Free Republic

Sammy Hagar and Guy Fieri are facing a “huge setback” after two trucks for their jointly owned tequila company were hijacked, with over $1 million in product stolen. The trucks were transporting 4,040 cases of Santo tequila, including blanco, reposado and extra añejo varieties, the latter of which has the highest price point. The robbery reportedly took place in Laredo, Texas, just after the big rigs had crossed the border from Mexico. "It appears this was an organized crime effort where the trucks were illegally double brokered to different carriers who transferred the product to their trucks," a representative for...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Strickland: Pope Francis ‘does not love the truth and seeks to reshape it in the image of man’On this week’s episode of Faith & Reason, John Henry-Westen, Deacon Keith Fournier, and Frank Wright discuss Bishop Joseph Strickland’s historic open letter urging his brother bishops to call out Pope Francis as he abandons the Church’s teaching.On this week’s episode of Faith & Reason, John Henry-Westen, Deacon Keith Fournier, and Frank Wright discuss Bishop Joseph Strickland’s historic open letter urging his brother bishops to call out Pope Francis as he abandons the Church’s teaching, Cardinal Joseph Zen’s article criticizing...

A lot of early analysis of the 2024 presidential election has suffered from three overlapping problems. First, that vote margins can be influenced by changes in turnout as well as changes in vote preference. If voters stay home, the candidate they would have supported receives fewer votes. And it looks like a lot of 2020 voters stayed home in 2024. But — second — not as many as one might have thought in the first few days after the election. Many immediate analyses of what happened exaggerated the decrease in Democratic votes or suggested that Donald Trump won an outright...

Amsterdam Mayor Femka Halsema said she regretted calling the riots in Amsterdam a “pogrom” because this was being used to discriminate against the Moroccan-Muslim population of the city, Dutch media reported on Monday. The riots that erupted following an Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv game led to mass violence throughout the city. Large groups attacked people they suspected were Jewish or Israeli, often demanding to see their identification to confirm their ethnicity. In an interview with Dutch state media NOS, Halsema said that she would not use the term “pogrom” to describe the events again and that it was wrong to do...

The Biden-Harris economy was so bad that $1 billion can’t even rig an election anymore. But really, the Democrats' biggest problem wasn’t fundraising; it was twofold: Their strategy sucked, and their brand ambassadors were gross. And the one person most responsible for it all was the old gray mare of the Democratic Party, Nancy Pelosi. More than anyone else, her clammy fingerprints were all over the Biden coup; more than any other legislator, the former “Madam Speaker” was most synonymous with the arrogance, condescension, and utter ineptitude of the modern Democratic Party. Orchestrating the Biden coup was the greatest gamble...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Having failed to stop him thus far, Democrats have implemented their last-ditch attempt to prevent Donald Trump from taking office by starting World War 3. While all efforts to indict Trump, remove him from state ballots, imprison him, and assassinate him were unable to keep him from winning a landslide victory in this month's presidential election, Democratic Party leaders were hopeful that their emergency plan of plunging the globe into nuclear conflict and a subsequent post-apocalyptic hellscape would do the trick. "We hoped it wouldn't come to this, but we've got to do what's necessary," said one...

I held my tongue for a long time, because as an American I believe we should respect the Oval Office and our leaders whether we agree with some of their decisions or not. But I can’t. I look back on the last four years and can only come to one conclusion about the man many pundits said early in this election, should be on Mt. Rushmore. This was one of the most corrupt men to ever sit in the White House. This man, I now believe without reservation, stole the 2020 election. There is no way he got 81,000,000 votes....

Donald Trump Jr. said Sunday that any pushback from the Washington establishment around his father’s unconventional choices for Cabinet proves they are just the kind of disruptors that voters are demanding. The younger Trump insisted the team now around the president-elect knows how to build out an administration, unlike when his father first took office. “The reality this time is, we actually know what we’re doing. We actually know who the good guys and the bad guys are,” he told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures. “And it’s about surrounding my father with people who are both competent and loyal....

Lower prices and social justice are not in conflict, and Democrats should do a better job of declaring that these goals do reinforce each other, to everyone’s benefit.In the wake of Democrats’ losses in this year’s election, questions have been raised about the party’s progressive wing, with some claiming that “woke is dying.” There are indeed lessons to learn, but Democrats should not abandon their core values. Obviously, elections are won by appealing to a broad base. Going too far left or right undermines that. Though President-elect Donald Trump is mostly on the extreme right, he apparently appealed to enough...

Walgreens Boots Alliance, the parent company of British retailer Boots, has seen its stock decline during a turbulent week after facing backlash over its allegedly "woke" Christmas advert. The stock closed Friday at $8.48, down 3.75 percent from Thursday, continuing a broader downward trend. Walgreens-Boots shares are down 66 percent over the past year and trading at their lowest since 1996. Last week, Boots stirred conservative anger after releasing its Christmas commercial featuring actor Adjoa Andoh as Mrs. Claus and a scene referencing gender-inclusive pronouns, where Mrs. Claus uses they/them pronouns when referring to one gift recipient. Newsweek has contacted...

U.S. officials would allow increased logging on federal lands across the Pacific Northwest in the name of fighting wildfires and boosting rural economies under proposed changes to a sweeping forest management plan that's been in place for three decades. The U.S. Forest Service proposal, released Friday, would overhaul the Northwest Forest Plan that governs about 38,000 square miles (99,000 square kilometers) in Oregon, Washington and California. The plan was adopted in 1994 under President Bill Clinton amid pressure to curb destructive logging practices that resulted in widespread clearcuts and destroyed habitat used by spotted owls. Timber harvests dropped dramatically in...

When John Stonehouse's clothes were found in a pile on Miami Beach on 20 November 1974, many people presumed that the UK Member of Parliament had drowned while swimming – until he turned up alive and well in Australia on Christmas Eve. In History looks at the stranger-than-fiction tale of the man who died twice. When John Stonehouse hatched his plan to disappear completely, he was a troubled man. His political career had stalled, his dodgy business dealings left him facing financial ruin, he was accused of being a communist spy, and he was having an extra-marital affair with his...

Russia will not accept a reported Turkey-formulated proposal to end to the fighting in Ukraine after nearly 1,000 days of war, the Kremlin said on Monday, as the prospect of a ceasefire that had long seemed unrealistic looms over the horizon with a new U.S. presidency. Bloomberg reported on Sunday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was preparing to present a plan to fellow G20 leaders, which would freeze the war in Ukraine along the front lines currently snaking for hundreds of miles through the country. The Turkish leader would lay out the plans during the summit in Rio de...

ran has hit back against social media claims that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is close to death or in a coma, by publishing a picture of him meeting a Lebanese official. The photo on X, formerly Twitter, purports to show a meeting between the Iranian leader and Mojtaba Amani, Iran's ambassador to Lebanon at noon Sunday, November 17, in Tehran. Its publication followed tweets claiming Khamenei was in a coma or dead which had erupted on November 16.

Billionaire art collector Kenneth C. Griffin is among the top donors to outside spending groups for the 2024 election, which resulted in former President Donald Trump winning a second term. The founder and CEO of the investment firm Citadel donated $100 million to conservatives, the fifth-largest amount for individual contributions to federal election spending, according to data released by the Federal Election Commission and analysis from Open Secrets, a non-profit research and government transparency group based in Washington, DC. November Evening Sales in New York Include Basquiat Portrait at Christie's Estimated at $20M. to $30M. Top Collector Adrian Cheng Ousted...

Cancer can be a silent deadly killer. But dozens of pet owners have revealed how their dogs were able to detect different forms of the disease before the doctors did to help save their lives, using their powerful sense of smell. It's estimated a dog's sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times more powerful than humans, meaning some breeds can detect a substance at a concentration of one-billionth of a teaspoon. Their supreme sense of smell has been harnessed to detect a range of things, from detecting drugs and explosives to tracking down criminals. Diabetic alert dogs can even...

The early analyses of Trump’s victory have focused almost exclusively on the perceived abandonment of the working class by increasingly corporatist Democrats and the Trump-Vance ticket’s successful embrace of the plight of those who have been left behind by the global economy and the rising inequalities in our society. The culture wars have also been thrown into the mix. While these issues have certainly played a significant role in the decisive loss, Trump was able to claim another attribute traditionally reserved for the Democratic Party, that of being anti-war. We have no doubt that this association contributed to the election...

Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde has officially conceded the Wisconsin Senate race to incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin. Hovde’s statement came amidst mounting allegations of election fraud in Wisconsin. Hovde, a businessman and first-time Senate candidate, had been a formidable contender, focusing his campaign on key conservative priorities like fiscal responsibility, border security, and law enforcement support. On election night, early projections showed Hovde with a commanding lead. However, over 108,000 absentee ballots were dumped in Milwaukee at 4:00 AM, with Senator Tammy Baldwin receiving nearly 90% of those votes.

Could certain bishops, cardinals hold a council to remove Francis as pope?Centuries ago, Cardinal Thomas Cajetan noted that an imperfect council can be called ‘when there is a single heretical pope to be deposed, and when there are several doubtful supreme pontiffs.’ Perhaps this is the solution to our time?(LifeSiteNews) — LifeSite recently published Dr. Edmund Mazza’s analysis of why Benedict XVI’s arguably invalid resignation of the papacy would have caused the conclave that ostensibly elected Bishop Jorge Bergoglio to also be invalid. In addition to Dr. Mazza’s argument, which has persuaded many Catholics, there are at least two other...

“It makes common sense to tax mega polluters and the mega-rich to ensure that we have the money needed for climate action at home and globally” according to one campaigner. Who should foot the climate finance bill - from loss and damage funds to new funding targets - has become an enduring controversy at recent COPs. Experts have said that at least $1 trillion (€948 billion) needs to flow to developing nations by 2030 and a new climate finance goal known as the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) hangs in the balance in Baku. Rich countries are calling for the...