Free Republic

Fox News has quietly parted ways with longtime legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, months after the former judge was accused by two men of sexual assault. In a statement responding to a new lawsuit filed against the network by a former Fox Business employee, Fox revealed it had “parted ways” with Napolitano. The new lawsuit from a Fox News employee comes months after a South Carolina man named named Charles Corbishley filed a $10-million lawsuit in September 2020 against Napolitano, alleging that he sexual assaulted him in 1987 when Corbishley was a criminal defendant and Napolitano was the judge overseeing his...

Confections in Lufkin, Texas announced on Thursday that it would be selling rainbow cookies for Pride Month. The bakery, located in East Texas, soon faced backlash for its decision. "Today has been hard. Really hard," a Facebook post from June 3 read. "We lost a significant amount of followers because of a rainbow heart cookie we posted."

Former Olympic decathlete and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner has filed her initial paperwork to run for governor of California and will officially announce her bid later today, her campaign tells Axios. The big picture: Jenner, a longtime Republican, is seeking to replace Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in a recall election, hoping her celebrity status and name recognition can yield an upset in the nation's most populous state. But in deep-blue California, she's decidedly not branding herself as a Trump Republican even as she's counting on some of the former president's advisers to drive her strategy. She's assembled a team...

Fried chicken is serious business in New Orleans. The city where the Popeyes chain was born in 1972 has no shortage of great places to dine on crunchy, flavorful fried chicken, but when some residents found out this week that Chick-fil-A was moving in, they weren't cluckin' having it. "Something to smile about," New Orleans council member Kristin Palmer tweeted. "The City’s first stand-alone @Chik_Fil_A is coming to #algiers in 2022." The popular chicken chain, which has also been embroiled in controversy for funding anti-LGBTQ organizations over the years, has stayed off Popeyes' home turf — until now.'

Showing that it is never possible to be too self-centered, forward-looking LGBTQ+ people are bending the English language toward their navels for gazing. In the late 1970s, at a Peter, Paul & Mary concert, Paul Stookey noted how American magazines once had big names, with scope, such as Life or National Geographic. The scope shrank with People magazine. Then, in 1977, a new magazine appeared: Us. With this trajectory, Paul predicted, the next magazine would have only a reflective sheet inside. It would be called Me. Based on the New York Times article about self-referential “neopronouns,” it’s clear that Paul’s...

Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas vetoed a bill on Monday that would make it illegal for transgender minors to receive gender-affirming medication or surgery — a rare Republican rejection of the growing conservative effort to restrict transgender people’s health care and participation in society. The Arkansas State Legislature could override Mr. Hutchinson’s veto of the bill, known as H.B. 1570. Republicans hold large majorities in both chambers and passed the bill last month with mostly party-line votes: 70-22 in the House and 28-7 in the Senate. “I was told this week that the nation is looking at Arkansas because I...

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon on Wednesday will sweep away Trump-era policies that largely banned transgender people from serving in the military, issuing new rules that offer them wider access to medical care and assistance with gender transition, defense officials told The Associated Press.The new department regulations allow transgender people who meet military standards to enlist and serve openly in their self-identified gender, and they will be able to get medically necessary transition-related care authorized by law, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal decisions not yet made public.

Washington (CNN) Transgender athletes in Mississippi's public schools and colleges will no longer be allowed to compete in women's sports after the state's Republican governor on Thursday signed the first statewide anti-trans law of 2021. SB 2536 is the first anti-trans legislation to be approved by a governor this year, with similar bills percolating in statehouses across the country and one such bill currently before South Dakota's Republican governor. Advocates of the bills have argued that trans women have a physical advantage over cisgender women in sports, while critics contend that they're discriminatory, including the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's...

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) is expected set to sign a bill on Thursday banning transgender athletes from competing on girls and women’s sports teams. The legislation calls on K-12 schools, as well as colleges and universities, to designate all sports teams for men and boys, women and girls or “coed.” It states that “Athletic teams or sports designated for ‘females,’ ‘women’ or ‘girls’ shall not be open to students of the male sex.” The bill passed the state’s Senate last month, and Mississippi House lawmakers passed the bill last week. The bill will go into effect on July 1...

Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally was removed from Amazon’s cyber shelves Sunday, three years after the controversial best-seller was published on February 20, 2018. Anderson told Newsweek that he discovered that his book had vanished from Amazon—as well as the company’s e-reader Kindle, podcast service Audible and used-book sellers—when someone looking to buy a copy informed the author. He said that neither he nor his publisher were notified by Amazon. In 2018, the book hit No. 1 on two of Amazon’s best-seller list before it was even released, but sparked controversy for arguing that society’s growing acceptance of transgender...

A record 5.6 percent of Americans now identify as LGBTQ, the majority of whom say they are bisexual, according to a new survey. Gallup on Tuesday published its latest update on LGBTQ identification, showing a 1.1 percent increase since the poll was last conducted in 2017. It marks the largest increase since the survey began in 2012, with an estimated 18 million adults in America identifying as LGBTQ last year.

An estimated 5.6 percent of Americans identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, according to a new Gallup report. That’s up from 4.5 percent in 2017, the last year polling on the issue was conducted by the organization. Of those surveyed who identified as LGBTQ, 54.6 percent identified as bisexual, 24.5 percent as gay, 11.7 percent as lesbians, 11.3 percent as transgender and 3.3 percent said they used another term to describe their identity (i.e. queer or same-gender loving). The total exceeds 100 percent because respondents were able to choose more than one category. The results were based on...

In early December, Netflix dropped its highly anticipated musical comedy “The Prom,” starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells and James Corden asfading Broadway stars who set out to help a lesbian teen take her girlfriend to the prom. The film, helmed by out director Ryan Murphy, got mixed reviews, but some lambasted it as “homophobic” and “offensive” because of the casting of Corden, a straight actor, in what they saw as an “aggressively flamboyant” caricature of a gay man. Erik Anderson, who runs the film site Awards Watch, called “The Prom” a “gorgeous and vibrant production” but tweeted that...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up an appeal from parents in Oregon who want to prevent transgender students from using locker rooms and bathrooms of the gender with which they identify, rather than their sex assigned at birth. The case came from a school district near Salem, Oregon’s capital city. The federal appeals court in San Francisco had upheld a Dallas, Oregon, school district policy that allows transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. Parents sued over the policy in 2017, saying it caused embarrassment and stress. A lower...

Right after the interview, Tapper talked with 10pm host Don Lemon, who said “it feels like we are watching … a president-elect and a president who are on Earth One and Earth Two. And at this particular Earth that is in reality, it was very normal, very sedate. And it was welcoming news. It was good to watch. It was good to actually get content. We heard no fake news. We heard no conspiracy theories. We heard no personal grievances. We heard a President-Elect and a vice president who want to work with the other side.” “No fake news:” That’s...

The woke “capitalists” at the Nasdaq stock exchange are pushing to force its listed companies to adopt leftist identity politics. And the liberal media is salivating all over it. Nasdaq recently filed a proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pushing for mandatory racial and sexual diversity rules for its listed companies’ boards of directors. The new rules, if adopted, “would require all companies listed on Nasdaq’s U.S. exchange to publicly disclose consistent, transparent diversity statistics regarding their board of directors,” according to Nasdaq. Additionally, the rules would require the companies to “have, or explain why they do...

Biden is making sweeping promises to LGBTQ activists, proposing to carry out virtually every major proposal on their wish lists. Among them: Lifting the Trump administration’s near-total ban on military service for transgender people, barring federal contractors from anti-LGBTQ job discrimination, and creating high-level LGBTQ-rights positions at the State Department, the National Security Council and other federal agencies. Biden says his top legislative priority for LGBTQ issues is the Equality Act, passed by the House of Representatives last year but stalled in the Senate. It would extend to all 50 states the comprehensive anti-bias protections already afforded to LGBTQ people...

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary’s government proposed a constitutional amendment on Tuesday requiring children to be raised with a Christian interpretation of gender roles, as Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling nationalists turn to anti-LGBT rhetoric to shore up support. The draft amendment submitted to parliament by Justice Minister Judit Varga declares that children must be guaranteed an “upbringing based on values stemming from Hungary’s ... Christian culture.” “The basis for family relations is marriage,” it says. “The mother is a woman, the father is a man.” It also says Hungary “protects children’s right to the gender identity they were born with,”...

Two years ago, Grace McKenzie thought team sports were no longer an option for her. As a transgender woman, McKenzie said she didn’t think she’d be allowed to play after transitioning and was “pretty sad” because she has been a lifelong athlete. McKenzie, 26, said she was surprised when a player invited her to a practice with the Golden Gate Women’s Rugby Club in San Francisco. She went and has “never looked back,” because “the entire team was extremely welcoming and inclusive.” Now her sport is has become less welcoming to elite players. On Oct. 9, World Rugby, the sport's...

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett served for nearly three years on the board of private Christian schools that effectively barred admission to children of same-sex parents and made it plain that openly gay and lesbian teachers weren’t welcome in the classroom. The policies that discriminated against LGBTQ people and their children were in place for years at Trinity Schools Inc., both before Barrett joined the board in 2015 and during the time she served. The three schools, in Indiana, Minnesota and Virginia, are affiliated with People of Praise, an insular community rooted in its own interpretation of the Bible,...