Free Republic

The paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, notes that the fertility rate in the U.S. has fallen by 22 per cent since 2007, when the first iPhone went on sale in the country... Until 2011, the iPhone was only available in the U.S. to subscribers of AT&T, allowing the researchers to compare birth rates in counties with near-universal AT&T coverage to counties with little or none in the four years since the first iPhone’s release. Their findings suggest a striking relationship between iPhone access and declining birth rates... As for why exactly this is, the researchers present...

~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New JerseyJoint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst (JB MDL) is a United States military facility located 18 miles southeast of Trenton, New Jersey. The base is the only tri-service base in the United States Department of Defense and includes units from all six armed forces branches. The facility is an amalgamation of the United States Air Force's McGuire Air Force Base, the United States Army's Fort Dix and the United States Navy's Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst, which were merged on 1 October 2009. It was established in accordance with congressional legislation implementing...

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) took action “toward drafting” an affordability agenda for 2027 that puts Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in charge of health care, and transgender-identifying Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) in charge of caregiving, according to multiple reports. Sarah Ferris, a Capitol Hill report with CNN shared a photo on X that showed working groups for housing, gas and utilities, groceries and goods, caregiving, and healthcare. According to the photo shared by Ferris, Reps. Laura Friedman (D-CA) and Emilia Sykes (D-OH) were put in charge of the housing group. Reps. Nikki Budzinski (D-IL) and Mike Levin (D-CA) were...

Alarmed by Trump’s public flirtation with supporting a Florida abortion-rights ballot measure, Live Action founder Lila Rose traveled to the president’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club in September 2024 for a private intervention. During a sit-down that lasted more than two hours, Rose tried to persuade the president to adopt a stronger pro-life position on the campaign trail. She showed Trump videos narrated by former abortion doctors explaining how procedures are performed in graphic detail, hoping to convince him not to abandon a social-conservative movement that had stood by him for three presidential campaigns. But his response unsettled her... “That...

In a joint letter signed by former ministers and all of the Labour chairs of Westminster select committees, the UK Government has been told there is an “urgent need for accountability and concrete consequences in response to Israel’s violations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are spiralling by the day”. The letter to Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper was co-ordinated by Melanie Ward, the Labour MP for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy and the former chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). It comes as Israel launches air strikes on Iran despite a so-called ceasefire, closes all...

Police in Bangkok have arrested a security guard accused of stealing cash from donation boxes at Wat Pho after he allegedly climbed over the temple wall, covered his head with a cloth and recited what he described as a spell to conceal himself before carrying out the theft. Lt. Gen. Siam Boonsom, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Bureau, together with Maj. Gen. Pallop Aemla, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Bureau, and Maj. Gen. Chaikrit Pho-a, commander of Metropolitan Police Division 6, announced the arrest of Ratchathan, 43, on 4 June. He was apprehended at the entrance to Soi Lat...

The knife-wielding madman accused of slashing five people at random in one of New York City's busiest transit hubs has been identified. Hector Deleon, 51, has been identified as the alleged homeless man who attacked five people at the notorious Penn Station at around 7pm on Sunday. The suspect was tackled to the ground in the minutes following the Sunday stabbing spree. Deleon was hospitalized on Monday, and has yet to be charged, according to The New York Post.

How is this permitted? Why aren’t these jihadi doctors struck off and deported if foreign born? Any Jew who goes to a Muslim doctor is taking their own life in their hands. conceded that “the medical healthcare professional regulatory system is failing to protect Jewish patients and NHS staff.” In response, the Prime Minister has commissioned an emergency regulatory review, spearheaded by Lord Mann, to investigate antisemitic hostility systematically as well as broader institutional prejudice throughout the public healthcare network. The pervasive hostility within the medical sector, coupled with compounding societal threats, has prompted Baruch and his wife to orchestrate...

The White House is actively considering a plan to purchase the Chagos Islands, potentially undermining the UK’s agreement to transfer sovereignty of the strategically vital territory to Mauritius, according to reports. US officials have prepared proposals to bypass Britain and negotiate directly for control of Diego Garcia, the key Indian Ocean atoll that hosts a major joint US-UK military base. The idea forms part of broader options being developed by the Trump administration as alternatives to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan to cede the islands to Mauritius, which has close ties to China and Iran. Strategic Importance Diego Garcia’s location...

Midway through 2026, energy is the issue of the moment. The standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, soaring gas prices, the race to build AI data centers, and intensifying competition with China all point to the same question: Who will produce the energy that powers the modern world? That question is headed to the US Supreme Court. In a few months, the justices will hear arguments in one of the most consequential energy cases in decades, Suncor v. Boulder County. It’s one of dozens of lawsuits brought by progressive state and local governments seeking to make oil and gas companies...

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Hulu series host Nikole Hannah-Jones is set to speak at a Juneteenth event in Springfield. The University of Illinois Springfield Center for Lincoln Studies, in partnership with Juneteenth Inc., the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and the UIS Institute for Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice, will host a conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones, host and executive producer of the Hulu docuseries “The 1619 Project,” as part of its Juneteenth Lecture Series.

North Korea is the world’s most unlikely growth story. Its economy is flourishing in ways not seen in years, aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia, supplies and financing from China, and the ability to flout international sanctions to import more energy, components and materials. Chinese leader Xi Jinping traveled to North Korea this week for his first foreign trip of the year. The Kim regime slammed its borders shut during the Covid-19 pandemic. It has since reopened to only a select few outsiders, including Russian and Western travelers and diplomats. Those visitors describe a North Korea unrecognizable...

It is absolutely incredible the way democrats, and in particular the AWFUL’s, are treating Platner vs. Kavanaugh. Brett Kavanaugh was a choir boy compared to the total scumbag Platner. The shameless and unconscionable difference is truly amazing to watch. I guess democrats have completely changed their minds on “toxic masculinity “.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said on Monday that they would ban ships linked to Israel from the Red Sea after Israel renewed its military attacks on Iran, adding to concerns about global shipping and energy flows.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday he had a "positive" conversation with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and praised what he called their readiness to work on a settlement of the Ukraine war in the coming weeks. "A very positive conversation," Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app about the conversation during a stopover in the Moldovan capital, Chisinau. "Grateful for the readiness to work as actively as possible already in the weeks to come to give a boost to diplomacy for ending Russia's war against Ukraine," he wrote.

Karen Bass will escape being asked under oath about her actions leading up to The Palisades Fire at the trial of the man accused of starting the blaze which destroyed the beachfront enclave and killed 12. The trial against Uber driver Jonathan Rinderknecht started Monday with jury deliberations, where Judge Anne Hwang read out the witness list including dozens of names. But the embattled Los Angeles mayor, who it currently in a tight reelection fight, was not mentioned. Prosecutors claim Rinderknecht ignited the most expensive wildfire in US history, killing 12 people, torching thousands of homes and causing $150 billion...

Now that the race for U.S. Senate in Texas is solidified between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico, there are photos emerging of Talarico, who had famously declared his campaign to be "non-meat," now packing all kinds of meat into his mouth. End Wokeness is highlighting some of the images on X, stating: "James Talarico's team is now forcing him to eat meat in front of reporters "proving he's Texas tough." "He looks like he wants to puke."

Nithya Raman even LOST her own district (CD-4) to Spencer Pratt and Karan Bass, but you expect us to believe she beat them BOTH by winning 40% of the vote in the rest of the city by mail-in ballots?

MAZE repostedMAZE@mazemoore·Jun 72023. Immediately after her interview with Trump was broadcast, Kristen Welker "fact checked" Trump about his Jan 6th claim that the Mayor of DC had called for the National Guard and that they were turned away.Welker apparently forgot about her reporting from January 5th, 2021ransomnote: Welker's Jan 5, video clip contains her statement that the Mayor of D.C. had activated the National Guard as a precaution for Trump's Jan 6 event at the Capitol.

[Catholic Caucus] Schism or Showdown? A One-Scene Play~~ Prologue ~~Ahead of its threatened excommunication, the SSPX has responded with a “Declaration of Catholic Faith,” which, it says, “correspond(s) to the minimum indispensable to be in communion with the Church.” The Declaration is not a creed, but it lists twenty-two indispensable points of Faith.Without specifically identifying them, each of the twenty-two points of the Declaration refutes one of the many affronts to the Faith committed by the post-conciliar Church, including, for example:The Post-Synodal Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, on Holy Communion for couples in adulterous relationships.The Pan-Amazon Synod and its worship of Pachamama.The...