Free Republic

Bad Bunny used his acceptance speech at the Grammy Awards on Sunday to denounce U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and call for the end of the ongoing immigration crackdown."Before I say thanks to God, I'm going to say ICE out," the Puerto Rican artist said as he accepted the Grammy for his album "Debí Tirar Más Fotos" in the música urbana album category. "We're not savage, we're not animals, we're not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans."His statement was met with applause and standing ovations. It came as protests against ICE took place across the country this weekend,...

Placed prominently within President Trump’s controversial “compact” for higher education was a call to center merit in admissions. The president’s offer to universities, which followed more than a decade of battles over what factors to consider in admissions, has sparked new debates about the meaning and value of merit. In particular, some college-admissions officials have pushed back on the idea that merit exists or have said that they have more meritorious individuals than spots. The second claim is partially true, but the first is not. Many selective colleges offer even more selective merit-based scholarships, which shows that they have at...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations chief is warning that the world body faces “imminent financial collapse” unless its financial rules are overhauled or all 193 member nations pay their dues — a message likely directed at the United States and the billions it owes. ......President Donald Trump has repeatedly said the United Nations has potential but has not lived up to it. His administration has withdrawn from U.N. organizations like the World Health Organization and the cultural agency UNESCO, while pulling funding from dozens of others....

Texas A&M University is ending its women’s and gender studies program, changing the syllabuses of hundreds of courses and canceling six classes as part of a new policy that limits how professors can discuss some race and gender topics, school officials announced Friday. The changes to and cancellation of courses comes months after a viral video of a student confronting an instructor over her lessons threw Texas A&M, one of the largest universities in the country, into upheaval. University officials tried to reassure the campus that the impacts of the new policy would be minimal, affecting only a small portion...

The eldest son of Norway’s crown princess will go on trial Tuesday on multiple charges including rape in a high-profile case that has been an embarrassment to the royal family. Marius Borg Høiby is facing the Oslo district court after being indicted in August following a lengthy investigation. The indictment includes 38 counts, among them rape, abuse in a close relationship against one former partner, acts of violence against another and transporting 7.7 pounds of marijuana. Other charges include making death threats and traffic violations. Prosecutors have said the 29-year-old could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted...

This blows! A Massachusetts man accidentally set his home on fire while using a blowtorch to melt ice stubbornly clinging to his roof after the winter storm that battered the Northeast last week. The homeowner in Milton, Mass. decided to get creative while attempting to tackle the sheets of ice cemented to his roof. He whipped out a blowtorch, scaled a ladder and got to work. But minutes into the endeavor, his roof caught fire and flames spilled into the gutter, Local 12 reported. The man was able to slide off the ladder and rushed inside to call 911. When...

It is truly remarkable how easy it is to fool the smartest people. And especially when you tell them they are helping to save the world. So something called the Federal Judicial Center has just come out with a new edition, the 4th, of something called the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The publication date appears to be December 31, 2025. The idea that the federal government, and in particular the judiciary, needs a reference manual on scientific evidence seems to date from the 1990s. The courts, then as now, were facing an increasing volume of cases involving complex scientific...

A suspected biological laboratory raided by Metro police and the FBI may be connected to a similar incident in California, where officials found infectious agents such as HIV and malaria, the 8 News Now Investigators have learned. Police and the FBI searched the home on Saturday, Jan. 31, finding a “possible biological laboratory,” including “refrigerators with vials containing unknown liquids,” police said. Shortly before 6 a.m., a Metro SWAT team served a search warrant at the home on Sugar Springs Drive near Washington Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard to search for a possible “biological laboratory” inside the home. A second location...

I browse various classifieds and see more and more ads for people selling their guitars. And the same guitars seem to languish on the market. With the evolution of techno music, Eddie Van Halen and Angus Young guitar licks don't seem to be instant crowd pleasers/chick magnets like the old days. Or, am I just out of touch?

There's a fascinating anecdote in an oral history of Martin Scorsese's 1985 dark comedy After Hours. Griffin Dunne, who played the film's protagonist Paul Hackett, recalls the director's apartment in New York's Tribeca neighbourhood, where Scorsese "had devoted a room in his loft to maybe 15 VCRs that ran 24 hours a day. He would go through the TV Guide and circle the movies that an assistant had to record from television. Quite often he would hand me a VHS tape and go, 'Griffin, this is a noir movie that reminds me of the kind of tone I like for...

Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House has been a parade of bold, daring accomplishments. Few presidents would dare to dream of matching it. Elected with a resounding mandate in 2024, Trump wasted no time implementing a transformative agenda that reshaped the nation in tangible, measurable ways. He secured the Mexican border with unprecedented rigor. He is revitalizing the economy through deregulation and tax relief. From brokering international peace deals to dismantling bureaucratic waste, Trump’s administration compiled 365 wins in 365 days. On immigration, Trump achieved negative net migration for the first time in fifty years, removing over 2.6...

President Donald Trump has threatened to sue Grammy's host Trevor Noah for making "false and defamatory" comments regarding his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Writing on Truth Social, Trump said: "Noah said, INCORRECTLY about me, that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. WRONG!!! I can't speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close, and until tonight's false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the Fake News Media.

🚨WATCH: 'What we found was deeply concerning' Scott Dexter, a former Minnesota Department of Human Services investigator, testified to Congress that he spent nearly three decades conducting criminal and financial fraud investigations, including in the state’s Child Care Assistance Program before political pressure and bureaucratic hurdles brought meaningful investigations to a halt. After joining DHS in 2013 as part of a newly formed fraud unit, Dexter said his team focused on data-driven cases. “Our cases were not selected based on the name of the center, the owner, or the community it served,” Dexter told lawmakers. “They were selected based solely...

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem 🇮🇱(2/2/26)[Prayer]A New Study For A New Year: PersonalitiesGenesis 21:1-821 And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken. 2 For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. 3 And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. 4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him. 5 And Abraham was an hundred...

One after the other, they're going down. It seems our U.S attorneys and other prosecutors have been busy! Georgia, Massachusetts, California, Michigan, Louisiana, and Oklahoma have all seen arrests recently of Democrats in various positions from state legislatures to city councils. Way to go! First, to the great state of Georgia, where they’ve been arresting Democrats left and right, evidently. “Georgia Democrat State Rep. Dexter Sharper was charged with defrauding the federal government by falsely claiming unemployment while he earned income.” Next, up to crazy liberal Massachusetts where a one-time “Bostonian of the Year,” Monica Cannon-Grant is up on public...

Last fall, when New York’s business community warned that the election of a self-described democratic socialist as mayor would trigger an assault on the city’s economic engine, we were waved off as hysterical. The press assured us that Zohran Mamdani was "evolving," that his rhetoric would soften, that we should focus instead on his vague promises of "affordability." That reassurance evaporated almost instantly. Barely two weeks after his swearing-in — amid lofty rhetoric about the "warmth of collectivism" — the Mamdani administration unveiled its real agenda. Sam Levine, the newly installed commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection...

"Physician, heal thyself!” Jesus said to those gathered in the synagogue at Nazareth. The admonition was aimed at hypocrisy and moral blindness — a warning that those who presume authority must first examine their own conduct. Today, someone needs to repeat those words to health care professionals who have allowed Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) to corrode their ethics and professionalism. That warning applies just as much to nursing as it does to medicine. Nursing emerged as a modern profession in the mid-19th century under the leadership of Florence Nightingale. In 1893, the Nightingale Pledge codified the profession’s moral foundation, committing...

When the mother of a black Texas middle schooler claimed in 2021 that a group of white students made her son drink urine, media outlets from NBC to CNN and ABC covered the story. “Texas authorities investigating allegations of racism and bullying of a 13-year-old by his classmates during sleepover,” a CNN headline blared. Nearly five years later, we’re learning it was a giant hoax. None of the outlets that covered the case have written follow-up stories despite the lurid (and defamatory) nature of the allegations... Last month, a Texas district court judge in Collin County, in suburban Dallas, ordered...

The cold is sticking around for a little longer. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow after emerging from his den in Pennsylvania on Monday morning — signifying six more weeks of winter. If the world-famous prognosticating groundhog had not seen his shadow, it would’ve meant spring was near.

When we talk about political violence, we almost always assume that its perpetrators are young men. That makes sense: men are statistically more likely to engage in physical aggression and get arrested for violent crimes at higher rates. At the same time, many are dealing with rising unemployment, declining educational achievement, and growing social disengagement. Given all that, researchers may reasonably assume that young men are driving greater tolerance for political violence. New data complicate that assumption. A recent survey by the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers found that under certain conditions, women were more likely than men to...