Free Republic

The former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says that “all the anger about illegal immigration” pushed him to publicly make the case for the importance of legal immigration, he told The Daily Wire. Gingrich, along with his wife Callista Gingrich, is set to release a documentary on the value of legal immigration to the United States next month. He says the idea is to highlight immigrant stories that made the country a better place. “Callista and I wanted to make the case for legal immigration with all of the anger about illegal immigration. We wanted a diverse range...

Explanation: Orion seems to come up sideways, climbing over a distant mountain range in this deep skyscape. The wintry scene was captured from southern Poland on the northern hemisphere's long solstice night. Otherwise unseen nebulae hang in the sky, revealed by the camera modified to record red hydrogen-alpha light. The nebulae lie near the edge of the Orion molecular cloud and join the Hunter's familiar belt stars and bright giants Betelgeuse and Rigel. Eye of Taurus the Bull, yellowish Aldebaran anchors the V-shaped Hyades star cluster near top center. Still, near opposition in planet Earth's sky, the Solar System's ruling...

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Washington Post Associate Editor and MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart said that incoming Trump Border Czar Tom Homan’s proposal that families who have parents who are in the country illegally need to decide between either being in detention and then leaving the country together or separating is “not where we should be going as a country.” And is “no choice at all, not for those families. That’s why they’re living in fear right now.” After New York Times columnist David Brooks argued that the border has to be secured to get people to support immigration, Capehart said,...

Smoke rising after Jeju Air Flight 2216 crashes in South Korea Jeju Air Flight 2216. The Boeing 737-800 was flying from Bangkok to Muan

Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said. The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter. With just more than three weeks of his single-term presidency remaining, Biden’s...

In the United States, there are a wide variety of visas – both immigrant and nonimmigrant – that foreign nationals can apply for to enter the country. Most categories of visas, apart from tourist visas, have a maximum number that can be issued each fiscal year. This is referred to as a visa or immigration “cap.” Although there are roughly a million immigrant visas issued each year and hundreds of thousands of nonimmigrant visas, the immigration cap system has resulted in long wait times for those attempting to come to the U.S. Where did the Immigration Cap Come From? Today,...

Outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) wrote a scathing tweet about President Joe Biden after he granted clemency to 37 prisoners on federal death row who received life sentences without the potential for parole. He called it “horribly misguided and insulting,” especially regarding the two men convicted of murdering a student at Marshall University. The Democrat-turned-Independent said he felt a moral obligation to speak out against the outgoing president on behalf of the parents of Samantha Burns, a 19-year-old girl who was killed in November 2002. However, her remains were never found. Manchin said her family wrote letters to Biden pleading...

Scientists mapped genomes of bed bug strains, identifying 729 mutations linked to insecticide resistance, offering insights for improved pest control. Scientists have successfully mapped near-complete and highly accurate genomes for two strains of bed bugs: one highly susceptible to insecticides and another “superstrain” that is roughly 20,000 times more resistant. This achievement provides the most comprehensive view yet of the genetic mutations behind insecticide resistance. The findings were published in the journal Insects. While bed bugs are not known to transmit diseases to humans, their bites can cause itchy rashes and secondary infections. Insecticide use, including the now-banned DDT, nearly...

This time around, the ACLU shows no signs of backing off, particularly since Trump has once again made big promises to overhaul the border and immigration protocols.ACLU leadership warned two days after the Nov. 5 election that the organization stood ready to take on Trump again.“As Trump returns to the White House, we’re ready to return to the courts and Congress to fight for our civil liberties,” the group said in a statement last month.“Starting on day one, we’re ready to fight for our civil liberties and civil rights in the courts, in Congress, and in our communities,” it continued....

Nearly a decade ago, members of a Northern California Native American tribe, the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians, made a big bet when they bought 160 untouched acres north of San Francisco to erect a $700 million casino resort it had no approval to build. Today it is one of three tribal casino projects mired in controversy and awaiting a go-ahead from the Interior Department. The projects, which the tribes say are allowed under an exception in federal law, have set off a fierce debate about tribal sovereignty and have turned tribes opposed to the projects against an administration...

France’s war on nativity scenes is a calculated assault on Christianity, aiming to erase the nation’s cultural roots while empowering Islam, leaving the defense of France’s identity to bold local leaders.The administrative court of Nîmes delivered yet another blow to France’s Christian heritage last Friday, ordering the mayor of Beaucaire, Nelson Chaudon, to remove the Provençal nativity scene from the town hall. The charge? A supposed violation of secularism, gleefully pursued by the left-wing Human Rights League (LDH)—an organization that seems to consider any public expression of Christianity an existential threat.This is not an isolated incident. Across France, nativity scenes...

An alarming percentage of working-age American men have exited the labor force in recent decades, threatening profound negative social consequences in the very near future. This is an unignorable and dire phenomenon that should not be a divisive issue. The trend has been ominously noted by observers on both left and right. However, with President-elect Donald Trump returning to the White House, armed with a sweeping voter mandate for change, could it finally be the time to right the ship before a tipping point is reached? The numbers are indeed alarming. “The share of US-born, working-age (16 to 64) men...

A new Congress will be introduced in a matter of days, and a myriad of outgoing lawmakers have made their concerns and questions for their and the country’s future known. Some had advice for the upcoming Congress. Others were thankful they were leaving. Most were frustrated with political parties, partisanship, or the slow going process in the chambers. Here’s what they said.Sinema withstood a torrent of attention at most every turn during her time in Congress, and found praise from both Republicans and Democrats. The political independent, who sometimes caucused with her former Democratic Party, drew a hard line on...

Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a highly effective and general molecular design that enables an enhancement in radioluminescence within organometallic scintillators by more than three orders of magnitude. This enhancement harnesses X-ray-induced triplet exciton recycling within lanthanide metal complexes. Detection of ionizing radiation is crucial in diverse fields, such as medical radiography, environmental monitoring and astronomy. As a result, significant efforts have been dedicated to the development of luminescent materials that respond to X-rays. However, current high-performance scintillators are almost exclusively limited to ceramic and perovskite materials, which face issues such as complex manufacturing processes,...

Last Saturday, I poured wine, greeted regulars and strangers and bused tables at Contento, the restaurant I co-owned in East Harlem, for the last time. After more than three years of service, during which The New York Times ranked us twice among the 100 Best Restaurants in New York City and the Michelin Guide gave me its sommelier award, I had to say goodbye to my talented staff and lifelong dream of owning a restaurant. The combination of inflation, rising crime that required us to pay for security guards and declining profits simply proved insurmountable.I’m crushed that we had to...

They'd have you believe that H-1B is a meritocracy. That's a lie. A VP for Cognizant, who supplies thousands of H-1B workers for Silicon Valley, admitted under oath that visa workers are not more "skilled" than US workers. ... Companies are incentivized by H1B visas to hire cheap foreigners They’ve been caught multiple times discriminating against Americans in favor of immigrants

The majority of likely American voters says the United States does not need any more foreign H-1B visa workers to fill white-collar jobs, a new poll finds.A Rasmussen Reports survey reveals that 6-in-10 Americans say the U.S. “already has enough talented people to train and recruit” for white-collar jobs when asked whether Congress should increase the inflow of foreign workers, primarily those arriving through the H-1B visa program.Meanwhile, just 26 percent of Americans say Congress should increase the number of foreign visa workers taking white-collar jobs.Republicans and swing voters, in particular, say the U.S. has enough American talent for such...

New York City’s biggest overtime hogs for a second straight year are mostly rank-and-file workers responsible for tackling the Big Apple’s $6 billion-plus migrant crisis, The Post has learned. Fifty-one of the 100 city employees who racked up the most OT during the fiscal year ending June 30 work at the Departments of Social Services and Homeless Services, and their duties include assisting migrants, an examination of city payroll records shows. Each worker accumulated at least 1,851 hours in extra pay. Leading the way was Kashwayne Burnett, a DSS bookkeeper who worked 3,303 hours of overtime in the agency’s Manhattan...

TechCrunch Bench shuts down, leaving thousands of businesses without access to accounting and tax docs Charles Rollet 1:52 PM PST · December 27, 2024 Bench, a Canada-based accounting startup that offered software-as-a-service for small and medium-sized businesses, has abruptly shut down, according to a notice posted on its website. “We regret to inform you that as of December 27, 2024, the Bench platform will no longer be accessible,” the notice reads. The company’s entire website is currently offline except for the notice, leaving thousands of businesses in the lurch. Bench touted having more than 35,000 U.S. customers just hours before...

Elon Musk Is Propping Up Anti-Trump Activists In H-1B Visa Fight @RaheemKassam