Free Republic

The astronomic rise in mortgage rates and spike in home prices over the past year has pushed a key tenet of the American dream out of reach for millions of families. Now, there is another obstacle to homeownership: higher home insurance premiums. The average cost of home insurance for a $300,000 property in the U.S. surged 12% in 2023 to roughly $1,770 per year, according to a new report published by Insurify, an insurance comparison website headquartered in Massachusetts. However, home insurance is even more expensive in states plagued by severe weather and other climate-related catastrophes. In fact, as the...

Donald Trump denounced the Alabama Supreme Court for making it “harder” for American families to have children. The former president took to Truth Social to voice his opposition to the recent ruling that frozen embryos should be considered “children.” He called on Alabama’s state legislature to “find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama.” He wrote: Under my leadership, the Republican Party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families. We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder! That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments...

Starting almost immediately after the death of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a penal colony in the Russian Far North, Russian government agencies and Kremlin-controlled media began issuing implausible, contradictory speculation as to how Vladimir Putin’s chief political rival could have possibly met his demise in a remote facility administered by Vladimir Putin’s oppressive state apparatus. As an exercise in understanding just how disorienting the Kremlin’s firehose of falsehoods can be, The Insider sums up the most blatantly false “versions” of Navalny’s death that were offered to the Russian public.

Attacks on churches have increased nearly 800 percent in less than six years, indicating that “hostility against U.S. churches is not only on the rise but also accelerating,” a Family Research Council (FRC) report found. Between 2018 and 2023, FRC identified 915 acts of hostility against churches in the United States by analyzing open-source documents, reports, and media outlets. In just the last year alone (between January and November of 2023), 436 acts of hostility against churches occurred, according to the report. “This was more than double the number of incidents in all 12 months of 2022, which was 195....

A 17-year-old migrant was stabbed during a wild brawl involving dozens of people — including other migrants — in Times Square Thursday night, police sources said. The male victim, believed to be from Nicaragua, was chased by a large group before they caught up to him and knifed him in the lower back in front of 251 W. 42nd Street around 5:30 p.m., according to the sources and cops. The victim was taken by EMS to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition, police said. “I saw someone running…and there was blood coming from his back, coming from everywhere,” witness Bell Mohamed...

Plans for a New Digital Order –– a fully digitized, total-surveillance society –– are moving ahead faster than you think.From February 12-14, 2024, industry leaders and government officials met in Dubai for the World Governments Summit (WGS). Think mini Davos meet-up in the Middle East, focusing on how governments will be run.(snip)In September 2021, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov wrote an article for the Atlantic Council (one of the Globalists’ key outfits for influence operations), entitled “Ukraine’s digital revolution is gaining momentum”9. He stated back then:“The launch of the Diia app was a big step towards the “paperless”...

One Devils fan showed more fight than his favorite hockey team Thursday night. A Devils fan and a Rangers fan brawled during New York’s 5-1 road win, with the Devils fan starting the skirmish with a headbutt that resulted in punches being thrown. Devils VS Rangers game is getting CHIPPY @CoachChippy Fight in stands turns into melee @NYRangers @NJDevils @OhRyanMead pic.twitter.com/7OvQvdVPbf — Eric Morey (@NotEricMorey) February 23, 2024 With the Rangers leading 2-0 toward the end of the first period, a Devils fan in a Jack Hughes jersey is seen standing next to the rail and yelling at a fan...

A display seemingly complaining that the definition of domestic violence is negatively impacting nuclear families was photographed at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. Dubbed as the most influential gathering of conservatives both in the United States and abroad, the event concludes Saturday and features speakers including former President Donald Trump, Representatives Elise Stefanki and Jim Jordan, Senator J.D. Vance, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, former Representative Tulsi Gabbard, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and more. American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp on Wednesday defended CPAC's denial to provide media passes to "left-wing" journalists, instead forcing them to purchase...

Presidential hopeful and Trump challenger Nikki Haley is reportedly launching a seven-figure national cable and digital ad buy leading up to Super Tuesday, Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney told reporters ahead of South Carolina’s primary results. While poll after poll shows Haley down by double digits in her home state of South Carolina, she has made it abundantly clear she plans to remain in the race regardless of the results on Saturday. “South Carolina will vote on Saturday, but on Sunday, I’ll still be running for president,” Haley told supporters during a speech in Greenville this week, making it clear...

On or about this day in 1629, one John Dean, described in court documents as “an infant between eight and nine years,” was hanged in Abingdon, England for setting fire to two barns in the nearby town of Windsor. According to Historia placitorum corone: The history of the pleas of the crown, Volume 1 by William Axton Stokes and Edward Ingersoll, this juvenile felon was indicted, arraigned and found guilty all on the same day, February 23, “and was hanged accordingly.” The actual date of his execution is not known, but it can’t have been long afterward. The wheels of...

The latest Gallup poll shows that the economy and immigration have dragged His Fraudulency Joe Biden’s job approval rating down to 38 percent. Biden’s disapproval rating is 59 percent. Among Democrats, Biden earns an 82 percent approval rating, which is okay but not great and nowhere near the expected 90+ percent range. Only 32 percent of Independents approve of the job Biden’s doing. This number was in the fifties during Biden’s first year in office. His disapproval number with this group is 62 percent. In the previous Gallup poll measuring Biden’s monthly job approval, Biden sat at 41 percent approval....

A longtime San Francisco barber, Shorty Maniace, has never been the type to ruffle anyone's feathers. But when faced with unsightly graffiti next to his beloved barbershop J.P. Kempt, rather than duck responsibility, Maniace hatched a plan. "This was just me messing around and having fun and it turned out to be something great," Maniace said His weapon of choice? Rubber duckies. Hundreds of them. "I see a lot of people smile and I smile every time I look at it," he said. It all started innocently enough, Maniace had some rubber ducks left over from a Halloween party and...

It seems like San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy has already found a new job in the offseason. Fans need not be concerned -- Purdy's contract runs through next year -- but he is trading his uniform for a vest and a plaid long sleeve shirt for his new gig. Purdy was spotted on a commercial shoot in San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood Thursday morning alongside 49ers offensive tackle Colton McKivitz. A massive John Deere tractor was unloaded off a flatbed truck and parked steps away from Bernal Heights Park, the cityscape in the background. Crewmembers told a member of...

hicago is also being terrorized. There, professional criminals enlist migrants from the shelters to raid luxury stores at the suburban Oakbrook Center shopping mall, 20 miles west of downtown. These migrants wouldn't have a clue where Oak Brook, an upscale suburb, is, or how to get there without the criminal masterminds. South American gangs are turning suburban malls into danger zones, explains retired Riverside, Illinois, Police Chief Tom Weitzel. "You're at one of the suburban malls... pushing your kids in a stroller" and you can get caught in the violence, he said in an interview with Fox News. "A lot...

Cotton is a fiber grown on a plant of the Gossypium genus, which, once harvested, can be cleaned and spun into the fabric we know and love. Needing sunshine, abundant water, and relatively frost-free winters, cotton is grown in a surprising variety of locations with diverse climates, including Australia, Argentina, West Africa, and Uzbekistan. However, the largest producers of cotton are China, India, and the United States. Both Asian countries produce the highest quantities, mostly for their domestic markets, and the U.S. is the largest exporter of cotton with about 15 million bales each year.1 "Cotton: World Markets and Trade."...

Our neighbors to the North continue to be the Ghosts of Legislative Future if we don’t get our act together. During the first session of the 44th parliament, Bloc Québécois party leader Yves-François Blanchet, introduced a private members bill that would remove religious exceptions to the law that criminalizes hate speech. If someone is charged with hate speech in Canada, they can defend themselves in court by arguing they were, in good faith, making an argument based on their religious beliefs. At present, in Canadian Criminal Code, the “religious exemption” in Section 319 states: “No person shall be convicted of...

A temporary network disruption that affected AT&T customers in the U.S. Thursday was caused by a software update, the company said. AT&T told ABC News in a statement ABC News that the outage was not a cyberattack but caused by "the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network." "We are continuing our assessment of today’s outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve," the statement continued. The software update went wrong, according to preliminary information from two sources familiar with the situation. Sources have told ABC News that there...

Matthew Stevenson is the lead pastor of All Nations Chicago, a charismatic church that emphasizes the 5-fold ministry.” Stevenson’s bio describes him as a “global influencer, culturalist and visionary, violently raised up by God during this complex moment in history” whose ministry is “earmarked by powerful preaching, bold delivery and unusual supernatural activity.” Claiming to be “Intensely gifted in the prophetic” whereby “thousands around the world have been dramatically impacted by his very timely, direct, and specific prophetic words,” he reveals he is “an apostolic leader with the Father’s heart entrenched in his life.” As some have already identified, he’s...

Ukraine’s military has destroyed a Russian A-50 surveillance aircraft, Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Friday. “The A-50 with the call sign ‘Bayan’ has flown its last!” Oleshchuk wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Developing

The media freakout over the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos are people continued on Thursday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, where the MSNBC eponymous host welcomed OBGYN Jennifer Lincoln to label the state “dangerous” and claim Evangelicals are trying to kick women out of the workplace. Mitchell led Lincoln with two reasons why a woman may seek IVF treatment. The first had to do with the ramifications of certain life choices, “a lot of women are staying in the workplace longer and not having children, delaying marriage until their late 30s or 40s. For them, this can be very, very important,...