Free Republic

Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Kelly Loeffler said Thursday night that her agency has suspended “6,900 Minnesota borrowers” over suspected fraudulent activity regarding COVID-era lending programs. Loeffler said the SBA over the last week reviewed “thousands” of potentially “fraudulent” Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) payouts that were approved in Minnesota. “Today, our agency took action to suspend 6,900 Minnesota borrowers amid suspected fraudulent activity. In total, these borrowers were approved for 7,900 PPP and EIDL loans worth approximately $400M,” Loeffler said on social platform X. She said the implicated individuals would be banned from all...

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2006834169637384470

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised to "defeat the decline and division offered by others" in his new year message, as he insisted 2026 would see people feel "positive change" in their lives. He acknowledged "things have been tough in Britain for a while" but said the public should now start to see improvements including lower bills, more police on the streets and new health hubs. It has been a difficult year for the PM, who has been battling slowing economic growth, poor poll ratings and speculation he could face a leadership challenge. In her own new year message,...

The incoherence of the Charlotte diocese’s ban on altar railsBishop Michael Martin has issued new diocesan guidance banning the use of altar rails during Holy Communion in the Diocese of Charlotte.In a pastoral letter dated 17 December, Bishop Michael Martin affirmed that the “normative posture” for receiving Holy Communion in the United States is standing, following a bow of the head as a sign of reverence. The letter instructs parishes that currently use altar rails, kneelers, or prie-dieus for the distribution of Communion to discontinue the practice, with any temporary or movable fixtures to be removed by 16 January 2026.“The...

This year began with a deadly New Year's Day car-ramming terrorist attack in New Orleans and is finishing with a flurry of horrific shootings, including a mass shooting at Brown University, but 2025 is also poised to end with the largest one-year drop in U.S. homicides ever recorded, according to data from cities both large and small. Based on a sampling of preliminary crime statistics from 550 U.S. law enforcement agencies, the year is expected to end with a roughly 20% decrease in homicides nationwide, Jeff Asher, a national crime analyst, told ABC News. "So, even taking a conservative view,...

After a bruising presidential election loss in 2024, this year proved decisive for a Democratic Party looking to recover from its defeats and regain momentum. Heading into 2026, all 435 districts in the House of Representatives and 33 seats in the U.S. Senate are up for election in the midterms. Republicans currently have a three-seat majority in the Senate, while they hold 219 seats to Democrats’ 213 in the House. - Rep. Thomas Massie’s Primary Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, has made an enemy of President Trump by leading the campaign for the release of the files relating to...

[Catholic Caucus] The Traditional Mass a Topic at the January Consistory?Nicola Spuntoni, in an article published in Il Giornale on December 16, reveals that the Pope, who has convened an extraordinary consistory for January 7 and 8, will be sending the cardinals a letter before Christmas outlining the three-point agenda for this consistory: their participation in the governance of the Church, synodality, and the liturgical question.It goes without saying that, on this last point, the status of the Traditional Latin Mass after Traditionis Custodes will not be the only topic of discussion, but it is clear that it will be...

2025 began with the devastating fires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, which destroyed the homes of many in the industry and stymied production and livelihoods for others. Then there were the ups and downs of the theatrical box office — And, of course, there were the big industry shakeups. Just in this year, we saw the completion of the Paramount-Skydance merger followed by Paramount’s initial bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, and then the potential acquisition of Warner Bros.’ studios, HBO and HBO Max by Netflix. About the only thing I can predict with certainty is that 2026 is going...

Mayor Zohran Mamdani opened his administration Thursday with an explicit pledge to govern the nation’s largest city as a democratic socialist, saying he would not soften his politics as he ushered in the “new era.” “I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist,” Mamdani said in his inaugural address on New Year’s Day before a crowd of thousands gathered at City Hall and at a block party down the Canyon of Heroes. The declaration, made on the steps of City Hall, set the tone for a speech that framed his mayoralty as a...

The Washington state attorney general released a statement on X Tuesday evening warning independent journalists to stop investigating fraudulent Somali daycare centers or they could be charged with a hate crime. “My office has received outreach from members of the Somali community after reports of home-based daycare providers being harassed and accused of fraud with little to no fact-checking,” State AG Nick Brown stated. “We are in touch with the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families regarding the claims being pushed online and the harassment reported by daycare providers. Showing up on someone’s porch, threatening, or harassing them isn’t...

this is shocking: US collects $2.4T in income tax, but spends $1.5T on fraud if we didn't have to pay for fraud, only $900b would need to be collected this means anyone with less 500k in income could pay *literally $0* in income tax If you cut $1.5 trillion in fraud you could exempt all income tax up to $200,000 🤯 https://x.com/profstonge/ we don't need to raise taxes. we need to cut fraud

Tommy Emmanuel and Jason Isbell perform "Deep River Blues" as a tribute to Doc Watson. It's from Tommy's duet album 'Accomplice One'. The video was directed and edited by Joshua Britt & Neilson Hubbard for Neighborhoods Apart Productions. Deep River Blues | Collaborations Tommy Emmanuel with Jason Isbell | 3:43 Tommy Emmanuel, CGP | 921K subscribers | 6,296,265 views | March 7, 2018

Transcript DogeDesigner: "When people say like, this is fake, I'm like, uh, actually, well let's look at, um..." Somali TikToker: Somali clicks and gibberish followed by "I wouldn't worry too much about this one. I wouldn't worry too much about him. He about to die."

And that's exactly what they have been doing. It's right out there in the open. https://x.com/WesternLensman/status/2006852882210128088Transcript "The only way we're going to have a great future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants, the dreamers, and all of them. Because our ultimate goal is to help the dreamers, but get a path to citizenship for all 11 million or however many undocumented there are here."

For over a century, Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been considered irreversible. Now, research has challenged this long-held dogma in the field. Through studying diverse preclinical mouse models and human AD brains, the team showed that the brain's failure to maintain normal levels of a central cellular energy molecule, NAD+, is a major driver of AD, and that maintaining proper NAD+ balance can prevent and even reverse the disease. NAD+ levels decline naturally across the body, including the brain, as people age. Without proper NAD+ balance, cells eventually become unable to execute critical processes required for proper functioning and survival. The...

Investigative reporter Catherine Herridge revealed how CBS executives blocked the Hunter Biden laptop from hell story. Catherine Herridge previously worked as the chief intelligence correspondent for Fox News. In 2019, she joined CBS News as a senior investigative correspondent. She was fired in 2024 after she probed the Hunter Biden laptop from hell story. Hunter Biden dropped off his damaged laptops at a Delaware computer repair shop run by John Paul Mac Isaac back in 2019. John Paul Mac Isaac’s life changed in April 2019 when a visibly drunk Hunter Biden stopped by his computer repair shop with three damaged...

Witkoff and Kushner on one side, Rubio and Huckabee on the other: beneath the surface, the US administration is divided over who should be Israel's next prime minister… There was one moment in the Knesset speech on the day the war ended that particularly troubled Likud. It happened when the president spontaneously praised Yair Lapid. "He's a nice guy," he said to Netanyahu — and then jabbed the prime minister: "You don't need to be so tough now that the war is over." Was this a hint that the president intends, God forbid, to adopt neutrality in the upcoming election...

Beaver 🦁 @beaverd Daycares in Minnesota donated a combined $35 million to political campaigns in the last two years They didnt even try to hide the money trail. http://somaliscan.com

David Khait @David_Khait +1,000 people are registered to vote from a single address in Fulton County (Atlanta, Georgia) The issue? It’s a church and no one lives there. It’s a clever scheme by Democrat activists to register homeless people to vote, citing the church as their “residence” In one block, we found two churches that have registered over 3,000 people

2025 was an extraordinary year for precious metals. Gold, silver, and platinum each outperformed other asset classes, including equities, bitcoin (2024’s best performer), and even indexes tracking artificial intelligence (AI)—one of 2025’s most popular investment themes.Silver and platinum rose by approximately 170 percent in 2025, while gold returned a highly respectable 73 percent.Among AI stocks, only Palantir outperformed gold.Why such stellar performance from assets once derided by governments as “barbarous relics” and shunned by investors as outdated?The reason I wrote at the start of last year that we should “expect gold to shine in 2025” was because global conditions had...