Free Republic

OK, I know that all you smug people out there in the hinterlands are now snickering at me behind my back because I’m about to get stuck with one Zohran Mamdani as the Mayor of my city. Probably, you have already read enough about this guy to know just how crazy and ignorant he is. If you haven’t yet studied up, here is a small sample of his stated positions: free transit buses for all, free childcare for all children 6 weeks to 5 years old, city-owned grocery stores, a rent freeze on all regulated apartments, vast expansion of city-owned...

A lot of people have asked me if I will get involved in the NYC mayor race by supporting a candidate that can defeat Zohran Mamdani. TBH, I’m torn and undecided. Like every other city run by democrats, NYC is a broken kleptocracy. Taxes are astronomical and services are pathetic to nonexistent. Anarchy and socialism are the next logical steps in this story arc. It's what the people of NYC have been asking for for years and it looks like it's what they are about to get. Trying to fight against this tide seems like throwing good money after bad....

It’s not just your imagination. Lefties really are completely un-self-aware about what tyrants they are, and one professor with five thousand study participants proved it. October 2024’s article, The Left Has an Authoritarian Problem (but Doesn’t Know It), was written by social psychologist Luke Conway who “has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and others, as well as on the BBC and NPR” and draws from three “decades of authoritarianism research.” The article appears in an online publication called “Presser” which, according to their “What is Presser?” page, launched in 2024...

When people think of American commerce, they think of New York. And when people think of American Jewish culture, they also think of New York, which has the largest Jewish community of any city in the world outside of Israel. But if the polls are correct, New York may soon have a mayor who is an avowed Marxist and an antisemite. (And yes, I equate anti-Zionism directly with antisemitism.) Tomorrow is voting day in the New York Democrat party mayoral primary. This matters because the greatest likelihood is that whoever wins the Democrat primary will be New York City’s next...

It always seemed as if Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, was in trouble for something. A 1956 article in the New York Times describes an instance in which Day was fined $250 for being the landlord of a building that failed to comply with the fire code. In addition to the fine she was also in danger of being forced to evict the sixty tenants from her house of charity. The paper explains that as she headed to court, “there was a group of needy men about the door, awaiting the distribution of clothing. From their midst...

Bass believes that the use of taxpayer dollars to deploy the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to protect the city and its citizens, as well as federal law enforcement, is ‘shameful’ and ‘despicable.’ With riots and looting destroying Los Angeles (again), it is important to remember that the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, reportedly led a radical Cuban communist cell that was part of a group responsible for radicalizing youth and organizing chaos. In the 1970s, when Bass was in her 20s, she led the Southern California cell of Cuban Venceremos Brigade — a Fidel Castro regime-linked organization and...

The Democratic Party has long cried out for more peaceful, cordial politics, for an end to the divisiveness of modern times, despite the fact that their politicians are the ones who always call for violence against their opposition. Even after these past ten years of “the Trump era” – which have laid bare this outrageous and constant hypocrisy – the Democrats continue to claim to be upset at the politics of division. This is the contradiction that comes to mind when we think of Democrats, but it’s not alone. In fact, over the past generation or two, America’s Democratic Party...

"We're gonna run right over them" "Fight like hell" "Are you ready to fight?" They’re gonna plan riots all across the country. Bonus: A California history teacher has a plan .... https://x.com/SKDoubleDub33/status/1932091423030985056 "Listen to the language he uses. He refers to the people being deported as indigenous to this land and calls it “ancestral land”. This is a revolution. His organization, Union del Barrio, is a Marxist Revolutionary group that also advocates for Palestine." Courtesy of SKDoubleDub

“60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley spoke out about President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against CBS and its parent company on Saturday, arguing that a settlement would be “very damaging.” “Well, it’d be very damaging to CBS, to Paramount, to the reputation of those companies,” Pelley said during a conversation with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Saturday, who asked how harmful a settlement and potential apology would be to the network. Trump filed a lawsuit against Paramount Global, CBS News’ parent company, over a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris in October 2024. Fox News Digital confirmed that Trump rejected...

The U.S. Education Department said Wednesday that Columbia University has failed to meet the standards for accreditation because it “is in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws” for allegedly tolerating harassment of Jewish students on campus. The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, an accrediting institution that Columbia belongs to, of the alleged violation. The department noted that federal regulations, “accreditors are required to notify any member institution about a federal noncompliance finding and establish a plan to come into compliance.” “If a university fails to come into compliance within a specified period,...

Political activists on the left approach slavery as a historical phenomenon in a highly selective way, focusing on the transatlantic slave trade while ignoring, if not tacitly accepting, the existence of entire slave populations in countries under Marxist tyranny. Whether naive or ignorant, leaving apathy aside, modern man associates the notion of “slavery” with either Roman households and gladiatorial games or plantation management in the South. For the older generations, moral education found dramatic support in the TV series “Roots” (1977). By now, only a few have personally experienced the division of public transportation and benches, etc. by “color” —...

33 years ago today, Edward Travens, 15, was murdered while trying to rent a video with his older brother in LA as the race riots were breaking out. A Black male yelled, "where you from?" and shot Travens five times as he exited the vehicle. UNSOLVED https://x.com/NatCon2022/status/1928071818897694832

There are three aspects of Kwanzaa that most folks don't know. First, most blacks DON'T celebrate the invented holiday. Secondly, very few non-Americans even know of its existence and finally, its inventor is a kook and a violent convict. Born Ron Everett, Maulana Karenga gave up what he calls his "European name" right about the time he began to adopt his Marxist, black nationalistic views in the 1960s, right around the time he invented Kwanzaa (Dec. 26, 1966), a week-long celebration focusing on African heritage and culture. You see, Karenga believes in black separatism and black isolationism. He's a radical...

NewsNation political contributor Chris Cillizza said Thursday that fresh polling data paints a dire picture for the Democratic Party. Just roughly one-third of Democrats said they were “very optimistic” or “somewhat optimistic” regarding the future of their own party, according to a Wednesday poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Cillizza said on his YouTube channel that this survey, alongside another poll, underscores how damaged the party has become. WATCH: VIDEO AT LINK.................. “The extent to which Democrats, Democrats think the Democratic brand is broken is pretty stunning to me, and we have a bunch of...

The strange beliefs of Nicholas Kristof A couple of years ago, to celebrate the Catholic feast of the Assumption, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column called “Believe it or Not” (New York Times, 8-15-03), in which he scoffed at the naïve religious beliefs of Americans and in particular at the absurdity of believing in the Virgin Birth of Christ. This year, to celebrate Christmas, I wish to reply to his charges. In publishing his column, Kristof showed considerable bravery. Not by attacking religious believers (which is mere political correctness) but by exposing his own beliefs, which are touchingly old-fashioned and naive....

Going Entebbe on the hostage-taking dictator, right in front of his patron, Vladimir Putin. For Venezuela's fraudulently elected Nicolas Maduro, in Moscow to pay tribute to his patron Vlad Putin, yesterday was kind of embarrassing for both of them. Way under the radar, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been busy, figuring out a way to make both of them look like weaklings, and with perfect timing, he succeeded: The U.S. welcomes the successful rescue of all hostages held by the Maduro regime at the Argentinian Embassy in Caracas. Following a precise operation, all hostages are now safely on U.S....

The left broke norms, erased borders, and weaponized justice—not to govern, but to crush Trump and cling to power by any means necessary. Somewhere between 10 and 12 million illegal aliens were invited into the United States by the Biden administration. As far as logistics go, Biden could not flee Afghanistan without getting 13 Marines killed and abandoning to the terrorist Taliban $50 billion in munitions, a billion-dollar embassy, and a $300 million retrofitted huge airbase. But Biden and his handlers proved far more logistically capable when their target was fellow Americans. After all, they somehow managed to stop the...

In what can only be described as the most astonishing turn of events in American political history, the Democrat party over the past twenty years has evolved into a previously unimagined alliance of super-rich plutocrats and their two-century-old mortal enemy, the far-left or Marxists. Many years ago, while participating in a voter registration drive, I came upon a grizzled and disheveled old man sitting in the overgrown and weed-infested yard of his paint-starved house calmly smoking his pipe. Despite his gruff demeanor, Ully (Ulysses) was very pleasant and loquacious as we talked for over an hour on topics ranging from...

My country, Venezuela, is on the verge of social and economic collapse. This slow-motion disaster, nearly 15 years in the making, was not initiated by falling oil prices or by mounting debts. It was set in motion by the authoritarian government’s hostility toward human rights and the rule of law and the institutions that protect them. -excerpt- I am writing from a military prison, where I have been held since February as a result of speaking out against the government’s actions. I am one of scores of political prisoners in my country .... -excerpt- ... Venezuela’s road to ruin was...

To the rational, well intentioned American citizen, the issues where the Democrat party chooses to fight certainly appear ill advised. There must be better ways to express your support for unrestricted immigration than by waxing poetic every time another vicious gangbanger is removed from the country under a clear and unambiguous legal foundation. Abusing the court system to obstruct political opponents, or to assault them, is not going unnoticed by the average American. Championing the “right” of common street criminals to have ready, unimpeded access to victims by challenging every attempt by law enforcement to keep society safe (no cash...