Free Republic

The US housing crisis has been decades in the making, but combined with an inflation squeeze and a systemic shortage of affordable housing, more renters have nowhere to go. erardo Vidal, who has lived in the same apartment in Queens, New York, with his family for 9 years, recently received a $900-a-month rent increase this year. “It means having to uproot my entire family, given the fact we’re still having a difficult time earning money due to the pandemic and loss of jobs,” said Vidal. “It’s unfair that we are being basically forced out of places we lived in for...

Roaring inflation is tanking Americans' confidence in the economy.. U.S. consumer confidence tanked in early June, reaching the lowest level ever recorded as soaring inflation batters Americans' budgets and fuels concerns for the economy at large. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index released Friday shows the index plunged to 50 this month, a 14.4% drop from May and the lowest reading since the survey began in the late 1970s. ... The survey indicated declines in every component, reflecting a bleak vision from respondents: The year-ahead outlook tumbled 24%, while Americans' assessments of their personal financial situations worsened by 20%....

The European Commission has been unable to find the text messages exchanged between president Ursula von der Leyen and the boss of giant pharmaceutical company Pfizer, the EU executive said in a letter to the EU ombudsman published on Wednesday (29 June).

“There is a sense among the American public that the military is becoming increasingly political and that topics such as race and gender equity, critical race theory, and wokeism in general are commanding more attention, at the cost of readiness,”

Rep. Mike Johnson warned that Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin's vaccine mandate is "causing major damage" to America's Armed Forces. With the deadline to comply fast approaching, Johnson has called attention to the consequences enforcement of the mandate might have. "@SecDef's COVID vaccine mandate is causing major damage to the readiness of our Armed Forces," he wrote on Twitter, "particularly our Army." Nearly 13 percent of the National Guard has not yet been vaccinated, with that number rising to between 20 and 30 percent in some states. Around 10 percent of Army Reserve forces have also not yet gotten the...

Apparently, Christianity is no longer acceptable in the marketplace of ideas, Twitter. An associate pastor in Texas, Gabriel Hughes, was just permanently banned from Twitter with no stated explanation from the social media site. Gabe is a popular Twitter user in conservative Christian circles and is often seen as "controversial" because he actually preaches the Bible. The tweet that got him the perma-boot from Twitter was one in which he stated that all sin is worthy of death, which is kinda the underlying premise for God's redemptive work throughout the entirety of the Bible believed over thousands of years by...

Cai Qi, the Chinese Communist Party secretary of Beijing, told state media Monday that the city would adhere to its “zero-Covid” policy of lockdowns and quarantines for the next five years.State media rapidly deleted his comment — and Chinese censors relentlessly scrubbed it from websites — after a burst of shock and outrage on social media.The original quote from Cai, as published by the state-run Beijing Daily, read as follows: “In the next five years, Beijing will unremittingly grasp the normalization of epidemic prevention and control.”The rest of the article made it clear that Cai was talking about the harsh...

The COVID policies promoted by Dr. Fauci, the World Health Organization, CDC and the majority of influential public health “experts” had devastating consequences, according to a new analysis published by Nature. The report suggests that over 75 million people have been thrown into poverty, defined as making less than $1.90 US per day, than were expected before the pandemic response started. This graphic shows how previous expectations were for global poverty rates to decline, only for the trends to completely reverse once lockdowns got underway: ... Income losses were also dramatic across all demographics, but especially targeted lower earning workers....

President Trump taught Republicans how to fight, but Anthony Sabatini didn’t need many lessons. Sabatini can brawl with the best of them and has been fearless in engaging RINOS and Democrats. State Representative Anthony Sabatini, who is running for U.S Congress in Florida’s 7th District, has no interest in performing a balancing act. Sabatini makes no apologies for his confrontational stance against both RINO’s (Republicans In Name Only) and Democrats. Tacking to the right of Republican colleagues who have made firing Fauci their rallying cry, he recently said that Fauci should “be in prison for the rest of his life”...

Former President Donald Trump issued a severe smackdown to his Republican haters in a statement on Sunday, characterizing them as talentless fools.Calling out George Will, Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, and others by name, the former president said that nobody should listen to such “foolish (stupid!) people”:I listen to all of these foolish (stupid!) people, often living in a bygone era, like the weak and frail RINO, Peggy Noonan, who did much less for Ronald Reagan than she claims, and who actually said bad things about him and his ability to speak, or Rich Lowry, who has destroyed the once wonderful...

The former military officers worry that their alma mater has embraced "woke" teachings that will undermine the mission of the institution. Several retired U.S. military officers signed a letter written by "Concerned Graduates of West Point and The Long Gray Line," which objects to mandatory vaccinations, CRT instruction, progressivism and other "woke" sentiments in the military academy. "We wanted to challenge the leadership of the Academy and the Defense Dept on their WOKE actions, CRT, Diversity training and the other discrepancies in the Academy," retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, told the Epoch Times. "We found it pervasive at the...

Since around the middle of May 2022, you will have most likely heard or seen the word Monkeypox mentioned numerous times in the mainstream media. Allegedly, for the first time since its discovery among humans in Africa over 50 years ago, the monkeypox virus is circulating throughout several countries including the USA, UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia and most of Europe all at the same time. But it just so happens that every single country where monkeypox is allegedly circulating is also a country that has distributed the Pfizer Covid-19 injection to its population; excluding some countries in Africa where the...

New York City began offering vaccination against monkeypox to at-risk groups on Thursday, as authorities scramble to contain a global outbreak. But demand was so high, within hours of launching the program the city had to cut off walk-in appointments, and scheduled visits were already booked through early next week. As opposed to the early days of COVID, when there was no effective treatment, there are already multiple vaccines that work against the orthopoxvirus that causes the ailment. Supply, however, is the question. Some 30 people have tested positive for the virus in the city since early May, almost all...

One of my favorite non-religious fiction books of all time is World War Z (An Oral History of the Zombie War) by author Max Brooks (the son of Mel Brooks). Despite its ominous title, the book isn’t so much about zombies and gore, as it is about human behavior and what people do when a crisis happens. What was more fascinating, was the way the book was formatted. It was written in such a way as to chronicle the global crisis after the fact, as the main character was tasked by the United Nations with documenting the viral outbreak from...

In this excerpt from the just-published “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words” by Michael Pack and Mark Paoletta, the Supreme Court justice reflects on changes in his hometown, Savannah, Ga. The book is based on more than 30 hours of interviews Pack conducted with Thomas and his wife Ginni for the film of the same name; 95% of the book’s material is new, including this excerpt. Michael Pack: You have talked a little today about how life in the black community has not been improved by many well-intentioned social programs. Do you think, in some sense, it is...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign a bill to grant places of worship the right to keep doors open during a state of emergency. Florida bill SB 254, which passed the Senate in January, would officially designate religious services as being essential and therefore allow houses of worship, including churches, to remain open and host public gatherings in the event of a public emergency or disaster. The governor received the bill last Friday and has until June 30 to act on it. “An emergency order authorized by this part may not directly or indirectly prohibit religious services or...

Hello Americans, I’m Todd Starnes. Stand by for news and commentary next. President Biden raised eyebrows when he announced that he needs more money for a second pandemic. He literally said there is going to be another pandemic. “We don’t just need more money for vaccines for children, eventually; we need more money to plan for the second pandemic,” Biden told reporters in the White House. “There’s going to be another pandemic. We have to think ahead. And that’s not something the last outfit did very well. That’s something we’ve been doing fairly well. That’s why we need the money.”...

STORY AT-A-GLANCE Mass formation is a form of mass hypnosis that emerges when specific conditions are met, and almost always precede the rise of totalitarian systems Four central conditions that need to exist in order for mass formation to arise are widespread loneliness and lack of social bonding, which leads to experiencing life as meaningless, which leads to widespread free-floating anxiety and discontent, which leads to widespread free-floating frustration and aggression, which results in feeling out of control Under mass formation, a population enters a hypnotic-type trance that makes them willing to sacrifice anything, including their lives and their freedom...

The ruling on Wednesday is the first win in appellate court for a restaurant seeking business interruption insurance losses.. Oceana Grill, Bourbon Street’s tourist-centric restaurant loved by New Orleans hotel concierges, has won the country’s first victory in appellate court for an insured business seeking damages related to COVID-19 shutdown losses. A split Louisiana court found the policy’s definition of “direct physical loss or damage” ambiguous, ruling in favor of the restaurant on Wednesday, June 15. Cajun Conti, the company that owns Oceana Grill, among other French Quarter tourist haunts, sued Lloyd’s of London on March 20, 2020 — the...

The federal government started taking orders from states two weeks ago for 10 million doses. WASHINGTON — Florida parents with kids under 5 years old may find themselves waiting longer than the rest of the country to get their youngest children vaccinated against Covid since state officials have decided not to order any doses for that age group. Florida is the only state that hasn't submitted a request with the federal government for doses of the Covid vaccine specifically tailored for children ages six months to five years in anticipation of U.S. regulators giving clearance for that age bracket as...