Free Republic

Mike Pence is back on the Trump Train following the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Pence heaped praise upon Trump for the attack, which has sharply divided many of the president’s conventional supporters, during an interview on Sunday’s edition of Fox News Channel’s The Story with Martha MacCallum. MacCallum began the conversation with a clip of Pence trashing the president. “The things that you point out there, the importance of the free world and the fact that President Trump made this very gutsy move, I just want to go back to the pre-election period in 2024, because you joined...

The Supreme Court issued decisions in six cases today, so that leaves just ten cases remaining on its docket for the term. It’s now possible to hazard a decent guess as to which justice will write the majority opinion in each of the remaining cases.… … …The two remaining cases from April are both big: Kennedy v. Braidwood Management (Appointments Clause challenge to Preventive Services Task Force) and Mahmoud v. Taylor (religious rights of public-school parents). Alito, Kagan, and Jackson haven’t written for April. I’ll guess Alito for Mahmoud. I can’t see either Kagan or Jackson being assigned to write...

Explanation: How do stars form? Images of the star forming region W5 like those in the infrared by NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, later NEOWISE) satellite provide clear clues with indications that massive stars near the center of empty cavities are older than stars near the edges. A likely reason for this is that the older stars in the center are actually triggering the formation of the younger edge stars. The triggered star formation occurs when hot outflowing gas compresses cooler gas into knots dense enough to gravitationally contract into stars. In the featured scientifically colored infrared image,...

As California braces for another wildfire season, forestry experts warn that decades of regulatory mismanagement — not climate change or Trump-era budget cuts — have left forests dangerously overloaded with fuel. Democrats have blamed climate change and agency rollbacks for creating tinderbox conditions, but forestry experts see a self-inflicted wound that began festering as far back as the Clinton administration. Three decades of environmental litigation, they say, has warped forest management into a Byzantine maze of legal delays and procedural dead ends — leaving millions of acres to accumulate fuel faster than anyone can clear it. The blame game intensified...

On Monday’s America This Week Walter Kirn read from a bizarre introduction to his 75th Anniversary edition paperback edition of 1984. Written by Harvard-educated author Dolen Perkins-Valdez, it came with a trigger warning. I had to go looking for the foreword by Perkins-Valdez, a black female writer whose Twitter page features a line from the “discussion questions” portion of her book Take My Hand: “History repeats what we don’t remember.”In Take My Hand Perkins-Valdez stressed the importance of remembering episodes like the Tuskegee syphilis experiments and the use of the Henrietta Lacks cell line. Her essay about 1984 argues at...

Two whales allokelping, with a small length of kelp stem visible between them. (Credit: Center for Whale Research, NMFS NOAA Permit 27038) In a nutshell Southern resident killer whales are making tools from kelp to groom each other—the first documented case of tool manufacturing in marine mammals This “allokelping” behavior involves coordinated teamwork between whale pairs and appears to serve both hygiene and social bonding functions The behavior is unique to this critically endangered population and could be threatened by climate change affecting kelp forests ================================================================= FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash. — Scientists have spotted something extraordinary: killer whales are crafting their...

"Can't deny." Looks like CNN has fallen back on those words to cover those unfortunate situations where—much as commentators would like to diminish the accomplishments of the Trump administration or address inconvenient truths—pesky facts have made that impossible. Thus it was that last month, commenting on the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers outside the DC Jewish museum, we caught CNN security analyst Juliette Kayyem, a former Obama DHS appointee, saying: "We can't deny [that] the suspect said Free Palestine." Sorry, Juliette. It would have been ever so much better if he had yelled, "Jews will not replace us!" The...

Rosie O’Donnell took to social media on Monday to promote a “recount” of President Donald Trump’s landslide victory over former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. The comedian shared a post to her Instagram Story from social media influencer Joe Braxton, who claimed that Tesla CEO Elon Musk “hacked and stole” the 2024 presidential election in his demand for a “recount.” “We Demand A Recount!” the online influencer exclaimed in the caption of his Instagram post, which was shared by O’Donnell. Braxton went on to bizarrely alleged that “Elon hacked and stole the election, then created a department...

The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, slipped quietly into the depths of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), embodies the insidious nature of modern propaganda. This Act, a malignant offshoot of the original Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, dismantles the barriers that once stood between American citizens and the persuasive machinery of U.S. government-sponsored propaganda. With the stroke of a legislative pen, the distinction between truth and state-sanctioned narrative was rendered ambiguous, blurring the line between informed citizenry and manipulated populace.The original Smith-Mundt Act, birthed in the aftermath of World War II, sought to wield the power of information as a...

EDGARTOWN, MA — With the news that the U.S. military had carried out a successful bombing operation in Iran over the weekend, former President Barack Obama was reportedly distraught that President Donald Trump had bombed the cool nuke factory he had paid for. After several days of speculation, Trump revealed that the U.S. had carried out air strikes to destroy several of Iran's key nuclear research sites, leaving Obama despondent that the facilities he had fronted the Iranians billions of dollars to build were now gone. "All those years of money and hard work just blown to bits," Obama was...

In a shocking display of leftist hypocrisy, a group of activists stopped Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from arresting a known illegal alien child predator in the Denver, Colorado, area, with ICE later confirming on social media that the alien was convicted of and wanted in Italy. For context, in a post on social media on June 21, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) explained that a group of their agents had been prevented from arresting a dangerous illegal immigrant criminal from El Salvador named Jose Reyes Leon-Deras, when a group of anti-ICE activists arrived on the scene...

Talk about getting Jim Cramered. The Atlantic’s pompous loudmouth of a staff writer David Frum committed an unforced error by publicly showcasing how he literally knows nothing about the Trump Doctrine on military strategy or foreign policy. Frum attempted to make it seem like Iran had President Trump’s number in a June 21 screed, “The mullahs of Iran join the bet that Trump always chickens out.” Frum was responding to Trump’s retrospectively deceptive tactic to make it appear he was waiting two weeks before making a decision on whether the U.S. would conduct targeted strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “A...

Israel has reportedly sent messages to Iran through intermediaries that it intends to end the ongoing war within days — despite the fact that it has been accelerating its attacks and widening its targets this week. The Times of Israel cited Israel’s Channel 12: “Israel has sent messages to Iran that Jerusalem is aiming for the air and missile war between the sides to end in days, Channel 12 reports.” Report: Israel Sends Message to Iran That War Is Nearing End A sign with an Iranian and Israeli flag that was set up up a while ago is pictured at...

Bidenflation is over. But if you feel like prices still aren't falling, you're not alone. Since Donald Trump took office, inflation has plunged from a Biden-era 5 percent to just 1.4%. This is actually below the Fed's target of 2%. Normally, at this point, the Fed would be trying to pump inflation since it's "too low." Of course, for the American people, 1.4% is not "too low." What they want is falling prices, as in take it back to pre-Biden prices. Will that happen? In short, no. Prices will never durably fall until we get rid of the Federal Reserve....

President Donald Trump took a swipe at former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for suggesting that other countries would step in to supply Iran with nuclear warheads in retaliation for the U.S. strikes on Saturday that targeted three Iranian nuclear facilities. "Did I hear Former President Medvedev, from Russia, casually throwing around the ‘N word’ (Nuclear!), and saying that he and other Countries would supply Nuclear Warheads to Iran? Did he really say that or, is it just a figment of my imagination? If he did say that, and, if confirmed, please let me know, IMMEDIATELY. The ‘N word’ should not...

Tonight this creep is attacking Trump for attacking Iran; earlier this month he was taunting Trump for negotiating with Iran. There is no brain left; there is just a partisan reflex. What Trump does is wrong; no other thoughts exist or are even necessary. *********************************************************** Chuck Schumer @SenSchumer · Jun 2 If TACO Trump is already folding on Iran, the American people need to know about it. No side deals. 0:36 VIDEO AT LINK.................

[exceprt]To determine the regulatory burden that each state (and Washington, D.C.) places on private schools, we used The School Starter Checklist as a reference document and then classified regulations across eight areas. They were:Regulation, Accreditation, Approval, and LicensureNonprofit RequirementsSchool Day and YearCurriculumRecord KeepingTestingTeacher CertificationHealth and Safety Our classification system follows a stoplight pattern. “Green” regulations are reasonable and appropriate. “Yellow” regulations could be appropriate or problematic, depending on how the state enforces them. We do not and cannot have granular knowledge about how each state interprets every one of its regulations, but we also want to compare states to each...

Well, here’s a shocker, indeed: A thought bubble can get thought-bubbly. Could you have pictured this? I couldn’t, especially after the very-successful, not-at-all-astroturfed hubbub around X alternative Bluesky after Elon Musk bought Twitter and made it free-speech friendly. We were all told that Bluesky — a decentralized microblogging platform that launched in 2023 — was going to overtake X because of Elon’s toxicity, since all of the legacy media was headed there. The American left, in particular, wanted to get off of the legacy platform and build something of their own. Well, why not? After all, as they told conservatives...

The Trump administration has sued Texas and Kentucky over laws allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition. Students wonder if the federal government will target California, which passed its law in 2001. States’ in-state tuition laws, often enacted with bipartisan support, have faced growing challenges. For 24 years, immigrants lacking documentation who graduated from high school in California have received in-state tuition benefits at public colleges and universities under a law that’s given tens of thousands access to higher education that many couldn’t otherwise afford. When the California Legislature passed Assembly Bill 540 in 2001, it was the second state...

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene launched a blistering assault on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez, castigating her as a “pathetic little hypocrite” for supporting U.S. military involvement in Ukraine under President Biden, only to suddenly posture as anti‑war today. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez (D‑NY) condemned President Trump’s decisive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities as “clearly grounds for impeachment,” accusing him of a “grave violation” of constitutional war powers. AOC immediately took to the public stage, calling Trump’s actions “disastrous” and “impulsive,” warning they risked “ensnaring us for generations in a war.” She and other Democrats have begun floating articles of impeachment, claiming the president...