Free Republic

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” host Jake Tapper reacted to 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump comparing the situation on college campuses to Charlottesville by stating that “There has been some anti-Israel sentiment and there has been some antisemitic sentiment,” but “most of them” were “peaceful, most of them in support of Palestinian rights” and “that’s not what the neo-Nazis in the Unite the Right rally were doing. That was not a peaceful march that turned into something ugly. It was ugly from the word go.”

The White House punted on Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) demand for President Biden to call in the National Guard to college campuses amid mass protests over the Israel-Hamas war on Thursday. Johnson visited Columbia University on Wednesday, the first of major pro-Palestine protests that have spread to dozens of college campuses around the country, and said that Biden should call in the National Guard to quell the peaceful demonstrations.

The University of Southern California (USC) has canceled its main graduation ceremony due to apparent security concerns after anti-Israel protesters tried to encamp and were removed by Los Angeles Police Department this week. As Breitbart News reported, anti-Israel protesters had tried to occupy the campus, as demonstrators have done at other universities in an apparently well-coordinated and well-funded campaign. In addition, USC canceled the speech of its valedictorian after she was found to have supported the annihilation of the State of Israel in online posts.

News reports about Islamic terrorist attacks are awkward. Videos even more so. Australian authorities have refused to use the “I” or “M” word to discuss the Muslim terrorist attack on a bishop.Now they’re demanding that Twitter take down a video of the stabbing on the Australian Jewish Association Twitter account.At issue is the right of X to publish a video showing the moment a 16-year-old allegedly stabbed a bishop in an Orthodox Christian Church in Sydney earlier this month.Australian authorities say the clips threw fuel on a riot that erupted outside the church after the attack and shouldn’t be available...

The U.S. military has begun to build the long-awaited port and causeway off the coast of Gaza that will establish a maritime corridor to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza, the Pentagon said Thursday. "I can confirm that U.S. military vessels, to include the USNS Benavidez, have begun to construct the initial stages of the temporary pier and causeway at sea," Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon's press secretary, told reporters, referring to the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, system floating pier delivery system. "We are aware of the significant interest in this important effort and will provide much more information...

Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) argued Thursday before the Supreme Court that droning American citizens is permissible because Obama’s DOJ said so, whereas questioning election results isn’t OK because the government also says so. The Supreme Court heard arguments on the scope of presidential immunity after special counsel Jack Smith alleged that former President Donald Trump should be tossed in jail for questioning the administration of the 2020 election. Justice Brett Kavanaugh posed a series of hypotheticals to DOJ attorney Michael Dreeben about the scope of presidential authority, asking whether Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon in 1976 could have...

Security services received reports of an explosion near an unidentified vessel today in the Red Sea. It is the first acknowledged report in days and came just hours after the Houthis issued a renewed threat on their official channels. Details were vague on today’s incident with the UK Maritime Trade Organization issuing only brief details. They received a report from a vessel of an explosion in the water approximately 72 nautical miles southeast of the port of Djibouti. The statement only said that there had been an explosion “at a distance,” and that the crew and vessel were reported safe....

Anti-Jewish, pro-Hamas protesters — such as those seen at Columbia and Yale — will be expelled if they try to pull the same stunts at Florida universities, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) made clear on Thursday. “You think about what happened when you have these Hamas demonstrators out. They’re taking over bridges, and they’re taking over roads,” he said, noting that these individuals do not have the right to do that. “How do you know if someone — someone may need to get to a hospital. Someone may need to pick up a child somewhere, and you’re just going to commandeer...

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with low-level Chinese Communist Party officials, students, and businessmen in Shanghai on Thursday, promoting an “expansion of exchanges” with the rogue state in several fields. The most prominent of his meetings was with the head of the Communist Party in Shanghai, Secretary Chen Jining, who said in a press engagement prior to their meeting that he was pleased to hear that Blinken had attended a basketball game and visited Shanghai’s Yu Garden after landing on Wednesday: Met with Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining to discuss the importance of healthy economic competition and a level...

Anti-Israel protesters set up an “intifada” encampment on the campus of state-funded City College of New York Thursday — with participants raising a Palestinian flag over a quad. The encampment was set up Thursday morning, and by the afternoon the Convent Avenue campus was riddled with flags and signs, video from independent reporter Talia Jane showed. “Palestine calls this University Intifada,” Within Our Lifetime organizer Nerdeen Kiswani said into a megaphone, per indie reporter Oliya Scootercaster. “We have a right to control where our tuition goes and that it should never go to oppressing any people anywhere!” Kiswani added in...

Amid continued tensions and violence in Gaza and Israel, students at the University of Pittsburgh organized a sit-in outside of the Cathedral of Learning on Tuesday. “We're just here in solidarity with Palestinians at a time where they don't have universities, to use our university privilege to make something,” said Samuel Weiner, a master’s student in Pitt’s teaching department.

Palestinian terrorists fired mortars Wednesday at United Nations officials as they toured the proposed site for a pier that is to be constructed in the Gaza Strip to assist with the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Times of Israel reported: Members of a terror group in the Gaza Strip launched mortars at an under-construction pier for a US-led project to bring aid into the Palestinian enclave yesterday, the military says. The mortar attack occurred as United Nations officials were touring the site with Israeli troops on the coast of central Gaza, the IDF says in response to a query on...

Anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, and pro-Hamas protesters who camped out in Harvard Yard on Wednesday received a rude awakening overnight as automatic sprinklers switched on, soaking tents and sending the activists into a panic. The Harvard Crimson reported that sprinklers began to turn on after 2:00 a.m. in 36º Fahrenheit weather. It later noted at 4:05 a.m. ET: As protesters spend their first night in the Harvard Yard encampment, the biggest threat to their stay has not come from administrators or Harvard University police officers, but the Yard’s sprinklers. Two more sprinklers turned on at the edge of the encampment near Massachusetts...

Two Columbia University students who rushed to join NYU’s violent anti-Israel rally are going viral after admitting they had no idea what the protest was about — and wished they were “more educated.” The unidentified students rattled off their clueless rationale on the steps of the NYU campus in downtown Manhattan as a slew of NYPD cops clad in riot gear stood in the background, as seen in footage viewed more than 3 million times since being shared by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani late Wednesday. “I think the main goal is just showing our support for Palestine and demanding that...

Saratu Dauda had been kidnapped. It was 2014, ... Kidnapped from their dormitory exactly 10 years ago, the 276 captives known as the Chibok Girls were catapulted to fame by Michelle Obama, by churches that took up the mostly Christian students’ cause and by campaigners using the slogan “Bring Back Our Girls.” “The only crime of these girls was to go to school,”... Their lives have taken wildly different turns since the abduction. Some escaped almost immediately; 103 were released a few years later after negotiations. A dozen or so now live abroad, including in the United States. As many...

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...