Free Republic

All this talk about redrawing congressional districts overlooks the big picture. In other words, the census will end up doing in 2030 what some GOP state legislatures are trying to do before 2026. This is from Tom Rogers:Much has been written about the various attempts to create more Republican House districts through extreme gerrymandering. This column recently discussed a pending Supreme Court case that could strike down the Voting Rights Act’s remedy of creating majority-minority districts and result in the creation of even more Republican House seats.However, none of these actions affect presidential elections, which are decided in the Electoral...

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That applies not only to Newtonian physics but also to markets, even in things like housing. Doral, Florida, is a suburb of Miami, peopled heavily with Venezuelan immigrants. Some of them are citizens, some are in the country legally, and some are not in the country legally. According to a piece in Monday's Wall Street Journal, some of these people are leaving Doral, in no small part due to President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, resulting in a spike in Doral's rental housing vacancy rate. That's a good thing. Here's...

An ancient Egyptian manuscript may prove the biblical 10 plagues described in the Book of Exodus. Known as the Ipuwer Papyrus, the document takes the form of a poetic lament attributed to a scribe named Ipuwer. It recounts widespread catastrophes and societal upheaval in ancient Egypt, describing famine, mass death and environmental disasters.... The text also echoes the biblical plagues' attacks on Egypt's gods, with the river of blood, frogs, and darkness recalling Hapi, Heqet, and Ra. It references slavery and wealth, noting precious metals and stones fastened on female slaves, reflecting the Israelites' bondage ....

This is the first in a two-part series of the Great Dispersion of Americans across the country.For much of the past century, in both the United States and elsewhere, the inexorable trend has been for people to move from rural areas and towns to ever larger cities, particularly those with vibrant downtown cores such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and dozens of other iconic American cities. Most visions of the future still view urban cores as the uncontested centers of production, consumption, and culture, with rural areas, small cities, and suburbs relegated to the backwaters of modernity.A RealClearInvestigations...

"Democracy," H.L. Mencken once wrote, "is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." Mencken probably would feel right at home among Californians in this age. Or, perhaps more accurately, among the Californians who haven't left yet.According to a new poll from Politico and its partners, California voters want graft and fraud on a massive scale to continue. And lucky for them, they've elected a governor who can deliver! For example, slightly more than six in ten Californians want Gavin Newsom to keep funding the high-speed rail project that hasn't...

The UK closed a tax loophole. Guess what. NYC can expect the same.Extreme Wealthy Flee the UKThe Wall Street Journal reports The U.K. Closed a Tax Loophole for the Global Rich. Now They’re Fleeing.The U.K. is trying to tax the superrich. It’s off to a bumpy start.“I’m on my way out,” said Bassim Haidar, a Nigerian-born Lebanese businessman who moved here in 2010. “There comes a time when you don’t feel welcome anymore, and it’s time to just start packing and leaving.”Haidar is one of the estimated 74,000 who used a centuries-old tax loophole, abolished in April, that catered to...

Hey New Yorkers. I heard you're probably going to get an outright communist as your mayor. Zohran Mamdani sounds like a real peach, and the fact that he won the Democrat Primary and is well on his way to the mayor's office has made many of you fire up your Zillow account and start looking for homes out of state. Read: New York Real Estate Broker Flooded With Calls From Wealthy Residents Looking to FleeI don't blame you, but let me offer you some advice. You're probably going to be tempted to come to Texas because so many companies have...

As the vote totals rolled in on Tuesday, it quickly became clear that a major upset was brewing. Disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo had been favored to win the Democratic Party primary for Mayor of New York City. Yet, the numbers kept stacking up for a left-wing Muslim socialist who wants to "queer the police" while also defunding them, and sometime before midnight, it was no longer a hypothetical. Zohran Mamdani had emerged victorious, and with that, New York City's fate appeared to be sealed. While there's still an outside chance that the scandal-plagued current mayor, Eric Adams,...

On Wednesday morning, while talking about New York's mayoral primary with the host on a live radio spot, I heard myself saying something alarming. Only days ago, I would have bet serious money that those words would never be uttered by me. The fateful words were these: "It would have been better if Cuomo had won." I know, right? The guy who won, full-bore Communist Zohran Mamdani, is now making all kinds of promises, and while we all know that his mouth is writing checks his butt can't cash on many of these, he can do enough to make things...

Whether they’re doing it on purpose or out of just plain ineptitude, Illinois’ political leaders have been slowly destroying this state. More recently, they’ve moved into overdrive.What we’re talking about is all the wealth the state is giving up by pushing out wealthier taxpayers and inviting less wealthy people in. Not to mention the flood of illegal immigrants that have been “welcomed” to Illinois, many fully dependent on the state.Not only is Illinois a net loser of people to other states, but the people leaving Illinois make far more than the people coming into Illinois, making things even worse.The taxpayers...

Since the beginning of the Oregon legislative session in January, my wife and I have been having ongoing discussions about whether we should leave Oregon for another state, where the leftists are not in control, or whether we should stay and fight to stop the landslide of insanity that grips Oregon right now and will cross borders to contaminate other red states. We have many friends here, established doctors and dentists, and a great one-story house between the mountains to the East and the Pacific Ocean to the west. We attend a strong church that teaches out of the Bible....

Exodus is a historical novel by Leon Uris regarding the founding of the State of Israel beginning in post-World War II. The movie EXODUS is a retelling of of the 1947 IMMIGRATION SHIP EXODUS and the main characters relationship to the birth of the new Jewish state. 1st Part: The movie begins on a ship filled with Jewish immigrants bound for Israel then were off-loaded in Cyprus. An Intelligence officer succeeds in getting them back on board their ship only then to have the harbor blocked by the British forces preventing them from entering Palestine. 2nd Part: The second part...

Despite an apparent lack of Arab partner states willing to accept Gaza residents voluntarily leaving the Strip, the number of civilians departing Gaza has risen over the last month. Since the beginning of March, 1,000 residents have left the Gaza Strip, with another 600 expected to leave this week, according to Hebrew media reports. During the 2023-2024 war period, around 35,000 Gaza residents fled the Strip for other countries, often paying bribes to be smuggled out through Egypt. Some Gaza residents were also permitted to leave to receive medical treatment in other countries. The announcement of an increase in the...

The BriefRealtor.com relocated its corporate headquarters from Santa Clara, California to Austin, Texas. The new corporate location is in East Austin. A new report shows Texas is the fastest growing state and is forecast to overtake California as the most populous state in 2045. AUSTIN - Realtor.com announced on Thursday the relocation of its corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas from Santa Clara, Calif. The company says it has made Austin its top hiring location and is committed to the long-term growth of its team in Texas. Realtor.com says it has invested in its Austin location through hiring, developing new talent...

The largest remaining tenant in San Francisco's largest mall just called it quits. Bloomingdale's which is owned by Macy's announce it will be closing its doors in March.The store, which occupies 330,000 square feet in the beleaguered San Francisco Centre, is slated to close at the end of March. Bloomingdale’s is by far the mall’s largest remaining tenant, and it is closing the brand’s second-biggest store after its New York flagship...Bloomingdale’s, which opened in 2006 in the former Westfield mall, is the second anchor tenant to bail on the 1.5 million-square-foot property at Fifth and Market streets. Nordstrom’s flagship store...

On December 9, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas aired on TV screens across America and instantly captured the hearts and ears of a generation. Bolstering the animated special, based on Charles M. Schulz's immensely popular PEANUTS comic strip, was an engaging score from Bay Area jazz artist Vince Guaraldi, who brought characters like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Snoopy to life through his evocative cues... Guaraldi's soundtrack, meanwhile, has since become one of the best-selling jazz albums in history, second only to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, and regularly ranks among America's top-selling holiday albums every December.Vince Guaraldi Trio - Christmas...

Americans are constantly on the move, with many leaving their home states in search of better opportunities, lower living costs, or a change in scenery. Some states see more departures than others, raising the question of what’s driving people to pack up and leave.This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Kayla Zhu, shows the top five states that American residents moved away from in 2023 and their migration outflows, with the top three states where people from those states moved to labeled.State-by-state migration flow data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau and is updated as of August 2024. Only residents aged one...

Hollywood actress and film producer Eva Longoria said in an interview this month that she has moved her family out of the United States because it is “dystopian.”Longoria, a Democrat, made the revelation in an interview with Marie Claire. The interview took place two days after President-elect Donald Trump won the 2024 election.For context, Longoria campaigned for Vice President Kamala Harris and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August. “The shocking part is not that he won,” she told the outlet. “It’s that a convicted criminal who spews so much hate could hold the highest office.”“I would like to...

The Amazon billionaire and Post owner said the paper's decision to cease presidential endorsements came from a drive to avoid the "perception of non-independence."The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wrote in an op-ed on Monday that the paper’s choice to cease presidential endorsements was borne from an attempt to regain the trust of its readers. “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.” Post CEO Will Lewis announced in a memo on Thursday that the paper would not endorse a...

Did the eruption of Thera cause the Ten Plagues of Egypt, such as the transformation of the Nile into blood?The eruption of the Minoan island of Thera, or Santorini, has popularly been linked to the legend of Atlantis. However, many researchers also attempt to connect it to another famous story: the Ten Plagues. The Bible tells the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Is it possible that the eruption of Thera really could have resulted in these famous Ten Plagues? How the eruption of Thera supposedly explains the Ten Plagues According to advocates of...