Free Republic

The EU looks set to scrap a landmark 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel cars on Tuesday, as part of a package of reforms aimed at supporting Europe's embattled auto industry. Carmakers and their backers have lobbied hard for Brussels to relax the ban over the past year – in the face of fierce competition from China and a slower-than-expected shift to electric vehicles (EVs). Set in 2023, the ban was a cornerstone of the EU's environmental Green Deal, which has come under increased pressure from businesses and right-wing politicians as the EU seeks to bolster its industry.

While members of the U.S. Senate continue to battle over whether to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies just days before they expire, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is sharing some harsh truths. Johnson, in a post on X, recalled how Democrats sold the ACA to the American people as a form of relief that would lower their health care premium costs but instead has raised those premium costs 3 times faster than the the rate of inflation. The Speaker shared a chart showing how, since 2014, premium costs on the ACA exchange have risen twice as...

Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez Jr., on Monday, evaded questions on the Brown University shooter and declined to say what witnesses claim the shooter yelled before opening fire at the university. If the shooter were a White male, we would likely know everything about him. Rhode Island Officials held a press conference on Monday to provide updates on the Saturday shooting and ongoing investigation as the manhunt for the shooter remains underway. Witnesses say the shooter “yelled something” before killing two students and wounding nine more, and early reports suggest the shooter shouted “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire. But Perez...

Inside a closed Los Angeles courtroom, something wasn’t right. Clerks working for family court Judge Amy Pellman were reviewing routine surrogacy petitions when they spotted an unusual pattern: the same name, again and again. A Chinese billionaire was seeking parental rights to at least four unborn children, and the court’s additional research showed that he had already fathered or was in the process of fathering at least eight more—all through surrogates. When Pellman called Xu Bo in for a confidential hearing in the summer of 2023, he never entered the courtroom, according to people who attended the hearing. The maker...

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem 🇮🇱(12/16/25)[Prayer]The Scriptures in Handel’s “Messiah”1 Corinthians 15:5454 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”[a]Holy Bible, The King James Version________________________

16 December 2025 Tuesday of the 3rd week of Advent St Adelaide Church, Peabody, MAReadings at MassLiturgical Colour: Violet. Year: A(II).First readingZephaniah 3:1-2,9-13All peoples shall invoke the Lord's name and serve himTrouble is coming to the rebellious, the defiled,the tyrannical city!She would never listen to the call,would never learn the lesson;she has never trusted in the Lord,never drawn near to her God.Yes, I will then give the peoples lips that are clean,so that all may invoke the name of the Lordand serve him under the same yoke.From beyond the banks of the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliantswill bring me...

An extinction event is a rapid, sweeping collapse -- something so disruptive that what emerges afterward is unrecognizable from what came before. Volcano eruptions or meteor strikes can trigger such events in the natural world. Washington, D.C. may be approaching a political version of the same phenomenon, and Republicans seem disturbingly unprepared for what is coming. The GOP currently holds narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress -- seven seats in the House and six in the Senate. Those margins are razor-thin by any measure, and fragile given that five senators, three Republicans and two Democrats, are over eighty years...

What used to be online threats, harassment, and social-media trolling has started to bleed (literally) into the real world. Conservatives are being swatted. Homes are being shot up. Public figures are facing assassinations. Events are being shut down by threats of violence. And now, once again, a young conservative is dead. ...... but think about it: you have a visible right-wing leader on a campus where conservatives already say they’re afraid to speak freely, a violent act followed by silence and unanswered questions, and an administration with a record of caving to activist pressure. When you put it all together,...

South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden has announced that one of his priorities for 2026 will be to deregulate suppressors/silencers in South Dakota. Governor Rhoden stated he announced his decision support on December 4th. From dakotabroadcasting.com: After congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill earlier this year, silencers or suppressors were deregulated on a federal level. Governor Rhoden says he plans to bring legislation to deregulate these firearm accessories on the state level… December 8, 2025, South Dakota Senator Casey Crabtree announced he is introducing a bill to deregulate silencers in the state. Governor Rhoden announced his support for the measure...

Any day now, a US Navy strike force, led by the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, will join an armada of war ships already positioned off the coast of Venezuela. Described in the naval media as “the most capable, adaptable, and lethal combat platform in the world,” the USS Gerald R. Ford bristles with state-of-the-art attack aircraft on its massive deck: Super Hornet fighters, Growler electronic warfare jets, and Seahawk helicopters among them. And the battleship carries some 5,000 seamen and Marines, adding to the phalanx of 10,000 military personnel already deployed on bases in Puerto Rico and on...

The long march through the institutions: From Trotskyist entryism to civilizational conquest of Europe by the Muslim Brotherhood. The twentieth century taught the revolutionary Left a bitter lesson: frontal assaults on power fail when the state commands loyalty and firepower. Supposedly, the reason Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks triumphed in 1917 was that the Russian state had already collapsed; elsewhere, such as Hungary and Germany in 1919 and 1923, respectively, insurrection was crushed. From this defeat emerged a subtler doctrine—“entryism”. Instead of “storming the palace at once”, as it were, revolutionaries were advised to patiently infiltrate every institution shaping public opinion and...

“‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches’” (Matthew 13:31–32). A further lesson from this parable is that God’s kingdom will grow to become a blessing to the rest of the world. The tree that develops from the mustard seed symbolizes the kingdom, which in this age is Christ’s true church. The...

They described the person on the videos and photos released as a 5'8 male with a 'stocky build.' He is shown in a 19-second clip walking on Waterman Street in Providence at around 4:06pm on Saturday, around the same time the shooting occurred.

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After another massacre, Jews are reminded of a truth our enemies never grasp: History belongs to those who refuse to disappear. Like so many Jews, I was woken up in the early morning today to news of the massacre in Bondi Beach, Australia. Like so many Jews, I personally knew people who were hurt in the attack. And like so many Jews, I grieved for the victims and raged as public officials who cheered on the policies that made the attack possible rushed to publish sanctimonious denunciations, as if they had failed to understand that the shooting was precisely what...

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has tapped a controversial lawyer who defended an al Qaeda terrorist and a radical anti-Israel campus leader at Columbia for a “high-ranking” position at City Hall, The Post has learned. Ramzi Kassem, who is also a law professor at City University of New York and a member of Mamdani’s transition team for legal affairs, is the top candidate for Chief Counsel, the most important advisory role in the mayor’s office, according to a source close to the transition team. Kassem, 47, was one of the attorneys who defended Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born leader of the pro-Palestinian encampment...

A senior counter-terrorism official has revealed Sajid and Naveed Akram underwent military-style training overseas just weeks before the pair allegedly opened fire at the Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach. The father and son travelled to the Philippines in November, a region that has been a hotspot for Islamist militants since the early 1990s, when terrorist training camps relocated from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to southern Mindanao. Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24, arrived from Sydney on November 1 and left on November 28, a Bureau of Immigration spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday. Sajid travelled on an Indian passport while Naveed...

President Trump lodged an eye-watering $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC on Monday, accusing the British broadcaster of defaming him through a deceptive edit of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech at the White House Ellipse. The lawsuit took aim at a 2024 documentary by the BBC, which spliced different sections of Trump’s comments before his supporters ransacked the Capitol to make it appear as though he explicitly encouraged the riot. “I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth, literally,” Trump grumbled to reporters earlier in the day, Monday. “They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to...

The Obamas were supposed to meet with director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, the night they were allegedly killed by their son, Nick Reiner, in their home in Los Angeles. “We were supposed to be seeing them that night — last night — and we got the news,” Michelle Obama said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Monday night, when host Jimmy Kimmel asked how she was coping with the news of her friends’ murders. The former first lady said she and her husband were devastated when they learned that the legendary filmmaker and his wife, with whom they had been...

The commander of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), whose area of operations includes the Caribbean waters where the strikes against the alleged drug boats have been conducted, retired Friday as scrutiny surrounding the attacks mounts. Navy Adm. Alvin Holsey, who became the head of Southern Command in November 2024, announced suddenly in October that he would retire from the military as operations heated up in the region that the administration claims is part of President Donald Trump’s crusade against the influx of drugs into the U.S. The Trump administration designated drug cartel groups like Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa and others as...