Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After two decades of rising support for LGBTQ+ issues, U.S. attitudes have plateaued and begun to slide back modestly. Approval of same-sex marriage, moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relations, and endorsement of gender changes are all down from peaks reached in the early 2020s. While most Americans still favor legal same-sex marriages, the 65% who do so today is down six percentage points from the peak in 2022 and 2023. Similarly, the percentage viewing gay or lesbian relations as morally acceptable, 62%, has not been lower since 2016. And the share of Americans who consider changing...

President Donald Trump’s push to restore accountability across the federal government has triggered a major exodus of attorneys from federal agencies, with more than 10,000 lawyers leaving government service since the beginning of 2025, according to a New York Times analysis of federal employment data.The departures reveal the growing divide between the Trump administration and a legal establishment that has increasingly aligned itself with progressive politics and left-wing advocacy organizations.According to the report, roughly one in five government lawyers employed at the end of 2024 had left by March 2026. Despite federal agencies hiring approximately 3,200 lawyers during that period,...

US President Trump accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being the reason for global hatred of Israel in an angry call on Monday, Axios reported. Earlier on Monday, Iran had threatened to stop negotiating with the US due to Israel’s action in Lebanon, prompting the call in which Trump at one point yelled at Netanyahu, “What the f*** are you doing?” According to one US official, Trump felt that Netanyahu was reacting disproportionally to Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel. He objected to Israel destroying buildings to take out a single Hezbollah commander, and Israel’s threats against Beirut, Axios wrote. Another source...

Over the course of their lives, Americans have an average carbon footprint of 1,300 tons of CO2. Paris Ortiz-Wines, a young woman from San Francisco, has already canceled hers out. She could hop on a flight every week for the rest of her life, eat ribeyes at every meal and sip almond milk all day long, and still be in the clear. Back in 2021, Ortiz-Wines played a key role in the campaign that stopped the closure of California’s only nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon. This has already saved more than 30 million tons of CO2 emissions. Ortiz-Wines is part...

It was once a sacred place, ushering you inside with its signature red roof and comforting smell of bubbling cheese in a special era now known lovingly as "the '90s." In its prime, Pizza Hut wasn't just a restaurant chain — it was an experience. The stained glass lamps, red booths and red cups. The fully loaded salad bar. The Pac-Man machines to keep you entertained while you waited for your personal-pan pizza. "It was perfect," says one of many TikTok videos of the experience. "Felt like home," someone commented on another nostalgic video. Now, one of the largest franchisees...

The United Methodist Church’s experience with the disaffiliations of a number of its congregations has received widespread coverage in church media and in some secular media outlets. Because the polity of the UMC differs from that of many other denominations, this chapter in our denomination’s history may be confusing to those with different approaches to the ways congregations and whole denominations govern themselves. Some may find it helpful to learn of the steps that led to the disaffiliation process, what its effect has been upon the denomination and what it may hold for the future of the denomination in the...

VATICAN CITY—Pope Leo XIV warned that artificial intelligence “threatens to normalize an anti-human vision” and said that the concentration of immense digital power in the hands of a few private actors must be countered. The pontiff’s encyclical letter—a text that is poised to define Leo’s papacy—reads like a sharp warning to Silicon Valley executives and humanity more broadly about the future of civilization as new technologies rapidly advance. The risk, he said, is that humans will be reduced “to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.” Leo used two biblical images to describe the choice humanity faces....

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV called Monday for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind as the technology impacts everything from work to war. “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), Leo’s first encyclical, has been eagerly awaited ever since history’s first U.S.-born pope announced days after his election that he considered AI to be the biggest challenge facing humanity today. In the text, Leo denounced the “culture of power” driving the AI race, especially in developing ever more sophisticated methods of remote...

“Progress! Did you ever reflect that that word is almost a new one?” asked an enraptured Woodrow Wilson in 1913. “No words come more often or more naturally to the lips of modern man, as if the thing it stands for were almost synonymous with life itself, and yet men through many thousand years never talked or thought of progress.” Instead, Wilson claims, they thought only of the past as a golden era, a time in which morality and technology were superior. “Now all that has altered,” Wilson believes. “We think of the future, not the past, as the more...

In what would have once been viewed as career-ending rhetoric, a Democrat candidate running for Congress in Texas is now openly discussing prison camps for ideological opponents -- and doing so in a political environment where outrage, extremism, and online performance increasingly generate attention instead of condemnation. Maureen Galindo, a Democrat candidate for Texas' 35th Congressional District, stunned many Americans after comments in which she called for converting the Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for "American Zionists" and former ICE officers. Even more chilling, she suggested the facility could also become "a castration processing center for pedophiles, which...

When I first encountered the data on falling fertility rates, I was confident that I could explain them. The problem, surely, was that other people had failed to embrace my preferred political program. As both a conservative and a mother, I assumed that if we all embraced a culture that was more pro-family—and particularly pro-motherhood—then birth rates would shoot up. It all aligned perfectly with my ideological commitments. How neat. I’ve since realized that this is how most people respond to this issue because the data on fertility rates tend to function as a Rorschach test. Conservatives blame the collapse...

Scientists are warning that the collapse of Antarctica’s massive “doomsday glacier” could eventually redraw large parts of America’s coastline, threatening major cities from Florida to California with severe flooding and rising seas. Researchers say the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is becoming increasingly unstable, raising fears that its eventual collapse could contribute to dramatic long-term sea level rise. While the glacier itself could add around 65 centimeters (roughly 2 feet) to global sea levels, some scientists worry it could destabilize much larger sections of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—potentially contributing to sea level rise approaching 3 meters (nearly 10 feet)...

Sage Creek Elementary School, located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, has decided to jettison Mother’s Day and Father’s Day presents in favor of much vaguer “family” gifts, which the Increasingly Less White North’s National Post noted is “part of a new trend among some Canadian schools downplaying or eliminating the traditional parental celebrations.” Gee, I wonder why they are doing this. Just kidding. “Marriage” and “family” have been legally redefined in recent years — as leftists push to destroy both. After all, if you wish to destroy Western society, you must first weaken its foundation, shatter its building blocks.

But if Massie loses, it's not just the end of his career. (He told Mangu-Ward that if GOP primary voters send him packing, he's going back to his plow and "nobody will ever hear from me again"). It would also effectively be the end of what used to be called the Tea Party, a loose conglomeration of Republican representatives and senators who rode a wave of anti-Barack Obama and anti-George W. Bush sentiment to office in the early 2010s. Although some said that the tea in Tea Party stood for the "taxed-enough already," the rallying cry of the early Tea...

Americans no longer understand the biblical roots of our constitutional order. When a professor at Princeton begins a by recounting that students at one of the world’s most prestigious universities had to have the Ten Commandments explained to them, the natural reaction is disbelief. Surely Gregory Conti was exaggerating? But within days, his essay had drawn corroborating testimony from a chorus of academics at other elite institutions. A Northwestern professor teaching students who had never encountered the word “Exodus.” A former University of Virginia faculty member undergraduates who could not parse Martin Luther King Jr.’s references to that same story...

Democrat James Talarico is in striking distance of flipping Texas, according to a new poll of the Lone Star State’s 2026 Senate race released ahead of the Republican runoff between Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Democrats believe a favorable national environment, a weakened GOP nominee and reversion among Hispanic and Latino voters that shifted rightward in 2024 could create a perfect storm for them to flip Texas in the midterm elections. Texas has been a site of Democratic ambitions for several election cycles, but Republicans have held onto their iron grip of the state. However, the new...

The mainstream media’s outrage over religious expressions by government institutions and politicians is highly selective. At bottom, it the event is Christian, they attack. If it’s any other religion, they applaud. Did the mainstream media publish indignant diatribes when leftist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani held Muslim dinners at City Hall and Gracie Manor for Ramadan? The answer is no, of course they didn’t. Because Islam is celebrated by modern liberal movements and Christianity is despised. And, it’s important to take note of what leftists hate, because if they hate it, it’s probably good. [snip] Progressive outlets are in an uproar...

How commonplace is political violence these days? A man shooting at federal officers near the White House as JD Vance's motorcade passed by was barely mentioned in the papers. Still, the timing could not be better for Noah Rothman's new book, Blood & Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America. Ian Haworth returns to the Weekend Beacon with a review. “’This is a book about the assassins, the vandals, the small-cell terrorists, and the lizard-brained mobs that mete out destruction, violence, and death in the name of political causes and in the pursuit of political outcomes,’ Rothman declares, before...

A conservative law firm is suing state officials in federal court challenging Wisconsin’s ban on conversion therapy, arguing it amounts to unconstitutional “viewpoint discrimination.” The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, or WILL, announced the litigation Wednesday, saying it filed suit on behalf of licensed counselors Terri Koschnick and Joy Buchman, who both provide Christian faith-based counseling services. Gov. Tony Evers, Department of Safety and Professional Services Secretary Dan Hereth and members of the Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board are named as defendants in the suit.

In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.Democrats rarely mention our nation’s fertility crisis, but when they do, they always offer the same solution: more immigration. Here is former President Bill Clinton stumping for Vice President Kamala Harris in the most recent presidential election."We got the lowest birth rate we've had in well over 100 years,” Clinton told Harris supporters less than a...