Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Reporters who were supposed to observe President Biden’s heavily promoted trilateral meeting with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines missed his remarks Thursday when press handlers left them standing downstairs in a hallway as the commander in chief spoke. The rare logistical snafu prevented journalists from witnessing the 81-year-old president’s opening remarks to Philippine President Bongbong Marcos and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the White House East Room. The day’s print pool reporter, Michael Shear of the New York Times, relayed the unexpected dilemma in an emailed update to colleagues who were anticipating quotes from the...

If there has been a more blatant example of Matthew 19:24 being played out in modern times than the Furtick family, I’ve not seen it. Jesus’s words were clear, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” It’s one thing to cover your expenses, and there’s nothing wrong with earning a living in ministry. But this isn’t ministry, it’s charlatanry, and when you’re bilking your followers for millions of dollars by preaching a false, ear-tickling gospel, one must ask who are what you...

A ban on nearly all abortions in Arizona doesn´t sit well with the Republican former governor whose expansion of the state Supreme Court allowed him to appoint the four conservative justices whose ruling cleared the way for it. Doug Ducey is among Republicans in several states who are wrestling with the consequences of their opposition to abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. He expanded the state court in 2016, but thinks its ruling this week went too far. After the Arizona court ruled 4-2 on Monday to revive an 1864 law that criminalizes abortion...

PBS/CNN’s Christiane Amanpour joined CBS’s Stephen Colbert for her second late night comedy show appearance of the week on the Wednesday installment of The Late Show. The duo freaked out over the possibility of a second Donald Trump term and that the rest of the democratic world is similarly freaked out and over the same issues, such as American pro-lifers allegedly being comparable to Iran and the Taliban. Amanpour informed Colbert that the rest of the world is “watching your election very, very closely because that is really preoccupying them. Having had a collective nervous breakdown the last time. They...

The calendar might say 2024, but for MSNBC’s Joy Reid, it is still 2012. On Tuesday’s installment of The ReidOut, the eponymous host declared that it was “grotesque” for pro-lifers to quote Abraham Lincoln while also demanding women “wake up” because “the Republican Party has openly declared war on women.” In recent times, the Heritage Foundation and their Project 2025 have become Reid’s boogeymen. Heritage’s vice president of domestic policy is a man named Roger Severino, and Reid warned that “this man, according to the New York Times, has been crafting a plan in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 that...

Joe Biden is running new television ads promoting abortions up to birth on the heels of a ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court protecting babies from abortions. The seven-figure ad buy highlights former President Donald Trump’s record on abortion and says he is responsible for it because he nominated Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe and allowed states to protect babies from abortion. Trump has taken credit for the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. Biden’s 30-second commercial will air on MSNBC and appear online. Here’s more on the commercial: “Your body and your decisions belong to...

A middle school in Massachusetts found itself embroiled in a massive culture war. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks. Amherst, in western Massachusetts, is the nexus of four liberal-arts colleges and a major public university. It is home to about forty thousand people, including a fluctuating population of undergraduates and grad students. On its woodsy, winding residential streets, Black Lives Matter and “In This House . . .” signs sprout alongside native gardens of holly, bayberry, and mountain laurel. In the 2020 election, more than ninety per cent of the town’s voters went for Joe Biden....

“‘Behold, you have now heard the blasphemy; what do you think?’ They answered and said, ‘He is deserving of death!’” (Matthew 26:65-66). Like many through the centuries, members of the Sanhedrin rejected Jesus Christ without fairly judging all the evidence. Lynching is an activity we don’t hear much about today. But during earlier generations, the heinous crime occurred quite regularly. Innocent people, or those merely presumed guilty (prior to any trial), were tortured and killed, usually by angry, hateful mobs. Often the person lynched was a victim of racial or political prejudice or some other irrational fear held by the...

Israel is preparing for a direct attack from Iran on southern or northern Israel as soon as the next 24 to 48 hours, according to a person familiar with the matter. A person briefed by the Iranian leadership, however, said that while plans to attack are being discussed, no final decision has been made. Iran has publicly threatened to retaliate for an attack last week in Damascus, Syria, that Tehran said was an Israeli airstrike on a diplomatic building. The strike killed top Iranian military officials, including a senior member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force. Earlier...

My latest song. Let there be light.

Republican candidates in North Carolina are seeing a squeeze this month, as the party’s leads are narrowing ...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is stepping up his pressure on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to put the Senate-passed foreign aid bill up for a vote in the House, warning Wednesday that “starving” Ukraine of military support is “strategic and moral malpractice.” McConnell told a radio host in Louisville recently that despite plans to retire from Senate leadership, he intends to stay in the Senate through the end of his term in 2027 in order to fight back “against the isolationist movement in my own party.” On Wednesday, he did that by taking shots at President Biden for not...

A new meta-analysis shows sodium glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors reduce the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events in patients with either diabetes at high risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), heart failure, or chronic kidney disease (CKD). SGLT2 inhibitors, also called gliflozins, are a class of drug that lower blood glucose by increasing its excretion in the urine. While late-stage trials of these medicines have demonstrated reductions in heart failure and adverse kidney outcomes, the effects on major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), including cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, and stroke, were less clear. Researchers analyzed data across 11 trials involving...

People with hypertension and obstructive sleep apnea were no less likely to see their blood pressure drop over six months if they used a mandibular advancement device (MAD), which is inserted onto the teeth similar to a bite guard, compared to a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, according to research. Obstructive sleep apnea can cause or worsen hypertension. Medical guidelines recommend the use of a CPAP machine to help keep airways open by delivering pressurized air through the mouth and nose. MADs help keep the airway open by repositioning the lower jaw. 321 people with uncontrolled hypertension and high...

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam in the country’s largest financial fraud case ever, state media Vietnam Net said. The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was formally charged with fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP. Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion to the bank, reported state media VnExpress. The court asked...

We’ve all wondered if the fix is already in. Given the irregularities of the last election, and the manner in which the whole of the U.S. establishment rallied around one side, maybe a Biden victory in November is a foregone conclusion.I’m guilty of believing this. I’ve doubted every prediction that Donald Trump or RFK, Jr. can win. This is not because they won’t get votes. It’s because those votes might not matter enough.The power of haters is awesome and ubiquitous. The whole of legacy media, government, corporate tech, pharma, and both the administrative state and the deep state are dedicated...

The use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 is an ongoing debate. The central conflict is that while many doctors have reported success in using ivermectin, some studies published in major journals suggest it is in fact ineffective.(eloresnorwood/Shutterstock)Even as the FDA recently has been removing misinformation it posted about ivermectin, the agency has maintained its original position regarding its effectiveness, namely that there isn’t evidence.People who trust ivermectin claim the studies showing ineffectiveness are fraudulent, while people who are skeptical of its use for treating COVID-19 view it as an anti-science conspiracy theory.As a professional with decades of research experience conducting...

The share of San Francisco sellers losing money on their home sale is sitting near its highest level in more than a decade, largely because prices have come back down to earth after skyrocketing during the pandemic. Nationwide, the share of sellers losing money is much smaller (4%) because home prices remain near their record high. In San Francisco, the typical seller who’s parting ways with their home for less than they originally paid is losing $155,500. Nationwide, the median loss is roughly $40,000. New England sellers are least likely to lose money, with less than 2% of Providence, RI...

Researchers have found a mechanism responsible for increasing the risk of developing cancer among patients with heart disease: Small extracellular bubbles, or vesicles (sEVs), secreted from the sick heart to heal itself, are released into the bloodstream and promote the growth of cancer cells throughout the body. "Our research revealed that the diseased heart secretes cancer-promoting factors, which we identified as small extracellular vesicles (EVs). These are tiny particles wrapped in a simple membrane, which all cells secrete, but because of heart damage, these vesicles are released in greater quantities and contain factors related to inflammation, healing, growth, creation of...

On Wednesday, the government put out disappointing inflation statistics that show that inflation has accelerated to four-tenths of a percent last month. But that number seems unrealistically low to me. In the numbers, bureaucrats claimed that gasoline prices only went up 1.7% last month, which would be only five cents per gallon. On the New York mercantile exchange, gasoline has risen from around $2.10 per gallon in early January to around $2.75 on March 31st; that is up 30% in three months. Crude oil has risen from around $72 at the end of the year, to $83 at the end...