Free Republic

The Student Experience Research Network sounds innocuous enough. The organization says it exists to "advance the research, relationships, and capacity necessary to build an education system in which every student experiences respect as a valued person and thinker." In reality, the group funds research with the goal of promoting DEI practices in education and partners with other left-wing organizations to promote "inclusive mathematics environments" and push universities to abandon standardized tests. Earlier this month, the Student Experience Research Network took a victory lap after the University of California system said it would toss out the SAT in its admissions process....

President Biden is taking flak for sending cluster bombs to Ukraine, and over the weekend he blurted out the truth that both Kyiv and the U.S. are running low on firepower. So why doesn’t the Commander in Chief unveil a new national effort to expand U.S. weapons production and stocks? “The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition,” Mr. Biden told CNN. “This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it.” The U.S. has given Kyiv more than two million 155mm artillery rounds, and the Pentagon says Ukraine is burning through...

Damien Cook broke a Maryland state record when he reeled in a 21-pound northern snakehead. Photo courtesy of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources July 7 (UPI) -- A Maryland angler broke a state record when he reeled in a northern snakehead that weighed in at a whopping 21 pounds. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources said Damien Cook of Rhodesville was fishing from his kayak in a Dorchester County river when he hooked the invasive fish. "Honestly, I thought it was just your average 30-inch snakehead when I first hooked the fish," Cook told DNR officials. "It pulled hard...

A helicopter crash in Nepal, near Mount Everest, has left six people dead, according to Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority. File Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA-EFE July 11 (UPI) -- A helicopter crash in Nepal, near Mount Everest, has left six people dead. Five of the victims were Mexican citizens on a sightseeing tour, while the sixth was a Nepalese pilot. The passengers, who have been identified as Maria Jose Sifuentes, Fernando Sifuentes, Abric Gonzalez, Ismael Rincon and Olacio Luz Gonzalez, were all from the same family. The pilot was identified as Nepalese citizen Chet B. Gurung, according to the Civil Aviation...

The dangerous hate of Catholic homophobia | OpinionFor the sixth year, my parish, Our Lady of Grace in Hoboken, celebrated a Pride Mass on the last Sunday in June. We do it on the day Pride celebrations occur all over the world but for a different reason: Ours spiritually affirms the dignity of each person as a child of God.And for the sixth year, about a dozen people protested the Mass across the street from the church in front of the dog run in Church Square Park. For only one day a year, I wished the dogs drowned out the...

Bel Powley stars as Miep Gies in the Disney+ series 'A Small Light' (Video screenshot) How far will Hollywood "progressives" go to advance their agenda of celebrating all things LGBT? Evidently, as far as taking a real historical figure and making him homosexual – with zero evidence – as a tool to inject "queer" history into the storyline. Tony Phelan and Joan Rater are the husband-and-wife creators of the popular historical mini-series "A Small Light," about Miep Gies, a Dutch woman who famously helped hide Anne Frank's family and other Jews from Nazi occupiers carrying out Hitler's "Final Solution" in...

Walmart is closing 22 retail locations across the US this year, including four in Chicago, citing poor financial performance at each. In the latest move, Walmart confirmed Monday that it plans to close a store in Richmond, Virginia, on July 28. "We are grateful to the customers who have given us the privilege of serving them at our Brook Road Neighborhood Market location," Walmart spokesperson Felicia McCranie said in an emailed statement to Insider. "We look forward to serving them at our other stores in the surrounding communities including our Brook Road Supercenter just two miles away and on walmart.com."...

Visitors to Disney theme parks this summer are encountering something they haven’t seen in a while: elbow room. Travel analysts and advisers say traffic to Disney’s U.S. parks, and some rival parks, has slowed this summer. Data from a travel company that tracks line-waiting time at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., shows that the Independence Day weekend was one of the slowest in nearly a decade. Disney executives have said they have expected weaker earnings from their U.S. parks this year. The Orlando-area resort is even offering hotel discounts around Christmas, typically a peak period. Travel advisers and industry...

Unsold electric cars continue to pile up on dealer lots amid the auto industry’s apparent misjudgment of buyers’ demands while attempting to compete with Tesla. Most notably, luxury brands are struggling with high inventories of EVs that nobody wants to purchase. With the increasing discrepancy between electric car supply and demand signals, there is a big looming public concern over buying an EV due to charging concerns and the hefty price tag. As Axios reported, senior manager of economic and industry insights at Cox Automotive, Jonathan Gregory, linked the situation to the 1989 film Field of Dreams, which coined the...

The Heritage Foundation is out with a new roadmap on how to reform the FBI as the federal law enforcement agency continues to be embroiled in controversy and civil liberties violations. "The FBI’s chilling record of politicized abuses and the executive branch’s continuing misuse of federal intelligence authorities to target the exercise of free speech and other constitutional rights of Americans gives Congress clear and compelling grounds for enacting forceful reforms, starting with the FBI," a recently released Heritage report states about the need for reform. "In fact, the time is ripe for Congress to consider a complete reconstruction of...

Democrat President Joe Biden has committed the biggest blunder in the history of modern warfare. But the blame is not his alone, however, as Congress, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), deserves some of it too. According to multiple media reports, and Biden’s own mouth, we are running out of ammunition because Ukraine is hoovering it all up. Biden is also running the strategic oil reserve low for political reasons but running out of munitions is beyond the pale. And begs the question, what are we getting for our nearly trillion-dollar-a-year defense budget? Russia spends a fraction of what we...

A @NYTimes essay by @TareqBaconi justifies, and ultimately cheers, murdering Israeli civilians How many ways can one minimize and then legitimize terror attacks against Jews? Tareq Baconi, former senior analyst for Israel/Palestine at the International Crisis Group and the author of “Hamas Contained” who is now president of the board of al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, displays a lot of them in New York Times guest essay. Purportedly an analysis of Jenin, he breaks new ground in first obfuscating, and ultimately justifying, Palestinian attacks on civilians .. Latest virus in israelophobia is the term: "resistance". The Pallywoody whitewashing of raw...

In my first op-ed addressing LGBTQ-affirmation in the Church, I ended with this statement: “True compassion affirms the reality of God’s design while offering competent help to those who desire it.” This is an understanding sadly lost in contemporary Christianity, let alone the whole society.But it should be readily apparent. If an ER doctor encounters a patient with an arm unable to move, the doctor would be perfectly reasonable to assume the individual has sustained some sort of trauma, such as a stroke or a dislocated shoulder or other condition. And the doctor’s compassion would be demonstrated by his efforts...

In the last couple of months, thousands more houses of worship have left the United Methodist Church, having their disaffiliation votes approved by their UMC conferences. Updated totals show that as many as 6,000 churches have fled the UMC in the last couple of years — and the issue shows no signs of slowing down. "For the last several ... decades, the United Methodist Church has been in a big debate about whether to change its official stance on LGBT issues," Christian Post reporter Michael Gryboski explained on “The Inside Story” podcast. "At present, the UMC prohibits the blessing of...

It takes real skill to drive this many customers away. ===================================================== Tweet See new Tweets Conversation Old Spook 👻 @maxheadroom470 Disney World in Orlando is suffering - here it is nearly mid-July, schools are out, families are on vacation, and the streets at Disney are just about empty! ====================================================== The July 4th weekend was a 10-year-low for the massive company's Disney World amusement park in Orlando, but all the parks have been suffering recently. More from The Wall Street Journal: Park visitors in recent weeks have had significantly lower wait times to get on rides, according to data from Touring...

The skies are dark and hazy across the Midwest after inducing eerie yellow billows across the North and East. Residents of Western states such as California and Montana are used to such evidence of wildfires, but not residents of Midwestern and Eastern U.S. states. So this haze blanket stretching south from Canada feels surreal, even apocalyptic.Even more apocalyptic is the political context. We’re two months away from the Biden administration potentially letting the United Nations seize power over the entire United States indefinitely in the event of whatever it defines as a “global shock.” One of the potential emergencies warranting...

How can GOP candidates admit that 2020 was rigged against Trump voters, and then ask those voters to abandon Trump?You might have noticed a media narrative taking shape the last few days about how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign has “stalled.” A Politico Playbook item over the weekend described it as a “failure to launch,” noting that polling for DeSantis peaked in January at 40.5 percent and has since settled in the low 20s amid a barrage of attacks from former President Donald Trump.Playbook also cited other news outlets recently casting doubt on the DeSantis operation, from fundraising struggles...

Here’s something coming without delays. New research warns that rapidly rising underground heat in subway stations is well on its way to becoming a “silent hazard” that will wreck transit systems and cause health issues for straphangers in the not-so-distant future. “Subsurface temperature rises can also cause transportation infrastructure and public health issues, such as overheated subway rails that force trains to slow down or stop to avoid incidents with significant economic costs associated with the delay of public transportation services,” warns Northwestern engineering professor Alessandro Rotta Loria in a study released Tuesday. Making matters worse, the hellishly hot platform...

A young person has told BBC News they felt threatened by the BBC presenter at the centre of a row over payment for sexually explicit photos. The individual in their early 20s was first contacted anonymously by the male presenter on a dating app. They say they were put under pressure to meet up but never did. When the young person hinted online they might name the presenter, they were sent abusive, expletive-filled messages. Speaking to BBC News, the young person - who has no connection to the person at the centre of the Sun's story about payments for photos...

Seriously, man … how embarrassing can one company get? For over three months since its partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, beer giant Bud Light has been getting rocked with embarrassment on a daily basis. For both Bud Light and its umbrella brand Anheuser-Busch, sales have completely tanked. And speaking of that umbrella, it’s been getting slammed with heavy rain as Anheuser-Busch’s stocks have come down as well. And what’s been A-B’s plan in an attempt to get out of their Mulvaney disaster? To just simply act like nothing ever happened. Instead of just owning up to their stupidity and...