Free Republic

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been accused of attempting to create an anti-press freedom culture in his state. Proposed bills would weaken anti-SLAPP laws, make anonymous sources less credible, and require bloggers to register with the state. Critics have told Newsweek that such legislation would "chill, silence and punish those who criticize public officials and their powerful allies." DeSantis, however, says he wants to "stand up for the little guy against these massive media conglomerates." The governor has yet to confirm whether he will sign the bills into law, but if they are passed, it could trigger a Supreme Court...

The venerable survey company found that 62% of registered Republicans said the year-old invasion by Moscow “represents a critical threat to US vital interests” — the highest proportion of any political affiliation, as just 58% of Democrats and 51% of independents agreed with the statement...The poll released Monday found just 9% of Republicans said the Russia-Ukraine war was “not an important threat at all” to American interests,...

From devastating cyclones and floods to an unrelenting drought, African countries are spending between 2% and 9% of their budgets to respond to extreme weather events, according to a report released by the United Nations on Wednesday. A committee of experts shared the findings at the annual U.N. conference of African ministers of finance and economic planning in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “Climate change is having a devastating impact on Africa’s economies, and the situation is expected to worsen in the coming years,” Antonio Pedro, the acting executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa told The Associated Press. Climate...

Americans will hold accountable those responsible for the accelerating degradation of the U.S. justice system as the government's J6 narrative collapses and their wrongdoing becomes apparent. The FBI agent squirmed on the hot seat. Confronted with messages the Justice Department attempted to conceal, Nicole Miller, one of the lead FBI investigators assigned to the Proud Boys case, was on the verge of admitting that the FBI monitored privileged communications between one defendant and his attorney in 2021. “It appears so,” Miller responded when asked by defense attorney Nicholas Smith on March 8 to confirm she and another agent discussed the...

Some of the tall, stately trees that have grown up in California's Sierra Nevada are no longer compatible with the climate they live in, new research has shown. Hotter, drier conditions driven by climate change in the mountain range have made certain regions once hospitable to conifers — such as sequoia, ponderosa pine and Douglas fir — an environmental mismatch for the cone-bearing trees. "They were exactly where we expected them to be, kind of along the lower-elevation, warmer and drier edges of the conifer forests in the Sierras," Avery Hill, who worked on the study as a graduate student...

Researchers claim that moose are potentially a leading cause of climate change and that the species should be balanced, suggesting they are "one of the biggest potential single sources of carbon emissions from wooded parts of Norway." The Norwegian University of Science and Technology studied moose in Norwegian forests for several years and concluded that the species have a major effect on vegetation growth and are altering the carbon cycle by dining on tree buds. "Moose are an ecosystem engineer in the forest ecosystem, and strongly impact everything from the species composition and nutrient availability in the forest. A grown...

Climate models used by the UN's IPCC and others to project climate change are not accurately reflecting what the Arctic's future will be. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg argue that the rate of warming will be much faster than projected. Due to the Arctic´s sea ice cover and its harsh climate, relatively few observations are made in that part of world. This means that the climate models used for projecting the future of the Arctic have not been calibrated to the same extent there as in other parts of the world. Two recent scientific studies involving researchers from the...

Russian officials railed against Ukraine’s talk of changing Russia’s official name to Muscovy, after a Ukrainian petition regarding a potential name change garnered 25,000 signatures. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly instructed Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal to “carefully” consider renaming Russia to Muscovy, accounting for consequences under international law and whether it was possible in historical and cultural contexts. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a statement posted to Telegram on Saturday that Zelensky is trying to create an “anti-Russia Ukraine.”

BERLIN (AP) — The head of the United Nations called Monday for scientists to serve up “cold, hard facts” to push governments into making policies that curb climate change before a key global warming threshold is passed. In a video address to delegates, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “could not come at a more pivotal time.” “Our world is at a crossroads — and our planet is in the crosshairs,” he said. “We are nearing the point of no return; of overshooting the internationally agreed limit of 1.5 degrees...

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has awarded the Hero of Ukraine to a soldier whose execution by machine gun fire was filmed by Russian forces. The soldier was identified as Oleksandr Igorevich Matsievskyi by Ukraine’s security services after speculation about his identity followed the publishing of the grim video that captured his death. In his nightly address, Zelenskiy said Matsievskyi had become a symbol of resistance to the Ukrainian people. “Today I conferred the title of Hero of Ukraine upon Oleksandr Matsievskyi, a soldier,” he said. “A man whom all Ukrainians will know. A man who will be remembered for ever. For...

K 12: Excuses, excuses, always excuses For many decades, the Education Establishment has shown itself unable or unwilling to improve public schools. I suspect they actually prefer wallowing in failure; this serves their ideological goals – namely, Americans should settle for mediocrity because that's how we make the world more equitable.A big topic now is how will students recover from the Covid pandemic. Sounds reasonable, but the Washington Post ran a long article full of double talk: on the one hand this, on the other hand that. This smorgasbord of expert opinions pointing in every direction gives each teacher and...

Russia's metropolitan elites have avoided the impact of heavy battlefield casualties that the country's forces are sustaining in Ukraine, according to a new defense intelligence assessment. Russia's elite, particularly in the major cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, have so far emerged "relatively unscathed" from the "extremely heavy casualties" being racked up in the ongoing Ukraine war, the British defense ministry said on Sunday. In the eastern regions of Russia, the death toll for Russian troops is likely more than 30 times higher than in Moscow, as a percentage of population, the ministry wrote in its daily update on Twitter....

The feds’ political persecution of the Proud Boys took a wild turn after unintentionally leaked chat logs from FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller revealed she said she was ordered by her boss to “destroy” “338 items of evidence.”The leaked chats also suggest Miller failed to reveal relevant communications to the defense, potentially spied on privileged attorney-client communications and was asked by another agent to “edit out that I was present” during a meeting with a Confidential Human Source Informant.Concealing evidence. Doctoring evidence. Destroying evidence. Violating attorney-client privilege. What's sad is this will be ignored even by conservative media and Congress...

Clayton Morris interviews Tucker Carlson and covers J6 video controversy, State of Journalism, personal attacks, and more.

Batten down the hatches — the Big Apple faces a greater rise in the risk of catastrophic hurricane damage over the next 30 years than any other city in the nation. By 2053, New York City will see a 302% increase in average annual losses as climate change intensifies the power of tropical storms, the nonprofit First Street Foundation predicts in a hyper-local analysis of more than 50,000 likely storm tracks. “We’re more likely to see storms that actually hold together and maintain hurricane-strength winds by the time they reach New York City,” said Dr. Jeremy Porter, First Street’s head...

EDMONDS WA — Jaxon Kennard learned that forests capture planet-warming carbon. So the soft-spoken seventh grader pitched in to remove tree-killing invasive ivy. When classmate Ava Woodsum discovered the high environmental cost of mining lithium for batteries, she researched sodium ion batteries, a potential alternative. Other middle schoolers in the Climate Crisis Solutions Class at Maplewood Parent Cooperative gave presentations to elementary school kids. “A lot of them paid attention a lot more than we were expecting,” eighth grader M.J. Pandow said. “They asked interesting questions.” The elective course these students took during fall semester is taught by Bradley Barton....

New diet trends are taking on climate change, one plate at a time. You may have heard of "meatless Mondays" or maybe even "vegan before 6." Now, more consumers are making deliberate food choices and even altering entire dietary practices with sustainability in mind. "Young people are definitely concerned about the planet. They know they have many, many more years left and they want there to be a healthy and sustainable planet," says Brian Kateman. The author and documentarian decided to eat less meat after learning how damaging it is to the environment. Kateman even coined a term for it:...

On the first full day of her administration, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) signed an executive order creating the state’s first-ever climate chief and appointing Melissa Hoffer, a former Environmental Protection Agency official, to the Cabinet-level role. Hoffer, who previously worked for Healey when she was Massachusetts attorney general, is responsible for ensuring that climate change considerations are incorporated into “all relevant decision-making” at every state agency. Her position mirrors that of White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi, whom President Biden has tasked with ensuring a whole-of-government approach to climate change within his administration. But unlike Biden officials, Hoffer...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Denmark pushed the button Wednesday on an ambitious project that aims to bury vast amounts of planet-heating carbon dioxide gas beneath the North Sea floor, in the hope that it can help the Nordic nation and others meet climate targets. Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik gave the symbolic order to begin pumping CO2 into the depleted reservoir of the Nini West oil field, 50 years after his father Prince Henrik celebrated the start of oil and gas exploration off the Danish coast. “It gives me great pleasure today to be able to reverse the traffic in the pipes...

Ten pieces of climate propaganda from February 2023 exposed and debunked. The full PDF version (needed to click through to the links) is here.