Free Republic

A woman arrested twice for silently praying outside an abortion clinic, who received a £13,000 payout in acknowledgement of her unjust treatment, has become the first person in Britain to be charged under new buffer zone laws. Abortion buffer zones came into force in October 2024 outside abortion clinics in England and Wales, criminalising offering vital support to women, and amid confusion about precisely what activities are prohibited outside abortion clinics. Director of the March For Life UK, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, had previously been arrested twice for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in Birmingham, but West Midlands Police subsequently apologised...

As the Euro-Globalist failing leaders try to whip their countries into an anti-Russia Frenzy, Germany is trying to come out of this process as the country with the largest military and – it appears – the meanest intelligence services. (snip) “Spies will also be allowed to install spyware on computers belonging to enemy suspects and secretly enter their homes. When operating overseas, spies will be allowed to install tracking devices on enemy technology or weaponry – or destroy it altogether.”

I was there in an Ottawa courtroom when Tamara Lich, the leader of the trucker convoy, was sentenced to a year under house arrest. She's only allowed to leave her home for medical appointments and church, and a few hours a week to buy groceries. She's not allowed to go out for dinner or visit friends or even go for a walk. It's atrocious. But there is another exception: she can leave her home for work. That got me thinking. Tamara has worked with Rebel News before — speaking at our events across Canada, coming on our TV shows, and...

The question is not whether the EU collapses but whenIf I were a bookie, I would be making odds now about when the European Union will finally unravel and die. Unless there is an imminent and drastic course correction, the blessed event cannot be far off. I might need a Doomsday Clock akin to the one publicized by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Their clock hovers near midnight, which signifies nuclear Armageddon, the minute hand pushed closer or farther away from the blast depending on minatory world events. My clock would measure the EU’s proximity to implosion. Its recent...

A Minnesota high school has threatneed to suspend students who talk positively about Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) agents. Paul Paetzel, the principal at Edina High School in Minnesota, has warned that making reference to the work of ICE agents and President Trump’s policy of mass deportations goes against the “culture” that his school is trying to foster. He wrote in a letter parents: I want to speak directly and proactively about the culture we are committed to creating at Edina High School. As we continue to grow as a community, it is essential that we are clear about the...

The prosecutor argued that the slogan “White lives matter” constitutes an insult to people with dark skin. Both suspects, identified as John A. and Daniel S. (25 and 35 years old at the time), lost their appeal and now face six months in prison, which Dutch mainstream media describes as a “light sentence”. They faced charges such as insulting a group, inciting discrimination, disseminating discriminatory messages and possessing discriminatory stickers.

Left-wing Canadian lawmakers are working to introduce a new bill that would end existing protections for people of faith against prosecution under national “hate speech” laws. Canada’s Criminal Code, which bans what the government deems “hatred against any identifiable group,” contains a so-called religious exemption that protects Canadians who “in good faith” cite religious texts or beliefs. But the left-wing Liberal and Bloc Québécois parties are currently negotiating new legislation, Bill C-9, with an amendment that would remove this exemption.

A Swiss wind instrument repairman is serving a ten-day jail sentence after refusing to pay a fine imposed for a comment he made on Facebook about biological sex. Emanuel Brünisholz, from Burgdorf in the canton of Bern, responded to a December 2022 post by Swiss National Councillor Andreas Glarner, writing: “If you excavate LGBTQI people after 200 years, you will only find men and women among the skeletons; everything else is a mental illness that was fostered by the curriculum!” As we reported, the comment, which stressed the immutability of biological sex, triggered complaints from activists who accused him of...

A Swiss man, Emanuel Brünisholz, is serving 10 days in prison in Switzerland for saying on Facebook that skeletons are either male or female. For that remark I was fined 500 Swiss francs. I refused to pay, and so, on the 2nd of December 2025, I will serve ten days in prison. It is worth noting that, legally speaking, this prison sentence is not a punishment for refusing to pay the fine. Instead, the prison sentence is an alternative way to be punished for the Facebook post itself. I have chosen to trade a monetary fine for time behind bars....

Donald Trump voiced concern about the current political track taken by EU countriesWASHINGTON, December 9. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump criticized the fine imposed by the European Commission on X and warned that Europe is "moving in some bad directions." Asked about the fine at a meeting with representatives of the agricultural industry at the White House, Trump called Brussels' decision "nasty" and added: "I don't think it's right. Europe has to be very careful." He voiced concern about the current political track taken by EU countries. "We want to keep Europe Europe. Europe is going in some bad directions....

The EU has slapped Elon Musk with a $140 million fine for refusing to censor content on his social-media platform X, in contravention of the bloc’s controversial Digital Services Act Vice President JD Vance took to X to slam the EU for its actions, which he described as “garbage” The EU has slapped Elon Musk with a $140 million fine for refusing to censor content on his social-media platform X, in contravention of the bloc’s controversial Digital Services Act (DSA).The hefty fine, announced by Bloomberg, is the first to be issued under the 2023 law, with EU lawmakers promising...

SummaryA new book by Paul Holden, building on reporting by Matt Taibbi, Paul Thacker and others, documents that the “Stop Funding Fake News” (SFFN) campaign — which led to widespread advertiser boycotts and deplatforming of outlets including ZeroHedge, The Federalist, Breitbart, The Canary and others during 2019–2021 — was not a grassroots activist effort as publicly claimed, but a centrally directed political operation run out of the same South London office as Labour Together, the think tank that backed Keir Starmer’s leadership bid.Key findings:SFFN was conceived and resourced by Morgan McSweeney (now Starmer’s chief of staff and formerly sole director...

The EU is working at full speed to complete its online surveillance-and-informant network. By the end of the year, all EU member states are required to present so-called “Trusted Flaggers” -- institutions tasked with identifying “problematic” content -- to Brussels for accreditation. Politicians from Germany’s Christian Democratic Union appear especially eager. Hendrik Wüst, CDU politician and Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, is a child of the current zeitgeist. As the leader of Germany’s most populous state, he views it as his mission not merely to preach the dominant ideology of the CO2-neutral society, but to enforce it rigorously. Together with...

The US State Department will focus on “natural rights” like freedom of speech in its next human rights report, a senior State Department official said Thursday, as the Trump administration targets traditional European allies for alleged freedom of speech restrictions. The move further institutionalizes changes seen in the latest report released in August, which covered the 2024 calendar year. That report alleged “significant human rights issues” in allied countries including the United Kingdom, France and Germany over “serious restrictions on freedom of expression.” The State Department instructed all embassies and consulates in a diplomatic cable Thursday to begin preparing the...

For the first time in France, a private television channel, CNews, has been convicted of ‘climate misinformation’. The debate on climate change is no longer a matter of conflicting arguments or scientific controversy; it is now an official doctrine that cannot be questioned or even discussed without breaking the law. Meanwhile, on public service television, falsehoods and inaccuracies on the same subject are repeated without any contradiction. This is a first in France: the news channel CNews, owned by conservative Catholic billionaire Vincent Bolloré, has just been ordered by the council of state to pay a fine of €20,000 for...

The West is systematically destroying freedom of speech in a startlingly rapid and blunt manner. Increasingly, the authorities are unashamed of their actions in doing so. The revolution, as Stephen Coughlin has predicted, is going from covert to Overt. This first story is about a theatre in the UK cancelling a documentary about the destruction of freedom of speech in the UK. No irony seems to be felt by the theatre. SPIKE: Our free-speech documentary has been cancelled You would think that banning a documentary about free speech would be a bad look for a cultural institution. But that’s precisely...

Germany, France, Canada, and Belgium are among 12 nations that signed on to the “Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change,” documenting the so-called “threats” that free speech and the free press pose to what U.S. President Donald Trump refers to as the climate “con job.”Signed at the United Nations’ COP30, the UN’s annual climate confab, the declaration marks the first time that “information integrity” has been on the docket for COP’s Action Agenda.The rise of independent media, social media, and the internet has created a source of non-establishment news that has elevated legitimate criticism of the so-called man-made climate-change...

Digital censorship has been underway in the E.U. for nearly a decade, but last week Brussels took it to a new level. The European Commission unveiled the latest weapon in its arsenal — the European Democracy Shield and accompanying E.U. Strategy for Civil Society — billed as a plan to “protect democracy,” a descriptor that usually means anything but that. The Shield is justified largely as a response to Russia’s information operations and, increasingly, to China’s Gray-Zone warfare. One of its premises is that member-states cannot handle the threats on their own. E.U. leaders say the initiative is designed to...

Ten people accused of sexist cyber-bullying of the French president's wife, Brigitte Macron, are due to go on trial this week in Paris. The defendants are accused of spreading unsubstantiated claims over her gender and sexuality, as well as making "malicious remarks" about the 24-year age gap between Brigitte and her husband, Emmanuel Macron. If found guilty, the defendants face up to two years' imprisonment. Among the ten people due to appear in the dock on Monday and Tuesday are an elected official, a gallery owner and a teacher, according to French media. Two of them - self-styled independent journalist...

A divided federal appeals court has sided with Michigan school administrators who barred students from wearing shirts with the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon!”, which gained traction as a coded message of opposition to then-President Joe Biden. The 2-1 decision this week by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit provides some important guidance to educators on when they can prohibit speech promoting a “vulgar message” in schools, even if doesn’t contain actual expletives or is political in nature. “The Constitution doesn’t hamstring school administrators when they are trying to limit profanity and vulgarity in the...