Free Republic

Recent headlines about UCLA School of Medicine suggest that the institution has lost its focus. Instead of brushing up on organic chemistry, its students were subjected to lessons on “Indigenous womxn” and “two-spirits.” Future doctors had to take a class on “structural racism” and were led in a “Free Palestine” chant by a Hamas-praising guest speaker. The school made plans to segregate students by race for courses on left-wing ideology, and two of its psychiatry residents championed “revolutionary suicide.” Why has the school charted this course? One reason is its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology. UCLA has a...

New York Attorney General just lost her effort to negate the bond agreement allowing Trump to appeal the judgment. The court added conditions but turned down her effort to reject the company as a viable bonding company.

After months of delays, the battle between landlords and tenants in one Bay Area city has come to an end. A rent control ordinance in the city of Concord went into effect Friday after its opponents failed to get enough signatures to place the issue on the November ballot. “We are thrilled that the people of Concord have spoken again in favor of people over corporate greed,” Rhea Elina Laughlin, executive director of advocacy group Rising Juntos, said in a statement. The ordinance reduces the annual percentage by which landlords can raise rent in Concord and bolsters certain eviction protections....

Hillary Clinton suggested her onetime political rival, former President Donald Trump, wants to “kill his opposition” because of his purported affinity for “strongmen” leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We haven’t talked much about the international arena, but, you know, his bromance with Putin,” said Clinton, who served as U.S. secretary of state and U.S. senator, during a podcast released last week. “And it was actually called that I think by the former prime minister of Australia, who said he saw Trump with Putin and Trump was like, you know, just gaga over Putin because Putin does what he...

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Eva Edl turned 10 years old in a World War II-era death camp. She believes she may die in a United States prison. Charged by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, Edl faces up to 11 years in prison and $350,000 fines. She is about to turn 89 years old. “When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die there,” she said thoughtfully in a phone interview with The Daily Signal. “Right now, I am ambivalent. … I’m doing the best I can to get...

During oral arguments on Tuesday, Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito exposed the Biden administration’s inexcusable practice of selective prosecution of protesters and rioters. The case, Fischer v. United States, involved the contention by Pennsylvanian Joseph Fischer that the charges of “obstruct[ion of] … any official proceeding,” based on 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), should not apply to his actions during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Fischer, who also was charged with assaulting police officers, is hardly a sympathetic figure. His claims that he wasn’t trying to obstruct or “impede” official (and important) congressional business, in the ordinary (nonlegal)...

The military could seek to formally punish service members for refusing to use another service member’s preferred pronouns under existing policy, according to military experts. A 2020 Equal Opportunity law opened the door for commanders to subject someone who refuses to affirm a transgender servicemember’s so-called gender identity to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) for charges related to harassment, Capt. Thomas Wheatley, an assistant professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Such a move would likely infringe on a servicemember’s constitutional rights to uphold their conscience, but it might not...

Betsy DeVos said the Biden administration's finalized Title IX rule change has "gutted" five decades of protections for women and girls and replaced it with "radical gender theory." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (The Center Square) - Former secretary of education Betsy DeVos said Friday that the Biden administration's finalized Title IX rule change has "gutted" five decades of protections for women and girls and replaced it with "radical gender theory." "The Biden administration’s radical rewrite of Title IX guts the half century of protections and opportunities for women and callously replaces them with radical gender theory, as Biden’s far-left political base demanded," DeVos...

The Louisiana legislature is in the process of strengthening the current state preemption law regarding weapons and the right to keep and bear arms. Local governments seeking to push gun control have been clever about finding ways to restrict people’s right to keep and bear arms in ways not foreseen by previous preemption laws. For example, in Iowa, the Dubuque City Council voted to create a zoning ordinance to prohibit otherwise legitimate gun sales. In Montana, the city government of Missoula, dominated by the University of Montana, voted to require government approval of all firearm sales in the city. In...

Democrats have been trying to destroy Donald Trump ever since he announced his candidacy for president back in 2015. They’ve framed him for Russian collusion, election interference, and even rape. They’ve impeached him twice. They’ve tried to bar him from the ballot. They still may succeed in convicting him of bogus crimes and even sending him to prison, all in the hope of making sure that he doesn’t walk back into the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2025. Yet even all this isn’t enough for some of these sinister authoritarians. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Racism) on Friday introduced a bill to...

Former Attorney General Bill Barr called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush-money case against former President Donald Trump an “abomination” on Wednesday. Additionally, Barr revealed, despite past differences and concerns about a Trump second term, that he plans to vote for the presumptive GOP nominee in November. Regarding Bragg’s charges against Trump, Barr told Fox News, “I’ve said from the beginning this case is an abomination. You know it’s obviously political, seven years after he pays hush money, to try to come up with this case.” “It’s not only far-fetched, they’re trying to predicate it on a federal crime, which...

The Sheetz convenience store chain has been hit with a lawsuit by federal officials who allege the company discriminated against minority job applicants. Sheetz Inc., which operates more than 700 stores in six states, discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job seekers by automatically weeding out applicants whom the company deemed to have failed a criminal background check, according to U.S. officials. President Joe Biden stopped by a Sheetz for snacks this week while campaigning in Pennsylvania. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit in Baltimore against Altoona, Pennsylvania-based Sheetz and two subsidary companies, alleging the chain’s longstanding hiring...

A California bar court judge ruled in late March that John Eastman should be disbarred for helping President Donald Trump challenge the outcome of the 2020 election. Before the California Supreme Court reviews the case, Mr. Eastman asked a judge to pause the order prohibiting him from practicing law, so he could fund his defense in the criminal case brought against President Trump and his attorneys in Georgia. Jeffrey Clark, who also tried to help President Trump, is facing a similar disbarment hearing in Washington. The focal point is a “proof of concept” letter he drafted for President Trump in...

In battleground states across the country, environmental activists like Dr. Emily Church are canvassing on behalf of an organization called the Environmental Voter Project in an effort to turn out people who care the most about climate change -- but who haven't shown up for past elections. During a recent effort in Pittsburgh, Church, a biology professor who leads local canvasses for the project, recalled to ABC News how she used to lobby lawmakers directly to take action on climate change, but they told her voters don't care about the issue. She said she's now trying to prove them wrong....

We have often discussed how cities and universities will use the threat of protests to block or shutdown free speech, particularly of conservative speakers or groups. We now have a major decision out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that could prove an important precedent in resisting the growing anti-free speech movement in the United States. In Meinecke v. City of Seattle, the court ruled against Seattle in a case involving the arrest of a pro-life protester. Matthew Meinecke was harassed by Antifa and other counterprotesters, but police arrested Meineche when he refused to yield...

Once one of Donald Trump’s fiercest critics, convicted attorney Michael Avenatti has been discussing possibly testifying on behalf of the former president in his hush money trial after he unleashed a tirade of criticism against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. In X posts from his Los Angeles federal prison cell and in news media interviews, Avenatti has questioned the legitimacy of Bragg’s prosecution against Trump, even suggesting it was an interference in the 2024 election. “There’s no question it is politically motivated because they’re concerned that he (Trump) may be re-elected,” Avenatti told The New York Post in an interview...

Homicides are falling across the U.S. And that shift could impact the role crime — often a top voter concern — plays as an issue in November’s election. But it is a phenomenon for which experts don’t have a clear explanation. Some say homicide peaks come and go in cycles, some say policing improved after the COVID-19 pandemic, and some attribute it to the evolving national conversation about how to handle crime. A data analysis released last week shows that the number of homicides in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, are dropping. While many major cities, especially...

President Biden signed a bill Saturday extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) warrantless surveillance program another two years. The Senate passed the reauthorization bill early Saturday, after hours of intense debate, narrowly avoiding a key national intelligence gathering capability going dark. Senators voted 60-34 to send the bill to Biden’s desk shortly after the midnight deadline. The program looked as if it was headed for a lapse until Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced a breakthrough on the Senate floor.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The most significant case in decades on homelessness has reached the Supreme Court as record numbers of people in America are without a permanent place to live. The justices on Monday will consider a challenge to rulings from a California-based appeals court that found punishing people for sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. A political cross section of officials in the West and California, home to nearly one-third of the nation’s homeless population, argue those decisions have restricted them from “common sense” measures intended to keep homeless encampments from...

Sidney Powell, a lawyer who filed lawsuits after the 2020 election, got a win in Texas after an appeals court ruled that the Texas bar did not prove that she engaged in misconduct or fraud. A panel of judges on the Fifth District of Texas Court of Appeals in Dallas ruled Wednesday that the state bar’s arguments lacked merit and evidence. They found that state bar prosecutors “employed a ’scattershot' approach to the case” that had alleged Ms. Powell did not have a reasonable basis to file lawsuits that challenged the 2020 election’s outcome in battleground states. “The Bar employed...