Free Republic

Russia plans to hold drills simulating the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the Defense Ministry announced Monday, days after the Kremlin reacted angrily to comments by senior Western officials about the war in Ukraine. The drills are in response to “provocative statements and threats of certain Western officials regarding the Russian Federation,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement. It was the first time that Russia has publicly announced drills involving tactical nuclear weapons, though its strategic nuclear forces regularly hold exercises. Tactical nuclear weapons have a lower yield compared to massive warheads that arm intercontinental ballistic missiles intended to...

But why haven’t we seen more overt objection to this travesty, such as more poster-carrying, angry citizens outside of the Trump trial courtrooms, on campuses, at congressional hearings, and in the streets? Part of the answer to this question has to do with the intended target for the shock and awe. It isn’t Donald Trump. As Trump has correctly observed, he is just in the way. No, the primary targets of the shock and awe are people like you and me. And the left may well have hit their mark.

In what’s likely to be a watershed moment, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has ended the use of diversity statements for faculty hiring, making it the first elite private university to backtrack on the practice that has been roundly criticised as a political litmus test. On Saturday, an MIT spokesperson confirmed in an email to me that “requests for a statement on diversity will no longer be part of applications for any faculty positions at MIT”, adding that the decision was made by embattled MIT President Sally Kornbluth “with the support of the Provost, Chancellor, and all six academic deans”....

At $1.5 million per job, this new incentive package from the state is at least 15 times the norm. For this much money, the state could have just handed out a million bucks to 827 people, instead of creating 550 jobs.Gov. JB Pritzker announced Thursday that the State of Illinois will provide an $827 million incentive package for Rivian to invest $1.5 billion to expand its electric vehicle factory in Normal, Illinois. The expansion is expected to create at least 550 full-time jobs within the next five years, and will build Rivian’s next model EV, the R2. Rivian initially got...

Why does the Biden administration want open borders? As a researcher and writer on immigration, that’s the question I often get asked.Here are the three reasons I think are behind President Joe Biden’s deliberate border chaos:electoral politics, extortion, and, most insidiously, ideology.I’ll start with ideology and come back to the other two reasons in my next columns.The most dangerous driver behind Biden’s open borders is ideological. Policy differences can be negotiated, but as we’re seeing on college campuses, people fanatically committed to an idea can prove intransigent, regardless of the facts.When you see the word “abolition” used in connection with...

Transgender college runner Sadie Schreiner won three women's events at the Liberty League championship meet (Division III) on Saturday.Schreiner of the Rochester Institute of Technology won the 400 meters with a time of 55.07 and the 200 meters at 24.14.Both times would have been last in the men's races at the meet, but they were school records in the women's category, according to the site that lists the results of the meet.The 200-meter time is now a Liberty League conference women's record (beating Schreiner's own previous record of 24.50 set earlier this season). Schreiner was also the anchor leg of...

Chicago, like so many of our major cities, is out of control. Homelessness, smash-and-grab robberies, carjackings, gangs effectively taking over parts of the city - Chicago is in free fall. On Sunday, another incident in Chicago's meltdown was revealed when the Chicago Police Department canceled the city's Cinco de Mayo parade "out of an abundance of caution," due to gang violence and large-scale fighting in the area of the parade.Families in Democrat-run Chicago hoping to enjoy a Cinco de Mayo parade will have to wait until next year – after the city canceled the festivities due to "gang violence."The Chicago...

If a motion to vacate the speaker of the House fails resoundingly, does it make a sound?The answer is, of course, yes — with a Capitol Hill press corps that loves nothing more than pitting all-too-willing Republicans against one another. Next week, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is poised to finally pull the trigger on her quixotic quest to oust Speaker Mike Johnson — but she’s likely to be left holding a bag of small-dollar donations and press clippings, which is what her detractors think she is actually motivated by. On one side of the push to oust Johnson is a...

Israeli fighter jets during the night shot down a drone that was heading toward Israel from “the eastern direction,” the military says. The IDF says the aircraft had been tracked throughout the incident, and there was no threat to civilians.

"Workplace romances are as American as apple pie," Wade told ABC News' Linsey Davis in an exclusive sit-down interview. "It happens to everyone."

Court documents showed Kandic had multiple responsibilities, including recruiting foreign fighters (ISIS photo) On January 4, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) called for worldwide targeting of Jews and Christians, which it later claimed resulted in 610 people wounded or killed in 110 attacks across 12 countries. Avril D. Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, told a Senate panel, “The threat from ISIS remains a significant counterterrorism concern,” while noting that the majority of its attacks have been carried out by “parts of ISIS that are outside of Afghanistan.” The main body of ISIS is active in Turkey,...

The Biden regime has cut off ammunition supplies to Israel as they attempt to appease the growing anger among the left of the Democratic Party over America’s support for the war against Hamas. According to a report from Axios, the decision to put a hold on the ammunition shipment caused panic among the Israeli security services and is intended to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from proceeding with an invasion of Rafah. Axios notes: The Biden administration last week put a hold on a shipment of U.S.-made ammunition to Israel, two Israeli officials told Axios. It is the first time...

The Democratic Party is bracing for massive protests during the Democratic National Convention, comparing it to another chaotic event from the 1968 convention. As pro-Hamas protests continue to rage through college campuses due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, concerns that similar protests will occur during the DNC convention this August in Chicago. Former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff William Daley told the Washington Post that the chaotic college protests that have occurred in the past week have “taken the demonstrations to a different level.” “It portends that you have the potential for big demonstrations. Whether they get violent —...

As many universities and colleges around the nation are preparing for summer break and commencement ceremonies, anti-Israel protesters show no signs of giving up. Several protesters told Politico they were not going to give up, even with summer approaching and as several anti-Israel encampments on university campuses have been cleared, adding there is “nothing that will deter” them from continuing to protest as the war between Israel and Hamas continues. “There is a genocide going on in Gaza and there’s nothing that will deter us from doing everything we can do end it,” Ryan Mersol-Gard, a senior at the University...

A senior Ukrainian intelligence official warned about the threat Moscow poses on other nations in Europe, saying "the Russians will take the Baltics in seven days" if allies don't stand up to Russia now. The comment was made by Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence directorate (GUR), during an interview with The Economist published on Thursday. The alarm has been sounded before about the potential of Russian President Vladimir Putin looking to start conflicts in the Baltic states. Earlier this year, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote that the Russian leader appeared to...

Armed groups in Gaza, including one with presumed Hamas links, last month robbed the Bank of Palestine of some $70 million, French daily Le Monde reported Saturday. The funds were taken from the vaults of several branches of the bank, it said, citing a Bank of Palestine document sent to “certain international partners” detailing the robberies. On April 16, staff discovered a hole in the ceiling of the safe deposit room at one of the bank’s Gaza branches and found that some $3 million worth of Israeli shekels destined for cash dispensers were missing, Le Monde said. The next day,...

**SNIP** But that isn’t what made the Hur report so poignant, so interesting—so funny. It’s something neither party nor much of the news coverage mentioned at all; the biggest missing detail from the stories elected officials told about the Hur report isn’t any legal technicality in the decision not to prosecute Biden for holding on to classified documents. It’s what Biden held on to, and why. The centerpiece of the investigation is a lengthy memo Biden wrote in 2009 to then-president Barack Obama, which investigators found—along with classified materials used to draft it—tucked in a cardboard box in Biden’s garage...

Three things are certain: antisemitism is on the rise; hatred of Muslims is increasing; and everyone – but especially those at universities with time to reflect – should be very, very troubled by this. Without taking account of the hate waves, it is impossible to understand why the seemingly mundane act of pitching a tent on campus has become so high stakes: is it announcing a desire to annihilate Israel, or is it a perfectly legitimate way to protest against particular US (and university) policies

A recent subcommittee hearing before the House Committee on Natural Resources heard testimony regarding alleged influence by unelected non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on important federal government policy decisions. The Biden administration was called out for permitting activist environmental groups, many funded by billionaires and the Chinese Communist Party, to inappropriately influence US energy policy at the Department of the Interior. Committee members are investigating the degree to which Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and others are working with green activist groups to shape policies that undermine the decision-making of state and federal officials, divert oil production to less eco-friendly sources...

Graduate Student Union flouts 36-year-old Supreme Court ruling on "political and non-representational agenda and expenditures," says legal group that won the case, now representing students. Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth has thus far survived the purge of Ivy League presidents in the wake of their widely criticized testimony before Congress that calls for genocide against Jews don't inherently violate campus codes.However, MIT itself may have a problem with multiple federal agencies for its response to campus activism against Israel,Though it's no longer on the Department of Education's list of open investigations for Title VI "shared ancestry" violations following...