Free Republic

Senior officials from the Biden administration held indirect talks last week with the Iranian regime in the Gulf state of Oman to avoid “escalation” in the region — even as Iran’s proxies continue to attack Israel and global shipping. The effort is one of few diplomatic meetings between the U.S. and Iran, and recalls the secret meetings between President Barack Obama’s envoys and the Iranian regime in Oman in 2013 that set the stage for the Iran nuclear deal.

Courts in England are reportedly looking to scrap the requirement for barristers to wear traditional wigs amid claims that they discriminate against lawyers with “Afro-Caribbean hair”. The iconic manner of dress in English courtrooms may become wokism’s latest scalp as demands have been made to abandon the requirement of barristers to wear wigs in front of the court because they are “culturally insensitive”, The Telegraph reports.

Legal challenges by conservative lawmakers and activists against guaranteed basic income programs are heating up nationwide. And one of their arguments is surprising: Some say the programs are discriminatory because they are not universal. Numerous cities and counties are experimenting with guaranteed basic incomes to support their most vulnerable populations. They typically offer no-strings-attached monthly payments between $500 and $1,000 to specific groups, like new moms, Black women, or trans people, all of them low-income residents. Guaranteed basic income programs differ from their idealistic cousin — a universal basic income. UBI, made famous by Andrew Yang during the 2016 presidential...

Washington DC's woke Mayor Muriel Bowser will travel on a taxpayer-funded jaunt to Las Vegas with her team just hours from now. It comes just weeks after the Democrat faced backlash for attending the lavish Masters golf tournament that cost $5,000 per person, Bowser personally revealed. The mayor will travel with a team of 14 on an 'economic mission' to the International Council of Shopping Centers at the Wynn Las Vegas on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, according to her public calendar.

Former Chicago Alderman Ed Burke, once a powerful Democrat, was found guilty of 13 out of 14 corruption charges, including racketeering, bribery, and extortion. The case highlighted high-level corruption in Chicago’s city government, involving political favors for money. The trial also implicated other officials and revealed widespread corruption in Illinois, leading to numerous convictions. “This case was about bribery and extortion occurring at the highest level of Chicago city government,” U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual said. “Burke has his hand out for money. He tied the giving of official action by him to the giving of money to him.” “Alderman Burke...

Earlier this month, the Biden administration floated a trial balloon, suggesting "senior officials across several federal U.S. agencies have discussed the practicality of different options to resettle Palestinians from Gaza who have immediate family members who are American citizens or permanent residents." No other Middle Eastern country is crazy enough to want large numbers of Gazans to enter their country. The history of Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria suggests that the refugees would look to overthrow the government or launch terrorist attacks against Israel from within their borders. This apparently isn't deterring Joe Biden. Perhaps it should. Pinhas Inbari,...

The Israeli government has been thrown into chaos as politicians in Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet threaten to resign. Pressure has continued to mount on the Israeli leader to find a postwar plan for Gaza even as the war shows no sign of ending. In the months following the devastating October 7 terrorist attack, Israeli politics has remained remarkably unified but that united front looks as though it is about to be shattered. On Saturday evening Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Netanyahu's war cabinet and his main rival for the top job, threatened to leave the government on June 8...

‘APRIL is the cruelest month,” poet T. S. Eliot famously declared. Joe Biden might beg to differ. June is shaping up as a potential nightmare for the 81-year-old president. His re-election, his legacy and son Hunter Biden’s freedom are all on the line over the course of a month-long gantlet. And he has only himself to blame. Biden’s surprising demand last week that Donald Trump debate him twice, with the first face-off in June, underscores his desperation to get his campaign back on track. His insistence on a televised showdown in a month already crammed with high-stakes events reveals that...

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...

No one can predict the future, of course, or if there will even be one. But all of us crystal ball gaze—if we live, it will be in today’s future. So, we make plans and contingencies based on our best guesses of what the short-term and long-term will bring. We do that individually, and we need to do it as a country. The re-election of Joe Biden in November, as improbable and horrifying as the thought is to right-thinking Americans, is far from impossible. All the polls tell us that, currently, Mr. Trump has the edge, but that the election...

President Trump’s election lawyer John Eastman on Friday was arrested in Phoenix on conspiracy, fraud, forgery and other felony charges related to the 2020 Trump alternate electors plan even though he had ZERO communication with the Arizona electors! Last month Trump 2020 alternate electors, GOP state legislators, former Arizona GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward and others were indicted by a state grand jury in Arizona. A total of 18 people involved in the Arizona alternate electors plan were indicted by the Arizona grand jury last month.

Anti-Israel protesters clashed with NYPD officers at a raucous demonstration in Brooklyn on Saturday, leading to at least a dozen arrests. Video showed part of the angry mob, some 250 strong, pushing back as police tried to move them towards the sidewalk in Bay Ridge. Cops eventually tackled and arrested several protesters, video shows.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) decision to appear this week at former President Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan is sparking new blowback from some House Republicans, who are questioning why he would inject himself so prominently in a case involving an alleged affair with a porn star. These Republicans, who requested to speak anonymously to discuss the sensitive topic, are accusing Johnson — a devout Southern Baptist who built a career around the fight for Christian values and moral conservatism — of undermining the party’s family values image simply to ingratiate himself with Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

Supporters of former President Donald Trump gathered together in the Bronx on Saturday to show their support for the former president ahead of his upcoming visit to the city. Trump’s campaign announced on Friday that the former president would be holding an event at Crotona Park in the South Bronx on May 23. In one video posted to X, Trump supporters could be seen walking through the streets holding a banner with the words, “The South Bronx for Donald Trump” as the people chanted, “Trump, Trump, Trump.

Roughly 75% of Americans drink coffee every day. That won’t be the case for long, apparently, if the elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, have their way. Did anyone notice what they were talking about back in January during the 2024 World Economic Forum's Davos get-together? During a recent WEF panel discussion, a reporter for Moneywise, in an item posted on Yahoo! Finance, reported that one speaker, some banker named Hubert Keller, remarked, “The coffee that we all drink emits between 15 and 20 tons of CO2 per ton of coffee.” Ominously, he added, “so we should...

Presidential candidate Donald Trump jokingly predicted that his opponent, President Joe Biden, would be so “jacked up” before their anticipated debate that he might request a drug test. Biden announced that he would participate in two debates against Trump hosted by CNN and ABC News. Trump offered some predictions surrounding the debate during the Minnesota Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner.“He’s going to be so jacked up for those, you watch,” Trump said of the debates. Later, he suggested he would “demand a drug test” before the two got on the debate stage. Speaking to attendees of the National Rifle...

Filmmaker Amanda Milius examines evidence of a conspiracy to sabotage President Donald Trump. Critic's Name Armond White Publication National Review The reviewThe Plot Against the President doesn't end with triumph and victory like Costa-Gavras's rousing Z. Neither does it end with vengeance like Red Dawn. Fact is, Milius has made a cliffhanger -- but with an informative explanation. Date Dec 9, 2020

A secret report has emerged from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that exposes the shocking impact of Covid mRNA injections on American children and young adults. The bombshell report shows that a staggering half a million American children and young adults have been killed by Covid shots. The CDC report has revealed that almost 500,000 Americans aged between 0 and 44 years old died from the dangerous side effects of the Covid mRNA injections. The recorded deaths occurred between the start of the public rollout of the shots in early 2021 and October 9, 2022. However,...

The city is keeping students’ safety on hold. The Adams administration has yet to publicly launch a school safety hotline promised at the start of the academic year, The Post has learned. City officials previously said the tip line was slated to debut last fall, but no official launch announcement or updates had been made since an October City Council hearing.

On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Surveillance,” Bloomberg columnist, economist, President of Queens’ College, Allianz Chief Economic Adviser, and former Obama Global Development Council Chair Dr. Mohamed El-Erian stated that the “sustainable energy” transition has helped create “a world that’s subject to higher inflation” than the world we had before.