Free Republic

How would you feel about paying $5 each month for the ability to lock and unlock your car from a distance through an app? What about a $25-per-month charge for advanced cruise control or $10 to access heated seats? What if those charges continued long after your car was paid off? As vehicles become increasingly connected to the internet, car companies aim to rake in billions by having customers pay monthly or annual subscriptions to access certain features. Not content with the relatively low-margin business of building and selling cars, automakers are eager to pull down Silicon Valley-style profits. But...

Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson appeared Thursday on CNN’s Democracy in Peril, where she spoke about the current condition of her former network. Carlson first spoke about the power FNC opinion host Tucker Carlson seems to have over Republicans in Congress, some of whom have followed his lead and sided with authoritarian Russia in the growing conflict with Ukraine. “This is the result of fake news,” Carlson said. “You know, we're seeing not only the fallout from fake news during the Trump era, but what happened with the insurrection on Jan. 6. Now it's moving into other areas. Not...

Despite a mountain of evidence showing the 2020 presidential contest wasn’t rigged against Donald Trump, nearly 6 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (57 percent) now say they will not vote in upcoming elections for any candidate who admits that Joe Biden won the presidency "fair and square." Only 17 percent say they would consider voting for a candidate who accurately characterizes Biden’s victory as legitimate. These numbers underscore the degree to which Trump’s “big lie” claiming Biden cheated his way into the White House — a falsehood that three-quarters of Trump voters (74 percent) now believe — has become...

Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani discusses how the CDC says the COVID-19 booster shots are effective against the Omicron variant.

Last week Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, gave an interview to Yahoo Finance and made some truly startling admissions. He said, among other things, that the two original Pfizer injections provide no protection against Covid-19. “We know that the two doses of the vaccine offer very limited protection, if any,” Bourla confessed. If, then, you have received the two shots you are not protected against infection or severe Covid or death. Neither are you less likely to transmit the disease to others than your unvaccinated neighbor or co-worker. To put it in a different way, the first two jabs...

Just two weeks into the new year, the U.S. has already seen more than a million new COVID cases on multiple days. The Omicron variant has created a dangerous surge, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimating that this version of the virus currently accounts for more than 98 percent of cases in the country. Omicron is spreading even faster than the previously dominant Delta variant, and pushing case counts higher than ever before. Health officials across the country have started to update existing policies in response to the surge, with some places introducing vaccine mandates for...

Jon Reeves first realized that treating climate anxiety would become a regular part of his job in 2016. He was then working in Massachusetts as a student counselor at Boston College, and the country was about to elect noted climate-change denier Donald Trump to the highest office in the land. “I definitely noticed that students were bringing climate change up as part of their overall concerns,” Reeves, a psychologist, told Yahoo News. “I think there was some stress that came along with the presidential election and concerns that the U.S. government wouldn’t do as much to mitigate climate change with...

The 74.9-megawatt plant, called the Archer Solar Project, would span the 650-acre vacant farmland plot near the Saint Peter neighborhood area. “This is not a facility that’s compatible with the residential community,” Rutledge continued. “Our families have ties to those types of experiences since the Civil War, Jim Crow, and having to escape,” said Gerrie Crawford, another resident who lives across from the proposed site. She explained that many families, including hers, have worked and purchased land there since the 1800s. Crawford also said that many residents in the town are descendants of African Americans driven out of Rosewood, a...

President Joe Biden was subjected to a right-wing anti-Biden slur during a Christmas Eve call with NORAD's Santa tracker.Biden and the first lady were speaking with families around the country who had called into the North American Aerospace Defense Command to receive an update on Santa's location when one parent ended the conversation by saying: "Let’s go Brandon/The president did not appear to recognize that the phrase is used by the right wing as a euphemism for "f--- Joe Biden," and responded: "Let’s go Brandon, I agree."

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), which represents West Virginia coal miners as well, said that the bill contained important measures that would benefit coal miners — like an extension of funding to aid victims of black lung disease, tax incentives to urge manufacturers to build new factories and employ ex-miners and protect union workers. Cecil Roberts, the union’s president said in a statement: “We are disappointed that the bill will not pass. We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working,...

When Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced on Fox News on Sunday that he won’t vote for the current version of Build Back Better, experts predicted he may have single-handedly killed the world’s best hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

cientists are warning an Antarctic glacier could collapse and cause sea levels to raise at least a foot in the next decade. The scientists said Monday at the American Geophysical Union the Thwaites glacier, which is the size of Florida, could collapse in the next three to five years. The ice shelf holding the glacier in place is quickly developing cracks due to the warm water hitting it, according to the scientists. "There's going to be a dramatic change in the front of the glacier probably within less than a decade," Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative...

The Department of Energy is selling 18 million barrels of sour crude from storage caverns in Texas and Louisiana in a tender that closes Jan. 4, with deliveries from Feb. 1 through March 31, according to a statement on its website. Crude futures have dropped about 15% since late October, when President Joe Biden and his team began indicating they were considering a variety of tools to bring down fuel prices. Oil has fallen more sharply since news of the omicron variant of the coronavirus broke in late November. Biden to Release U.S. Oil Reserves in Challenge to OPEC+

Former President Trump announced on Wednesday that he was endorsing controversial far-right GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colo.) for reelection in 2022. "Congresswoman Lauren Boebert has done a fantastic job in her first term representing Colorado's Third District. She is a fearless leader, a defender of the America First Agenda, and a fighter against the Loser RINOs and Radical Democrats," Trump said in a statement issued through his Save America PAC. "She will continue to be tough on Crime, strong on Borders, and always protect our under-siege Second Amendment. Lauren has my Complete and Total Endorsement for her reelection!" the former...

An NBC Sports crew working on assignment in Oakland, Calif., was robbed at gunpoint Saturday morning.. and the robbers got away with a camera from the crew's vehicle. .... This robbery is reportedly the third involving news organizations in Oakland within 2 1/2 weeks' time. On Dec. 3, a San Francisco Chronicle photographer was held up in an armed robbery, and before that a security guard for local news station KRON-TV was shot and killed during an attempted robbery ... "We in Oakland believe in a comprehensive and effective approach to ending gun violence," Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf (D) said...

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday he wants new state laws protecting Florida from the "Biden border crisis" that he directly tied to the stabbing death of a Jacksonville resident in a case where authorities charged a Honduran man who posed as a 17-year-old under a fake name.DeSantis made the link to that homicide case during a news conference at Jacksonville International Airport while saying President Joe Biden's immigration policies have left Florida exposed to people arriving from other countries without state and local officials knowing who they are.U.S. Rep. John Rutherford, who has criticized federal flights into Jacksonville of unaccompanied...

A special Customs and Border Protection unit used sensitive government databases intended to track terrorists to investigate as many as 20 U.S.-based journalists, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporter, according to a federal watchdog. Yahoo News, which published an extensive report on the investigation, also found that the unit, the Counter Network Division, queried records of congressional staffers and perhaps members of Congress. Jeffrey Rambo, an agent who acknowledged running checks on journalists in 2017, told federal investigators the practice is routine. “When a name comes across your desk you run it through every system you have access too,...

First came passage of one of the nation’s most restrictive voting bills. Then came efforts to overhaul the number of elected offices in one of Georgia’s largest counties. Now, with the pending passage of a new congressional map, Republicans have taken another step toward dismantling the Atlanta-area engine that turned Georgia blue, powering President Joe Biden to victory in 2020 and flipping control of the Senate to Democrats. Just as Georgia has emerged as a pivotal swing state, the GOP-controlled legislature has gone to extraordinary lengths to overhaul election administration, rewrite election rules and redraw political lines in the fast-growing...

Is this the revenge of Four Seasons Landscaping? That was the worn-down venue in Philadelphia where Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, launched the doomed effort to block Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. The Giuliani group meant to book the Four Seasons hotel, but somebody goofed and Giuliani ended up spouting his familiar election lies in front of an industrial garage door plastered with Trump signs. The Trump effort to overturn the election never got any more professional than that.

Lindy Blanchard, a nonprofit director, former ambassador and major financial supporter of former President Donald Trump, entered the gubernatorial race on Tuesday, hitting traditional Alabama Republican issues while sprinkling in the former president's name. In a 10-minute speech in downtown Wetumpka, Blanchard — who went by Lynda during her Senate campaign — said she would oppose federal COVID vaccination plans and accused Republicans in charge of state government of being out of touch with Alabamians. "I will stand up for our rights, against not just the liberal left, but the go-along, get-along so-called conservatives who have run things in Montgomery...