Free Republic

A new report from the nonpartisan State of the Nation Project lists New Mexico near the bottom of national rankings for education, shootings, youth depression and a number of other factors that impact life satisfaction. The organization produced the State of the States report, which gives in-depth scorecards to each of the 50 states and Washington D.C. ... A board of academics and advisers to the last five presidents created a list of 31 measures — ranging from youth depression, air quality and income inequality to social isolation, life expectancy and young adults employed or in school — and quantified...

After building an ugly, overprice, monstrosity marring the design of a famous Chicago park, anybody surprised to learn that the Obama Presidential Center has failed to pay the help? Multiple little-guy contractors have told Fox News that they've been stiffed on the payments for their goods and services. (snip) Salaries and benefits soared from $18.5 million in 2018 to $43.7 million in 2024, as staffing expanded to 337 employees and annual revenue reached nearly $210 million. But the little guy who smooths the cement or does the gardening or catering or windows and floors gets nothing, and as the video...

Today, my wife & I joined Donald Trump’s hit list. He has directed his Department of Justice to investigate us. They have not found a crime - they are simply trying to find one.He isn't coming after me because of mean tweets, but because I am considering running for President.… pic.twitter.com/tVYk3WUvO8— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 15, 2026

Initial conservation efforts for Toyon National Park began in the 1920sThe widow of Frederick Hastings Rindge, who purchased thousands of acres in the Santa Monica Mountains in 1892, May eventually became known as the “Queen of Malibu” for her fierce opposition to anything that would bring more people to her coastal empire, including railroads, roads and homesteaders. In short, she wanted to keep the pristine coastline and the chaparral hillsides to herself. But all of her legal fights cost money, and Rindge started selling land to family members and renting out beachfront lots to celebrities. In the end, even that...

Obama, whose roots are African rather than African-American, rose to power by hijacking the racial resentments and guilty left behind in America after a history of slave and segregation he was never part of. Now, the one trick pony is at it again, announcing the opening of the grim fortress of a museum in Chicago, on ‘Juneteenth’, trying to link his time in the White House as a notable event for black people up there with the end of slavery. It’s another cynical and despicable hijacking of American history to serve his own vanity and ego. The reality, as most...

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is investigating what happened to $30 million it sent to a Muslim nonprofit to help resettle Afghan refugees in the US, The Post has learned. The department is the latest to look into the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) amid accusations it has ties to dangerous groups in foreign nations including terror group Hamas. In letters to the governors of California and Washington, where the $30 million was sent, HHS — headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — claims it has received information that “raises concerns about the business practices and...

Officials in Northern Colorado are celebrating a new project to improve energy reliability and availability in their communities ... Platte River Power Authority CEO Jason Frisbie says the project is a major step toward reducing its carbon footprint ... The facility will strengthen the county's electric system by storing energy for later distribution during periods of high demand.

Almost every day now, there is another headline warning about the collapsing birth rate across the developed world, and along with it, another think piece attempting to diagnose why younger generations seem increasingly reluctant to build families. This week, new figures out of England and Wales showed that the number of babies being born has fallen to the lowest level since 1977, with couples delaying parenthood until their thirties or deciding against children altogether. The total fertility rate dropped to 1.39 children per woman, the lowest level ever recorded. The explanations offered for this phenomenon tend to revolve around economics,...

California is spending millions of dollars on a program that provides free solar panels, refrigerators, and windows to “low-income” farmworkers, including illegal immigrants. The initiative, called the Farmworker Housing Component of the Low-Income Weatherization Program, is part of California’s sprawling, multibillion-dollar “cap-and-trade” system, which taxes carbon producers and redistributes approximately $3 billion per year to energy programs........." The initiative, called the Farmworker Housing Component of the Low-Income Weatherization Program, is part of California’s sprawling, multibillion-dollar “cap-and-trade” system, which taxes carbon producers and redistributes approximately $3 billion per year to energy programs and left-wing social causes—all under the banner of fighting...

Today's video investigates the absurdities of the policies, and how they lead to inefficiencies both domestic and international. We then try to understand why autocratic governments nonetheless offer subsidies despite knowing all of their drawbacks. Turkmenistan prior to 2019? Free natural gas for everyone. Great. But it gave rise to the saying, "A Turkman does not turn off his stove because then he will have to pay for matches." Hence why I had to add the prior to 2019 qualifier there because that policy sure as heck was not sustainable.

If you believe the governor of California, the state is laying track that it hasn’t bought yet. ================================================================== It was an induced hallucination, happily shared by a crowd of professional journalists, and a useful reminder of Gavin Newsom’s tendency to swagger like a winner on the lightest of pretexts. Back in February, the California governor spoke to the media in a crowded railyard, posing in front of a long line of freight cars and the piles of construction materials they had just delivered while he bragged about the extraordinary new progress the state was making toward a functioning high-speed rail...

The High Court of Justice ruled unanimously on Wednesday against a petition by an association of 19 international aid organizations against new security regulations imposed by the government, asserting that state agencies are entitled to require strict security checks to ensure foreign organizations are not connected to terror groups. Thirty-seven organizations refused to comply with the new rules, saying doing so would endanger their employees and violate international law. The licenses of the organizations were subsequently revoked earlier this year. Among the 37 organizations are multiple branches of Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam, the Danish and Norwegian Refugee Councils, Caritas...

A UN body of researchers that puts together possible climate scenarios announced last week that one extreme scenario it put forward back in 2011 is no longer plausible. As Roger Pielke Jr. from AEI puts it, the climate apocalypse is no longer around the corner.The climate apocalypse isn’t around the corner after all. That’s the upshot of a recent report from the international panel that supplies official “scenarios” to researchers, governments and banks. It turns out that the most extreme assumptions about the future — the doomsaying predictions embodied in the worst-case scenario known as RCP8.5 — are “implausible.”...The substance...

Climate hysteria, which was always about power and money, finally seems to have peaked, and President Trump helped lead the way. There has been a huge shift within the public and private sectors on climate change as it has dawned on governments and companies that the United States, under President Donald Trump, will no longer be a patsy to a cabal of international elites who seek to impose costly climate restrictions upon American businesses and international climate boondoggles upon nations. Trump’s actions are draining the climate swamp of resources, supporters, spirit, and momentum. These include defunding climate boondoggles across federal...

A self-described Muslim university operating in North Texas is facing a lawsuit from the State of Texas over allegations it illegally offered unapproved degrees while misleading prospective students about its legitimacy and ties to Texas A&M University. Filed Monday in Collin County district court, the lawsuit targets Texas American Muslim University—also referred to as “TexAM”—along with administrators Shahid A. Bajwa, Bilal Piracha, and Arsalan Shahzad. The state is seeking temporary and permanent injunctions as well as more than $1 million in civil penalties. According to the petition, TexAM operated as an unlicensed and unaccredited “university” despite never receiving authorization from...

Apocalyptic climate-change predictions were box-office gold for Hollywood but they did untold damage to the public psyche, economy and the average man’s pocketbook. Now the United Nations’ influential climate change committee has quietly discarded the dire temperature-rise scenarios used in two previous reports predicting horrific consequences of global warming if greenhouse emissions weren’t curbed. For years, lefty outfits — based on dubious climate science — screamed about the coming climate catastrophe: The New York Times warned that “Climate Change Is Harming The Planet Faster Than We Can Adapt,” “Climate Change Is Speeding Toward Catastrophe” and “A Hotter Future Is Certain.”...

American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten tapped hundreds of thousands in union resources to help write her controversial book — working with a team that raked in more than $1.4 million from the labor group, a new analysis found. Weingarten used the abundance of union-fueled resources for the liberal agenda-pushing “Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy” then pocketed a portion of the proceeds, the Freedom Foundation claimed in a new report. Her team included an attorney who supposedly worked on the book pro bono but whose firm raked in $977,000 for various work for...

President Trump took a victory lap late Saturday after a prominent international climate change panel backed off using some of the most aggressive doomsday estimates after determining that they were not the most plausible outcomes. The United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had quietly adjusted its modeling framework of a 4–5°C warming by 2100 last month. That framework had underpinned a myriad of other analyses predicting terrifying consequences for greenhouse gas emissions. “GOOD RIDDANCE! After 15 years of Dumocrats promising that ‘Climate Change’ is going to destroy the Planet, the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that...

Key FactsNew York lawmakers are planning the tax, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the state budget negotiations who noted the proposal would be levied at 1% of the buying price and be paid by buyers. The legislators are also considering expanding the tax to $1 million or more cash purchases in the state that would incorporate the suburbs and upstate New York, Bloomberg added. The tax in New York City alone could generate up to $160 million, according to the unnamed sources Bloomberg cited. A spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., told Bloomberg she “announced a general agreement...

A former Black Lives Matter activist-turned-conservative influencer blasted the social justice organization as a “scam” — and insisted that Democrats are the party of “racism and violence.” Xaviaer DuRousseau, 29, revealed that he did a complete 180 from his liberal upbringing during the 2020 George Floyd riots as he realized that the movement was a money grab and that he was indoctrinated. “Once I started looking at the conservative side of the argument, I started realizing, oh, wait, socialism has literally never worked. BLM has always been a scam, and the Democratic Party has always been the party of racism...