Free Republic

Even before the swearing in, Seattle has given Zohran Mamdani his own “Mini-Me”; expect many more. New York City and Seattle now have democratic socialist mayors-elect. Democrats’ overwhelming support from cities and these supporters’ increasing embrace of far-left positions promise to elevate more democratic socialists in the party. Zohran Mamdani understandably monopolized national media attention. He was a political neophyte and self-declared democratic socialist running for mayor of America’s largest city. His policies were radical: free buses, government-built housing, government-run grocery stores, government-provided daycare – all paid for by higher corporate and wealth taxes. En route to victory, he knocked...

I have noticed over the last few months media reports that there are 10 million illegal aliens in the U.S. And now a small group in the U.S. House of Representatives is using that number to ask for amnesty. Others are addressing the horrible idea itself. This article is a focus on the number they are pushing. This number stood out to me because President Biden let in at least 10 million illegal aliens, and I thought there were more than 10 million in the U.S. before President Biden was elected. My radar went on full alert. So I did...

I began my career with Allegheny County Pretrial Services in April 2008. I was sworn in by a judge, issued a badge, and placed into a system built on neutrality and public safety. Our job was simple: interview defendants, verify information, review police reports, pull complete criminal histories, and present magistrates with fact-based recommendations. We weren’t advocates for release or detention. We were there to present facts. And for a long time, the system worked because facts were the only thing that mattered. Failures to appear happened, but they were usually honest mistakes. Multiple pending cases were rare. Dangerous charges...

America stands at a crossroads. The greatest crisis we face is neither foreign invasion nor financial ruin nor even the factional strife that now masquerades as governance. The gravest danger before us is trust, that “main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad,” as Madison warned in Federalist Number Forty-Nine. The American people have been deceived, misled, manipulated, and betrayed by the very institutions designed to be their safeguard. These departments, much like the unchecked branches Publius feared, have grown ambitious beyond their constitutional boundaries. And now, at the...

If ICE or other immigration agents go out of bounds, the place to fight them is the courts, not the streets —and New York pols from Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on down are courting chaos if they play the issue otherwise. Consider City Councilman Shaun Abreu’s smear Wednesday, posting an inflammatory video that he claimed showed Homeland Security officers pulling a migrant out of an SUV in Washington Heights without due process. Abreu blasted the arrest as “deeply disturbing” and part of a “despicable pattern of intimidation,” huffing that agencies “carrying out [President Donald] Trump’s agenda of detaining people without due...

When New York passed its utopian Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act back in 2019, it set mandatory targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from the state’s energy consumption. But none of the mandates were scheduled to take effect prior to 2030. The earliest mandates were: 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030, and 40% overall reduction in GHG emissions by the same year. (Still more ambitious mandates were also set for 2040, followed by a “net zero” mandate for 2050.). These dates all seemed so terribly far away — plenty of time for somebody to invent some new...

The right’s warnings about Obamacare proved prescient, yet Democrats keep doubling down on a failing system they refuse to admit they broke. Just over 15 years ago, when the Democrat-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate were debating the healthcare proposals offered by the Democrat president, nearly everyone on the political right was unified in opposition. It may well have been the last time the right was united on anything, but it was indeed unified and resolute. Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (MN) warned that “This monstrosity of a bill will not only destroy the private healthcare market, it will lead to massive...

Glenn Beck recently referred to an important point made by Joe Rogan, in that with the left celebrating political violence, we may have reached his step seven of nine in the lead-up to civil war. Note that each one of these builds on the previous step in breaking down our society. And we might as well dispense with the notion that 'both sides' are equally at fault. While that may sound magnanimous, it doesn't square with the present reality, because it should be obvious that most of one side would like to bring down our society, while the other would...

“The dawn of a better day” for New York City will not be what they imagined. Zohran Mamdani, mayor-elect of New York City, quoted Eugene Debs in his acceptance speech last week. “The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said: ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.’” The Debs quote is, to most people, obscure. It is deliberately so. Most Democrat voters have no idea who Eugene V. Debs was, what he did, or the ideology he espoused—but that ignorance is paving the way for hardcore socialism. Debs...

Having won a single election, we cannot rest on our laurels. Communism and its sister despotism, Islam, still have their sights set on America. We have been through a lot, and we are going through a lot. Getting President Trump elected was a great gift, and he has, as expected, done amazing things. But we are still in trouble. Most readers here already know this, but it still bears repeating. The American radical Left is dangerous—literally an existential threat to our existence as a constitutional republic (much of which has already been eroded over decades of effort by our internal...

Even in Bucharest, a Romanian freedom fighter’s warning proved clear: too many Americans have forgotten the price of liberty—and some no longer care to hear it. I am on vacation. I was planning on taking a timeout and not thinking or writing about politics for a few days, but somehow politics found me anyway. As a result, I feel compelled to write about what I just experienced. I think the things I witnessed are subtle yet quite important and highly worth sharing with anyone who supports liberty. I am in Bucharest, Romania, as I write this. Today I experienced a...

Following WFLX’s reporting on the so-called “Mamdani Migration”— New York City businesses leaving the city after the mayoral election — new data we obtained shows several companies filing to relocate to Florida. Mamdani, who was elected as New York City mayor Tuesday, has pledged to increase taxes for corporations and individuals making more than $1 million, a move that sent shock waves through the business community. The morning after Mamdani’s election victory, Florida business relocation attorney, Chad Cummings, told WPTV he received five to 10 times his usual number of calls from New York companies seeking to move to Florida....

After the 2024 election, there was a vast right-wing clamoring for an inevitable realignment favoring conservatives. Political gravity would force the pendulum of political history to the right, the liberal media would be shamed into something resembling unbiased fairness, and woke policies would shrivel and die on the vine. The results of the November 4 elections make it clear that the demise of the progressive-liberal nexus is greatly exaggerated. Democrats, socialists, and liberals of all stripes enjoyed good election results, but it would be a mistake to read this as anything more than a normal off-year election. Since 2000, the...

Another day, another Democrat found to be involved in some sort of fraud. I don't think there's a single member of that entire party who speaks the truth or plays by the rules. And the legacy media -- ever the loyal lapdogs of the Left -- fawns over these people, burying scandals or spinning them as virtues. From multi-million dollar fraud schemes tied to congressional insiders to impersonating lawyers to springing illegal aliens. From doctored court evidence to unconstitutional residency fraud, the evidence piles up like Kamala's campaign debts. We're witnessing a pattern of blatant lawbreaking enabled by a complicit...

The nightmare descent of New York City under Mamdani rule has begun. Defunding the police, “free” services, and antisemitism are the tip of the spear. Staffing, policies, and mandates will issue from the mayor daily, implemented by an administration of hardcore socialists. The outlook is far worse when measured in dollars and cents. Spending will soar from already unsustainable levels, even as the tax base exits. When the top 1% leave, along with major financial firms, they never return. The glory of New York will fade. The city will not even be able to sustainably pay its bills for basic...

Whatever the Founding Fathers had in mind, they surely did not intend for some Portland judge to usurp the president’s authority as commander in chief. Should America’s constitutional republic ever fall, the most likely cause of death will be its corrupt institutions. When citizens lose faith in the “system” and have exhausted all available remedies to “fix” that “system,” they will feel wholly disconnected from the government that rules over them. A cascade of institutional crises will exacerbate public distrust in the “system” until the “system’s” legitimacy collapses. Should that foreboding and chaotic event come, a primary driver will have...

If you want to run for office as a Democrat, there is a new catchword that you need to make as your main promise: “Affordability.” As anybody paying attention knows, the cry of “affordability” was the central theme that carried the Democrats to victory in all the big races this year, most notably those of Zohran Mamdani for Mayor in New York City, Abigail Spanberger for Governor in Virginia, and Mikie Sherrill for Governor in New Jersey. The same theme also carried two Democrats to victory as Public Service Commissioners in Georgia — the first victories by Democrats in statewide...

California’s voters, blinded by hatred of Trump, keep empowering the corrupt coalition that’s driving the Golden State into decay, debt, and disorder. “Stick it to Trump.” That is the strategy of the Democratic Party in California, and it’s working. For 28 years, the Democrats have controlled both houses of the state legislature, and apart from Schwarzenegger’s interlude from 2004 to 2010, there’s been a Democrat governor since 1999. Nothing seems likely to change; this month, California’s voters approved a redistricting plan that is expected to reduce the number of Republican U.S. Congressmen to four out of 52. Democratic dominance in...

Universal Basic Income is a snare and a delusion that cedes all human liberty to the government. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever. – George OrwellGeorge Orwell’s telescreen is no longer “suspend your disbelief”-level fiction. And the foot meting out the punishment may soon be the state’s, delivering your Universal Basic Income in UBI Dollars (UBIDs). I have recently written about AI and UBI, positing that AI will lead to sufficient disruption to make UBI a near-certainty. In this essay, I combine these threads in relation to a current political...

For the first time in decades, the Democrats have lost their bid to engineer a federal government shutdown, blame the Republicans for it, and win political concessions for doing so. Now that they’ve lost, they’re blaming moderates in their own party for the miscalculation. Let the blaming begin. As is often the case, CNN’s unflappable, lonely conservative, Scott Jennings, predicted the outcome of the shutdown last week after Democrats posted big wins in blue states in the off-year elections. “I’m sure the Democrats will be happy to open the government now, the election is over,” he said, even as the...