Free Republic

The China-backed Confucius Institute is rebranding to avoid public scrutiny into its work disseminating propaganda to thousands of American students. United States government oversight and faculty pushback have curtailed the influence of the Confucius Institute, which has dwindled from 103 college branches in 2017 to just 51 today. But the propaganda program is not going away without a fight. Experts say that after host institutions shutter Confucius Institutes, some of the programs continue to operate by adopting new names. The rebranding has allowed the Beijing-backed influence program to continue to shape the education of students from kindergartners to college students....

A judge has ruled that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson violated state law last year when she issued “guidance” on how absentee ballots should be evaluated. State Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray ruled last week that Benson, a Democrat, did not follow the proper rule-making process when instructing voting clerks in October to presume the accuracy of absentee ballot signatures, and the guidance is now invalid, according to the Detroit News. "The presumption is found nowhere in state law," Murray, a Republican-appointed judge, wrote in the ruling. "The mandatory presumption goes beyond the realm of mere advice and...

GAO has no option other than to find that President Biden’s pause of the border wall funds is unlawful and should issue an opinion stating the Biden administration has broken the law.Last Congress, many Democrats, including Rep. John Yarmuth, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, claimed the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) broke the law when it paused the obligation of funds to Ukraine for 50 days to determine the best use for them. On the very first day of his administration, however, President Biden directed that funding specifically appropriated to build the wall along the...

Enjoy!Dennis Day sings "Danny Boy" on the Jack Benny Show. St. Patrick's Day 1946.

Atlanta massage parlor shooting suspect Robert Aaron Long took "full responsibility" for the string of Tuesday night attacks that left eight people dead and another person injured, authorities said Wednesday. Police officials said the events were not believed to have been racially motivated, and Long instead allegedly opened fire because he saw the locations as "an outlet for him" to succumb to purported sex-addiction temptations, police and officials said during a news conference. Long, 21, was allegedly on his way to Florida at the time of his Tuesday night arrest and indicated he was potentially going "to carry out additional...

For nearly a year now, we've been monitoring the shift toward enabling digital "passports" that will allow at least some people - those wealthy and/or fortunate enough to get their hands on the vaccine - to continue traveling and going about their lives as normal, while others are forced to continue living with COVID-inspired restrictions, potentially for years.According to a draft plan leaked to the FT, Brussels has proposed the creation of a COVID certificate to allow EU citizens who have been vaccinated, who have recently tested negative, or who can provide proof of recovery to move around the bloc...

Look, for those of you sitting there thinking, hey, Michelle was asked the question, she just answered it, just stop it. First of all, Michelle Obama doesn’t just willy nilly walk onto a set or pick up a ringing phone and talk to reporters unprepared. She and Jenna Bush unquestionably communicated prior to that interview, so that Michelle could carefully prepare answers to the questions she knew would be asked. It is entirely likely, in fact, that Michelle herself actually suggested that line of questioning so that she could roll out that specific answer. In fact, it is entirely likely...

After a much anticipated and hyped federal investigation and intelligence report into 'Russia-linked cyber attacks' found (gasp... or rather entirely as expected in yet the latest repackaged iteration of long deflated Russiagate) the Kremlin mounted an online 'interference' campaign related to the 2020 election, President Biden said in a bombshell ABC News interview that he agrees Vladimir Putin is a "killer" and that he's going to pay a price. CNN reports sanctions are likely coming, specifically targeting "people close to Russia President Vladimir Putin as soon as next week."Here's the key part of the pre-recorded interview with George Stephanopoulos which...

Londonderry Air isn't "O Danny Boy", that came a decade later, it was originally "An Irish Love Song". Would God that I, might be an apple blossom, that falls and floats, from off the twisted bough, to find a home, beside your tender blushes, and gently lie, where lies that blossom now. Or would I were, a little burnished apple, for you to gather gliding by so fair, while shade and sun, your robe of lawn will dapple, and hide together in your crown of golden hair. Or, would that I were one among the roses, that bow to greet...

There is a direct line from those who attacked the Trump administration for “family separation” at the border to the current pain and suffering of thousands of migrant children. Now that the Biden administration has carried out a policy these critics argued for, the result is a humanitarian disaster, and those who were most vocal about the care of migrant children are now silent.First, the backstory. A legal ruling says the federal government can’t detain migrant children in the United States for more than 20 days. If adults bring children with them to the southern U.S. border, assuming these children...

VIDEOWatch Joe Biden debate Joe Biden debate each other over the border surge. One Joe Biden says "don't come" to the border while the other Joe Biden demanded that they "surge to the border." Finally, a third Joe Biden interjects to declare that he has given up on the border by not even bothering to appear there.

President Biden came to the defense of his German shepherd rescue dog Major after he caused what the President described as "a minor incident" last week at the White House. Biden said Major, one of his two German shepherds, was just startled in his new home when he caused what the White House called a "minor injury" to someone last week. "You turn a corner, and there's two people you don't know at all," Biden said in an interview with ABC's Good Morning America. "And he moves to protect. But he's a sweet dog. Eighty-five percent of the people there...

The third and last remaining commissioner of the Texas utilities regulator resigned under pressure on Tuesday after the release of comments to investors vowing to protect utility profits and dismissing financial hits from a cold snap on municipal power companies. The resignation came soon after the disclosure of inflammatory comments by the Public Utility Commission Chair Arthur D’Andrea in a March 9 call with Bank of America utilities’ analysts. The call took place two days before he was to consider rescinding billions of dollars payment to utilities. His stance against repricing helped sink a proposal this week to cut $4.1...

From the beginning of the COVID-19/Wuhan virus epidemic, China's communist government has lied about the disease, its origin and its transmissibility. It has also avoided an accurate accounting of the contagion's health and economic consequences within the Peoples Republic, always insisting Chinese Communist Party leadership has minimized the pandemic's effects. We know for a fact that since early January 2020, CCP lies, denials and obfuscations have exacted a heavy worldwide price in human illness, in human lives lost and in economic damage. A Wall Street Journal article recently revealed Chinese officials didn't inform their own Chinese Center for Disease Control...

A Michigan judge ruled last week that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s last October guidance relating to ballot signature verification was not in compliance with the law and thus it’s invalid. Michigan Republican Party and Allegan County clerk Robert Genetski filed the lawsuit on Nov. 2, 2020, against Benson and Jonathan Brater, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections. The plaintiffs claimed that the guidance Benson issued last October violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and should be nullified. They also asked the court to declare that they have the right to request an audit of their choosing, saying the...

Two members of Congress are asking the Navy to pull three books promoting identity politics and wokeness from its official reading list. The books teach young sailors that they’re being asked to fight and possibly die for “a systemically racist country,” the lawmakers say. The books—“How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi; “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander; and “Sexual Minorities and Politics” by Jason Pierceson—are listed as part of the Chief of Naval Operations Professional Reading Program. All Navy personnel pledge to defend the Constitution, yet these books portray America as fundamentally bigoted, Reps. Doug Lamborn,...

Nationalism and globalism are on a collision course and the future of civilization is at stake. “Progressive nationalism ... seeks to impose a highly specific and controversial vision of social order,” warned George Washington University Professor Samuel Goldman, as reported March 16 in The Christian Post by Ryan Foley. Meanwhile, Pope Francis proposes a new world order of globalism to counteract all the rising nationalisms.[1] “The world will never be the same again (because of the COVID pandemic),” said the Pontiff. However, “it is precisely within this calamity that we must grasp those signs which may prove to be the...

The nation’s cultural elites have been gripped by an intense wave of moral panic since the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol. That panic has found expression in higher education in renewed efforts to curtail the speech rights and academic freedoms of the already near-extinct members of the campus community who dissent against woke orthodoxies. Attempts by activist faculty at Stanford University to curtail the independence of scholars at the Hoover Institution, for instance, reflect this new sense of empowerment. Clearly, the academic left has taken on a mission to eliminate all conservative and classical liberal critique, now...

When I first heard about Columbia University’s “segregated graduations,” I immediately thought it was just one more example of the woke segregation too often championed by proponents of Marxist critical race theory. After all, black students at New York University recently demanded segregated housing — although the university didn’t agree. Separate graduations for different identity groups seems horrifyingly plausible these days. On further investigation, however, I found that the story wasn’t quite the outrage I thought it was. Columbia University had simply used unclear language that left the wrong impression about its graduation events. Fox News reported that Columbia University’s...

A clearly frustrated Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill has excused two of the jurors already selected to serve in Derek Chauvin's murder trial before news of $27million settlement in the George Floyd’s family’s civil suit was reported. Cahill interviewed seven jurors Wednesday morning and was satisfied that only five could still serve as fair and impartial in the trial of the former Minneapolis police officer charged following the death of the 46-year-old black man last spring. The judge was critical of the announced settlement, which he described as ‘unfortunate’ in its timing.