Free Republic

Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) announcement this week that he would not seek re-election won’t change the 2024 Senate math for Republicans — who are as bullish as ever about a red run. In contrast to their beating in the 2022 midterm elections — the GOP is insisting that 2024 will be a better year. In November, the GOP lost a seat in Pennsylvania and failed to pick up any new ones, leaving it two votes shy of taking the majority.Party leaders say the 2024 map — when 33 seats are up for grabs — offers uniquely rosy prospects. “We are...

SALEM, Ore. — A new report released by the Oregon Health Authority shows health care costs are on the rise, and Oregonians are struggling to keep up. The OHA’s report, released Thursday, shows that on average, Oregonians are spending about 22% of their budget on health care costs. The new report also looked at household spending on health care in 2021 and found Oregonians are paying on average $8,000 a year on their health. That’s a 5% increase since 2019 and about a 40% increase since 2013. The report, for example, found that 17% of Middle Eastern or North African...

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - As the wildfire in Lahaina spread, the Pacific’s top disaster management leaders were together with many of Hawaii’s emergency officials at a meeting on Oahu educating them about how to respond in crisis situations, FEMA confirms to HNN. The revelation is the latest twist in the ongoing effort to determine how Maui emergency management officials responded to the wildfires, as thousands were in the crosshairs of an inferno that claimed the town of Lahaina and more than 100 lives. HNN Investigates has learned that on Aug. 8, the day of the wildfire, several of the nation’s top...

Russia's first moon mission in 47 years failed after its Luna-25 space craft spun out of control and smashed into moon. Russia's state space corporation, Roskosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft shortly after a problem occurred as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit on Saturday. 'The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,' Roskosmos said in a statement. Moscow had earlier reported an 'abnormal situation' with the craft. 'During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which...

Disney, our favorite left-wing corporate punching bag, is having a(nother) bad month. The company just reported fiscal fourth-quarter losses of a cool $710 million. Don’t worry, I’m sure its new woke live-action version of “Snow White” will fix things. Let’s see what the new Snow White, the outspoken Hispanic feminista Rachel Zegler has to say about the new movie that will save Disney from disaster. “It’s no longer 1937,” Zegler said. “She’s not going to be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can...

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is running ads to promote the impending one-on-one debate against rival Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom amid their ongoing coast-to-coast feud. "Ron DeSantis is debating Gavin Newsom to highlight the choice facing American voters next year," the talking points added later. The campaign also released ads to promote the debate and encourage voters to "choose their fighter." "Who do you support?" the arcade game-themed advertisement reads.

A Ron DeSantis administration would begin with a bureaucratic bloodbath, the Florida governor vowed – using language that had some potential supporters feeling queasy. We’re going to have all these deep state people. You know, we’re going to start slitting throats on Day One,' he said. That came after a pledge about cracking down on Mexican drug cartels. 'At the border, they’re going to be shot stone, cold dead,' he said, according to New Hampshire's NPR affiliate .

MIKE CERNOVICH: [DeSantis] is maybe the first candidate that became less popular when he ran for office. There was a lot of enthusiasm from people, myself included, with the DeSantis campaign, because we wanted a competitive primary. We wanted a primary, not a coronation. If you're me, or other people, you're probably pretty frustrated because you see a lot of denial from DeSantis supporters. You see a lot of frustration from them, a lot of rage.

Heads up folks...this alert runs from Chicago to New York, New England, PA, West Virginia, and DC (Link Only)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) altered its definition of COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated, leading to a lower number of cases classified as a breakthrough, according to documents obtained by The Epoch Times.The CDC in early 2021 defined the post-vaccination cases as people testing positive seven or more days after receipt of a primary vaccination series, according to one of the documents.The definition was changed on Feb. 2, 2021, to only include cases detected at least 14 days after a primary series, another document shows.“We have revised the case definition,” Dr. Marc Fisher, the lead of...

With no significant breakthrough after six weeks, it is worth asking whether Ukraine’s counter-offensive can ever succeed, for it certainly doesn’t look to be succeeding now. (clip) The question to be asked is: are the Ukrainians prepared – militarily, politically, financially – to carry out months and potentially years of these (frontal assault) attacks to penetrate 1914-18 style defensive belts of tank traps, barbed wire, minefields, bunkers and trench lines? The UK Ministry of Defence has described these Russian fortifications as “some of the most extensive systems of military defensive works seen anywhere in the world”. (clip) Ukraine is already...

Below is my column in The Hill on Attorney General Merrick Garland at the midpoint of his tenure at the Justice Department. For an Attorney General who said that he wanted to restore the trust of the public in his department, Garland has manifestly failed to achieve his goal. It appears that the Justice Department and FBI are now trusted less than under his predecessor, Bill Barr. A new poll shows that 55 percent of the public view the Trump indictment as “politically motivated” and 56% believe that it constitutes election interference. A similar majority wanted Trump pardoned if convicted....

The So-Called “New Pentecost” vs. True Renewalhis article first appeared in the May 2021 Print Edition of Catholic Family News (click HERE to subscribe; current subscribers can access the E-Edition HERE).Pentecost: The Coming of the Holy Ghost“And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, they were all together in one place: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them: And they were all...

A Chicago man who wore a neon yellow “peacekeepers” vest helped a group of people beat and rob a motorist in Little Village on Friday night, according to a Chicago Police Department report. Oscar Montes, 31, is scheduled to appear in felony bond court Sunday afternoon on charges of robbery, aggravated battery, and unlawful vehicular invasion, a CPD spokesperson said. City and state officials have lauded the use of “peacekeepers” as a tool they would deploy over the Memorial Day weekend to tamp down violence across the city.

Fly me a river. Hunter Biden cried poverty at his Arkansas child-support hearing earlier this month — despite flying to and from the courthouse aboard a luxury private jet owned by his close friend Kevin Morris. The 2001 Dassault Falcon 50 — formerly owned by country singer Brad Paisely — is registered to Plato LLC, for which Morris is the principal, California business records show. The $6 million jet took off from Los Angeles on April 30 just after 7 a.m, according to flight records reviewed by The Post. It flew cross-country to Washington DC where it landed at Dulles...

A trio of Vladimir Putin's leading hypersonic scientists have been detained on suspicion of high treason in what fellow scientists have declared a 'witch hunt' Aerodynamics specialist Dr Valery Zvegintsev, 78, is the latest of three prominent scientists from the Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in Novosibirsk to be arrested on extremely serious charges. Zvegintsev, 78, along with Anatoly Maslov and Alexander Shiplyuk, are seen as key figures in the development of Russia's hypersonic weapons programme which is thought to be one of the world's most advanced. News of their detention on suspicion of high treason comes days...

Chancellor David C. Banks said the city is going to make major changes to how reading is taught in order to address the fact that half of city children in grades three through eight are not proficient in reading, according to the report. Banks noted in a recent interview that the city’s reading instruction methods are “fundamentally flawed” and fail to use scientifically proven ways of teaching students to read. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your child’s fault. It was our fault,” Banks said. “This is the beginning of a massive turnaround.” The city’s 32 school districts will begin...

Among the topics, British police who are men - who say they are women - are allowed to intimately search women. (Go to 13:30 in the video.) British police pay to the "Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme," for "advice on gender-neutral facilities and pronouns, which leading barristers have said 'misrepresents" the 2010 Equality Act.'" Reference articles: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/public-bodies-pay-thousands-to-join-stonewalls-lgbt-diversity-champion-scheme-qhtm5b6c6 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/08/exclusive-police-forces-threatened-legal-action-links-stonewall/

Heeere we goooo. Fingers toes and eyes crossed for a successful test flight of the 33-Raptor engine Superheavy booster and Starship first time into space. Both vehicles are planned to splash down...the booster in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship off of Hawaii.

I recently wrote how public educators and unions were methodically killing public education. The best example this week comes from New York where a school board committee has solved the dismal math and reading scores for children in the system . . . they lowered the standards. This is not the first system to gut its standards rather than improve its quality of education. As teachers and unions object to school choice, they continue to make the case for private education. Parents are increasingly voting with their feet. The board is simply calling the lack of proficiency “the new normal”...