Free Republic

Citing the First Amendment, a federal judge on Tuesday agreed to permanently block the Trump administration from implementing a presidential directive to end federal funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, two media entities that the White House has said are counterproductive to American priorities. The operational impact of U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss’ decision was not immediately clear — both because it will likely be appealed and because too much damage to the public-broadcasting system has already been done, both by the president and Congress. Moss ruled that President Donald Trump’s executive order to cease funding...

The U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has been accused of “God-washing” the war in Iran. Leading a Christian worship service at the Pentagon, he prayed for "every round to find its mark" and for “overwhelming violence" against America's enemies. During the service, which was livestreamed and attended by military personnel, Hegseth also quoted from the Psalms, saying: "I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed." Speaking to Sky News, U.S. pastor Rev Andy Campbell said the use of Scripture in conversations around the Iran war is troubling: “If you go to war...

Both Ayn Rand and George Orwell would have recognized what is going on—and, in fact, they warned us about it. A form of torture I endure for my research is reading the New York Times morning emails. The phrase “alternate universe” aptly describes its sly, misleading story titles, which demonstrate a built-in bias even before the report itself begins. A good example was a heading marked “Territorial Adventurism” used the other day in reference to Trump’s geopolitical strategy in Iran and elsewhere. Adventurism is defined as “Involvement in risky enterprises, especially in foreign affairs, while disregarding established principles or...

Here come the morality police: About 1-in-3 people under the age of 30 say being extremely wealthy is “morally wrong.” Just 19% say it’s acceptable, and another near-50% don’t think it’s an issue one way or another. That data comes from the latest Pew Research Center poll on morality. Compare Gen-Z to Boomers, and data becomes even more stark. Only 10% of those over 65 say it’s morally wrong to be extremely wealthy. But that checks out. Those over 65 have enjoyed one of the greatest growth engines in human history, post World War II America. Cheap education, cheap homes...

The Iranian regime has been running an online influence campaign using AI-generated photographs, videos and memes to sow confusion about the war in the Middle East. Experts say the main goal is to ramp up anti-war sentiment in the US and pressure President Trump to end the conflict. “The propaganda includes memes and cartoons that aren't meant to be perceived as real but are very good at spreading political messaging,” said Darren Linvill, author of the study and co-director of Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub. “The deepfakes portray a version of reality that [seems] genuine and often paint Iran as more...

I watched this last night and was blown away by how stupid it was. It had a good plot but the character portrayal of the military and executive government officials under the stress of nuclear missile launched against the US was horrific. Every one involved from the initial launch detection to the president issuing the go code was so overcome with stress that they couldn't focus and function. Missile commander left his position, SECDEF committed suicide, blah blah blah.

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The dangerous heat wave shattering March records all over the U.S. Southwest is more than just another extreme weather blip. It’s the latest next-level weather wildness that is occurring ever more frequently as Earth’s warming builds.</p><p>Experts said unprecedented and deadly weather extremes that sometimes strike at abnormal times and in unusual places are putting more people in danger. For example, the Southwest is used to coping with deadly heat, but not months ahead of schedule, including a 110-degree Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) reading in the Arizona desert on Thursday that smashed the highest March temperature recorded in the U.S.</p>

Demonizing the Jews is one of the oldest tricks in the bag. In the early Middle Ages, the accusations against the Jews of Europe started to erupt, and in the first quarter of the 21st century, they haven't stopped. Justin Martyr accused us of being Christ killers in "Dialogue with Tripho", as early as A.D. 160. John Chrysostom, might very well be the poster child for early Christian antisemitism. In his work Adversus Judaeos (387), he describes the Jews as "lucious, rapacious, greedy, destroyers, demon-possessed and assassins of Christ." Then came the ritual murder libel of 1141 when Jews were...

If you've been following coverage of the Trump administration's military action against Iran, you've probably noticed something: A lot of people are determined to convince you that the United States is losing. They're wrong. Even worse, many of them know they're wrong. Critics across the political spectrum — from Democrats to elements of the so-called horseshoe Right — are pushing narratives that paint the conflict as a disaster in the making. The goal is simple: Undermine public confidence and turn what is shaping up as a strategic success into a perceived failure. Three particular claims are circulating widely. All three...

The artist and singer/songwriter formerly known as Cat Stevens, and then as Yusuf Islam, and then as Yusuf/Cat Stevens (you can call him anything, just don’t call him late for iftar dinner), early on Thursday morning weighed in on the conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran. He did not, however, have a negative word to say about the bloodthirsty Iranian regime; instead, he said that the problem was all anti-Muslim propaganda: Perhaps I was particularly blessed to have discovered Islam in 1977, before the Iranian Revolution, when Muslims were less visible and the monstrous propaganda machine had not been...

As the war between the U.S., Israel, and Iran enters its sixth day, the rate of military resource depletion on both sides has emerged as a critical factor that could determine the outcome of the conflict. Reza Talaei-Nik, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Defense, stated on the 3rd, “We have the capability to sustain an ‘offensive defense’ longer than the enemy expects in this war,” adding, “We have no intention of deploying all our advanced weapons and equipment from the outset.” This remark, implying that Iran has yet to use its “advanced weapons,” directly contradicts U.S. President Donald Trump’s...

According to a Politico report citing an internal Pentagon notification, United States Central Command (CENTCOM) has requested additional military intelligence officers to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days and possibly through September. When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran last Saturday, the operation was framed as a swift military campaign. Donald Trump later described it as a limited effort expected to last roughly four to five weeks. ...

This is the most consequential moment in the modern Middle East since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. No American president has ever – ever – dealt so courageously or so decisively with the Iranian regime since its leaders declared war on America 47 years ago. The Iranian regime has killed, wounded, and maimed more Americans than any government in the world since the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s. Yet no American leader has ever truly confronted the tyrants in Tehran. Until now. When Iran ordered its terror proxy, Hezbollah, to blow up the U.S. Marines...

Next month the most important political book of the year, or perhaps the decade, will be published. It is called The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control. The author is Jacob Siegel, a journalist for the Tablet. To summarize: shocked by the arrival of Donald Trump in 2016, American government officials, the media, and the technology giants created a system of censoring the public, spying on other opponents, and planting false stories. The media was complicit and will never fully recover. Trump’s rise, Siegel writes, “meant that politics had become war, as it is in many...

In a stretch of Louisiana with about 170 fossil fuel and petrochemical plants, premature death is a fact of life for people living nearby. The air is so polluted and the cancer rates so high it is known as Cancer Alley. “Most adults in the area are attending two to three funerals per month,” said Gary C. Watson Jr., who was born and raised in St. John the Baptist Parish, a majority Black community in Cancer Alley about 30 miles outside of New Orleans. His father survived cancer, but in recent years, at least five relatives have died from it....

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Human-caused climate change had an important impact on the recent ferocious wildfires that engulfed parts of Chile and Argentina’s Patagonia region, making the extremely high-risk conditions that led to widespread burning up to three times more likely than in a world without global warming, a team of researchers warned on Wednesday. The hot, dry and gusty weather that fed last month’s deadly wildfires in central and southern Chile was made around 200% more likely by human-made greenhouse gas emissions while the high-fire-risk conditions that fueled the blazes still racing through southern Argentina were made 150%...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is expected this week to revoke a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, according to a White House official. The Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final rule rescinding a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding. That Obama-era policy determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. “This week at the White House, President Trump will be taking the most significant deregulatory actions in history to further unleash American energy dominance and...

Is it possible just to enjoy a long-cherished international sports tradition without injecting climate scareporn into the mix? Apparently not so for the Gaia-worshipping sub-optimal intellects at The Washington Post. Post reporters Janice Kai Chen, Nick Kirkpatrick and Júlia Ledur apparently forgot it was winter when they collectively blurted out the following headline February 2, “Climate change is making the Winter Olympics harder to host.” Kicking the doom-mongering into high gear, the authors cried that “Even with the intervention of machine-made snow, climate change will substantially shrink the number of locations able to host the Games.” The 2026 games, which...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A court on Wednesday ordered the Dutch government to draw up a plan to protect residents on the tiny Caribbean island of Bonaire from the devastating effects of climate change — a sweeping victory for the islanders. The Hague District Court, in a stunning rebuke of Dutch authorities, also ruled that the government discriminated against the island’s 20,000 inhabitants by not taking “timely and appropriate measures” to protect them from climate change before it’s too late. “The island already suffers from flooding due to tropical storms and extreme rainfall, and according to several researchers, this...

President Trump cited a major winter storm forecast to impact about two-thirds of the United States as evidence to suggest that global warming does not exist, repeating a misleading claim that has been consistently debunked by climate experts. In a Truth Social post on Friday, he said, "Record Cold Wave expected to hit 40 States. Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain — WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???" Climate scientists say Mr. Trump's statement conflates short-term weather trends with long-term climate changes. The unusually cold air spilling into the United States is an example of...