Free Republic

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Universities of Wisconsin regents narrowly rejected a deal Saturday reached with Republicans that would have given employees a pay raise and paid for construction of a new engineering building in exchange for reductions in staff positions focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. The deal would have frozen hiring for diversity positions, dropped an affirmative action faculty hiring program at UW-Madison and created a position at the flagship campus focused on conservative thought. The engineering building would have been built at UW-Madison. Conservatives have long criticized the UW system as a bastion of liberalism. Democrats have accused...

From “Carol” to “Single All the Way,” films centering LGBTQ characters have become a staple of the holiday season. The holiday film genre’s growing inclusion of LGBTQ people and storylines means that every year the options for what to watch with family and friends on a cold winter day expand. Below are 20 films that have helped generations of fans keep their yuletides gay. ‘Single All the Way’ (2021) Tony-winning director Michael Mayer (“Spring Awakening”) helms Netflix’s first gay holiday film. ‘The Bitch Who Stole Christmas’ (2021) RuPaul expands his empire with his first holiday movie, which sees the drag...

Some 200 far-right demonstrators gathered in Paris on Friday night to protest the death of a French teenager who died last month after being stabbed during what appeared to be a brawl that broke out at a village dance. Although the circumstances of the incident remain unclear, the far right has framed it as a symbol of France’s increasingly insecure society amid immigration. Chanting “Justice for Thomas” and “French people wake up! You’re at home here”, the demonstrators protested against what they called the laxity of the French law, and urged the imprisonment of racailles, or “scum”, which in French...

When you look closely, you begin to realize that international banking interests drive American fiscal and social policies in a carefully orchestrated approach. Since the early 1990s, American media companies have consolidated under huge multi-national corporations, and these corporations manage the overall media narrative on a quarterly basis. In effect, the United States Federal Reserve Board and a handful of outside interests systematically program the thought processes of the average American with carefully managed scripts. News these days is far more propaganda than news.Entertainment media also follows a similar agenda, albeit on annual or five-year schedules.

Attendees at the Oct. 4 ‘Free Palestine’ march were more focused on repeating anti-Israel slogans than helping liberate Gazans from Hamas.It usually takes 10 minutes, 15 at most, to get downtown from southeast D.C. On Saturday, it took over an hour. Traffic was at a standstill, and the metro was overflowing as protesters descended upon the nation’s capital to attend the People’s Forum “Free Palestine” march.The largest “pro-Palestine” protest in American history was centralized at Freedom Plaza — just a block away from the White House — but spilled into the surrounding areas as thousands of protesters splintered off into...

The scales have fallen from the eyes of Henry Kissinger. He was a signatory in 2015 to a letter that urged Congress to pass legislation allowing more Muslims from Syria and Iraq — claiming to be refugees — to be admitted to the United States. Now he looks at Europe, where millions of Muslims have been allowed to settle, where they batten on the benefits provided by those generous welfare states, and sees how they have spread the virus of antisemitism that they brought with them when they arrived. Kissinger was shaken by the murderous antisemitism that was on display...

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has blamed "irresponsible immigration policy and a failed integration" for the violence. He is taking several steps to help stem growing gang activity. "We're going to hunt down the gangs, and we're going to defeat them," Kristersson said during a televised address on Thursday evening. The Scandinavian country has been wrestling with rampant gang crime for years. National Police Commissioner Anders Thornberg said it now poses a "serious threat to the safety and security of the country." "Sweden has never seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this," Kristersson said....

Forget about goal posts! Usher could bring stripper poles to the Super Bowl as the vaunted halftime show’s latest musical controversy. The NFL has announced that Usher will be headlining the halftime show at the 2024 Super Bowl show. But a major concern for the star could be how to bring a favorite element of his act — stripper poles — to the notoriously conservative annual spectacular. The “DJ Got Us Falling In Love” singer regularly includes exotic dancing in his act, including at his Las Vegas residency, and dancers have even been known to “steal the show.” “Usher plans...

Katie Barnes, an ESPN writer who conducted one of the first and only in-depth on-camera interviews with transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, has finally answered the question people have asked them for years: What does a fair and trans-inclusive athlete policy look like? Barnes, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, has covered transgender athletes for seven years and women’s sports for eight. During that time, they have never publicly shared their own opinions about policies governing trans athletes’ participation and what they believe would ensure fairness for everyone involved. However, as they wrote articles about Thomas, who set off an...

Seven months after James O'Keefe announced he'd been ousted from Project Veritas, the company he founded in 2010 has imploded. Former Veritas employee and investigative reporter Bobby Harr announced that Project Veritas has suspended all operations effective immediately, which The Post Millennial later confirmed. "BREAKING: Project Veritas suspends all operations effective immediately," Harr wrote on Wednesday. "CEO @HannahMGiles and Jen Kiyak of Human Resources cite financial ruin as reason for additional layoffs on 9/20/23 leaving merely a handful of employees left. All investigations halted as of today."

The fabric of our society is coming apart at the seams, and you can see it with your own eyes. If you live in a major city, all you have to do is walk around, and you’ll find many signs that our core urban centers are decaying, and just about every sort of evil that you can possibly imagine is exploding all around us. Our so-called leaders continue to make stupid decisions, and now we are all going to reap the consequences. Predators are roaming our streets. American families are collapsing. Traditional moral values have been completely discarded. Young people...

Canada has issued a new travel warning to its LGBT citizens planning to visit the United States. Anti-LGBT protests in the US rose 30-fold last year compared with 2017, while legal moves to restrict LGBT rights are on the rise. Global Affairs Canada warned that some state laws may affect them on their travels, but did not specify where. Such warnings are usually reserved for countries such as Uganda, Russia or Egypt. "Some states have enacted laws and policies that may affect 2SLGBTQI+ persons. Check relevant state and local laws," reads its US travel advice page. The term 2SLGBTQI+ is...

More than 100 transgender men have entered the Miss Italy pageant this week, according to an activist leading a protest against recent comments by the pageant’s organizer, who said trans women wouldn’t be allowed to compete. The comments came after another European pageant, Miss Netherlands, crowned its first transgender winner, Rikkie Valerie Kollé, this month. About a week later, Patrizia Mirigliani, the official organizer of Miss Italy, told an Italian radio station that Miss Italy wouldn’t allow trans women to compete. “Lately, beauty contests have been trying to make the news using strategies that I think are a bit absurd,”...

Thousands of people were in San Francisco Saturday, celebrating Pride and many participated in or watched the annual San Francisco Dyke March which circled around Dolores Park and the Mission. The event started with revving motorcycle engines, celebrating dykes, women, and queerness. Hundreds of people participated in the march, some played drums while walking, others carried signs, and others called out impromptu chants. “I’m gay and I want to show it,” said San Leandro resident Aurora Friedman who participated in the march. Lots of people NBC Bay Area spoke to said this is their first time back at Pride celebrations...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- ABC7 celebrates the 52nd Annual Chicago Pride Parade with a two-hour, live parade broadcast, Sunday, June 25, from 12:00-2:00 p.m. Tanja Babich, Hosea Sanders and Jason Knowles host the Chicago Pride Parade broadcast with Knowles capturing all of the action live from the street. "ABC 7 is proud of our long-standing commitment to Pride, and we are thrilled again to present a two-hour, live parade broadcast on multiple platforms," said John Idler, president and general manager, ABC7 Chicago. "As we celebrate cultural inclusion and acceptance, we applaud the vibrant LGBTQAI+ community that is so important to our...

A new study outlines how white people’s migration during and after the Civil War, from the Confederate South to the West, bolstered white supremacy and institutional racism in non-slave states, helping create the vast racial disparities that exist today nationwide. Five researchers from separate colleges collaborated on the study, called “Confederate Diaspora,” to compile and study census data that tracked the migration to the West of white Americans, including 60,000 former plantation owners. The former Southerners took on local positions of authority, like police officers, clergy and politicians, giving them influence to create a post-Civil War culture that continued to...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A national sorority has defended allowing a transgender woman into its University of Wyoming chapter, saying in a new court motion that the chapter followed sorority rules despite a lawsuit from seven women in the organization who argued the opposite. The Kappa Kappa Gamma motion to dismiss, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Cheyenne, is the sorority’s first substantive response to the lawsuit, other than a March statement by its executive director, Kari Kittrell Poole, that the complaint contains “numerous false allegations.” “The central issue in this case is simple: do the plaintiffs have a...

A federal agency cannot force a Texas-based conservative Christian business to comply with policies barring discrimination against LGBTQ+ employees or job applicants, a federal appeals court has ruled. The decision by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity cannot deny Braidwood Management an exemption from anti-discrimination policies designed to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act. Braidwood is entitled to the exemption under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, the ruling said. “Being forced to employ someone to represent the company who behaves...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The city of Chicago announced a new $5 million fund to help survivors of gender-based violence. The fund will help support survivors of crimes like domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and human trafficking. The program will provide a one-time $1,000 payment to survivors in support of their economic stability. The goal is to reach 5,000 survivors. The application period will be open until June 30. Survivors can apply here.

While California is known as one of the most LGBTQ-friendly states in the nation, hate crimes are rising and other troubling trends persist, according to a new “State of Pride Report” issued by California’s Attorney General. The report, which was released Tuesday and coincides with Pride month, looked at data and surveys on issues ranging from mental health to public policy. Between 2021 and 2022, there were over 391 reported hate crime events motivated by sexual orientation bias in California, an increase of 29% over the previous period, the report states. The Attorney General’s report also says LGBTQ+ children are...