Free Republic

Preaching climate justice while arriving in a half-a-billion-dollar superyacht? That’s the kind of cinematic irony Lauren Sánchez served at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, pulling off a Leonardo DiCaprio moment of her own. The Amazon founder’s fiancée made her Cannes debut while being honored at the prestigious Global Gift Foundation charity gala for her environmental efforts through the Bezos Earth Fund and her work in social justice with This Is About Humanity, an organization that reunites families separated at the US-Mexico border. Interestingly, the soon-to-be Mrs. Bezos was joined by tech tycoon Jeff Bezos and their permanent third wheel, the...

Back at the beginning of the year, I had a post titled “New York On The March To Climate Utopia.” The post took note that everything about New York State’s vision for a zero-emissions economy and for “climate leadership” was in the process of falling apart. Its contracts for vast off-shore wind farms to replace fossil fuel generation had either been completely canceled (the majority) or rebid at much higher and uneconomic prices (the minority). Its two contracted facilities to produce “green” hydrogen to back up the intermittent wind and solar had run into financial difficulties and were likely to...

On last week's Clubland Q&A, I remarked en passant that almost everything connected with the Government of the United States turns out to be a racket, and it might be quicker for Elon Musk just to listen the seven things that aren't a racket. And several commenters protested that seven was a gross-overestimate of the non-racket component. After the weekend's revelations, I am inclined to agree with them. Just as a f'rinstance, USAid funds nine out of ten media outlets in Ukraine, under the guise of supporting "independent journalism". Hang on. If words mean anything, wouldn't the "independent" media in...

Elon Musk’s DOGE team entered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headquarters on Friday – and staffers are pissed off!“Elon Musk’s team on Friday entered the headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday, sources tell us,” Politico reported.According to Politico, at least 3 of Elon Musk’s DOGE workers are now “senior advisors” in the staff directory at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.“Three Musk allies are listed as “senior advisers” in the staff directory at the CFPB now.” Politico reported.“CFBP staff is “mad as hell.”” the reporter added.Elon Musk’s team on Friday entered the headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection...

I saw a ‘tweet’ recently suggesting that the government of the United States has become a ‘criminal organization.’ (I don’t remember precisely when or from whom the ‘tweet’ was issued.) I know that statement is hard to swallow, unpleasant as a root canal. And hard to fathom for those who grew up in the Great Depression and lived through World War II, Camelot, and the Reagan Revolution. It is, however, nonetheless true. Government as mafia. Turns out, Uncle Sam is a capo, head of an unimaginably vast criminal racket. Criminal racket definition: an act of organized crime where one or...

Imperial College London research has found limits to how quickly we can scale up technology to store gigatonnes of carbon dioxide under Earth's surface. Current international scenarios for limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees by the end of the century rely on technologies that remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from Earth's atmosphere faster than humans release it. This means removing CO2 at a rate of 1–30 gigatonnes per year by 2050. However, estimates for the speed at which these technologies can be deployed have been highly speculative. Now, findings from a new study led by Imperial College London researchers...

President Joe Biden lost his temper at a TikTok star during a special White House meeting with social media influencers, even threatening to throw his phone across the room. Independent journalist and social media darling Jonathan M. Katz started recording Biden, pressing him about his support for Israel during the war in Gaza. He asked him what he would do to prevent the ‘genocide’ that was taking place with American-funded weapons. The president tried to sidestep the questions, claiming he was working to reduce casualties in Gaza. But when Katz pressed him on the issue, the president grew impatient. ‘I...

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey today announced a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood after an expose’ video showed officials discussing how they take teen girls out of state for secret abortions. As LifeNews previously reported, Project Veritas conducted an investigation just before Christmas this past year in which a journalist entered a Kansas City, Mo. clinic asking how to get an abortion for a 13-year-old. The male reporter was met with certainty and confidence from the staff that although the procedure is illegal in Missouri, the minor could be sent to Kansas for the procedure, and no one would need to...

Perhaps it is a little early for another update here on the “homelessness” situation in San Francisco. (My last update was about six months ago in March 2023.). But there is a good reason for an update now: At least a few people seem finally to be catching on that the basic idea behind “homelessness” advocacy is to exploit an issue that brings forth great human empathy to generate vast taxpayer funds and then to not solve the problem. The spending continues and increases without limit. There is way too much money — for advocates — in “homelessness” for the...

Before the COVID lockdowns, social media companies had started contracting with new third-parties organizations called fact-checkers to assist in “content creation.” Getting a pass meant the post or story was amplified but getting dinged for inaccuracy meant that the post would be throttled or deleted.For a while we believed it but certain revelations changed that. We came to realize that the posts labeled false were typically contrary to regime narratives. And a close look at the supposed refutation revealed that many points were very much in dispute. The companies developed a talent for seeming to reveal something false that was...

The Biden administration announced plans Wednesday to invest up to $1 billion in “clean hydrogen,” an expensive fuel source that requires significant infrastructure to support it that would be unlikely to get significant private investment if not for government intervention in the energy sector, industry experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The Department of Energy (DOE) announcement stated the administration’s intent to invest the funds into Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs for the widespread deployment of the technology, with a particular focus on providing “demand-side support” to encourage buyers to come forward and support hydrogen projects, according to the agency’s...

The state has spent billions of dollars on homelessness in recent years. So why is the crisis getting worse instead of better? That’s what a bipartisan group of California legislators is trying to get to the bottom of by calling for a first-of-its kind, large-scale audit of the state’s homelessness spending. The state has stepped up its involvement and investment in the crisis under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s leadership, allocating $20.6 billion toward housing and homelessness since 2018-19, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. But despite the influx of cash, during that time, the number of unhoused people in the state...

"In 1964, hoping to erase its image as a privileged cloister for white rich families, Wesleyan University contacted 400 Black high school students from around the country to persuade them to apply. The outreach led to the enrollment of what became known as Wesleyan’s “vanguard” class — one Latino and 13 Black students — which helped establish the university’s commitment to diversity. Nearly 60 years later, such recruitment practices face an existential threat."

It’s been more than two years since The Post published the first article on Hunter Biden’s laptop and for much of that time, the effort to reveal Joe Biden’s role in his son’s dirty deals seemed stalled or even hopeless. Democratic propaganda outlets circled the wagons around the president they helped elect and never asked him or the White House if Biden is “the big guy” slated to get a secret 10% cut in his son’s deal with a Chinese conglomerate. Similarly, social media platforms continued to restrict users who didn’t follow the party line that Democrats are the good...

The profit-maximizing corporations that covet your "digital health" data hide behind nonprofit umbrella groups that pose as public interest do-gooders. These vaccine passport profiteers are turning millions of human beings into walking QR codes in the name of fighting COVID-19 and under the guise of bringing "normalcy" back. It's an unprecedented worldwide racket that rewards compliant sheep and punishes free-thinking, autonomy-seeking citizens. Let's name them. Here in my adopted home of Colorado, the state government is pimping the Smart Health Card "allowing users to verify and share their vaccination status." Who's behind Smart Health Card technology, which is now being...

Education has absolutely changed.One component of conversion: the value of being educated.Not many decades past, a high school diploma was considered academic achievement enough.College was reserved for elites and those seeking special skills.But these days, even secretaries have Bachelor’s degrees.From the looks of things, we’re a more educated society.But what if somewhere along the way, school became a suitable place for slackers?Apropos of such a scenario, a research team comprised of folks from a scholastic trio — Brigham Young University, Stanford University, and Purdue University — found that contemporary graduation rates may be bolstered by (Trigger Warning) “grade inflation.”Prior to...

Columbia University is among America’s most elite schools. Many believe that a graduate degree from Columbia or another Ivy League school will lead to financial security for life. But a recent investigation by Wall Street Journal reporters Melissa Korn and Andrea Fuller shows that this perception, so eagerly cultivated by universities, is a fiction. Master’s-degree students at Columbia and many other elite schools take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in student-loan debt. Yet after they graduate, too many find that the degree did not open the doors promised. The existence and scale of these subpar graduate programs is tied...

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Republican legislatures and governors were trying “to deny people of color, young people, poor people the right to vote.” Anchor Dana Bash said, “Let’s turn to voting rights. The Senate will vote on Tuesday on a sweeping bill that will most certainly be blocked by Republicans. Senator Joe Manchin is propose ing a narrower plan, which still seems to have a lot in it for Democrats. There are things like a ban on partisan gerrymandering, restoring key parts of the Voting Rights Act. Stacey Abrams says she...

D.C. has long been considered one of the most onerous places in the country for traffic fines, seeing a steady climb year to year in tickets issued and revenue generated. But recently the District broke into stunning new territory, issuing more than $1 billion in tickets in just three years. I don't know another local jurisdiction in the entire nation that has generated as much money from traffic tickets, parking tickets and moving violations," said John Townsend, Public Relations Manager of AAA Mid-Atlantic. “That tells us that things are out of control and out of hand in the District of...

Across the country, it's becoming a familiar scene: Sidewalks lined with tents, underpasses brimming with people with nowhere else to go and officials desperate to find ways to help those in need and simultaneously clean up their communities. In New York City, leaders have decided to send the problem away, with a program called SOTA, the special one time assistance program., which uses taxpayer money to give homeless individuals and families a year's worth of rent to get out of town... "Once that runs out they leave the cities the responsibilities of taking care of these people if they're homeless,...