Free Republic

CME Raises Silver Margins to $25K as Market Manipulation Intensifies CME raises silver margins to $25K amid a price surge, reviving manipulation concerns as higher costs threaten trader liquidations. On December 26, 2025, the CME Group announced an increase in margin requirements for silver futures. Starting December 29, 2025, the initial margin for March 2026 silver contracts will rise to $25,000. This move comes amid rising silver prices and growing concern about market manipulation. The CME’s decision is seen as another attempt to control silver’s price during a period of increased demand. The Impact of the Margin Hike on Silver...

The state’s parole board has released 39 “emerging adult” murder convicts who were originally sentenced to life without parole, but who later became eligible after a court ruling. The Massachusetts Parole Board has issued 51 parole decisions since the Supreme Judicial Court last year ruled that emerging adults who were 18 to 20 at the time of the offense cannot be sentenced to life without parole. Allen Alston, 47 — formerly known as Allen Scoggins — was one of the convicted murderers granted parole. On May 16, 1997, a then-19-year-old Alston shot and killed taxi driver Ismael Rivera, 56, in...

Recently appointed Chief Executive Officer of the federal Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Frank Bisignano predicted that "94% of taxpayers will see tax reductions from President Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' legislation. Many families will receive annual income tax reductions in the $10,000 to $20,000 range. Social Security recipients will see annual net increases in benefits ranging up to $6,000 due to the legislation's elimination of taxes on benefits." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) called these tax reductions "inherently unfair. Only the richest 50% of Americans pay income taxes. Those too poor to pay these taxes and those on welfare will get no...

Turkish intelligence captured an IS member assigned to carry out suicide attacks in Turkey and Europe, as authorities warned of possible New Year's Eve attack plots. Ten suspects were detained for financing the network. Turkey's national intelligence agency MITcaptured Mehmet Gören, a senior IS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) member assigned to carry out suicide attacks targeting civilians in Turkey, Europe, Pakistan and Afghanistan, security sources said Tuesday. Gören, operating under the codename "Yahya", was apprehended in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and brought to Turkey following intelligence operations, according to sources. The operation thwarted attack plans targeting Turkey and exposed the organisation's recruitment network....

VIDEOIn the dystopian novel "Handmaid's Tale" powerless women in a future patriarchal society are treated like slaves and forced to wear ugly head coverings and must cover their bodies completely in long robes. The sad truth is you don't have to conjure up fiction to find such a society. This situation already exists in much of the Muslim world and is strictly enforced in such places as Iran and Afghanistan. So what did the Lt. Governor of Minnesota do? She embraced the Handmaid's Tale ethos by wearing a hijab, a symbol of the Handmaid's Tale type oppression among millions of...

One of the first things I did when I moved to Dubai was buy a Dodge Challenger. Not the volcanic Hellcat or the feral Scat Pack — the SXT, the V6 base model. Nevertheless, for those nine months in 2023, the car carried itself like it had seen things it couldn’t legally discuss. I miss it the way a grounded teenager misses his phone — painfully and often. The car was, in many ways, gloriously pointless. But to me, it was absolutely perfect. Nobody buys a Dodge for practicality. You buy one because fun is a dying art and driving...

Don’t ever be silenced.

Journalist in Ohio discovered more shocking Somalia immigrant fraud schemes Somalis in Ohio exposed for running EBT fraud rings by owning restaurants with attached grocery stores. They use welfare benefits to buy ingredients in bulk and funneling the money into their cash-paying eateries while reporting losses for tax write- offs He also shows how Muslims with multiple wife’s can have them all claim benefits

As families come together to light the kinara, Jen and I wish all those celebrating a joyful Kwanzaa. May the seven principles of Kwanzaa, in particular community, purpose, and unity, guide our way toward a better future. Happy Kwanzaa, California!

CHRISTMAS BIBLE-ART EPISODE #15 of 33 IT’S A BOY! L U K E CHAPTER 2 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be...

~A happy third day of Christmastide to you. Waking on Boxing Day to hear that President Trump had dispatched the USAF across the Atlantic to take out the compounds of "scum", I naturally assumed he was referring to 10 Downing Street: A teacher in an English school was accused of posing a risk to children and referred to the Government's counter-terrorism programme after showing Donald Trump videos to his US politics class... Henley College, a sixth-form in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, with more than 2,000 students, reported the politics lecturer to the local child safeguarding authority, which concluded a referral to Prevent,...

Zohran Mamdani is about to take office as New York City’s new mayor. One of his signature initiatives is the idea of ‘community policing’. This usually gets translated in the press as “he wants to send social workers out to answer 911 calls.” That alone is crazy enough, but as usual, the press does not begin to understand or communicate effectively what is really happening. A bill has already been introduced before the New York City Council to create what will be called the “Department of Community Safety.” Brooklyn Lincoln Restler, a member of the Working Families Party, is the...

Droubay said her family's housing costs doubled, but their New York life is a dream come true. snip I have been pleasantly surprised by how kind 99% of people have been. I will get to the subway, and before I even fold up my stroller, strangers pick up the other end and carry it for me. Everyone stands up and offers seats to my kids, or older women have even grabbed one of my kids' hands and helped them on or off the subway for me.

“‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish of every kind; and when it was filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they sat down and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away. So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous’” (Matthew 13:47–49). During the present church era, God allows unbelief and unrighteousness to exist in His kingdom. Therefore believers and unbelievers coexist, as Jesus already illustrated in His...

American Christianity includes more than 200 denominations. One of the fastest growing is the orthodoxy of Woke. Woke Christianity is the single greatest threat to the modern church since the first century. There are two ways to tell if your church or religious organization has gone woke. First, what’s missing? And second, what replaced what’s missing? If sound biblical preaching about sin, salvation, Jesus’ virgin birth, and other teachings are absent, that’s not woke; it’s just weak. But if those essentials were replaced by Critical Race Theory (CRT), tolerance, and a watered-down social Gospel, a woke cancer is growing. The...

Friend or no friend, America’s history with the Jewish people goes back farther than either the Trump or Biden administrations. In fact, the country’s very foundation is based on the Jewish Scriptures. For instance: The three branches of the U.S. government were extracted from Isaiah 33:22: “For the Lord is our Judge [judicial branch], the Lord is our Lawgiver [legislative branch], the Lord is our King [executive branch].” The Liberty Bell’s inscription is taken from Leviticus 25:10: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Three of America’s Founding Fathers (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John...

A sitting U.S. mayor responded to a Jewish mass murder by spreading antisemitic conspiracies, blaming Israel, excusing terror, and issuing a hollow apology—exposing how deeply normalized Jew-hatred has become in progressive politics. The mayor of Richmond, California, Eduardo Martinez, was hammered following the Bondi Beach massacre of 15 people, with calls for his immediate resignation after he posted numerous antisemitic social media rants branding the slaughter as an Israeli “false flag” operation, while blaming Israel for the rise in violence against Jews. Martinez was elected mayor of Richmond in November 2022. He has served on the city council since 2014...

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem 🇮🇱(12/27/25)[Prayer]Countdown To The New YearMatthew 1:18-25Joseph Accepts Jesus as His Son 18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about[a]: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet[b] did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a...

That’s one hell of a markup. Whoever moves into NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s rent-stabilized apartment in Queens will be shelling out an extra $800 — or 35% — more per month than what the socialist “nepo baby” did, The Post has learned. The Astoria apartment — which has quietly attracted interest from potential tenants for the past few weeks — is now commanding $3,100 per month while still remaining rent stabilized, sources said. Mamdani — who’ll be moving into Gracie Mansion with his “aloof” artist wife Rama Duwaji sometime after being sworn in Jan. 1 — caught a break during...

A Bay Area Jewish advocacy organization is calling for Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez’s resignation, accusing him of spreading conspiracy theories about a deadly terror attack in Sydney, Australia. The Bay Area chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) said in an open letter sent to Bay Area media organizations that Martinez has “posted repeatedly on LinkedIn spreading false conspiracies blaming Jews for the Bondi Beach terror attack.” Two gunmen killed 15 people, including a child, during the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration on Sunday in what Australian authorities called an antisemitic terror attack linked to an “Islamic State group.” Martinez,...