Free Republic

There was a TON going on Wednesday night. A ton. Maybe it's because the government's been shut down for two weeks now, and the politicians are all getting a little antsy? Maybe it was a full moon? Regardless, there were, like, four town halls, including one on CNN with Bernie Sanders and AOC, and another on News Nation with … Stephen A. Smith. I mean, could you imagine a worse way to spend a night than by flipping back and forth between those two primetime specials? My God. I'd literally rather sit through ‘Green Lantern’ on a loop, and I...

Climate activist describes beatings, threats, dehydration, and deliberate humiliation during detention following Global Sumud Flotilla’s attempt to deliver aid to Gaza, saying Swedish Foreign Ministry failed to act 'What we have been through is only a small part of what Palestinians have experienced,' Greta Thunberg tells Swedish daily Aftonbladet Famed Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has recounted the five harrowing days she spent in Israeli custody earlier this month following the attempt by a humanitarian flotilla to deliver aid to Gaza, according to local media. Describing Israeli forces “beating, kicking, and threats of being gassed in cages,” the climate activist shared...

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has vowed to prosecute Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in a post-Trump era. Pritzker made the comments during an interview with FOX 32 Chicago this week as ICE agents step up their efforts across the city of Chicago. “The tables will turn one day,” Prtizker explained. ”These people should recognize that maybe they’re not gonna get prosecuted today, although we’re looking at doing that, but they may get prosecuted after the Trump administration because the statute of limitations would not have run out.” The 60-year-old added that he had spoken with Illinois Attorney General Kwame...

Morality isn’t made by committee.The latest sermon from HuffPost’s pulpit insists that “vertical morality” explains why MAGA Christians seem so unchristian. The author, in her infinite wisdom, claims that obedience to God makes people cruel, authoritarian, and conveniently Republican. In other words, faith with a backbone is now a threat to democracy.Let me start by asking a rather important question: if morality doesn’t descend from above, where exactly does it come from? From X polls? From whatever influencer cries loudest on TikTok? The article paints “vertical morality” as a primitive hangover from patriarchy — a moral monarchy that demands...

Zohran Mamdani is on track to become New York City’s next mayor. That’s bad for your interests, even if you don’t live, work, or spend time in the rotting Big Apple.Manhattan’s financial sector is the beating heart of the American economy. Every day, trillions of dollars course through Wall Street, making NYC the nation’s indispensable financial engine. It is not just a local hub but a national artery, driving investment, credit, and economic activity across the country.Decisions made in New York City ripple outward to affect retirement accounts in Ohio, mortgage rates in Florida, and small business loans in Texas.Now...

Layoffs of federal employees officially began Friday as the U.S. government shutdown entered another tense phase, according to Trump administration budget chief Russell Vought, who confirmed the sweeping reductions in a social media post. “The RIFs have begun,” Vought announced on X, using the acronym for “Reductions in Force.” The Gateway Pundit reported last week that President Donald Trump met with Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, a key architect of the Project 2025 blueprint, to determine which federal agencies, deemed by Trump as “political SCAM Democrat Agencies,” should face cuts and whether those cuts will be temporary...

MAGA commentators are stepping up as soldiers in Trump’s culture war to provoke confrontations against “Antifa” with the backing of DHS.TWO WEEKS AGO, THE X ACCOUNT for the Department of Homeland Security was being, all things considered, relatively normal.There was a repost of a video about law enforcement at the Charlie Kirk memorial, a video on how the Secret Service had dismantled a digital network that could have carried out attacks near the United Nations General Assembly, a video of part of Trump’s tone-deaf, chest-beating speech at the U.N., and posts and news updates on the Dallas ICE field office...

Contrary to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claim, most of the Obamacare subsidies are not expiring, for good or for ill.Into the debate on extending the Biden administration’s Covid subsidies for health coverage stepped Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. In an X post Monday evening, Greene claimed that “when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.” She went on to repeat the claim that premiums would “DOUBLE” — with all caps in the original — two other times in...

With its popularity in the United States crashing, Israel is bankrolling what organizers say will be the largest campaign of its kind to bolster support among evangelical churches, until recently seen as an unshakable base of support for the Jewish state. Israel’s Foreign Ministry has hired an American firm to run the campaign, with plans to spend as much as $4.1 million on marketing aimed at Christians across the Western part of the country, according to newly filed federal disclosures. The documents, filed last week under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, reveal that Show Faith by Works, LLC will execute...

A Dominican priest in Chicago who said he’d spent the day helping a young U.S. citizen who’d been beaten by ICE agents after he was “detained for walking on his own sidewalk on his way to his home” posted some video of tear gas. “America,” he wrote, “we are better than this.” The irony is that a lot of us have spent our lives convinced that we really were better than this, and now Donald Trump seems hell-bent on proving us wrong. He has declared war on some U.S. cities, where our military is, according to him, supposed to train...

I must admit that, despite having been raised in a secular home and limiting my Jewish observance to attending services when I can, I do have one pretty strong theory about the Judeo-Christian faith: The rules come from God, and we follow them. It’s a one-way street. And while some rules are no longer observed (e.g., we don’t kill witches and, outside of Muslim countries, no one’s stoning homosexuals to death), we don’t get to go around telling God to do a complete U-turn on morals. However, an article in The Nation, a hard-left publication, earnestly explains how queer Catholics...

The threat against our shared reality.A time existed when you could turn to a library, a newspaper, or a news network and be fairly confident the information you received was factual. Seeing used to be believing. Photos, videos, recordings, and other sources validated information. Those days are gone. Mis- and disinformation run rampant through digital spaces, creating branching narratives that emerge from algorithmic bubbles and infiltrate the real world. And now that the technology to generate spurious video and audio with AI is accessible and quickly improving, the difference between real and fake is becoming harder to discern. Fact and...

With each passing day it becomes more obvious that the left has become incapable of rational debate or political compromise, and must now embrace the only tools available to it: intimidation, coercion, and political violence. Whatever liberals might believe about their progressive politics, today their program is based not on persuasion or representation, still less on open-minded rational inquiry or practical solutions to problems. It’s based on force.The assassination of Charlie Kirk last month is of course emblematic of what the left has become. Kirk was murdered for speaking out against transgenderism. Dissenting from that ideology in particular is intolerable...

The similarities among the United States and Israel include their shared Manifest Destiny. One appears historical, the other current. In reality, they are conjoint and continuous, because the basis of their action is reason and progress. Manifest means self-evident and clear. Destiny means fated and inevitable, often in the context of a divine calling, and destined by God to create a dominion, and spread a particular belief and culture. That faith and culture in the United States was a manifestation of modernization based on human progress. The country began as a small, isolated settlement, just as Israel began, but it...

Today is the day we stop pretending that it’s not. Talks at the White House on Monday aimed at preventing a government shutdown left both sides far apart on a deal. Earlier in the day, reports emerged that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would consider a ten-day extension of government funding if Trump agreed to negotiate on enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of the year.Reaction to this was swift. “You don’t pick a fight and then run away,” said Emma Lydon, managing director of P Street, the government relations arm of the Progressive Change...

Even as they prepare to talk at the White House, both sides of the Senate dig in deeper.President Donald Trump will meet with congressional leaders Monday, September 29, in hopes of reaching a deal to avoid a government shutdown. But the looming deadline of 11:59 p.m. September 30 doesn’t leave much room for error. And it’s unclear if even a Trump talk can overcome the partisan enmity this time.Monday MeetingSpeaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will all meet the president...

Slovakia passed an amendment to its constitution that recognizes only two genders, along with other measures, through its parliament on Friday.Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md., on Feb. 21, 2025. Jose Luis Magana/AP PhotoThe amendment, drafted by Prime Minister Robert Fico’s government, required a three-fifths majority to pass, and moved through the National Council with 90 of the 150 members backing it.It states that Slovakia only recognizes two genders, male and female, and that Bratislava retains its sovereignty in matters of “national identity,” especially in “fundamental cultural-ethical questions.”It also...

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. Daniel became CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in 2025. PM Keir Starmer in the UK, Macron in France and other Western leaders who decided to recognize an Islamic terrorist state inside Israel have tried to pretend that they aren’t recognizing Hamas or helping Hamas.However, Hamas leaders have made it clear again and again that they are and that it’s the result of Oct 7.“The powerful blow that was delivered to Israel on...

Trump To Macron: 'I've always been on Israel's side'. Presidents Trump and Macron held a joint press conference where they clashed over the French initiative to declare a Palestinian state. Yoni Kempinski. Sep 25, 2025, 10:24 AM (GMT+3) At a joint press conference, U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron offered contrasting views on recent moves by several countries to recognize a Palestinian state. Asked if such recognition was “a gift to Hamas,” Trump replied: “Well, I think it honors Hamas and you can’t do that because of October 7th. You just can’t do that. But we want...

Donald Trump just pulled off a political maneuver that has Democrats reeling — and, frankly, they should be. With a potential government shutdown looming on September 30, the Trump administration has made it clear that if Congress can’t pass a clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government running, federal workers could be facing mass firings. Not furloughs. Firings. Real jobs on the line. For years, Democrats thought they could weaponize shutdowns as a way to extract concessions from Republicans. Now, Trump has flipped the script by putting the pressure right back where it belongs: on them. The House passed a...