Free Republic

“We’re saying Merry Christmas again!” President Trump declared recently, referring to the politically correct social pressure Christians sometimes feel to downplay the holiday greeting in order to be more “inclusive” of non-Christians. For decades now, as the culture has become more secular, references to Christ have been gradually drained from the season celebrating His birth: schools have changed “Christmas break” to “winter break”; Christmas tree lighting ceremonies have become “Winter” or “Holiday” tree lightings; and most notoriously, “Happy Holidays” has replaced “Merry Christmas” in many chain stores, advertisements, and corporate settings. Some claim that the idea of a “war...

America warns Europe that only one of them is truly fighting to reverse the West’s decline—and the clock is running out for the other to follow suit. Nothing bothers the European elite as much as American conservatives praising the European foundations of their shared, but threatened, Western civilization. Europeans especially resent having their social-welfare state system critiqued by upstart, crass Americans. Their pique only increases as they push back against the condescending American idea that the U.S. could possibly offer any constructive advice, much less help a more civilized Europe follow the “American model.” Americans, in turn, are worried that...

In an interview on "The Katie Miller Pod," Elon Musk said DOGE, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, was a "somewhat successful" venture, but he wouldn't do it again. KATIE MILLER: You are in the Roosevelt Room, if you remember this, getting sworn in, and they hand you a computer and a phone. I want to go back to what happened next. I think the story of DOGE, from your perspective, has never been told. What was your first thought on how DOGE was going to proceed? ELON MUSK: Well, I guess I couldn't believe I was there, for the most...

As the old aphorism goes: “Don’t tax you; don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.” Nobody likes paying taxes, but most Americans accept them as a necessary evil and are willing to pay their fair share, unless politicians waste those tax dollars in extraordinarily—well—wasteful ways, or steal them outright. I refer, of course, to California, where, as the classic Eagle’s song Hotel California goes: “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.” California, it’s no secret, is in deep financial trouble. In 2022, Gavin Newsom bragged about a $97.5 billion dollar surplus. By the...

The ever-ditzy Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) was a guest on the "Grounded" podcast, when she was asked by host Jon Tester about the presence of military personnel in cities like Washington, D.C., and Chicago, Illinois. Though the podcast aired this past September, a couple of her comments have recently re-surfaced and gone viral. When Tester asked the congresswoman her thoughts on the military presence in those cities, Crockett replied, “I think it’s terrible.” That opinion can legitimately be debated by people of good faith. However, she went on to say: "I want to be clear that, like, law enforcement isn't...

For a brief, shining moment in 1945, the United States stood astride the world like a colossus. In four years, we had built the greatest military machine in human history, liberated half the planet, and dropped the sun itself on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to prove the point. Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan (three empires that had terrorized the globe) lay in smoking ruins. The message was unmistakable: try America on the battlefield and you will be annihilated. Our enemies learned the lesson. They have not seriously attempted a direct military confrontation since. Instead, they (and the ideological heirs...

Either Americans win, or the criminals do. Pithy social critic David Burge said it best: “Journalism is about covering important stories — with a pillow, until they stop moving.” One of the important stories that “journalists” are covering up today is the Trump administration’s increasingly successful efforts to combat violent crime. At the end of July, the Department of Homeland Security released a report showing that violent crime rates had dropped significantly during the first six months of President Trump’s second term. Homicides were down 17%; gun assaults were down 21%; aggravated assaults were down 10%; sexual assaults were down...

"Imagine if the US and EU were still aligned on the censorship-by-proxy strategy. Few people realize how close we were to global totalitarianism." —Michael Shellenberger. Norm Eisen, Lawfare Ninja Supreme Western Civ is choking itself to death with lawfare in the name of “democracy.” If you think just a little bit past the sale, you will realize that few will say what they mean by “democracy,” including the most ardent “democracy” cultists. What it supposedly means is legal outcomes that the political left wants, not what the law, or the truth, or justice requires. On the surface, the left pretends...

The US has released a new National Security Strategy which re-envisions the Monroe Doctrine for a new century. Bernhard at MoA covered it in full here for those interested in the thorough details. I’ll instead look at the bigger picture, as well as one specific, fascinating aspect of this major rethink of US foreign policy. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/06/world/europe/trump-europe-strategy-document.htmlNYT’s subheading reframes the new vision as a hatred for Europe: A new White House policy document formalizes President Trump’s long-held contempt for Europe’s leaders. It made clear that the continent now stands at a strategic crossroads. Well, why wouldn’t Trump hate the new Europe?...

In the history of American governance, few chapters will stain the pages as darkly as the utter failure of the Biden-Harris administration to safeguard unaccompanied migrant children. I must ask this question: If their goal was to intentionally traffic children into sexual slavery and forced labor, how would their actions have been any different? For four catastrophic years, vulnerable minors poured across the Rio Grande and were funneled into a system riddled with incompetence, willful blindness, and flat-out negligence. A report from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) landed like a bomb and exposed the...

If you keep up with current events at all, it is unlikely that you have missed in the past week the explosion of the Minnesota Somali welfare fraud scandal into the national, and even international, news. Not that the enormous Somali welfare fraud in Minnesota is something new. The bloggers at Powerline, who are based in Minnesota, have been covering the subject since at least 2018. Here is a May 2018 City Journal piece by Scott Johnson (of Powerline), reporting on an investigation of Somali-owned daycare centers in Minneapolis suspected of stealing millions by billing the government for inflated number...

Pete Hegseth “runs around on a stage talking about lethality and warrior ethos and killing people. … That’s not the message that needs to come from the Secretary of Defense,” complained Sen. Mark Kelly last week. The message, especially coming from a former Navy captain, is so bizarre it borders on satire. Nations have had organized armies since recorded history started around 3000 B.C. And, in the words of the late, great Rush Limbaugh, the whole point of having a military is to kill people and break things, even if that military is exclusively employed for defensive purposes. Surely even...

A border abandoned and laws ignored have turned public frustration into a sweeping backlash that now threatens even legal immigration. It is hard now even for Democrats to defend illegal immigration, given that the Biden administration allowed in more than 10 million entrants. Among them were an estimated 500,000 criminals. No one believes that was wise or should ever be repeated. Worse, the message went out that there would be few, if any, deportations and no real ICE kinetic activity beyond the border. The world’s poor, sick, both law-abiding and criminal, young and old, understood that anyone could now enter...

A few years ago, I penned a piece titled “Democratic Party Platform 2020,” which was viewed many times on several different “platforms,” including this one. (American Thinker always comes first.) As we approach the 2026 and 2028 elections, I thought it might be a good time to update said piece, especially given current events. Though Democrats don’t usually say much other than “Trump bad,” “Republicans fascists,” and “no one should ever have the right to disagree with anything we are — and aren’t — saying,” here is what the Democrats' updated platform appears to be, in a casual format: *We...

The European Union has moved this week to punish the social media company X and Elon Musk for allegedly “deceiving users” through certain company practices. On Thursday, X, which was formerly known as Twitter, was fined €120 million ($140 million) by the European Union for violating one of the international organization’s laws regulating technology companies. The move makes the social media platform the first company to be fined under the jurisdiction of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). “Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU. The DSA...

The ABA’s left-wing bias targets Catholic law schools, exposing the need for reform in America’s politicized legal education system. Last month, Florida Attorney General James Uttmeier made public a letter to the American Bar Association (“ABA”) accusing it of violating the First Amendment right to religious freedom when it said a Catholic law school did not meet one of its equal opportunity accreditation standards. The school is Florida’s St. Thomas University College of Law, and the standard is number 205, titled “Non-discrimination and Equal Opportunity.” The ABA’s finding did not specify how St. Thomas fell short. Standard 205 is distinct...

And its totalitarian assaults on free speech represent a national security threat to the United States. European civilization is dying. The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy makes this clear. It has squandered its post-WWII economic and military assistance from the United States by investing in centralized, socialist bureaucracies and expansive welfare States. By chasing the “climate change” con as a means for European governments to justify total control over the drivers of economic growth, European nations have forsaken cheap energy exploration, private entrepreneurship, and technological innovation. By depending upon the United States to defend its territorial interests, European nations...

UK’s Labour Censorship InitiativeAs economic and cultural suicide stalk Western Europe, it has initiated efforts to hobble America's technological advantage and diminish our freedoms. The first documented attacks on our open dialogue came from the UK and began in 2018 when Morgan McGreevy, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff (then Labour Together’s managing director), began and funded an outfit called Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN). Recognizing that the online news purveyors could best be silenced by depriving them of funds, it first targeted UK outfits, but moved on in an attempt to starve U.S. outfits like American Thinker, Breitbart, Zero Hedge,...

A “color revolution” (sometimes called a “soft coup” or “regime-change operation by non-kinetic means”) is a modern form of orchestrated political upheaval designed to replace an existing government without traditional military invasion or civil war. The term arose from events in the early 2000s, such as Serbia’s Bulldozer Revolution (2000) and Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003). These operations follow a remarkably consistent playbook, refined over two decades by Western NGOs, intelligence-linked foundations, and State Department-affiliated entities (Open Society Foundations, USAID, etc.). Authors describe seven stages of a color revolution. The stages include these tactics, which I’ll list in approximate chronological order:...

I used to believe that Democrats had limits. Recent events have forced me to accept a different reality. Democrats really have no limits. They happily accepted USAID money laundered through foreign agents. They yelled, but weren’t all that unhappy when USAID was eliminated. It was just one pathway to taxpayer money. They had Somali agents in Minnesota diverting billions (with a B) to terrorist organizations, most likely with a bit of backsheesh diverted to support local Democrat operations. It was so obvious and outrageous that even the New York Times has reported on it. And now several outlets are reporting...