Free Republic

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Saturday that its rival Boeing Co. is awarded government contracts in the space segment owing to their "armies of lobbyists" despite safety concerns around its commercial plane segment..."They have armies of lobbyists," Musk wrote in response to an X user who wondered why Boeing is awarded big contracts from the government despite the issues flagged with its passenger flight segment."Not sure why Boeing (given their track record with passenger flights) is given such contracts when SpaceX (given their track record with launches) is just vastly superior," Dhaval Shroff wrote. Shroff is also an employee...

ALBANY (WBNG) -- Governor Kathy Hochul announced Tuesday that around $350 million is supplemental payments to low and moderate-income families statewide through the Empire State Child Credit program. Hochul’s office said more than 1 million families will receive this financial assistance without any need to apply, as each eligible family will receive a direct payment of up to $330 per child. The Empire State Child Credit is a refundable tax credit for income-qualified New Yorkers with children. Hochul and the State Legislature expanded the Empire State Child Credit to include children under 4 years old which benefits an estimated 600,000...

A “Gun Free School Zone” case has been appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The appeal attacks the Gun Free School Zone Act (GFSZA) as being an unconstitutional infringement of rights protected by the Second Amendment. An amicus brief has been filed by the California Rifle and Pistol Association (CRPA), the Second Amendment Law Center, and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). From January 5th to the 29th of 2023, Ahmed Allam spent several hours in the afternoon and evening parked across the street from a parochial school, St. Anthony Cathedral Basilica School in Beaumont,...

The 1993 film In the Line of Fire was about a Secret Service agent, Horrigan, played by Clint Eastwood, who was on the job when JFK was killed. That the Secret Service did not save him has haunted him for years. SNIP That was a movie. On July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, they did not function at all. It is very difficult to believe that this once-esteemed, highly trained, and truly courageous institution could fail as badly as it did that day when an assassin took aim at President Trump at a rally. The shooter was observed more than an...

Attorney Tom Renz has issued a stark warning about the FDA's decision to grant Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to bird flu mRNA vaccines. Looking ahead, he says, “So what I would expect now is when Disease X rolls out, when the bird flu is something that they're gonna claim has made some sort of a dent in the human population, they're gonna try and push the bird flu vaccines in the same way that they pushed the COVID vaccines.” Renz cited a study showing gain-of-function research on bird flu in the United States before painting a chilling picture of the...

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh has been killed in the Iranian capital Tehran, according to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hamas on Wednesday, a major escalation that deepens fears of an all-out war in the Middle East. Haniyeh is the second leader of an Iran-backed militant group reported to have been assassinated in recent days. His death represents a significant blow to Hamas, eliminating its most public figure who headed up the group’s political operations while living overseas. In a statement, Hamas accused Israel of targeting Haniyeh and his bodyguard in a “strike” on where he was staying in Tehran,...

So much for the hopes of Americans desperate for a serious, substantive campaign about the crises racking the nation: from fentanyl to inflation, the rise of China to immigration. Instead, centre-left media and progressives on the X app are too busy creating a flimsy, identity-politics-tinged cult around Kamala Harris. At the same time, Team Trump is struggling to rise above the too-online, memetic right to pitch itself to the broad middle. Let’s start with the left. Democrats were relieved once President Joe Biden bowed out of the 2024 race under fierce pressure from party donors and grandees. Biden’s coronation of...

An insult uttered in schools and boardrooms about many marginalized people has a new high-profile target: Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “I think she’s one of the weakest candidates I’ve ever seen in the history of our country. I mean intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel. ... I think that she was a DEI hire,” Rep. Harriett Hageman, a Wyoming Republican, said of Harris. For Black diversity, equity and inclusion professionals, the attacks on Harris as a “DEI hire” or a “DEI candidate” show the ways racial tropes can be used against Black people...

Democrats get upset when you call Vice President Kamala Harris a DEI hire, but even President Joe Biden announced that's what she was. He promised voters a woman of color as his running mate and that's what they got … the presidential candidate who dropped out of the race before Iowa because she was so unpopular.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday condemned the "perfidious assassination" in Tehran of his close ally and "brother" Ismail Haniyeh, the politcal leader of Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas. "May God have mercy on my brother Ismail Haniyeh, fallen in martyrdom after this odious attack," Erdogan wrote on the X social media platform, denouncing "Zionist barbarity". "This shameful act aims to sabotage the Palestinian cause, the glorious Gazan resistance and our Palestinian brothers' just fight, and to intimidate Palestinians," Erdogan added. Turkey's foreign ministry had earlier denounced teh attack as "a shameful assassination". Haniyeh, who spent much time in Turkey...

The Kremlin said it “strongly condemns” the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran after the militant group announced his death early Wednesday. Hamas said the political leader was killed in an Israeli strike in Iran, where he was attending the inauguration ceremony of the country’s new president. The group vowed that the killing would “not go unanswered.” “We believe that such actions are directed against attempts to establish peace in the region and can significantly destabilize an already tense situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday. His comments mirrored those issued earlier by the Russian Foreign...

The Biden administration is gearing up to try to forgive the student debt of tens of millions of Americans again, after the Supreme Court struck down its first effort last year. In the coming days, the U.S. Department of Education will begin emailing borrowers who may be eligible for the wide-scale loan cancellation, the department said on Wednesday. It hopes to deliver that relief in the fall, possibly weeks before the 2024 presidential election. “Today, the Biden-Harris administration takes another step forward in our drive to deliver student debt relief to borrowers who’ve been failed by a broken system,” U.S....

31 July 2024 Saint Ignatius Loyola, Priest on Wednesday of week 17 in Ordinary TimeSt. Ignatius of Loyola Church, Houghton, MichiganReadings at MassLiturgical Colour: White. Year: B(II).Readings for the feriaReadings for the memorialThese are the readings for the feriaFirst readingJeremiah 15:10,16-21They will not overcome you, because I am with you‘Woe is me, my mother, for you have borne meto be a man of strife and of dissension for all the land.I neither lend nor borrow,yet all of them curse me.‘When your words came, I devoured them:your word was my delightand the joy of my heart;for I was called by...

It is a crazy time to be alive. We have economic uncertainty, threats of war, political violence, and social turmoil. An assassin nearly took President Trump’s life. Puppet President Biden has been recycled for a younger model. The Olympic Games openly mocks Christianity and celebrates transvestitism. The EU, Russia, China, Iran, Israel, and the U.S. are all tiptoeing toward a little nuclear tête-à-tête. Apprehension saturates the air. Still, if you were a time-traveler from the future surveying the world as it unfolds today, you might whisper, “What an amazing time to be alive.” That is a luxury that those who...

Former lawmaker and failed secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem may be heading back to the Arizona Capitol, as early election night results show him leading in his bid to knock off state Sen. Ken Bennett in a northern Arizona legislative district. Initial election tallies show Finchem with a margin of more than seven percentage points over Bennett, a lead of nearly 2,000 votes. Finchem spent a decade in the legislature representing districts based in Pima and Pinal counties in southern Arizona. But last year, he moved to Prescott to take on Bennett, following an unsuccessful bid in 2022 to...

Arizona’s primaries on Tuesday night saw numerous candidates who have questioned the results of past elections gain ground, the latest sign of Donald Trump’s deepening imprint on the GOP in the Grand Canyon State. In the most significant races of the night, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Republican Kari Lake were officially chosen as their parties’ respective Senate nominees. But voters also weighed in on several other contested primaries, including those for seats being vacated by Gallego and Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.). The primary night also offered some clues of what voters might expect in November. Here are five early...

Anita Dunn, who has served as a top advisor to President Biden during his presidency and his campaigns, is leaving her White House perch to advise a super PAC backing VP Kamala Harris. Dunn was part of a core group of longtime aides advising Biden as he decided to end his presidential campaign, and was reportedly one of the few who got a head’s up a minute before the president blasted out his decision. Now she’ll be guiding the Future Forward PAC, which says it plans to spend $300 million bolstering Harris, although campaign rules will limit coordination with the...

Republican voters on Tuesday ousted a top elections official in Arizona’s most populous county who angered conservatives by defending the state’s voting system against false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, according to The Associated Press. The results as of early Wednesday showed that the official, Stephen Richer, had lost his primary re-election bid for Maricopa County recorder to State Representative Justin Heap, a right-wing challenger buoyed by conservative voters’ distrust in elections and mail-in voting.

PHOENIX (AP) — State Rep. Justin Heap, a critic of Arizona's voting operations in 2020 and 2022 has unseated Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer in the Republican primary.

Surveying American institutions, one searches in earnest for even a few organizations or systems that progressives have been unable to control. News story after news story confirms that indeed that one, that one, and, yes, that one too have all succumbed to ideological capture. Naïfs like myself once held out hope for science and mathematics. How could geometry be racist or gravitational waves foster systemic oppression? Sadly, we were wrong. The latest institution to go is medical education. A recent essay at Inside Higher Ed bravely declares that all prospective doctors must be trained not to become skilled surgeons or...