Free Republic

According to the lawsuit, the three asset managers acquired substantial stockholdings in coal companies, and then used their influence to pressure the companies to adopt ESG goals and reduce output. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with 10 other state attorney generals, have filed a lawsuit against BlackRock, State Street Corporation, and Vanguard Group, three of the largest institutional investors in the world. The lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges the firms conspired to artificially constrict the market for coal through anti-trade practices. “Texas will not tolerate the illegal weaponization of the financial industry in service of a destructive, politicized ‘environmental’ agenda....

Raja Cholan, Chief of the Health Data Standards Branch at the U.S. National Library of Medicine for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has raised eyebrows with his candid remarks on COVID vaccines, global health strategies, and their broader implications. Cholan admitted he has chosen not to receive the latest COVID vaccine boosters, citing mixed evidence of their efficacy: “I haven’t gotten the latest COVID shots, and I’m not going to… there’s mixed evidence about if it really does anything.” He also expressed concerns over the risks the vaccine poses to younger individuals, saying, “For people that are 30 or...

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres encouraged world governments on Tuesday to “rein in hate speech and disinformation spreading online” through a global censorship framework. Guterres suggested that “unchecked digital platforms” were amplifying the “worst impulses of humanity” and threatening global stability and peace, requiring world governments to buy into U.N. programs such as the “Global Digital Compact” to silence speech the world body considers threatening. He made his remarks on the same day that the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared global intervention to “educate” online social influencers in how to avoid “misinformation” was an “urgent” priority. UNESCO...

O’Keefe Media Group on Monday released its first undercover video in its NIH Tapes series. In OMG’s first video release, Raja Cholan, Chief of Health Data Standards Branch US National Library of Medicine, said the Covid health initiatives were completely made up. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this out loud. They might have funded a lab in Wuhan, China and Pfizer and Moderna are getting a bunch of money from all of these vaccine mandates,” Raja Cholan said to the OMG undercover journalist. “I don’t even know if these vaccines stop you from getting COVID. They don’t,” Raja Cholan said,...

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has ruled out calling another general election, but said he is “not surprised” some people who did not support Labour might want a second poll. A petition on Parliament’s website calling for another election had by Monday night been signed by more than 2.4 million people. “I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead-up to the last election.” Asked about the petition on ITV’s This Morning programme on Monday, Sir Keir said: “Look, I remind myself that very many people didn’t vote Labour at the...

FBI agents raided the Manhattan apartment of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan early Wednesday — just a week after the election betting platform accurately predicted Donald Trump’s stunning victory, The Post has learned. The 26-year-old entrepreneur was roused from bed in his Soho pad at 6 a.m. by US law enforcement personnel who demanded he turn over his phone and other electronic devices, a source close to the matter told The Post. It’s “grand political theater at its worst,” the source told The Post. “They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things. Instead, they staged a so-called raid...

For years, reforming the Constitution has been a misguided conservative issue. Downplaying the danger of a runaway convention, impatient conservatives have campaigned to ask the states to call a Constitutional Convention (Con-Con) to consider reforms and amendments that might address their many legitimate concerns. Now, leftists are appearing on the reform horizon, calling for major constitutional changes. One impatient leftist is Prof. Erwin Chemirinsky, dean of the Law School at the University of California, Berkeley. His new book, No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States, goes beyond reform and calls for scrapping the Constitution altogether. He...

In the weekend before the November 5 elections, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) sent a SWAT team to raid the home of Mark Longo and his wife Daniela. The couple run a nonprofit wildlife sanctuary wildlife sanctuary in New York State called P'Nut's Freedom Farm. Seven years ago, the Longos rescued an injured squirrel that they named P'Nut. P'Nut, and later Fred the raccoon, became internet sensations on Instagram and TikTok. A self-described Biden supporter from Texas saw these animals on TikTok and lodged a complaint with New York state authorities. Mark and Daniela were kept...

Upper Leacock farmer Amos Miller cannot sell raw milk or dairy products made from it to the public under an order issued by a Lancaster County judge Friday afternoon. Judge Thomas Sponaugle’s order also allows the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to inspect any location where Miller packages or distributes raw milk and to test Miller’s dairy products. The ruling is a win for the agriculture department, which sought to prevent Miller from producing and selling raw milk and products while its lawsuit against him plays out. But Miller’s California-based attorney, Robert E. Barnes, said the judge actually reduced the scope...

No matter how bad you think Covid policies were, they were intended to be worse. Consider the vaccine passports alone. Six cities were locked down to include only the vaccinated in public indoor places. They were New York City, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The plan was to enforce this with a vaccine passport. It broke. Once the news leaked that the shot didn’t stop infection or transmission, the planners lost public support and the scheme collapsed. It was undoubtedly planned to be permanent and nationwide if not worldwide. Instead, the scheme had to be dialed back....

Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Thursday that they were readying to "protect California values" against the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, whose first term in office presented an onslaught of challenges to the policy agenda of Democratic leaders in the state. Newsom, a fierce critic of Trump, called for lawmakers to convene a special session later this year to safeguard the state's progressive policies on climate change, reproductive rights and immigration ahead of another Trump presidency. The move — a day after the former president resoundingly defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race...

Pennsylvania's traditionally private Amish community registered to vote in 'unprecedented numbers' after government agents stormed a local farm early in the year. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture raided Amos Miller's farm on January 4, sparking outrage among the state's Amish population, a source familiar with the matter told The New York Post. 'That was the impetus for them to say, "We need to participate,"' the source said. 'This is about neighbors helping neighbors.' The raid by state officials came after reports of children falling ill from raw dairy products purchased at the farm in Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania. 'If you...

A lawmaker in Delaware has become the first openly transgender woman elected to Congress. Democrat Sarah McBride was the favorite to win the only congressional district in Delaware - which is traditionally a Democratic stronghold. Speaking tonight, Ms McBride said: 'Tonight is a testament to Delawareans that we are a fair-minded state where voters judge candidates based on their ideas and not their identities.' The New York Times reported that Ms McBride believed her victory was a sign that she had earned the support of voters by leading efforts to improve their everyday economic lives through measures like paid family...

In a powerful closing ad for his campaign, Donald Trump has assembled a formidable lineup of voices—Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Nicole Shanahan, JD Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Elon Musk—to deliver a resounding message to America: the time has come to choose freedom over the tyranny of the radical left. In a powerful closing ad for his campaign, Donald Trump has assembled a formidable lineup of voices—Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Nicole Shanahan, JD Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Elon Musk—to deliver a resounding message to America: the time has come to choose freedom over the tyranny of the radical left. The ad,...

Peanut the Squirrel, and an Election Brought into Focus at Last by John F. Di Leo As the 2024 election approached, many voters found themselves with a dilemma. They’ve been told for a decade that they must dislike President Trump, though he did a good job as president. They’ve been told that they should like Kamala Harris, though everything about her from policies to behavior seems weird. So, while many have been able to comfortably cast early votes with confidence, others put it off until the last minute, hoping perhaps for a flash of clarity, a winning argument, or maybe...

Mandatory gun confiscation is a great idea — if Congress doesn’t act within the first hundred days of my administration, i will take executive action. 一 Kamala Harris

California motorists buy and consume a billion gallons of gasoline each month and are very sensitive about pump prices, which are markedly higher than those in other states. Naturally, they are a political football. Gov. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly characterized refiners as price gougers, even though most of the differences are caused by taxes, fees and regulatory mandates. Recently, he persuaded the Legislature to pass a watered-down version of his proposal requiring refiners to maintain higher reserves to avoid price spikes. However the gasoline situation is far more complicated than Newsom’s approach, and California may be facing a period of...

An upstate man whose beloved squirrel was cruelly killed by the state said he was treated like a “terrorist” when 10 government agents descended on his home during a five-hour raid. Mark Longo, whose pet Peanut captured the hearts of 3 million social media users, was stunned when a convoy of vehicles carrying officials from the state departments of Environmental Conservation and Health arrived at his Pine City home Wednesday. “They treated me like I was a terrorist. They treated this raid as if I was a drug dealer. They ransacked my house for five hours,” Longo told The Post...

In recent weeks the Department of Justice (DOJ) has tried to bully states into not removing ineligible persons from their voter rolls by citing the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). The DOJ claimed that no changes can be made during a so-called "quiet period provision" 90 days prior to election day and filed suits against Alabama, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia for removing the names of aliens and other ineligible persons from the rolls. The phrase "quiet period" is not in the NVRA. The 90-day window only applies to eligible registrants who have moved to a different residence....

In New Zealand there is no constitutional right for citizens to bear arms. Recently, the police conducted a domestic intelligence operation to identify people who hold unacceptable political opinions. They identified 62 such individuals who were licensed to own firearms and confiscated their weapons. Under the island's laws, the Firearms Safety Authority says "an applicant for a firearms license must be a fit and proper person to possess and use firearms." Government officials take the position that espousing views the government regards as "extreme" is sufficient grounds for disarming them. Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern asserted that "it would be...