Free Republic

Editor’s note: We expected the leftist thought police at Google would declare that this editorial was “unreliable” and “harmful“— because it blasphemes the climate religion — and strip its AdSense ads from the page. And we were right! (See below.) Al Gore famously warned that sea level rise caused by man’s use of fossil fuels was going to kill us. Barack Obama implied that he had magic powers that would control surging sea levels. A fresh study shows just how dishonest this pair and the many others who did their best to misinform the public have been. Gore’s 2006 propaganda...

Global sea levels have not continued to rise at the rates predicted by many scientists — and there is no evidence that climate change has contributed to any such acceleration, a new first-of-its-kind study has claimed. The research found that the average sea level rise in 2020 was only around 1.5mm per year, or 6 inches per century, according to the paper’s authors, Dutch engineering consultant Hessel Voortman and independent researcher Rob de Vos. “This is significantly lower than the 3 to 4 mm/year often reported by climate scientists in scientific literature and the media,” Voortman told independent journalist Michael...

If you’ve ever tried to buy tickets to a major concert or sporting event, you know the scam. You spend hours in a “virtual queue,” only to watch tickets vanish in seconds. Scalpers and bots scoop up thousands, then flip them for double or triple the price. Fans refresh their browsers over and over, while Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, pocket the profits. It’s a racket, and for decades the people who keep live entertainment alive — ordinary fans — have paid the price. Fans don’t want excuses. They want a system that works for them, not one...

Environmental organizations lost their bid Tuesday to immediately access $16 billion in grant money that was frozen by the Trump administration earlier this year. In a split decision, a three-judge panel from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals found the Trump administration was within its rights to stop $20 billion from the Biden-era Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that was promised to eight groups. “While some grantees may be forced to shutter their operations during the litigation, their harms do not outweigh the interests of the government and the public in the proper stewardship of billions of taxpayer dollars,” Tuesday’s ruling...

An appeals court has overturned a federal judge’s ruling blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from terminating $20 billion in grants for several climate groups. A three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Tuesday issued a 2-1 ruling in favor of the Trump EPA’s efforts to slash billions of dollars in grant money to green groups obligated during former President Joe Biden‘s administration. The District of Columbia Circuit Court judges were Gregory Katsas, Neomi Rao, and Cornelia Pillard, who dissented. The district court “abused its discretion” by issuing the injunction preventing the EPA from rescinding the funds, the judges wrote. They...

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Friday that $679 million in federal funding has been withdrawn for 12 “doomed” offshore wind projects – including three in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The scrapped funding includes $10.5 million for Connecticut’s Bridgeport Port Authority Operations and Maintenance Wind Port project, $20.5 million for New Jersey’s Wind Port at Paulsboro and $48 million for Staten Island’s Arthur Kill Terminal. The Trump administration plans to spend the withdrawn funds on “real infrastructure” and “restoring American maritime dominance.” “Wasteful, wind projects are using resources that could otherwise go towards revitalizing America’s maritime industry,” Duffy said...

California “First Partner” Jennifer Siebel Newsom making bank off her husband’s position is outrageous — and fresh proof that American politicians have gotten far too comfortable with the dirty dealing that pervades politics. ...Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit, Representation Project, pays her a hefty $150,000 — while raking in donations from companies that have an interest in winning the favor of her husband, California Gov. Gavin Newsom. AT&T, which has spent upward of $2 million to lobby the state on landline phone rules so far this year, forked over up to $25,000 for Representation Project’s “Flip the Script” gala. Comcast, AT&T’s competitor,...

The California High-Speed Rail Authority on Thursday announced a plan to accelerate the process of laying the first tracks on the state’s beleaguered infrastructure project. The materials will be used to install the first miles of electrified track along the California High-Speed Rail route, the first high-speed rail track to be laid in the U.S. The Authority states that the process is being accelerated and will result in track being laid in 2026. Aerial view of the Cedar Viaduct crossing in Fresno which was completed in April 2023. (California High-Speed Rail Authority) U.S. manufacturers will be able to bid in...

Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has been an instrumental figure in dismantling the climate science regime during the second Trump administration, including major funding cuts in partnership with the Department of Government Efficiency. Now, nearly half of the states' attorneys general have called on Zeldin to strike at the head of another climate institution: the Environmental Law Institute. Headed by Attorney General Austin Knudsen of Montana and signed by 22 other state AGs, the letter calls on Zeldin to cut funding grants for the Environmental Law Institute, which operates the Climate Judiciary Project. The letter says...

Internet sleuths have uncovered a likely illegal scheme where U.S. companies and job search sites are systematically hiding lucrative job openings from qualified, skilled American workers, all to funnel those jobs directly to foreign workers through H-1B and green card Permanent Labor Certification “PERM” loopholes. The scheme is as dirty as it gets: corporations bury ads in obscure corners of the internet or tiny Sunday print listings, while deliberately keeping those same jobs off their main career sites where real Americans are actually looking. Why? So they can claim to have “advertised” positions to U.S. citizens while quietly handing them...

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick canceled an Biden administration agreement Monday to distribute billions of dollars for semiconductor research through a nonprofit set up and staffed by former political appointees, according to a letter obtained by The Post. The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act provided for $11 billion in semiconductor research and development funding to be given out by the Commerce Department’s National Semiconductor Technology Center. “Rather than establishing these operations within the Department, however, Biden Administration officials spent significant time, effort, and resources creating an unaccountable, outside entity–Natcast–to administer taxpayer funds,” Lutnick wrote Natcast CEO Deirdre Hanford. Four days before...

A cybersecurity expert warns that a scam that has been used to drain entire life savings or retirement accounts has become "devastating" for seniors. FBI Los Angeles on July 15 posted a reminder on X about the Phantom Hacker Scam, which has cost Americans over $1 billion since at least 2024, according to the agency. The FBI said the scam targets senior citizens and warns that victims could lose their "life savings." The scam operates in three phases: a "tech support impostor," "financial institution impostor" and a "US government impostor." In the first phase, a tech support impostor will contact...

On August 19, 2025, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform escalated its scrutiny of Gavin Newsom’s vanity project: a high-speed railway that was originally supposed to connect California’s major cities by 2020. Congressional Oversight may mark the final phase in the latest review process that began in October 2024. This is not the first time the project came under federal fire — an earlier FRA review in 2019 led to termination of a key grant, which was later reinstated on smaller scale in 2021 and tied to the Central Valley segment.Specifically, the other important FRA review in 2019...

1/ Meet Gaurav Trivedi, an Indian scammer who impersonates Microsoft support and then rips off innocent vulnerable people. He tried to scam me......but instead of paying him money, I hacked into his laptop and turned on his live webcam feed. 2/ Gaurav runs a classic Microsoft tech support scam out of his apartment complex in Raebareli, India. It starts with a fake popup that locks your screen, blares a loud warning sound, and tells you to call “Microsoft” immediately or risk losing all your data.

Hotel owners around the pyramid-shaped Mount Rtanj, in the east of the Balkan country, say that bookings are flooding in, with believers in the prophecy hoping that its purported mysterious powers will save them from the apocalypse. Adherents of the end-of-the-world scenario think the 5,100ft-high mountain, part of the Carpathian range, conceals a pyramidal building inside, left behind by alien visitors thousands of years ago. Arthur C Clarke, the British science fiction writer, reportedly identified the peak as a place of "special energy" and called it "the navel of the world". Doomsday cultists believe that it emits special energy that...

Sometimes you can’t help but marvel at how much we’re all willing to pay for the illusion of “green progress.” New Jersey decided—like half the country—that climate purity would be achieved by wind turbines, solar panels, and endless press conferences declaring victory against bad old fossil fuels. But someone forgot to run the numbers, and now the bill arrives, with a little note attached: “Due immediately. No refunds. See: your monthly utility statement.” Let’s start with the latest funhouse mirror: PJM’s capacity auction. You’ll see the acronym “PJM” all over any story about electricity markets, grid drama, and ratepayer headaches...

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has called for more “transparency” from the government as she described evidence of “interdimensional beings” to Joe Rogan. Luna joined Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience this week and described both her personal experience with UFOs and what she’s seen as the head of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, a subcommittee under the House Oversight Committee. “Based on the photos that I’ve seen, I’m very confident that there’s things out there that have not been created by mankind,” Luna said. The congresswoman said these unidentified objects are referred to as “interdimensional...

California’s signature climate program, cap-and-trade, is set to expire in 2030. Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to extend the program to 2045, but critics say it needs reforms. Significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions and billions of dollars in revenue are at stake. As California pushes toward its ambitious goals for addressing climate change, the fate of its signature program is hanging in the balance. For months, lawmakers, industry groups and environmental advocates have been mired in negotiations over whether and how to extend the cap-and-trade program, which limits planet-warming emissions, beyond its 2030 expiration date. The cap-and-trade program was nation-leading...

There is "science," and then there is "The Science." These are two very different things. Science is a method that is used to determine certain kids of truths and facts about how things work; "The Science" is a method of extracting money and power out of the existing economic and power structure to benefit so-called "scientists." "The Science" is, effectively, organized crime. It bears as much relationship to "science" as a pyramid scheme does to investment. Except that, in the case of "The Science," the infrastructure that society has created to root it out is entirely ineffective because, as often...

Damage scanners are taking over more rental car return lots — and customers aren't happy. Since Hertz rolled out AI scanners in April, it has faced backlash for charging almost $1,000 for tiny scuffs. Now Sixt, a premium rival with 100 locations in the US, has in recent weeks begun using a similar tool called Car Gate.