Free Republic

Climate change worsened by human behavior made 2025 one of the three hottest years on record, scientists said. The analysis from World Weather Attribution researchers, released Tuesday in Europe, came after a year when people around the world were slammed by the dangerous extremes brought on by a warming planet. "If we don't stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal" of warming, Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution and an Imperial College London climate scientist, told The Associated Press. "The science is increasingly clear." "The heat waves we...

In the eighties, I had a friend who worked for me on and off. He was a competent handyman and could do an oil change without screwing it up, something that was always useful in an auto shop, which I ran. Eventually, however, he got a better paying job as a drywaller. Anyone who has ever done a home project with even a small drywall repair knows how difficult it is not to have even a small repair stick out like a sore thumb. Stevie was good and patient. He has that ability to measure with his eye. And so...

Meet three AWFL (Affluent, white, female, liberal) Minnesota judges who are making headlines for the most predictable reasons imaginable. These ladies have recently dismissed cases against Somali fraudsters in Minnesota, even overturning jury verdicts, allowing the immigrants stealing millions from Americans and Minnesotans to walk free. Each of these judges found small, technical prosecutorial errors, resulting in the cases being tossed. Here's local reporting in Minnesota on the case where Judge Sarah West tossed the jury verdict: Jurors who were chosen for the case were shocked by West's decision. 'I am shocked,' jury foreperson Ben Walfoort told KARE 11 News....

Credit: Geograph Britain and Ireland The United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has introduced a new policy requiring its officers and staff members to declare whether they are Freemasons. The MPS wrote in a statement on X, “There have been calls going back a number of years for the role of Freemasonry in policing to be properly addressed, including as a recommendation in the report of the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel.” “We strongly believe that failing to act on these calls would further damage trust not only among the public but also other officers and staff,” added the MPS. In...

For faith leaders supporting and ministering to anxious immigrants across the United States, 2025 was fraught with challenges and setbacks. For many in these religious circles, the coming year could be worse. The essence of their fears: President Donald Trump has become harsher with his contemptuous rhetoric and policy proposals, blaming immigrants for problems from crime to housing shortages and, in a social media post, demanding “REVERSE MIGRATION.” Haitians who fled gang violence in their homeland, as well as Afghans allowed entry after assisting the U.S. in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover, now fear that their refuge in America may...

Thousands are flooding Tehran, chanting for Reza Pahlavi as the crowd swells beyond control.

As Josh Abbotoy gazes out at lush green woods and pastureland nestled among Tennessee's Appalachian hills, he describes what he intends to build here: a neighbourhood with dozens of residential lots, centred around a working farm and, crucially, a church. Mr Abbotoy is prominent in US conservative circles and describes his development as an "affinity-based community" - marketed to people not only interested in the peace and quiet of rural life, but in a constellation of right-wing ideals. "Faith, family and freedom," he says. "Those are the values that we try to celebrate." Initially he didn't attract much local attention...

A pair of Empire State snowbirds just learned it’s not easy to fly the coop. An upstate couple who relocated to Florida is still on the hook for a $60,000 New York tax bill because they didn’t prove their Sunshine State pad was their main residence, a state tax panel ruled in a recent bombshell decision. John Hoff and his wife, Kathleen Ocorr-Hoff, kept cashing paychecks here and didn’t give up their local country club memberships, the tax panel found in the decision — which could give pause to snowbirds splitting time between the Empire State and Florida. The couple...

Teen Discovers 1.5M Space Objects With AI | Image by Matteo Paz @matteopaz06/X A recently graduated high school student made an artificial intelligence breakthrough using retired NASA data, which led to a public recruitment pitch from the agency’s new administrator on social media, including a fighter jet ride. The teenager from Pasadena, California, used AI to identify approximately 1.5 million previously unrecognized cosmic objects in archival NASA data. His work went viral on X, capturing the attention of senior space officials. This led to an informal public recruitment pitch from Jared Isaacman, the billionaire entrepreneur recently appointed as NASA administrator....

Three weeks after college, I flew to Senegal, West Africa, to run a community center in a rural town. Life was placid, with no danger, except to your health. That danger was considerable, because it was, in the words of the Peace Corps doctor, “a fecalized environment. “In plain English: s— is everywhere. People defecate on the open ground, and the feces is blown with the dust — onto you, your clothes, your food, the water. He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water. Human feces carries parasites that bore through your skin and cause...

It’s been nearly 20 years since Minnesota elected a Republican governor. The former House Speaker Tim Pawlanty (R-MN) was the last conservative to earn that distinction, winning consecutive terms in 2002 and then 2006. Since 2010, the Democratic-Farmers-Labor party, or DFL as it is commonly known in Minnesota, has ruled the political roost in the Land of the Lakes. But the MAGA stalwart and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is hoping to loosen the blue grip in Minnesota, announcing this week his intentions to run for governor of the state in 2026. In a statement broadcast to his eponymous platform, Lindell...

“‘. . . and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’” (Matthew 13:50). Continuing from yesterday, we can learn several more biblical truths about hell, the dragnet’s ultimate peril. For example, the lost will suffer hell’s torments in varying degrees. Those who willfully reject Jesus Christ and blatantly scorn His sacrifice will receive far greater punishment than people who had only the light of the Old Testament. The author of Hebrews writes, “Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of...

...California dropped its lawsuit against the Trump administration after it pulled roughly $4 billion in federal funding for the state’s high-speed rail project... ...Court records show that California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office filed a notice on Dec. 23 voluntarily dismissing the lawsuit without prejudice on behalf of the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA), which had been seeking to have the federal funding reinstated.... ....An authority spokesperson told Fox News Digital the loss of federal funding will not derail the project or construction because most of the funding comes from the state through the voter-approved Proposition 1A and the Cap-and-Invest...

A warning from Victor Davis Hanson warning from Victor Davis Hanson: somebody has been producing and posting elaborate and well-made AI-generated videos purporting to originate from Prof. Hanson himself. They have been posted on both YouTube and X, and perhaps elsewhere. They’re very convincing at first glance, and appear to have been filmed in the same book-lined setting that VDH uses for his Daily Signal videos. (I actually watched one of these last week, and a minute or two passed before I was certain that this was not Victor David Hanson.) The producers of the videos are as yet unknown....

A Florida man dressed in a Santa Claus hat captured a 153-pound invasive Burmese python on Christmas Eve. He shared a photo of the snake slung over his shoulder like a knight carrying a dragon back from battle and it truly puts into perspective the size of these invasive pythons here in Florida. Using ‘male scout snakes’ to locate the breeding female, Conservancy of Southwest Florida wildlife biologist Ian Easterling was able to capture and remove one of the largest invasive pythons caught this year. Florida Man Dressed As Santa Captures 153-Pound Invasive Burmese Python The Conservancy of Southwest Florida...

A man was arrested after an unprovoked attack in Marietta Square, where two people were punched Saturday, according to a police report.

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem 🇮🇱(12/30/25)[Prayer]Countdown To The New YearMatthew 2:19-23The Return to Nazareth 19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” 21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid...

In a speech at the December 2025 Turning Point USA summit in Phoenix, Arizona, Vice President J.D. Vance declared, “In the United States, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.” There was an overwhelming and immediate meltdown on the left, replete with the usual vile epithets and accusations of “white supremacy,” as headlines on the internet blared, “JD Vance Goes Full White Nationalist at TPUSA Event,” and NPR declared, “Vance Refuses to Set Red Line Over Bigotry at Turning Point USA’s Convention.” Within this echo chamber, the accusations of blatant racism assumed avalanche proportions. New York Times columnist...

In an article published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, Italian researchers mapped the genetics of European Marsican Brown bears (Ursus arctos). They found evidence indicating the bears had been selected by human hunting pressure to be less aggressive. From yale.edu: To investigate, Italian researchers mapped the genes of Marsican bears and compared them with the genes of brown bears in Slovakia and the U.S. Their study, published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, found clear evidence that the Marsican bears had been selected for lower aggression.The study has confirmed what naturalists, ranchers, hunters,, and wildlife managers assumed to be true. Grizzly...

A 33-year-old Wilmington man named Eliot Watkins was reported to be unclothed and causing damage to hotel property; he was also reported approaching hotel guests in the lobby. Police located him in a nearby wooded area, where he ran into a retention pond. The suspect was noted to have kicked an officer during the arrest.