Free Republic

The doom feed says home affordability locked a generation out. The math on the payment you actually write says something the headlines won’t.Here are the “facts” that the media tells you about home affordability.Let’s start with a recent survey. Two out of three Americans now say it’s a bad time to buy a house, the most negative reading Gallup has ever recorded. Another study showed that a record 25.2 million adults under 35 are living with their parents. Scroll any feed, and you’ll hear that home affordability has priced an entire generation out for good. Those are the “facts” according...

New York City dished out welfare checks to nearly 865,000 people over the past year — a historic handout that has sent public assistance spending skyrocketing to a record-breaking $2.7 billion, The Post can reveal. The city’s Department of Social Services served a staggering 864,999 welfare recipients for the 12-month period ending May 30, a whopping 55.7% increase since 2022 and totals the Big Apple hasn’t seen in roughly 30 years, an examination of agency records found. The city’s taxpayer-funded budget for cash-assistance payments soared even higher — up 72.6%, from $1.57 billion in fiscal 2022 to its current $2.71...

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed — who has questioned whether police officers need to carry guns — spent years on the campaign trail protected by an armed guard, according to his former security director. El-Sayed, who has been endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in the Democratic primary, has faced renewed scrutiny after a 2020 University of Michigan video resurfaced showing him questioning police funding and the need for armed officers. During his Senate campaign, however, he has said he does not support defunding police. “Do people really need to use guns? Do we need as much of a police...

“Squad” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) boasted that Minnesota liberals “defeated ICE’s racist terror campaign” in a cringey video trying to hop on a new TikTok-like trend — but the embattled lefty was swiftly roasted for her efforts. Plopped into a seat, “The Squad” member adjusted her blazer and fidgeted with a microphone as if she were about to be interviewed in the 10-second clip she shared Wednesday on Facebook. Omar, 43, took a deep breath as dramatic instrumental music played in the background. “Me preparing for the documentary on how we defeated ICE’s racist terror campaign in Minnesota,” she wrote...

Florida’s next governor needs a stress test, not a coronation. A few days ago, I posited that St. Pete Beach in Florida is showing signs of strain, hinting at a lack of the resilience that was once part of its fabric. Given that hurricanes are inevitable, I worried that its general inability to cope with even minimal pressure put it at risk of collapse in the event of another natural disaster. Some commenters thought I was exaggerating a bad restaurant experience and overextending it. It’s worth taking that criticism seriously because the objection shows that I failed to make myself...

Trump’s warning about communism is justified. If we broaden the term and speak instead of etatism and collectivism, his argument hits the nail on the head. President Donald Trump has issued a strong warning against communist tendencies in his country. A look at the European Union and Germany provides an explanation: figures like Zohran Mamdani can be found everywhere around us. Two powerful tendencies are currently challenging Western culture. First, Islam is moving into the spiritual vacuum left behind by a toothless and, in many respects, spiritually hollow Christianity. It turns out that a church which has degenerated into a...

Netflix acquired Ben Affleck's AI start-up company InterPositive this past March, and now the insane sum the streaming giant paid has been unveiled. In a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Friday, the streamer stated that it paid $587 million in cash for the company, per The Hollywood Reporter. According to the outlet, the information was provided in the company’s form 10-Q, stating that 'in March 2026, the Company completed an acquisition which was accounted for as a business combination for a total purchase price of approximately $587 million, consisting of cash consideration.' Although the document does not explicitly...

Two death row inmates are scheduled to be put to death on the same day in Florida — the first double execution in the Sunshine State in over six decades. Governor Ron DeSantis rescheduled the execution of former police officer and convicted child murderer James Duckett for 12 p.m. on July 28, exactly six hours before Dominick Anthony Occhicone Jr. is also set to be put to death, USA Today reported. The 68-year-old former cop was set to be executed in March for murdering an 11-year-old girl in 1987, but he received a rare and temporary reprieve from the Florida...

An employee at a Colorado Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center allegedly shot a female protester Thursday night while trying to get to work. Brandon Booth, 42, an employee of the GEO Group, which operates the Aurora ICE Processing Center in Colorado, was waiting in his car on a nearby street with other workers as a demonstration blocked their access to the facility, according to police. Two female protesters reportedly instigated a verbal confrontation and took pictures of the detention center employees’ cars before walking away. Booth then allegedly fired a single shot towards the direction of the two...

A top Missouri prosecutor was booted for having an affair with an illegal migrant her office was probing for sex assault — and because she slept with two other men in glaring conflicts of interest, too, court papers allege. Disgraced Ray County Prosecutor Camille Johnston was yanked from her position Thursday when a judge signed off on Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s petition laying out a slew of misconduct allegations against her during her three and a half years in office, Hanaway announced. Johnston — an elected official who took office Jan. 1, 2023 — compromised the integrity of her...

Fresh produce giant Taylor Farms is preparing to recall ingredients linked to a parasite outbreak that has caused severe diarrhea and sickened thousands of people in Michigan and nearby states, according to a report. The California-based lettuce supplier told federal regulators that it was preparing a recall tied to the widening cyclospora outbreak, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing a document viewed by the outlet. The parasite can cause severe diarrhea, fatigue and nausea. The scope of the recall was not immediately clear. The move would mark the clearest sign yet of a potential source of the outbreak, which prompted Taco...

The Department of Homeland Security has revealed what is in store for the Canadian woman accused of pummeling a patriotic teenager at the Jersey Shore on Fourth of July weekend. Kaitlyn Tracey, 33, a Canadian national, is currently in custody at Delaney Hall immigrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey, after the alleged July 3 beatdown at Point Pleasant Beach. She arrived in the US in 2024 using her passport but overstayed her visa, officials said. “This illegal alien who assaulted a teenager has no business being in our country,” DHS wrote in a statement on X, dubbing her a...

U.S. home prices surged to an all-time high in June according to a National Association of Realtors (NAR) report released last Thursday. The report found that the median existing home price in June reached $440,660, an increase of 1.8 percent year-over-year and a new high according to the NAR’s chief economist Lawrence Yun. Housing sales declined to 2.4 percent month-over-month in June and 2.8 percent, seasonally adjusted, since June 2025. The NAR’s Housing Affordability Index is up 6.8 points since June 2025 at 102.3, signaling that home prices are more affordable relative to the median family income. Yet the index...

The potential spread of massive water and electricity-consuming data centers into Florida has sparked fierce opposition from thousands of residents and drawn dividing lines between its most powerful politicians. But, experts say, the projects popping up in Miami-Dade are unlike those that grab headlines for fouling drinking water and driving up power bills — for now. The best example yet of Florida’s pushback against the spread of data centers may have been Thursday’s Palm Beach County Commission meeting, where officials gave a firm no to a proposed project called “Project Tango” that would have placed a data center using as...

Arson attacks, vandalism and other acts of sabotage are increasingly disrupting Germany's rail network, with investigators linking several incidents to far-left extremists. Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s state-owned railway operator, appears to be facing a growing sabotage problem. According to a leaked internal report, the company recorded around 2,200 cases of sabotage targeting railway infrastructure during the first six months of 2026, a 7% increase compared with the same period last year. The incidents include arson, vandalism, and theft that causes significant damage to railway infrastructure and disrupts train services, costing taxpayers increasing amounts to repair each year. The latest incident occurred...

A Rhode Island fugitive who had been on the run for 20 years and was featured on “America’s Most Wanted” was captured by US Marshals on his sailboat off the coast of New York. Ronald L. Fischer was tracked down by federal agents to his 56-foot-long sailing vessel “The Silver Lining” about an hour offshore on Thursday, ending a decades-long wild goose chase to take down the sex offender, according to the US Marshals Service. Fischer, 70, had been on the lam since 2005 when he fled Rhode Island during his criminal trial in Newport for allegedly raping a woman...

In a turnaround that surprised Wall Street, woke funds are no longer trendy. The savvy investors are staying away. Not so long ago, the acronym ESG was trendy in investment markets. The woke thing to do was to invest in ESG-friendly funds. Their popularity promised a maximum return on investment with a commitment to woke ideals. ESG stands for investing in corporations based on Environmental, Social and corporate-Governance factors. By adopting an ESG approach, mutual fund operators could deliver maximum return on investment while maintaining a minimal carbon footprint. Investors could virtue signal their support for LGBT and other social...

Disgraced ex-Rep. Eric Swalwell’s zombie congressional campaign has dwindled to just over $11,000 after he coughed up another $50,000 to celebrity defense attorney Sara Azari and refunded nearly $190,000 to donors following his epic career collapse following sexual assault allegations. The details were documented this week in new federal campaign filings and come as California ethics investigators continue probing more than $300,000 in payments made to Azari from Swalwell’s failed gubernatorial campaign — raising fresh questions about the disgraced Democrat’s mounting legal bills as his political career continues to unravel. Swalwell’s federal campaign filings, which list him as treasurer, paint...

Former CNN host and independent journalist Don Lemon claimed in a new interview that he’s “serious” about possibly running for president in the 2028 election — and insisted he’d be a “really good” commander-in-chief. Lemon made the eyebrow-raising declaration on “Can’t Be Censored” podcast hosted by Karman Wong and Travis Dhanraj, insisting that everyone wants to know if he has White House aspirations. “Do you have political ambition? Is that true?” Dhanraj asked on Wednesday’s show. “No, but people keep asking me if I’m running for president,” Lemon answered. “And I don’t know. I might. I’m serious. I don’t know....

They raised a stink. City Council members overwhelmingly voted Thursday to give themselves an 18% raise — a shamelessly self-serving move that comes after months of thwarted attempts to pass a fat pay hike. A veto-proof 42-6 vote approved the measure to inflate council salaries to $175,500, as well as hike Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pay to $305,800 a year, backdated to January — the start of new terms in office and the first day on the job for some lawmakers. The nay votes all came from Republicans and conservative Democrats, including Councilman Phil Wong (D-Queens), who said he pushed for...