Free Republic

Remember Arabella Advisors? Eighteen months ago, Scott Walter literally wrote the book on the dark-money organization that sought to remake America into its preferred Marxist image. ARABELLA: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America explained how billionaires, inside of America and out, supplied massive amounts of financing to supposedly "grassroots" organizations on the hard Left, using various issue-related "storefronts" to hide the high-level coordination by the oligarchs that the Left supposedly opposes. At the time, Arabella Advisors got its financing through names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Pierre Omidyar, Hans-Jörg Wyss, and more. These billionaire activists needed...

Seth Rich Attorney Ty Clevenger fired off a blistering letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel back in April, accusing the FBI of flagrantly concealing critical records about the late DNC staffer Seth Rich and the now-discredited Russia collusion narrative. Seth Rich was murdered in the summer of 2016 before the release of the Hillary Clinton emails. His death has never been explained. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange suggested it was Rich who provided the Hillary-DNC emails to his organization and NOT Russia. In February 2024, Clevenger demanded that the FBI hand over the Seth Rich documents...

Suppose you’re a controversial left-wing speaker. Who do you think would be more likely to let you voice your opinions on campus: a slightly conservative man or a democratic socialist woman? Now suppose you’re a controversial right-wing speaker. Who do you think would be more likely to let you voice your opinions on campus: a slightly liberal man or a somewhat conservative woman? It may seem obvious that, regardless of gender, someone with a similar ideology would be more tolerant of your views. But recent data gathered by FIRE suggests that’s not always the case. Amazingly, it turns out that...

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist (communist) mayor-elect of New York City, is already walking back his completely insane plan to replace police with social workers in response to certain crimes. It was never a realistic idea to begin with. It was an effort on his part to appeal to the ‘defund the police’ wing of the Democrat party, of which Mamdani is himself a member. The truth is that police never really know what kind of dangerous situation they might be walking into, even on the most routine calls. The New York Post reports: Zohran Mamdani now says NYPD should...

U.S. job growth defied expectations in September, according to a Labor Department report issued nearly seven weeks late due to the government shutdown. Payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 119,000 on the month, the strongest gain since April, the Labor Department said Thursday.

The service is being held Thursday at the National Cathedral. WASHINGTON -- Former Vice President Dick Cheney's funeral will be held in Washington on Thursday, with several high-profile political figures set to be at the service for the man considered one of the most influential vice presidents in U.S. history. Former President Joe Biden plans to attend, a spokesperson confirmed to ABC News. The funeral will be held at Washington National Cathedral at 11 a.m. ET. Former President George W. Bush, who Cheney served for two terms, will offer a tribute at the service. According to the cathedral's program, Cheney's...

VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — A Volusia County woman is facing battery charges and possible deportation after deputies say she threw cold coffee on a woman, her 11-month-old son and their dog during a confrontation over a leash. The incident happened Friday morning on Quail Nest Lane, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office. Kelly Brisell told WESH 2 News she was walking with her son, Owen, and her 5-year-old Dalmatian, Ponce, when she encountered Nina Jaaskelainen outside a home. Brisell said Jaaskelainen became upset that her dog was not on a leash. “She started screaming at us,” Brisell said. “I...

Greg Price @greg_price11 🚨 Aftyn Behn-- the Democrat nominee for the upcoming TN07 special election-- says that she despises Nashville, the city that she's running to represent in Congress: “I hate the city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville. I hate it."

As support grows to impeach Trump's biggest nemesis on the federal bench, the embattled D.C. chief judge plans to resume contempt proceedings against the administration. Are Republicans finally preparing to oust Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg? This week, six Republican senators asked Sri Srinivasan, the chief judge of the D.C. circuit court, to suspend Boasberg pending potential impeachment proceedings in the House against the embattled Obama appointee. Senators Eric Schmitt, Mike Lee, Tommy Tuberville, Lindsey Graham, Bill Hagerty, and Kevin Cramer want Srinivasan to sideline Boasberg indefinitely; earlier this month, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) filed articles of impeachment against Boasberg following...

KEY POINTS * Starbucks Workers United says it is adding more than two dozen new cities and stores to its strike count, brining the total to 95 stores in 65 cities. * The union, which began organizing in 2021, has threatened the “largest, longest” strike in company history. It began on Nov. 13 and is open-ended. * Starbucks and the union entered into mediation in February, and hundreds of barista delegates voted down the economic package Starbucks proposed in April. * Both sides have pointed blame at the other for failure to reach a bargaining agreement, and say they’re ready...

Scientists at the University of Santiago de Compostela have unveiled a new photocatalytic method that converts methane and other natural gas components directly into versatile chemical building blocks. Researchers have created an iron-based catalyst that controls methane’s extreme reactivity, opening the door for natural gas to serve as a sustainable feedstock for high-value chemicals, including pharmaceuticals. Natural gas, one of the most plentiful energy resources on Earth, consists mainly of methane, ethane, and propane. Although it is commonly burned for power and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, researchers have long looked for ways to convert these stable hydrocarbons into useful...

ALBANY, N.Y. — Governor Kathy Hochul is calling on President Donald Trump to release $400 million in federal funds for the Home Energy Assistance Program. Governor Hochul said 1.5 million New Yorkers will rely on HEAP to help them heat their homes this winter. Hochul noted that, despite the government shutdown ending after 43 days, the longest hiatus in history, the Trump Administration has yet to release the funds. New York State will begin accepting HEAP applications on Nov. 24, but Hochul said that this will only be possible if the funding is provided. CNY Central spoke to one local...

Minnesota is drowning in fraud. Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots. In many cases, the fraud has allegedly been perpetrated by members of Minnesota’s sizeable Somali community. Federal counterterrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab. As one confidential source...

MIAMI — U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida has been indicted on charges accusing her of stealing $5 million in federal disaster funds and using some of the money to aid her 2021 campaign, the Justice Department said Wednesday. The Democrat is accused of stealing Federal Emergency Management Agency overpayments that her family health care company had received through a federally funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract, federal prosecutors said. A portion of the money was then funneled to support her campaign through candidate contributions, prosecutors allege. "Using disaster relief funds for self-enrichment is a particularly selfish, cynical crime," Attorney General...

As climate change threatens our planet, AP climate choices reporter Caleigh Wells is explaining what readers can do. Here’s what she said: Climate change stories can be devastating — frustrating policy fights, environmental destruction, public health disasters — and my fellow AP climate reporters are great at telling them. That’s not my job. I cover “climate choices.” I tell readers how their actions impact the planet. It’s important for two reasons: First, if we’re going to tackle this big existential climate threat, we have to know how, and 2) climate news sparks dread and anxiety. And the best antidotes I’ve...

A political commentator for NonLib Take says getting to the bottom of the Arctic Frost controversy must reveal who ordered telecom companies to give up phone records for Jack Smith’s investigation of President Trump. Arynne Wexler, in a post on X, said the central issue is to identify who authorized the subpoenas targeting Republican lawmakers, asking, “But is this really about Verizon? They were one of the multiple telecom companies threatened by court order,” said Wexler. “We shouldn’t lose focus over who directed Arctic Frost. Jack Smith and Judge Boasberg directed this overreach – everyone should know their names.” Arctic...

World leaders are heading into the final days of COP30, the United Nations climate meeting in Brazil. They are trying to agree on how to curb global warming and pay for the costs of an increasingly hotter planet. For the past eight years, one of the primary objectives of the annual negotiations has been to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to the temperatures in the late 1800s. That temperature goal was established after a landmark international scientific report laid out the catastrophic effects of exceeding that amount of warming. But that goal is no longer plausible, scientists...

A Colorado consumer advocacy group says some of the newest toys on shelves this holiday season are equipped with artificial intelligence, and they may not be good for kids. These robots, and even teddy bears, are equipped with AI chatbots that can talk to your child. In tests, some of the toys could tell kids how to find and light matches or even discuss inappropriate topics. In its annual "Trouble in Toyland" report, U.S. PIRG said, "In our testing, it was obvious that some toy companies are putting in guardrails to make their toys behave in a more kid-appropriate way...

If heat-trapping pollution from burning coal, oil and gas continues unchecked, thousands of hazardous sites across the United States risk being flooded from sea level rise by the turn of the century, posing serious health risks to nearby communities, according to a new study. Researchers identified 5,500 sites that store, emit or handle sewage, trash, oil, gas and other hazards that could face coastal flooding by 2100, with much of the risk already locked in due to past emissions. But more than half the sites are projected to face flood risk much sooner — as soon as 2050. Low-income, communities...

Within 24 hours of arriving in San Miguel de Allende, Karen decided to permanently leave the United States and become one of the many recent US immigrants to Mexico. Four months before visiting the city, the 55-year-old had been terminated as part of the Trump administration’s January 20 executive order suspending the US Refugee Admissions Program. Karen, who asked me not to use her full name because of her current immigration status, says through a haze of tears, “It’s hard to explain the compound grief involved in seeing a sector that did nothing but good just destroyed,” adding that much...