Free Republic

Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed the “one big, beautiful bill” will spike electricity costs on Sunday, seemingly ignoring the fact that ratepayers in state are drowning under some of the most exorbitant utility bills in the U.S. Newsom took to X and listed several grievances he has with the GOP reconciliation bill, including concerns that its passage would lead to rising electricity costs because it would limit subsidies for green energy. California has some of the highest energy prices in the U.S., and they are projected to keep climbing, according to multiple reports and energy sector experts. “Electricity costs...

California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom’s presidential aspirations are Washington’s worst-kept secret. More than three years before the next election, he’s on the campaign trail in South Carolina, protesting immigration raids on cannabis farms and even politicizing the Second Family’s visit to Disneyland. Before Newsom gets anywhere near Washington, he must "confront his California problem," as even Politico observed. Blessed with incredible natural resources, the Golden State has the highest living costs in the nation. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in energy, where there is a direct correlation between Newsom’s wrong-headed policies and overall unaffordability. Here are three examples....

California’s high-speed rail had a $9.95 billion bond measure back in 2008 that was supposed to link up LA, San Francisco and the Central Coast by 2020. It’s 2025 and the budget has shot up to $128 billion. Sorry, let me correct that, it has shot up to $135 billion. By the time you read this, it’ll probably be up another few billion. The Trump administration is pulling funding from the ‘train to nowhere’ because well, just look at the Gov. Newsom press release. “The Authority has met every obligation, as confirmed by repeated federal reviews, as recently as February...

I last wrote about California’s high-speed rail to nowhere in Democrat’s dying and dead mass people movers in June: Approved by California voters in 2008, it was supposed to have run from San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2030 at a cost of a mere $33 billion. Eventually, it was downscaled to a very short route in the Central Valley, and the costs are over $100 billion and still rising [it’s now around $130 billion]. All that and not a single foot of rail—for a railroad!—has been laid. A variety of bridges and other concrete and steel monoliths have been...

Two women have been arrested after climate protesters spray-painted over the grave of Charles Darwin inside Westminster Abbey. Climate protest group Just Stop Oil (JSO) said two activists used chalk paint on the grave of the famous naturalist, who is best known for his theories on evolution. The Met Police was called after the incident on Monday at 09:30 GMT and said two women were arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage and remained in police custody. Westminster Abbey said it was taking "immediate action" to clean the memorial. Alyson Lee, 66, a retired teaching assistant from Derby, and...

A new study published in the journal Science suggests that humans might have played a significant part in the sudden deforestation of rainforests from Central Africa. This work contradicts the prevailing view that the expansion of farming practices was the root cause as well as the increased incidence of long, severe dry spells.Germain Bayon, a geochemist at the French Research Institute for Exploration of the Sea in Plouzané, and his colleagues examined the weathering of sediment samples that were drawn from the mouth of the Congo River. Deforestation intensifies weathering; therefore the clay samples would provide a continuous record of...

Dan Simmons comments -- The deeper question here is whether we want to turn major political decisions and huge efforts at terraforming Terra over to scientists (as Kim Stanley Robinson fictionally argues is necessary in his series of much-applauded global warming novels.) I love science. I consider it one of the few decent thought-systems ever created by the human species. Its very reliance on self-correction is what sets it apart from all the myriad of religions, political systems, ideologies, and self-help creeds that begin with "self-evident" propositions and go downhill from there. On the other hand, just as real democracies...

At a red-brick factory in the German port city of Hamburg, cocoa bean shells go in one end, and out the other comes an amazing black powder with the potential to counter climate change. The substance, dubbed biochar, is produced by heating the cocoa husks in an oxygen-free room to 600 degrees Celsius (1,112 Fahrenheit). The process locks in greenhouse gases and the final product can be used as a fertilizer, or as an ingredient in the production of "green" concrete. While the biochar industry is still in its infancy, the technology offers a novel way to remove carbon from...

The quintessential ice cream flavour is under threat, and many other dessert staples along with it, according to climate change researchers at the University of Costa Rica and Belgium's KU Leuven university. Increasing climate extremes are changing the habitats of wild vanilla species — primarily found in the tropical regions of Central America — and their mainly animal pollinators, the researchers say. This, in turn, is putting global production of vanilla at risk. In some regions, the plants may find more favourable conditions, but the insects that pollinate them may no longer find suitable habitats, according to the study published...

Far-left Democrats are tickled pink that radical Islamic socialist Zohran Mamdani beat former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in yesterday’s Big Apple mayoral primary. Indeed, top Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), are apparently not concerned about Mamdani’s obviously crazed views and plans, including arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit New York. The victory means Mamdani will almost certainly become the next mayor. Mamdani’s BackgroundMamdani is an Indian Muslim from Uganda who was naturalized in 2018. He takes his middle name, Kwame, from Ghanian communist Kwame Nkrumah. Added to that problematic past are his views,...

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright is slamming the Biden administration for what he calls an “absolutely infuriating” last-minute spending spree, revealing that more than $90 billion in green energy loans were pushed through by the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office in the weeks between President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection and his January inauguration. In an interview with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle, Wright detailed the results of a newly completed review of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, revealing that “more than $90 billion in loans were closed or committed in the 76 days between...

As riots engulfed Los Angeles and mobs vandalized public buildings, incinerated vehicles, and assaulted law enforcement officers, California governor Gavin Newsom was enjoying a swanky wine-tasting party in Napa Valley. The wine-tasting was held on the afternoon of June 7, 2025, at the Odette Estate Winery, which Newsom co-founded in 2011. Dubbed “Vineyard Vibes,” the event was a fundraiser for the PlumpJack Foundation, founded by Newsom’s sister, and featured “contemporary yet sophisticated” wines, live jazz music, and locally made pizza and smash burgers. ... A source who photographed Newsom at the event expressed shock that the governor was in attendance,...

As California braces for another wildfire season, forestry experts warn that decades of regulatory mismanagement — not climate change or Trump-era budget cuts — have left forests dangerously overloaded with fuel. Democrats have blamed climate change and agency rollbacks for creating tinderbox conditions, but forestry experts see a self-inflicted wound that began festering as far back as the Clinton administration. Three decades of environmental litigation, they say, has warped forest management into a Byzantine maze of legal delays and procedural dead ends — leaving millions of acres to accumulate fuel faster than anyone can clear it. The blame game intensified...

Two whales allokelping, with a small length of kelp stem visible between them. (Credit: Center for Whale Research, NMFS NOAA Permit 27038) In a nutshell Southern resident killer whales are making tools from kelp to groom each other—the first documented case of tool manufacturing in marine mammals This “allokelping” behavior involves coordinated teamwork between whale pairs and appears to serve both hygiene and social bonding functions The behavior is unique to this critically endangered population and could be threatened by climate change affecting kelp forests ================================================================= FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash. — Scientists have spotted something extraordinary: killer whales are crafting their...

A radicalized operative—Alexander R. Wick, 38, of Portland, nonbinary activist, ANTIFA recruiter, and CEO of a far-left climate tech front company, Cascadia Carbon Inc.—was arrested for attempting to detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) on Interstate 5, one of the nation’s most critical highways. This wasn’t a spontaneous act. This was an orchestrated act of domestic sabotage tied directly to the radical Left’s foot soldiers—trained, funded, and protected by the same global elite who are panicking under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump, now restored as Commander-in-Chief after defeating Biden in the rigged 2024 election. Let’s break it...

The Supreme Court sided Friday with oil companies seeking to challenge California’s electric vehicle regulations. In a 7-2 ruling, the court allowed energy producers to continue their lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to approve California regulations that require manufacturing more electric vehicles. “The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion. “In light of this Court’s precedents and the evidence...

Carbon dioxide, we’ve been told over and again, is the enemy that must be subdued if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming. It is, however, a faulty premise. Physics, not politics, tells us that man’s CO2 emissions will not cause catastrophic climate change nor an increase in extreme weather. “The common belief that CO2 is the main driver of climate change and the EPA Endangerment Finding assertion that ‘elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated’ to endanger the public health and welfare are scientifically false,” conclude the authors of a new paper. Richard Lindzen...

A far-left anarchist website has published a seven-step tactical guide to “stop ICE” and “create no-go zones for federal forces.” The website, CrimethInc., is a shadowy, anonymous, anarchist collective born in the 1990s punk scene, which pushes an anti-capitalist, anti-cop, and anti-American agenda. The website glorifies “direct action,” riots, looting, shoplifting, and black bloc tactics. On Friday, CrimethInc. posted a guide on how to stop ICE apprehensions of illegal aliens. The anarchist group is encouraging the formation of “tight-knit resistance groups” to map ICE’s infrastructure, publicize its vulnerabilities, and impose “consequences” on communities cooperating with federal agents. They advocate setting...

Substantial evidence has emerged to suggest that the UK Met Office is promoting the political cause of Net Zero by using recently introduced sensitive thermometers to collect 60-second unnatural heat spikes. These pulses are used to promote constant clickbait ‘records’ and claim exaggerated atmospheric warming. Furthermore, it appears that these short-term ‘spikes’ are larger in junk sites with massive internationally recognised ‘uncertainties”. Almost eight in 10 of the Met Office’s nationwide temperature measuring stations are in junk CIMO Classes 4 and 5 with possible errors up to 2°C and 5°C respectively. On May 1st, the Met Office claimed a station...