, announced by Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday, would replace the Giuliani-era MARCH initiative — or Multi-Agency Response to Community Hotspots — that led to cops storming into bars and clubs for surprise inspections during business hours. “Today, we are changing the way we engage with nightlife establishments by opening direct lines of communication with local businesses and giving them a chance to correct issues before enforcement takes place,” Adams said

The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV) said in its annual report that Venezuela still had the world's highest murder rate, 81.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, but it noted that figure was down from 89 in 2017 and 92 the year before. Director Roberto Briceño attributed the drop in part to migration. ... Briceño added that some prominent local gangs appeared to no longer be active in Venezuela, while crimes elsewhere in the region have been attributed to those same groups. The total number of homicides fell to 23,047 from 26,616 the in 2017, said the OVV, whose researchers have access to...

On Thursday, Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene said the houses of her two daughters were swatted, coming just days after Greene’s house herself was hit. "Both my daughters' houses just got swatted today," Greene wrote on Twitter. "Big thanks to the police who responded! We appreciate you and support you! Whoever is doing this, you are going to get caught and it won’t be funny to you anymore."

Explanation: For a brief moment, this brilliant fireball meteor outshone Jupiter in planet Earth's night. The serendipitous image was captured while hunting meteors under cold Canadian skies with a camera in timelapse mode on December 14, near the peak of the Geminid meteor shower. The Geminid meteor shower, asteroid 3200 Phaethon's annual gift, always arrives in December. Dust shed along the orbit of the mysterious asteroid causes the meteor streaks, as the vaporizing grains plow through our fair planet's upper atmosphere at 22 kilometers per second. Of course Geminid shower meteors appear to radiate from a point in the constellation...

VinFast will unveil the entry-level VF 3 SUV at January’s CES 2024 event in Las Vegas, together with a new concept. … VinFast recently revealed that U.S. dealers have expressed plenty of interest in the VF 3, in part because it could hit the market for less than $20,000 and that’s before the $7,500 EV tax credit when leased. CES will be the first time that Americans can see the VF 3 in the flesh. It is just 122.5 inches (3,114 mm) long and while it only has two doors, it claims it has enough interior space for five occupants....

JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. — The owner of a Jacksonville Beach sailboat that washed ashore more than two months ago now has a warrant out for his arrest. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission issued a warrant for John Rehberg. According to court records, he failed to pay the necessary fees to transfer the title of his sailboat to FWC. Action News Jax learned that Rehberg was arrested by the Jacksonville Beach Police Department on Dec. 13. He was charged with abandoning his boat and released from jail the next day.

On the menu today: The cover piece in the newest issue of National Review has Ron DeSantis fans grumbling that it’s far too early for such a gloomy assessment of his campaign because not a single vote has been cast yet. Fine, but to believe that DeSantis has a shot of winning Iowa, we need to believe that his support is at least 15 percentage points higher than his highest numbers in recent polling and that Donald Trump’s support is at least 15 percentage points lower than his lowest numbers in recent polling. (If you simply take DeSantis’s best number...

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has successfully submitted enough signatures to appear on the Utah ballot as an independent, as indicated on his campaign website’s “Ballot Access HQ” map. This development comes after weeks of back and fourth with Utah election officials, during which Kennedy’s campaign fought to extend the initial deadline for signature submission. Earlier this month, Utah agreed to postpone its ballot access deadline in response to a pending lawsuit by Kennedy. Kennedy argued that the existing rules would have placed a significant economic burden on his campaign, potentially forcing them to hire costly professional petitioners to...

The Colorado secretary of state will include former President Donald Trump on the 2024 Colorado primary ballot after Republicans filed an appeal to the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the Colorado GOP filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court after the state Supreme Court's decision to remove Trump from the primary ballot. Following the appeal, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced that she will include Trump on the primary ballot on the Jan. 5 certification deadline, unless the U.S. Supreme Court affirms the lower court's ruling or declines to take up the case.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) became the third GOP member of Congress to be “swatted” during this week’s holiday recess, following earlier false reports to law enforcement of incidents at the homes of Reps. Brandon Williams (R-NY) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). “Last night, while at dinner with my wife, cowards ‘swatted’ my home in Naples. These criminals wasted the time & resources of our law enforcement in a sick attempt to terrorize my family,” Scott posted Thursday on X. The Republican senator also thanked the Naples Police Department and the Collier County Sheriff’s Department “for all they do to keep...