Free Republic

Video of a drag queen in Massachusetts leading a group of young kids to chant “Free Palestine” has sparked fierce backlash — with some calling it “indoctrination” that is “wrong on every level.” The encounter, which unfolded at a “Queer Storytime for Palestine” event organized by the Valley Families for Palestine group in Amherst last week, had gone viral by Thursday as outrage mounted. “Today what we’re going to do is shout ‘Free Palestine.’ Can I hear that?” the drag queen, known as “Lil Miss Hot Mess,” was filmed telling the children in the 30-second clip. “If you’re a drag...

The Iranian attack on Israel seems a historic blunder. It opened up a new chapter in which its own soil, thanks to its attack on Israel, is no longer off limits to any Western power. Details of the recent limited Israeli retaliatory strike against Iranian anti-aircraft missile batteries at Isfahan are still sketchy. But nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions. Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance. The target was near the Natanz enrichment facility. That proximity was by design. Israel showed...

As someone who values liberty and limited government, I’ve always been skeptical of unchecked federal power – especially when it comes to matters of war and peace. The Founders warned us about the dangers of standing armies and entangling alliances, and history has shown time and again the perils of a trigger-happy foreign policy.Yet for decades now, the American people have been fed a steady diet of interventionism from the Washington establishment. We’re told that the United States must be the world’s policeman – that we have a moral obligation to spread democracy at the point of a gun, and...

Russia’s economy is expected to grow faster than all advanced economies this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Russia is expected to grow 3.2% in 2024, the IMF said in its latest World Economic Outlook published Tuesday, exceeding the forecast growth rates for the U.S. (2.7%), the U.K. (0.5%), Germany (0.2%) and France (0.7%). The prediction will be galling for Western nations which have sought to economically isolate and punish Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Russia says Western sanctions on its critical industries have made it more self-sufficient and that private consumption and domestic investment remain resilient....

Israeli troops foiled an attempted stabbing attack near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, the military said Wednesday. The Israel Defense Forces said a female Palestinian assailant tried to stab troops of the Kfir Brigade’s Shimshon Battalion, who were stationed at an army post at a junction near the settlement. “The troops engaged and opened fire at the terrorist who held a knife and charged toward the force,” the military said. The woman was killed, the army said. No troops were hurt in the incident. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA identified the alleged assailant as Maimouna Abdel Hamid...

During an interview with House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) that was aired on Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” host Erin Burnett said she was trying to understand why Johnson is “choosing to get involved in” the issues at Columbia University, a school that receives indirect money from the federal government. Burnett introduced the interview by saying, “There are pro-Palestinian protests across the United States spreading, violent clashes today between police and students at USC and UT-Austin, where more than 20 people were arrested. This follows protests at NYU, Brown University, and Columbia University where an encampment has taken over...

A band of migrants brawled outside of a Midtown hotel in New York City where they were seen fighting with sticks, belts, bats, and even traffic cones. “At least a dozen asylum seekers squared off Sunday afternoon outside The Row hotel on Eighth Avenue, with one out-of-control migrant seen swinging a bat menacingly at the mob before one of the combatants is taken to the ground and pummeled by four others,” reported the New York Post.

Greece’s Supreme Court has published the final list of parties that will compete in June’s European elections with the roster excluding the far-right party Spartiates (the Spartans). The ruling party New Democracy, along with opposition parties PASOK and New Left, filed a memorandum challenging the Spartans’ participation. The far-right group has been under scrutiny as a result of their associations with convicted members of the now-defunct neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, notably Ilias Kasidiaris. The prosecution process has been started against eleven Spartan parliamentary members for potential parliamentary and electoral fraud linked to their leadership roles. The electoral court has not...

A group of Republican and Democrat senators, along with the United Steelworkers (USW), are calling on President Joe Biden to hike United States tariffs on imported aluminum to save American jobs. In a letter to Biden’s Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo, the senators warn that aluminum extrusion plants in the U.S. are at risk of being eliminated as a result of imported aluminum extrusions.

An Oklahoma man is facing up to 12 years in prison for having ammunition in his carry-on bag at a Turks and Caicos airport, according to a GoFundMe page for his family. Ryan and Valerie Watson, the parents of two young children, were flying home from their island vacation, where they were celebrating a friend's 40th birthday, on April 12 when they were arrested at the airport. "They had their lives turned upside down when they tried to return home, as local airport security found four rounds of ammunition unknowingly left in a duff[le]bag from a deer hunting trip," a...

<p>At least nine protesters were handcuffed and loaded into police cruisers at a peaceful, pro-Palestinian protest Wednesday at the University of Texas hosted by the Palestine Solidarity Committee, a registered student group and a chapter of the national Students for Justice in Palestine. And several more were arrested at the university's South Lawn.</p>

Two-hundred days and counting. No mention of American hostages held by HAMAS, which we are no resupplying and defending from Israel. Hamas published a propaganda video showing Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin on Wednesday on their Telegram channel. ... n the video, Goldberg-Polin notes that he was hanging out with friends at the Nova Music Festival when Hamas attacked the festival and kidnapped him and his friends, countering claims that Hamas leaders have made in the past that they did not target civilians. Goldberg-Polin was seriously injured by a grenade during the Hamas assault on the Nova Music Festival and lost...

YIV, Apr 24 (AFP): Last month Pavlo Petrychenko, a junior sergeant in the Ukrainian army, issued a stark warning to President Volodymyr Zelensky about a dangerous vice sweeping the military. A surge in online gambling among serving soldiers has seen many lose their entire salaries, he said, pushing them and their families into debt. Some were even selling off army drones and thermal imaging cameras to feed addictions, compromising their own safety for a long-shot chance to strike it rich. Exhausted by more than two years of war, campaigners say online gambling is rife in the Ukrainian armed forces, a...

Ukraine faces challenges that are "almost insurmountable" in the face of a growing military initiative from Russia, according to a retired British Army officer. And, amid uncertainties created by the potential election as president of the US in around months time of Donald Trump, who is against providing further military support to Kyiv, as well as war fatigue developed in the West, Ukraine doesn't have much time left to resist to Vladimir Putin's troops, he suggested.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday he called White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and threatened to “intervene” if President Biden slapped sanctions on an Israeli military battalion over its alleged conduct in the West Bank. “We heard a rumor of this before our [aid] bill was actually brought for a vote in the House [Saturday], I mean, hours before,” Johnson (R-La.) told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “And I’ll tell you what I did, Hugh, and I don’t, I guess I’m breaking news here,” Johnson went on. “No one knows this. But I called the White House immediately...

George Will, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, went after House Republicans who recently voted against more aid to Ukraine in a Wednesday opinion piece in the Post. In the opinion, highlighted by Mediaite, Will said the 112 Republicans House Republicans who voted against Ukraine aid “voted last Saturday to endanger civilization,” calling them “ignoble.” “Hoping to enhance their political security in their mostly safe seats, and for the infantile satisfaction of populist naughtiness (insulting a mostly fictitious ‘establishment’), they voted to assure [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] attempt to erase a European nation,” Will wrote in his column. Opponents...

The population of Providence, R.I., has barely held even since 2020. Had it not been for some 8,300 immigrants who settled in Providence County, it would have shrunk by 1.3 percent by last year. Same in South Bend, Ind., where some 1,700 immigrants into Saint Joseph County barely filled a gap left by locals ditching town. Immigrants slowed demographic decline in more than 1,100 counties from 2020 to 2023, according to census estimates. Their numbers made up more than the entire growth of the population in 131 of them. The demographic reality casts immigration in a different light, not as...

President Joe Biden suggested war is peace on Wednesday after he signed legislation to provide Ukraine the funds to conduct a war against Russia. “It’s a good day for world peace,” Biden claimed about the war funds in the State Dining Room of the White House, echoing George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” “It’s going to make America safer, it’s going to make the world safer, and it continues America’s leadership in the world, and everyone knows it,” Biden said of the funds. The Senate passed the foreign aid package on Wednesday. Just minutes after the vote, Biden signed the legislation...

Ukraine for the first time has begun using long-range ballistic missiles provided secretly by the United States, bombing a Russian military airfield in Crimea last week and Russian forces in another occupied area overnight, American officials said Wednesday.

The former leader of Northern Ireland’s biggest unionist party was jeered as he left court Wednesday following his appearance on sexual abuse charges dating back nearly four decades. Some members of the public shouted at Jeffrey Donaldson and lunged toward him, and he had to be surrounded by police as he left Newry Magistrates’ Court following his first appearance since his arrest last month. Donaldson, 61, faces one charge of rape, a single charge of gross indecency and nine indecent assault charges dating from 1985 to 2006. His wife, Eleanor Mary Elizabeth Donaldson, 58, faces four counts of aiding and...