Free Republic

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin on Tuesday released the agency’s proposal to rescind what he has described as the “holy grail of the climate change religion,” which has led to over a trillion dollars in regulatory impact. Zeldin made the announcement to repeal the Obama-era Endangerment Finding at an auto dealer in Indiana alongside U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Gov. Mike Braun (R-IN), Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, and American Trucking Association President and CEO Chris Spear. The EPA has said the Endangerment Finding has been used to justify over $1 trillion in regulations, including the Biden-Harris...

Social Security faces automatic benefit cuts in less than a decade due to the projected insolvency of its trust fund ... Americans' overall confidence in Social Security dropped from 43% in 2020 to 36% in 2025, the lowest level since it fell to 35% in 2010. Younger Americans Younger Americans are even less confident in the program. Only 25% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 49 were confident in Social Security's future, whereas 48% of those 50 and older expressed confidence. ... retirees are relying more on Social Security than they were two decades ago, with the share...

Get that meat outta here. In a world of various kinds of meat alternatives — it can be hard to tell what’s real or not these days. A cattle rancher recently took to social media to share what he discovered to be a “glued meat product” and is instructing others how to spot one when ordering steak at a restaurant. Rockin’ W Ranch Cattle Co. is a family-owned Angus beef ranch that prides itself on being hormone and antibiotic-free. In an Instagram post that has sent waves across the meat-loving community, one of the company’s cattle ranchers is seen picking...

At some point Democrats just have to start being arrested “So Gavin Newsom and his wife actually created an organization just to steal some of the fire aid money. Like how this man is still governor of California and not behind bars is mind blowing. So I'm sure most of you have heard about the fire aid controversy. You know, where they had this concert to raise $100 million for the victims of the Palisade fires. And people started asking, hey, where the did all that money go? Because there's not a single person who was a victim of the...

Summary Policy shift risks $373 billion in clean energy investments New tax credit rules could make even fewer projects eligible for incentives Solar manufacturers concerned about demand for U.S.-made products once credits expire July 24 (Reuters) - Singapore-based solar panel manufacturer Bila Solar is suspending plans to double capacity at its new factory in Indianapolis. Canadian rival Heliene’s plans for a solar cell facility in Minnesota are under review. Norwegian solar wafer maker NorSun is evaluating whether to move forward with a planned factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And two fully permitted offshore wind farms in the U.S. Northeast may never...

It has been reported that of the tens of millions in Fire Aid money distributed so far since the January benefit concerts for Los Angeles’ wildfire victims, all has gone to nonprofits, not directly to residents impacted. Sue Pasco, the editor at Circling the News who also lost her home in the Palisades fire, spoke with Fox 11 on the discovery. She said that a reader had sent her a message saying, "I’ve never seen any Fire Aid money. How do I apply for Fire Aid money?" What she discovered was that the initial $50 million given in the first...

The climate alarmists regularly seize on weather events they believe will help them exploit their narrative. Naturally, they ignore contradictory information. So we see it as our duty to fill in the gaps from time to time. Following are a few examples that show why the global warming story is less scientific theory than conjecture in the service of a political agenda. - Let’s begin in the West Arctic, where the Northwest Passage is experiencing its third-highest level of sea ice extent in the last two decades. In 2009, Al Gore said, with his usual galling listen-to-me certainty, the Arctic...

Los Angeles was devastated by wildfires back in January, and the area is still feeling the impacts of the disaster. So when $100 million was raised by two FireAid concerts at the Intuit Dome and Kia Forum in Inglewood, California, featuring acts such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Billie Elish, and Jelly Roll, you'd have thought the money would make its way to fire victims. Well, it's not that simple. Sue Pascoe, editor-in-chief at Circling The News, has the story of how this money ended up not going to fire victims, but instead making its way to...

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s wife makes “gender justice” movies and sells them to the state public education system through her non-profit, The Representation Project. By 2023, she had charged the state $1.5 million for her “gender justice” movies. That’s a screaming example of a conflict of interest. If that’s not enough, the governor requested nonprofits and private corporations to contribute to his wife’s charity before taking their side on state issues.

Following the wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles area earlier this year, Democrats and a bunch of celebrities did a fundraising event called ‘FireAid’ that brought in a ton of cash, some reports say it was almost $100 million. Yet none of the victims have seen a penny of if it. Independent investigative journalist Sue Pascoe began looking into this and found that all of the money was apparently distributed to non-profit groups in the area, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with fire recovery. Is there a more perfect example of liberalism than this? Rather than giving...

How quickly things change. It was only two years ago, in 2023, that I was writing posts compiling long lists of quotes from climate activists warning that all assets used for production of coal, oil and gas were about to become obsolete and “stranded.” After all, wind and solar were (supposedly) cheaper and cleaner for generating electricity, which could then power anything and everything. Therefore anyone stupid enough to make further investments in producing fossil fuels would lose everything. Here is one such post from June 2023, and another from February 2023. If you look today, you can still find...

FIRST ON FOX: A $250 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally funded children's nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic has been described by FBI Director Kash Patel as "one of the worst" in Minnesota history. The FBI director told Fox News in a statement that 70 people in Minnesota have been indicted for their role in the sprawling "Feeding our Future" fraud scheme during the COVID-19 pandemic, which exploited a federal program designed to reimburse states for the cost of feeding children. Conspirators falsely claimed to have served millions of meals during the pandemic, but instead used the money...

An illegal immigrant and mother was arrested for staging a fake “kidnapping” — where bounty hunters took her at gunpoint and tried forcing her to self-deport at a fast-food restaurant — to scam people and “smear federal law enforcement.” Yuriana Julia “Juli” Pelaez Calderon, 41, was charged with conspiracy and making false statements to federal officers over the elaborate scheme on Thursday, according to the Department of Justice. “Dangerous rhetoric that ICE agents are ‘kidnapping’ illegal immigrants is being recklessly peddled by politicians and echoed in the media to inflame the public and discredit our courageous federal agents,” US Attorney...

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday announced charges against a 41-year-old undocumented mother from South Los Angeles, accusing her of orchestrating a fake kidnapping by federal immigration agents to generate sympathy and solicit donations. Yuriana Julia “Juli” Pelaez Calderon is charged with conspiracy and making false statements to federal officers. On June 30, Calderon’s family and attorney held a news conference claiming she had been taken from a fast-food restaurant parking lot in downtown Los Angeles, driven to the U.S.-Mexico border, and told to self-deport. At the same time, her daughter launched a GoFundMe campaign, and federal agents began...

Adam Swart, the CEO of Crowds on Demand, a company known for organising paid demonstrators, claims he was offered $20 million to recruit demonstrators for Thursday’s anti-Trump protests. Notably, tens of thousands of individuals nationwide are gearing up for the ‘Good Trouble Lives On’ protests honouring civil rights icon and longtime Congressman John Lewis. Axios says the Democratic Georgia lawmaker was one of Donald Trump's most vocal critics in his first term in the Oval Office and was one of the few members of Congress who decided not to attend his inauguration, the first one Lewis ever missed in his...

The promise of a green manufacturing boom, fueled by generous subsidies and ambitious climate policies, is unraveling across the United States and beyond. So-called “ghost factories”—abandoned or stalled clean-energy projects—are becoming a stark symbol of the challenges facing the green energy sector. From Arizona to Massachusetts, once-celebrated plans for battery plants, wind turbine factories, and solar component facilities are being scrapped or delayed, raising serious questions about the sustainability of Net Zero ambitions, the risk of deindustrialization, and the potential for fiscal collapse in green markets.

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley announced Thursday that the Department of Energy (DOE) is canceling its Grain Belt Express project. Hawley’s X post announcing the DOE’s decision to cancel the project followed a conversation with President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. The post also called the Grain Belt Express a “green scam” that is “costing taxpayers BILLIONS.” ... The Grain Belt Express was a $11 billion transmission line project designed to carry electricity from wind farms in Kansas across Missouri and Illinois to Indiana. “Energy demand is growing – our grid needs an upgrade,” the project’s website states,...

Even in green energy subsidised Britain, developing renewables does not make economic sense. Why wind farm developers are pulling out at the last minute.. The government aims to generate at least 43GW of offshore wind power (current capacity is 14.7GW) and 95% of all energy from renewable sources by 2030. These targets are now in jeopardy. The cancellation of Hornsea 4 follows a similar decision by Swedish developer Vattenfall, which stopped work on its 1.4GW Norfolk Boreas wind farm in 2023. … Building a wind turbine requires significant amounts of steel, copper and aluminium, all of which doubled or tripled...

JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon on Thursday blasted the Democrat Party for being too devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). “I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots. I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works. Almost every single policy rolled out failed,” Dimon said. The JP Morgan chief executive has said that too many American companies focused too much time and energy with DEI and that the banking company he led would pull back its focus on these topics. “They...

When the world’s top climate diplomats gathered in Bonn earlier this year to prepare for COP29, one issue cut through the noise, not just the usual challenges of finance and emissions, but something more intangible and potentially more corrosive: the rise of targeted misinformation and disinformation in the climate space. In 2024, the World Economic Forum identified misinformation and disinformation as the world’s top short-term risk. Disinformation doesn’t just delay climate action; it destabilizes the institutions, policies, and coalitions needed to deliver it. Dr. Fredrik Bertley president and chief executive officer of COSI, the Center of Science and Industry (COSI)...