Free Republic

Our top-heavy economy has come to this: One man can move out of New Jersey and put the entire state budget at risk. Other states are facing similar situations as a greater share of income — and tax revenue — becomes concentrated in the hands of a few. Last month, during a routine review of New Jersey’s finances, one could sense the alarm. The state’s wealthiest resident had reportedly “shifted his personal and business domicile to another state,” Frank W. Haines III, New Jersey’s legislative budget and finance officer, told a State Senate committee. If the news were true, New...

BURLINGAME, Calif. — Donald J. Trump got a taste on Friday of what his next month of campaigning in California could be like. He was forced to exit his motorcade and walk through a field, climbing an embankment with Secret Service agents helping him, to avoid angry demonstrators on the street. “We went under a fence and through a fence, and oh, boy, it felt like I was crossing the border, actually,” Mr. Trump said when he finally made it to a ballroom to speak at California’s Republican Party convention. For the next 25 minutes, though, Mr. Trump spoke little...

Two women filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday against The New York Times, its chief executive and its chief revenue officer, saying that the company “has been engaging in deplorable discrimination.” In the lawsuit, Ernestine Grant and Marjorie Walker, both black women in their 60s employed in the advertising department at The Times, contend that the workplace under Mark Thompson, the chief executive, “has become an environment rife with discrimination based on age, race and gender.” A spokeswoman for The Times called the suit “entirely without merit” and said “we intend to fight it vigorously in court.’’ The women are...

WASHINGTON — President Obama will use the power of his office to push for adoption of so-called smart gun technology that could eventually limit the use of a firearm to its owner, the White House announced Friday morning. The move is intended to allow Mr. Obama to confront firearms violence in the face of fierce opposition to broader gun control measures. But critics of smart gun technology, including some police officials, are expected to fight a proposal that they see as unproven and an unwarranted restriction on the freedom to use firearms. The initiative was unveiled on the White House...

We’ve long known of the persistent and troublesome academic gap between white students and their black and Hispanic peers in public schools. We’ve long understood the primary reason, too: A higher proportion of black and Hispanic children come from poor families. A new analysis of reading and math test score data from across the country confirms just how much socioeconomic conditions matter. Children in the school districts with the highest concentrations of poverty score an average of more than four grade levels below children in the richest districts. Even more sobering, the analysis shows that the largest gaps between white...

... Title IX has now become a “juggernaut” in the words of NYU law professor Richard Epstein. He explains in this Hoover Institution article that extremely zealous bureaucrats have abused the law (specifically, the Administrative Procedure Act) to impose their own ideas of what the language “be subjected to discrimination” means. They have managed to turn it into a justification for federal intervention into every aspect of college life that somehow involves sex. Epstein highlights the amazing case of Colorado State – Pueblo student Grant Neal, who was suspended by the school after a consensual sexual relationship. The woman who...

We get it. John Boehner doesn’t like Ted Cruz. In a witless cheap shot, Boehner called him “Lucifer in the flesh” at an event at Stanford University. Boehner’s attitude is widespread among Republican insiders who are foolishly allowing personal ill will to cloud their reasoned judgment about who, among the candidates left in the GOP race, is the best representative of conservative principles and policies, and about who would be the best candidate in the upcoming general election. On both counts, Cruz is the obvious choice. Ted Cruz is a constitutional conservative dedicated to reducing the outsized federal government to...

... [O]fficials now warn that, even with special courses and attention, many of those staying will lack suitable labor skills — a shift from initial buoyant predictions from industry, which needs workers. Most of the migrants come from countries where schooling lasts years less than in Germany, said Karl Brenke, a labor and migration expert at the German Institute for Economic Research. Qualifications are difficult to compare. Already, there are 14 people competing for a basic unskilled job, Mr. Brenke said. He provided figures showing that the number of employable people who are jobless and living on welfare had swelled...

The average performance of the nation’s high school seniors dropped in math from 2013 to 2015, but held steady in reading, according to results of a biennial test released Wednesday. The results, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also showed a drop in the percentage of students in private and public schools who are considered prepared for college-level work in reading and math. In 2013, the last time the test was given, 39 percent of students were estimated to be ready in math and 38 percent in reading; in 2015, 37 percent were judged prepared in each subject. In...

The New York attorney general suggests that Donald Trump may be taking the stand soon in a court case about the now-defunct Trump University. The news follows a New York court decision that the lawsuit filed by the attorney general against the former for-profit institution will proceed to trial, after a settlement could not be reached. "I am very pleased the judge has indicated her intention to move as expeditiously as possible to trial, as thousands of Mr. Trump’s alleged victims have been waiting years for relief from his fraud," Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement released this...

PARIS — Ten young Muslim men, bored by a mundane life in France and haunted by a “feeling of uselessness,” as one put it, were seduced by a leading Islamic State recruiter in Europe in 2013. Within months, they were in Syria under the watchful eyes of hooded, Kalashnikov-wielding militants, doing push-ups, fiddling with weapons and imbibing the ideology. But the harsh regimen, most have since told investigators, was not to their liking, and it was not long before they hastened back to their families in the Strasbourg area, where they were almost immediately picked up by the French authorities....

<p>Most “Progressives” believe that opposition to their plans for a government with the power to create the perfect society is essentially illegitimate. Therefore, they seldom hesitate to use any means they can to delegitimize, defund, and defeat conservatives and libertarians. For many, the weapon of choice is to misuse the law, turning it into a sword that can be used to cut down the opposition.</p>

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina voters say a new law has hurt the state's image and job prospects and should be completely or partially repealed, but they believe people should be required to use public bathrooms that correspond to their birth gender, according to a WRAL News poll released Tuesday. The results reflect the ongoing struggle statewide with the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, commonly referred to as House Bill 2, since it was signed into law almost three weeks ago following a one-day special legislative session. The law prohibits transgender people from using public bathrooms that correspond to...

HIGH POINT, N.C. — Parrish Clodfelter, a 79-year-old retiree who lives on a central North Carolina farm, professes opinions about transgender people that might get him fired if he worked for a multinational corporation, though for many here, they constitute simple country wisdom. “A man wants to change to a woman, he’s got a mental problem,” Mr. Clodfelter said on Wednesday over lunch at Spiro’s Family Restaurant, where posters by the door advertised classes on carrying concealed weapons and a “Hillbilly Sunday” Pentecostal church service. But Mr. Clodfelter has a different kind of problem. As a longtime Republican, he wants...

In what is likely an unconstitutional state action seemingly calculated to ensure that the purple state of Virginia goes blue in the November election, Governor Terry McAuliffe (D.) signed an order on Friday restoring the voting rights of 206,000 ex-felons in Virginia, including those convicted of murder, armed robbery, rape, sexual assault, and other violent crimes. The order also restores their right to sit on a jury, become a notary, and even serve in elected office. McAuliffe believes that ex-felons can be trusted to make decisions in the ballot booth and the jury box but apparently not to own a...

SAN FRANCISCO — From her apartment at the foot of the celebrated zigzags of Lombard Street, Judith Calson has twice peered out her window as thieves smashed their way into cars and snatched whatever they could. She has seen foreign tourists cry after cash and passports were stolen. She shudders when she recounts the story of the Thai tourist who was shot because he resisted thieves taking his camera. And that is her tally from the last year alone. “I never thought of this area as a high-crime neighborhood,” Ms. Calson, a retired photographer, said of this leafy part of...

More than 340,000 have signed a pledge to stop shopping at Target, in response to the corporation’s announcement this week that transgender employees and customers will be allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. “This means a man can simply say he ‘feels like a woman today’ and enter the women's restroom... even if young girls or women are already in there,” stated the American Family Association, which started the petition. Target on Tuesday became the first giant retailer to weigh in on an issue at the center of a heated national debate. The announcement came...

The reaction has been swift. The singer Bryan Adams canceled his concert in Mississippi in protest against what he called an “anti-L.G.B.T.” law, and the actress Sharon Stone decided not to film a movie there. In North Carolina, Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Pearl Jam and Ani DiFranco have canceled shows in response to a law regulating transgender bathroom access. While the celebrity response is drawing considerable attention, the travel industry in each state is more concerned about lower-profile visitors: the everyday tourists who have already begun canceling trips or planning vacations elsewhere. Both states have been hit by hotel cancellations...

An investigation by the New York State Board of Elections found evidence of flagrant violations of campaign finance law by a team of people that Mayor Bill de Blasio created to raise money for Democrats running for the State Senate in 2014, according to a confidential board report. The board sent the report to Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, three months ago, prompting a criminal investigation into the fund-raising. The mayor’s Senate effort, which failed in its goal to wrest the legislative body from Republican control, has proved damaging to him in multiple ways. Democrats remained in...

Dark chocolate is in. So, too, is beef jerky. And full-fat ice cream? You bet. Driven by fast-changing definitions of what is healthy to eat, people are turning to foods they shunned just a couple of years ago. Studies now suggest that not all fat, for example, necessarily contributes to weight gain or heart problems. That has left companies scrambling to push some foods that they thought had long passed their popularity peak — and health advocates wondering what went wrong. Under the new thinking, not all fat is bad, and neither are all salty foods. A stigma among the...