Free Republic

For many of us in the legal community, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump borders on the legally obscene: an openly political prosecution based on a theory even legal pundits dismiss. Yet Monday the prosecution seemed to actually make a case for obscenity. It wasn’t the gratuitous introduction of an uncharged alleged tryst with a former Playboy Bunny or expected details on the relationship with an ex-porn star. It was the criminal theory itself that seemed crafted around the obscenity standard that Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously described in 1984’s Jacobellis v. Ohio: “I...

Transgender activists are threatening the author of scathing UK report on child ‘sex changes’That a female physician has been advised to stop taking the bus or the train because she might be assaulted by trans activists for attempting to protect children from a horrifying – and ongoing – medical scandal should be shocking to us all.Dr. Hilary Cass, the 66-year-old physician who led the team behind the 366-page Cass Review, has become a target of trans activists as the repercussions of her findings reverberate through the political and medical establishment. The abuse is not confined merely to online; she has...

Greek independence hero Athanasios Diakos died by Ottoman impalement on this date in 1821.* Though he acquired his nickname Diakos (“deacon”) from a youthful spell in a monastery, this fellow Athanasios (English Wikipedia entry | Greek) while the Turks still governed Greece made his way as a klepht — Greece’s version of the Balkan hybrid outlaw/guerrilla archetype, similar to the hajduk figures among the South Slavs. All of these outlaw types took to the mountains where they could subsist as brigands and mercenaries beyond the reach of the Porte, and seek opportunities where they might to strike at Ottomans. Many...

<p>At least nine protesters were handcuffed and loaded into police cruisers at a peaceful, pro-Palestinian protest Wednesday at the University of Texas hosted by the Palestine Solidarity Committee, a registered student group and a chapter of the national Students for Justice in Palestine. And several more were arrested at the university's South Lawn.</p>

A new article out from Politico reveals that a select group of lawyers and legal pundits have been working behind the scenes to quash a Trump second term using the media. They've been sharing narratives, honing points, and working together to "intellectually stress-test the arguments facing Trump on his journey through the American legal system." The names of those who have been at these meetings are all too familiar and their tactics mirror those undertaken in 2020 to manipulate media to sway the presidential election in Biden's favor. A group began meeting weekly in 2022, every Friday, on Zoom calls...

Pope Francis reportedly praises pro-abortion Democrat Sen. Warnock for being ‘anchored’ in his ‘faith’Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a liberal Protestant pastor who promotes homosexual ‘marriage’ and virtually unlimited abortion, said Pope Francis commended him for being ‘grounded in your faith.’Pope Francis reportedly praised Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, a liberal Protestant pastor and strong supporter of abortion and homosexuality, for remaining “anchored” in his “faith.”Warnock, who has described himself as a “pro-choice pastor,” has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood, and co-sponsored the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” that codified homosexual “marriage” in U.S. federal law, met with Francis on Saturday....

Two-hundred days and counting. No mention of American hostages held by HAMAS, which we are no resupplying and defending from Israel. Hamas published a propaganda video showing Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin on Wednesday on their Telegram channel. ... n the video, Goldberg-Polin notes that he was hanging out with friends at the Nova Music Festival when Hamas attacked the festival and kidnapped him and his friends, countering claims that Hamas leaders have made in the past that they did not target civilians. Goldberg-Polin was seriously injured by a grenade during the Hamas assault on the Nova Music Festival and lost...

The rate of pitcher injuries in baseball has been a topic of conversation across the sport in recent years, but debate reached a boiling point when aces Shane Bieber and Spencer Strider and budding star Eury Perez all suffered season-ending elbow injuries just weeks into the 2024 MLB season. The wave of injuries led to dueling statements from the MLBPA and MLB about the potential root cause of the injuries. We asked our MLB experts to talk to a handful of pitchers about what they believe is behind the rise -- and what steps they would take to solve the...

Dairy cows cannot be moved between states without testing for the highly pathogenic avian influenza, U.S. officials announced on April 24. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a federal order that says “prior to interstate movement, dairy cattle are required to receive a negative test for Influenza A virus.” A strain of the highly pathogenic avian influenza A, H5N1, has been spreading across the country since first being detected in cows in March. The influenza is commonly known as the bird flu. At this point, no beef cattle are known to have been infected with the virus. The order,...

Ladies and Gentlemen Here We Have the Best and the Brightest Up and Coming Contributor to Society [These two protestors "don't know" why they're protesting.]

The violent, antisemitic protests at some of the nation’s elite colleges has forced top corporate recruiters to assess the quality of the education dispensed at these places — and whether they should look elsewhere for job candidates, the Post has learned. Activist investor Daniel Loeb, a Columbia University graduate, has begun to reconsider whether to focus offering jobs at his hedge fund to fellow alums and other Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Penn amid their tepid responses to the protests on their campuses, he told The Post. “We’ve always looked beyond the target schools but we’re doing it even...

"Such an inquiry is needed to protect shareholders, including TMTG’s retail investors," Nunes says. Devin Nunes, CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group, is asking House committee leaders to investigate the potential "unlawful manipulation of DJT stock." In a letter to the committees, Nunes pointed out that DJT [the initials for Donald J. Trump] has appeared every day since April 2 on Nasdaq’s "Reg SHO threshold list," which he said is "indicative of unlawful trading activity." The concern follows Trump Media & Technology Group, whose flagship product is social networking site Truth Social, began being traded late last month...

Mayor Eric Adams unveiled a $111.6 billion executive budget for fiscal year 2025 that restores $515 million in school funding and will put more cops on Big Apple streets — but falls short of plugging more than $58 million in cuts for libraries. The proposed spending plan, released by City Hall on Wednesday, came in at $2.2 billion above the preliminary budget announced in January and carves out billions for the city’s migrant crisis. The plan, which is $4 billion more than the current budget, benefited from higher-than-expected tax revenues and proactive cuts in city spending critics contend were premature...

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) turned off Instagram mentions on his official government account after a social media uproar over his passage of Ukraine aid. Instagram users can no longer mention the leader of the so-called “People’s House” in posts on the popular app, a change that limits users’ ability to engage with Johnson’s official account. The setting is unusual for politicians, particularly on Capitol Hill, who generally maximize their engagement with the people they serve. Notably, Johnson joins Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in turning off his mentions.

There is another historical analogy that I think is worth pointing out, and that is the historical analogy of the early 2000s. Now, in 2003, I was a high school senior, and I had a political position back then: I believed the propaganda of the George W. Bush administration that we needed to invade Iraq, that it was a war for freedom and democracy, that those who were appeasing Saddam Hussein were inviting a broader regional conflict. Does that sound familiar to anything that we’re hearing today? It’s the same exact talking points 20 years later with different names. But...

There are five things the aid package will not do for Ukraine. It will not provide enough money. It will not provide the badly needed weapons, nor deliver them on time. It will not provide the even more badly needed troops. And it will not provide victory. Though $61 billion is a massive amount of money, it is not massive enough to defeat Russia. Ukraine accomplished little but the loss of life and the most advanced weapons during its centerpiece counteroffensive when it was receiving even more.

April 24, 2024 A message from our Founder: TGP Communications, the parent company of The Gateway Pundit, recently made the decision to seek protection under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code in the Southern District of Florida as a result of the progressive liberal lawfare attacks against our media outlet. This is not an admission of fault or culpability. This is a common tool for reorganization and to consolidate litigation when attacks are coming from all sides. It allows TGP to consolidate this lawfare in one court for ultimate resolution. Despite the radical left’s efforts to silence The...

Hundreds of Texas Department of Public Safety troopers cracked down on pro-Hamas protesters at the University of Texas campus on Wednesday. The protesters in the Texas capital city came out in solidarity with students at other major universities across the country. According to a post on Instagram, the protest in Austin was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Committee. The group posted: Today, Palestine Solidarity Committee at the University of Texas started their Popular University movement on campus, and were welcomed by massive university and state trooper repression, with at least 16 arrests made so far. KVUE, Austin’s ABC affiliate, reported...

Now We Are Supposed to Cheer Government Surveillance?They are wearing us down with shocking headlines and opinions. They come daily these days, with increasingly implausible claims that leave your jaw on the floor. The rest of the text is perfunctory. The headline is the takeaway, and the part designed to demoralize, deconstruct, and disorient. A few weeks ago, the New York Times told us that “As It Turns Out, the Deep State Is Pretty Awesome.” These are the same people who claim that Trump is trying to get rid of democracy. The Deep State is the opposite of democracy, unelected...

YIV, Apr 24 (AFP): Last month Pavlo Petrychenko, a junior sergeant in the Ukrainian army, issued a stark warning to President Volodymyr Zelensky about a dangerous vice sweeping the military. A surge in online gambling among serving soldiers has seen many lose their entire salaries, he said, pushing them and their families into debt. Some were even selling off army drones and thermal imaging cameras to feed addictions, compromising their own safety for a long-shot chance to strike it rich. Exhausted by more than two years of war, campaigners say online gambling is rife in the Ukrainian armed forces, a...