Free Republic

It happened in February. It’s a video where a teacher, Warren Smith, is seen engaging in a conversation with a student who alleged that J.K. Rowling was transphobic. It quickly went viral. In less than five minutes, Smith, uncondescending, forces the student to rethink his position. The student admits he feels like an idiot after the pair discussed the phrasing and logical trajectory of the debate about the Harry Potter creator who has become persona non grata for her views on gender despite being an ardent leftist. This is utterly brilliant. A student accuses @jk_rowling of being transphobic. This teacher...

democracy itself on the line, the 2024 election will almost certainly be the nation’s most consequential since 1860. It will also be the weirdest. two facts about this campaign that do not appear to be making much of an impact on what seems to be close to a majority of the electorate. The first more obvious one is few people in history have ever been less qualified to hold a position of any responsibility, ...than Donald Trump. If elected, he will certainly deploy that power to destroy virtually everything Americans have historically held dear about the nation’s democratic traditions. The...

ROME — Pope Francis told CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell that conservatives are willfully blind and manifest a “suicidal attitude” in their narrowmindedness. In an interview set to air Sunday on 60 Minutes, the pope asserts that a conservative “is someone who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude.” “One thing is to take tradition into account and consider situations from the past but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box,” he adds. The Pope addresses his conservative critics in the church. “Conservative is one who clings to...

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and more than a dozen other House Republicans are pushing a measure that targets the Federal Reserve System. The measure includes text that declares, "The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and each Federal reserve bank are hereby abolished" and "the Federal Reserve Act is hereby repealed." Massie announced the introduction of the measure on Thursday, the same day that the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index surpassed 40,000 for the first time before ultimately giving up its gains and closing slightly down for the day. 'If we really want to reduce...

Sometimes we wonder if the Biden Democrats secretly admired some of Donald Trump’s stunts in the White House and decided that they could do them too when they were back in power. The latest example is President Biden’s dubious claim of executive privilege regarding his interview with special counsel Robert Hur. Mr. Biden sat for an interview over two days with the special counsel about his mishandling of classified documents. A pair of House committees sought the transcript and audio recordings of the interview, and the White House turned over the transcript. But on Thursday the President asserted executive privilege...

Special Counsel Jack Smith was supposed to be basking in glory right now. In his ideal world, Smith would be hot off a quick conviction of Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. for the former president’s alleged role in the events of January 6 and attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election. The special counsel then would have immediately moved his victorious prosecutors to Palm Beach for the summer to prepare for Trump’s second federal trial related to allegedly stealing national defense information and impeding the Department of Justice’s investigation. That, at least, was the plan. Instead, Smith is ingloriously hiding from...

Press Releases Rep. Massie Introduces Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act to "End the Fed" Washington, D.C.-, May 16, 2024 For Immediate Release Contact: massie.press@mail.house.gov Contact #: 202-225-3465 WASHINGTON, D.C.- Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) announces the introduction of H.R. 8421, the Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act. Rep. Massie's legislation abolishes the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve banks. It also repeals the Federal Reserve Act, the 1913 law that created the Federal Reserve System. "Americans are suffering under crippling inflation, and the Federal Reserve is to blame," said Rep. Massie. "During COVID, the Federal Reserve created...

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra admitted during a congressional hearing on Wednesday that hospitals with religious objections to transgender mutilation will lose federal funding. “Can you commit here today that your department will not withhold federal funding from hospitals or doctors who refuse to provide the gender-affirming care that you are, you know, mandating, if it violates their religious beliefs?” Republican Rep. Mary Miller, chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, asked Becerra. Becerra ignored the question and scolded Miller for asking it. “You’re going somewhere completely different. First, you started talking about how a doctor should...

Based on the latest available data and an enhanced version of a stress-tested methodology from a scholarly journal, a new study by Just Facts has found that about 10 percent to 27 percent of non-citizen adults in the U.S. are now illegally registered to vote. The U.S. Census recorded more than 19 million adult non-citizens living in the U.S. during 2022. Given their voter registration rates, this means that about two million to five million of them are illegally registered to vote. These figures are potentially high enough to overturn the will of the American people in major elections, including...

Legal experts believe Donald Trump could have flouted his court-imposed gag order by apparently manufacturing a scenario where his supporters communicated on his behalf. According to Newsweek, Trump has been penning notes for his political sympathizers to read outside the courthouse during his New York criminal trial, a move which could contravene the gag order. The purpose of the order is to prevent Trump from talking about the jury or any witnesses in the hush money case. "Those notes are not privileged documents, and if their contents mirrored some of what Trump's GOP cronies said to the press, the notes...

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of the structure used to fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency tasked with enforcing consumer finance laws. By a vote of 7-2, the justices reversed a decision by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, which had ruled that the agency’s funding violates the Constitution because it comes from the Federal Reserve rather than through the congressional appropriations process. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, in a decision that relied heavily on both the text of the Constitution and early English and U.S. history. Justice Samuel...

The Justice Department's Legal Counsel Office said the recording should be considered protected by executive privilege. Chairman Comer says the claim "changes nothing" and vows to continue contempt proceedings. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ President Joe Biden on Thursday claimed the recording of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur about his retention of classified documents should not be released due to executive privilege just hours before House Republicans were set to move toward holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for not releasing the recordings. The Justice Department's Legal Counsel Office said the recording should be considered protected by executive privilege,...

After more than three billion doses, the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is being withdrawn. However, its reputation was dented as unusual blood clots emerged as a rare side effect of the vaccine, and the UK turned to alternatives.

More than two-thirds of Americans think the Supreme Court was right to hold Harvard's race-based admissions policy unlawful. But the minority who disagree have no doubt about their own moral authority, and there's every reason to believe that they intend to undo the Court's decision at the earliest opportunity. Which could be as soon as this year. In fact, undoing the Harvard admissions decision is the least of it. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have embraced a precooked "privacy" bill that will impose race/gender quotas not just on academic admissions but on practically every private and public decision that matters...

A stalwart in the West Virginia Republican Party for decades lost his primary race on Tuesday night due in part to his support of a controversial bill that critics say would provide healthcare for illegal immigrants, according to a group that actively campaigned against him. West Virginia GOP State Sen. Craig Blair, the president of the state senate who has served as a state senator since 2013 and in the legislature for years before that, lost to his primary challenger Tom Willis on Tuesday night, WV Metro News reported. Stand For Us PAC, a group that put $1 million into...

West Virginia voters ousted the Republican state Senate president on Tuesday, as well as a doctor who drew fire for breaking with his party over school vaccination policy. They were among at least eight incumbent GOP legislators who lost in the state's primary elections.

A voting rights lawsuit that could cost Texas Democrats seats across all levels of government received a hearing Tuesday by the full Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, known as the most conservative federal appellate court in the country. The Galveston County redistricting case is challenging how the appellate court has previously interpreted the Voting Rights Act, which was passed to protect individual minority groups but has been “twisted” for political advantage. At issue is whether Section 2 of the law requires the county to create a majority-minority district by grouping a “coalition” of black and Hispanic voters....

Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll have asked a federal appeals court to expedite Donald Trump’s appeal of the verdict in their first trial in which a jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages after finding Trump liable for defamation and battery in May 2023. Carroll wants to see the oral arguments for the appeal scheduled to take place by July, arguing that the former president will try to further delay the proceedings, using his ongoing criminal trial or busy campaign schedule as an excuse. The motion with the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals filed Tuesday cites Trump’s numerous attempts...

In an interview posted on on Tuesday, Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that he’s changed his position on third-trimester abortions. This came after he said in an interview that he supports a woman's right to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. Kennedy made the remarks in an interview with comedians Shane Gillis and Matt McCusker this week. "There's no way you can change my mind by calling me names or criticizing me or by marginalizing or vilifying me. But, you can always change my mind with facts,” Kennedy said. “If you […] show me I'm wrong...

A Nanny State Idiocracy: A Tale of Too Many Laws and Too Little Freedom“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military.”—Simone Weil, French philosopherWe are caught in a vicious cycle of too many laws, too many cops, and too little freedom.It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American...