Free Republic

A trucker convoy of “patriots” is heading to the U.S. border with Mexico next week, as the standoff between Texas and the federal government intensifies.The organizers of the “Take Our Border Back” convoy have called themselves “God’s army” and say they’re on a mission to stand up against the “globalists” who they claim are conspiring to keep U.S. borders open and destroy the country. “This is a biblical, monumental moment that’s been put together by God,” one convoy organizer said on a recent planning call. “We are besieged on all sides by dark forces of evil,” said another. “Blessed are...

“BuzzFeed … is looking to sell its food sites, Tasty and First We Feast, according to people familiar with the situation,” writes the Wall Street Journal. “Meanwhile, Fortress Investment Group, which took over Vice in bankruptcy last year, is in talks to sell its Refinery29 women’s lifestyle-focused site[.]” The Wall Street Journal portrays these developments in much too narrow of a way — as “yet another chapter in the demise of these digital-media companies that raised money at sky-high valuations nearly a decade ago only to struggle amid a volatile ad market and a decline in traffic[.]” That’s not the...

A mandatory “re-orientation” for first-year University of Wisconsin Law School students last week included a survey prompting participants to share racial slurs and instruction that colorblindness is bad and that racial minorities cannot be racist, according to a source who attended Friday’s session. Like other euphemistically-titled “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programming, the presentation on Friday preached the usual dogmas of Marxist-steeped critical race theory and “anti-racism” that have infiltrated U.S. college campuses, the source said. These doctrines teach that the United States — particularly its legal system — is systemically racist, that “whiteness” must be “dismantled,” and that the...

A sticker. A little sticker of Joe Biden pointing his finger with the words “I did that” underneath started appearing in 2021 as gas prices were rising. It was stuck on gas pumps nationwide. Like a viral meme but in real life, everyone knew it was true — everyone, including Biden voters. It’s one thing to argue that 2020 Biden voters didn’t know that would happen (maybe they don’t listen to their own candidates or read the coverage), but every Biden voter who got gas a few months after he took office knew the sticker was right. Trump voters would...

Joe Biden is nominally our president, but he is manifestly incapable of discharging the duties of that office. Opinions vary as to who our “real” president is. Some say it is Barack Obama. Some say it is Jill Biden. Others describe a network of political influence within the Congress and the purported “Biden Administration.” But one thing we know for sure is that our chief executive is not the pitiful shell of a man known as Joe Biden, who at his best, decades ago, was dumb, and now is in la-la-land... I am sincerely sympathetic to the poor, frail shell...

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: The Anti-Defamation League flags “online amplifiers of LGBTQ+ hate” as extremists to be examined by law enforcement, an email obtained by The Oversight Project shows. The revelation indicates that the Anti-Defamation League, “the leading anti-hate organization in the world,” is specifically pushing law enforcement to scrutinize viral dissenters against transgender ideology, such as The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and The Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo. The email was obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.) The ADL has historically focused on anti-semitism, but in recent years has directed heavy...

Roger Kimball’s New Criterion editorial on “DEI’s dangerous lies” is titled “Gay science,” in honor of sacked Harvard president Claudine Gay. Roger’s editorial lacks only some accompanying reference to Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, which I actually read under the tutelage of my political philosophy teacher last year.It was in The Gay Science that Nietzsche announced “God is dead.” I thought Roger’s editorial might have announced that Harvard is dead. In each case, the assertion is a slight exaggeration, but it makes a point.The eminent historian Dominic Green makes the Harvard point in the Wall Street Journal column “No Task Force...

Canadian government used disinformation to invoke the “Emergencies Act” in 2022, and then shared it with other “Five Eyes” nations Over the last year, Public and others have reported on illegal abuses of power by government intelligence, security, and military agencies across the Western world. These abuses of power have included censorship efforts by the US Department of Homeland Security and British military; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) entrapment schemes; and FBI and Secret Service involvement in January 6, 2021 pipe bomb disinformation. Now, a months-long Public investigation reveals that the Canadian government used disinformation to crack down on the...

Zero percent of Palestinians in the West Bank described Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attacks as illegitimate resistance against Israel, according to a poll released earlier this month. In a poll from the Qatar-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, West Bank respondents were asked whether the attacks constituted an illegitimate operation. Seventy-nine percent said the attacks were legitimate, 11 percent said they were a flawed but legitimate resistance operation, and 4 percent said they were a legitimate operation that involved heinous or criminal acts. Support for the position that the Oct. 7 attacks were an illegitimate operation did not...

27 January 2024 Saturday of week 3 in Ordinary Time Saint Angela Merici Catholic Church, Metairie, LA Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green. Year: B(II).First reading2 Samuel 12:1-7,10-17 ©David's penitence over UriahThe Lord sent Nathan the prophet to David. He came to him and said:‘In the same town were two men,one rich, the other poor.The rich man had flocks and herdsin great abundance;the poor man had nothing but a ewe lamb,one only, a small one he had bought.This he fed, and it grew up with him and his children,eating his bread, drinking from his cup,sleeping on his breast; it was...

Dammit Janet! Stop borrowing money that we have to pay back! Don’t forget! US Q4 GDP grew by $182.6 billion while Janet Yellen increased borrowing by $834 billion. (Public Debt By 4.5 Times GDP Growth). In 2023, the Treasury added $2.6T to the national debt. While that number alone should be enough to scare anyone, the details reveal something even more concerning. $2T of it, or 77%, was financed entirely with short-term Treasury Bills maturing in less than a year. The chart below shows the debt issuance trend over the last 20 years. As shown, the Treasury typically relies on...

“CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil reported how he and his team couldn’t find anybody outside a New Hampshire grocery that was “feeling good about the economy.” While previewing an upcoming CBS News segment set to air on Sunday, Dokoupil mentioned how people complained about higher food prices, despite macro signs that the economy is improving. The co-host claimed that President Biden continues to try and sell his economic achievements — aka “Bidenomics” — ahead of the 2024 presidential election. While speaking to local New Hampshire CBS anchors, Dokoupil reported, “People are really bummed out about the economy here in New...

After using the ballot amendment process to enshrine baby-killing into Ohio’s constitution, Democrat activists are seeking to employ the same strategy to hijack the state’s elections system. Last week, Democrat-affiliated groups resubmitted paperwork to Attorney General Dave Yost in the first step necessary to have their amendment proposal embedding leftist-backed voting policies into the state constitution appear on Ohio’s November 2024 ballot. Backed by left-wing organizations such as the Ohio Organizing Collaborative and the Ohio NAACP, the campaign has recruited Cory Warfield, a Democrat strategist “who previously worked on Sen. Sherrod Brown’s 2012 campaign,” to help lead the effort. Warfield...

Nearly two years into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia again has the initiative, and its advantages over Ukraine are mounting.Conflict experts are warning that Russia maintains a significant advantage over Ukraine in several key areas right now, and Kyiv will need to seriously dig in if it hopes to fend off Moscow's war machine and have any shot at offensive operations next year.Michael Kofman and Dara Massicot, experts with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Rob Lee, an expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote in commentary published on Friday by War on the Rocks that "while the...

Mark is in Washington resting up in preparation for the resumption of his trial at the DC Superior Court on Monday morning - and wondering whether he'd have been better off in a New York courtroom. Oh, wait... Jury Awards E. Jean Carroll $83.3 Million in Second Defamation Case Against Donald Trump On the other hand, that's half of what the DC jury awarded Giuliani's plaintiffs. So it's all relative. In the meantime, here are Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer with their dramatised reconstruction of the most recent events. In this episode, Ann herself becomes the target of Michael E...

VIDEOThe good news is that the public piano that had been cordoned off under guard due to the Chinese Communists acting like authoritarians because British pianist Brendan Kavanaugh would not comply with their outrageous demand to remove his video has been liberated (for now). The bad news, as exposed by Kavanaugh during his piano liberation speech, is that it appears that YouTube is following CCP censorship orders since a YouTube channel featuring Hong Kong people showing support for Kavanaugh has been taken down. And in light of recent pandemic history that is not the only example of YouTube censorship at...

The Biden Administration is reportedly working on a long-term plan for supporting Kyiv that does not anticipate significant territorial gains by the Ukrainian military from Russia in 2024, the Washington Post reported on Jan. 26, citing unnamed sources. The new plan will seek to de-emphasize winning back territory and instead focus on fending off new Russian advances while strengthening the country's defense and economy.“It’s pretty clear that it will be difficult for them to try to mount the same kind of major push on all fronts that they tried to do last year,” a senior administration official said.The hope is...

A team of neuroscientists and sleep researchers has found that rather than improving sleep, consuming an alcoholic beverage before bed can cause a reduction in REM sleep. Prior research has shown that REM sleep takes up approximately 20% of a typical night's sleep, but is still important. Though scientists have not yet figured out the purpose of REM sleep, they do know that people who do not get enough can experience emotional problems, mental acuity difficulties and memory issues. In this new study, the researchers explored whether consumption of alcohol prior to sleep might have a positive or negative impact...

People close to former President Trump made preliminary overtures to Robert F. Kennedy about the possibility of serving as his running mate, The Post has learned. “Trump operatives expressed an interest in Kennedy early on, but it was all premature,” said one person familiar with the matter, adding that it was “right out of the box when Bobby announced” in April 2023 he was running for president. “Anything’s possible. I wouldn’t write it off by any means,” the insider continued.

Researchers have discovered that a certain type of chemotherapy improves the immune system's ability to fight off bladder cancer, particularly when combined with immunotherapy. These findings may explain why the approach, cisplatin chemotherapy, can lead to a cure in a small subset of patients with metastatic, or advanced, bladder cancer. Researchers also believe that their findings could explain why clinical trials combining another type of chemotherapy, carboplatin-based chemo, with immunotherapy have not been successful but others that use cisplatin with immunotherapy are successful. "We have known for decades that cisplatin works better than carboplatin in bladder cancer, however, the mechanisms...