Free Republic

A Colorado university’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate violates the U.S. Constitution, a federal court has ruled. The Sept. 1, 2021, mandate “clearly violates the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause as interpreted by our precedents,” a majority of a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit said in the May 7 decision. While the mandate was later updated, the newer version also violates the Constitution, the judges said. The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in 2021 required COVID-19 vaccination of all students and employees. It initially offered religious exemptions to anyone who checked a box, but later said...

A dying Marine veteran was finally handed his high school diploma while receiving hospice care after dropping out to fight in World War Two over eight decades ago. Richard Remp, a 98-year-old marine veteran in hospice care, left school at 17 years of age to serve in World War II, before later continuing his service in Korea and Vietnam. But on Friday he was finally handed the high school diploma he had longed for all these years but never received. Remp told local San Antonio NBC affiliate NEWS4SA: 'On behalf of myself and the Marine Corps, I thank you very...

Teachers’ grading practices have changed and students’ grades have drifted up in recent years, a pandemic-era legacy that is being met with mixed reaction from educators across the country. Dating back to 2020, when the pandemic upended American education overnight, many schools have adopted a more lenient approach to grading. Some eliminated zeros or removed penalties for late work. Many teachers report “giving grace” to struggling students. Others say they have felt pressure from administrators to limit failure rates. Higher grades have come even as students’ test scores and attendance rates have dropped. A study in Washington state found that...

President Joe Biden introduced new provisions to his student debt relief plan earlier this month, and the primary beneficiaries are high-income earners, according to a new analysis released by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. While Biden’s 2023 SAVE Plan already put taxpayers on the hook for $475 billion, the new plans add another $84 billion to the tally — largely by “canceling” the student debt of some 750,000 households making more than $312,000 a year on average. The average debt relief for these households is $25,500, the study found. In June 2023, the Supreme Court struck down...

Workers at a New Hampshire daycare center allegedly spiked children's lunches with melatonin, Manchester police say. Owner of the establishment, Sally Dreckmann, 52, and her employees - Traci Innie, 51, Kaitlin Filardo, 23, and Jessica Foster, 23 - have been charged with ten counts of endangering the welfare of a child after turning themselves into authorities. Police determined the children's food was being sprinkled with melatonin without their parent's knowledge or consent, possibly to make them drowsy and easier to deal with. Too much melatonin can lead to vomiting, diarrhea and even seizures — especially in young children with low...

A 12-year-old Las Vegas girl took her own life after being tormented by bullies at her middle school for months. Flora Martinez, a sixth grader at Keller Middle School, killed herself on May 7 - eight months and one day after her transfer out of Duane D. Keller middle school was denied. Her funeral was on Thursday. Her distraught parents are now blaming the Clark County School District for not doing enough to protect their daughter. Grieving mother, Alice Martinez told News8: 'I feel like the school had a duty to keep her safe, while she was in their care...

In a Wednesday statement, California State University Chancellor Mildred Garcia wrote: “On Tuesday evening, Sonoma State University President Mike Lee sent a campuswide message concerning an agreement with campus protesters. That message was sent without the appropriate approvals ... because of this insubordination and consequences it has brought upon the system, President Lee has been placed on administrative leave.” ... Among the four “points of agreement” he described was for the school to disclose university vendor contracts and seek “divestment strategies.” In another section, under the heading “Academic Boycott,” Lee detailed how the school will not pursue formal collaborations that...

One day after FOX4 first told you about an alleged sexual assault on the campus of Wyandotte High school, the county court released the complaint. Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools told FOX4 that the incident took place in a school hallway. The incident was caught on the school security camera footage, which alerted the district police to intervene. The complaint charges a male student with two felonies: One count of rape and a second count of kidnapping. When FOX4 went to the school on Wednesday, students and parents were upset that the district nor the school ever notified anyone about...

Parents cannot force a school district to let them pull their children out of classes with LGBTQ themes, an appeals court has ruled. Three sets of parents and a parental rights group sued the Montgomery County Public Schools board in Maryland after it announced the classes in 2022. They claimed not being allowed to opt out their kindergarten to grade 5 children violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. But the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals denied their request for a preliminary injunction 2-1 as the parents failed to show how the policy would infringe their rights...

As the weather has warmed, it’s time for that time-honored tradition — protest season. Because everyone knows the plight of the disenfranchised is best solved at 70°F. Setting up winter camp in a college quad seems unpleasant — the revolution will take place at a time, place and temperature that’s convenient for America’s poetry graduate assistants. Campus protests are nothing new in America. They’ve been a feature of university life since at least the Vietnam War and beyond. And sure, it’s fun to get wrapped up in a romantic cause you only just learned about and of which you have...

CHANDLER, Arizona — In a packed courtroom on Tuesday, a judge dismissed charges filed against 71 protesters arrested in late April at the Arizona State University Campus. The judge dismissed the cases without prejudice at the University Lakes Justice Court in Chandler, Arizona. The ruling by Democrat Justice of the Peace Tyler Kissell means the protesters are free to go but may face future prosecution if authorities file charges within the next year. According to a court spokesperson, the pro-Hamas protesters all faced trespassing charges. Breitbart Texas attended the hearing and observed supporters gathering outside the courthouse to rally on...

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has passed a motion to ensure that the public defender’s office provides defense attorneys and legal resources for the pro-Palestinian activists arrested at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) earlier this month. As Breitbart News noted, the pro-Palestinian “encampment” was cleared by police on May 2 after a week in which activists had seized the center of campus by force, assaulting journalists, using antisemitic rhetoric, and denying Jewish students and others access to public areas on campus. After 100 pro-Israel vigilantes attacked the barricades on the night of April 30 – May...

A 10-year-old boy in Indiana killed himself after a two-year bullying campaign which his parents claim his school failed to stop, despite contacting school officials 20 times in a year. Sammy Teusch, aged 10, of Greenfield, Indiana, died by suicide on Sunday, May 5, according to an interview his parents, Sam and Nichole Teusch, gave to 13 News WTHR. They claim Sammy, one of four siblings, took his own life after enduring constant bullying which had become increasingly physical and which Greenfield Intermediate School had done little to address. Sammy’s parents claimed in the interview that the bullying started two...

—In a huge city awash with tiny schools, few are smaller than the Hilda L. Solis Learning Academy. The public high school, housed in a former hospital in East Los Angeles, is down to 170 students from the surrounding Latino neighborhoods. On a hallway bulletin board, handwritten hearts display reasons students love the school, including, “how everyone knows each other” and “the fact that school is small.”

A report reveals that key radical left-wing organizations central in the current anti-Israel and anti-America protest movement are significantly funded and influenced by a network tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which seeks to advance a “revolutionary, anti-government, anti-capitalist agenda,” threatening U.S. internal stability. A major report from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), published Monday, details how the Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P) movement, which has connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through the Singham Network, uses protests and media campaigns to push anti-America and anti-Israel narratives and significantly contribute to social unrest.

Police are marching into UC Irvine's campus as pro-Palestine demonstrators have taken over one of the school's buildings. https://www.foxla.com/news/uc-irvine-...

I had to read American literature in both high school and college. I read Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Jack London, Maya Angelou, Herman Melville, John Knowles, J.D. Salinger, and many other famous American writers. Some I liked; some I didn’t like. What I invariably hated was how English teachers approached them, picking them apart to the point of inanity (and, in my day, always with an eye to sexual symbolism). However, none of my teachers used those books to advance Marxism. At Harvard, though, things have changed, with the American novel being used as a platform for...

A group of radical pro-Palestinian activists took over a building at the University of California Berkeley on Wednesday, just hours after administrators and protesters struck a deal to end a weeks-long “encampment.” The Daily Californian, the UC Berkeley student newspaper, reported: A group of pro-Palestine protesters broke in and took over Anna Head Alumnae Hall on Wednesday afternoon. The protesters — gathering in a group of about 30 by 3:15 p.m. — hung up the Palestinian flag as well as boards reading “Free Gaza” and “Avenge Al Shifa.” [Al-Shifa is a hospital in Gaza that was taken over by terrorists,...

* Keante Harris, an assistant principal at McAdory Middle, was cuffed Wednesday * His arrest stemmed from the January 2013 murders of two men and a woman * The three were lured to a home and tortured by Harris and others, cops said ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ An Alabama middle school principal has been arrested and charged in the cold-case deaths of three people that occurred more than a decade ago. Keante Harris, an assistant principal at McAdory Middle School, surrendered to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office Wednesday, on a fugitive of justice warrant. His arrest stemmed from the January 2013 murders of...

A former gym teacher reached a settlement with a California public school district, after claiming she was wrongfully fired when she refused to lie to parents about their child's pronoun preference and hide her religious beliefs. Jessica Tapia will receive $360,000 from the Jurupa Unified School District after she was fired in 2022 and accused of proselytizing during class. The teacher said the district accused her of not calling a student by their preferred pronouns, but denies ever being asked by a student to do so in the first place. She claimed the district directed her to refer to students...