Free Republic

Texas is on the cusp of a major victory for school choice. School choice has become a centerpiece of Republican policy, empowering parents to choose the best school that suits their children's needs. Education tax dollars should follow the child, not the schools and programs lobbied on behalf of progressive institutions like left-wing teachers' unions. However, many so-called “Republicans” are beholden to these institutions and have continued to vote against school choice policies. Even in the alleged conservative bastion of Texas, 21 Republicans in Texas’s House of Representatives voted against school choice last year. But conservatives across the state aren’t...

Steve Moore, from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a free market think tank, says Democrats were to blame for refusing 'to mandate work for welfare.' They 'view food stamps as an economic stimulus and/or virtuous income redistribution,' he said. Meanwhile, the scheme is increasingly targeted by fraudsters. A New York Times investigation spotlighted the scammers who use illegally installed skimming machines to lift payment card data from beneficiaries who swipe their SNAP cards through the devices in stores or at ATMs. Skimming cons picked up in 2022, and that the federal government has spent at least $30 million reimbursing stolen...

WAUKESHA, Wis. - A Waukesha man and woman separated by nearly 40 years in age face disorderly conduct charges for having sex in the Waukesha County Jail lobby. The accused are 28-year-old Desmound Cleveland and 67-year-old Karen Hill. According to the criminal complaint, a sheriff's deputy was dispatched to the Waukesha County Jail lobby on Thursday, May 2 for a possible disorderly conduct/lewd and lascivious call. The jail supervisor "called to report two individuals had sex in the jail lobby" and that the female, who was later identified as defendant Karen Hill, was still on the scene.

—In a huge city awash with tiny schools, few are smaller than the Hilda L. Solis Learning Academy. The public high school, housed in a former hospital in East Los Angeles, is down to 170 students from the surrounding Latino neighborhoods. On a hallway bulletin board, handwritten hearts display reasons students love the school, including, “how everyone knows each other” and “the fact that school is small.”

In late 2009, the question everyone was asking was put to the man himself. What made Usain Bolt – an era-defining champion of immense speed and consummate ease at just 23 – so fast? Bolt cited his God-given talent, while crediting a diet that ranged from ultra-processed chicken nuggets to the Jamaican staple of yams. But he also pointed to the cruelties of man. "I think over the years what makes Jamaica different is because of slavery really," he said of his sprinting roots. "The genes are really strong." It is a hypothesis that existed before Bolt's comments and has...

A report reveals that key radical left-wing organizations central in the current anti-Israel and anti-America protest movement are significantly funded and influenced by a network tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which seeks to advance a “revolutionary, anti-government, anti-capitalist agenda,” threatening U.S. internal stability. A major report from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), published Monday, details how the Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P) movement, which has connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through the Singham Network, uses protests and media campaigns to push anti-America and anti-Israel narratives and significantly contribute to social unrest.

A class disparity has emerged within the Russian military, contrasting the fates of ordinary soldiers and the privileged elite. This divide has ignited widespread anger and criticism, even among top-level troops who feel betrayed by their leadership during the ongoing battle over Ukraine.

UKRAINE’S generals warned they have run out of reserves to halt Russia’s shock assault on Kharkiv. It comes as Vladimir Putin masses more than half a million troops on the frontline in a bid to overpower Ukraine's forces. Ukraine's military has admitted it is struggling to contain the advance in the north east of the country. General Kyrylo Budanov, boss of Kyiv’s military intelligence said: “I’ve used everything we have. “Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone else in the reserves.” Putin’s troops have seized miles of ground in their fastest advances in months.

Last fall, a congressional report revealed that I was on a secret list of public figures compiled by agencies within the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, in conjunction with Stanford University, that was used to pressure social media companies into suppressing and censoring my public statements. This was all part of an “Election Integrity Project” that was created in the summer of 2020. Ostensibly, the goal was to prevent the spread of so-called “disinformation,” which the Washington establishment considers a threat to “democracy”—words that in recent years have become political weapons divorced from any meaning. In reality,...

A close ally of Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov resigned unexpectedly as speaker of parliament on Wednesday, creating a vacancy in the elite at a time when Kadyrov’s health is under close scrutiny. Magomed Daudov was widely seen as one of the most influential politicians in the southern Russian region. He gave no reason for his departure.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russian forces were improving their positions every day along the front in Ukraine in all directions and that the advance was going to plan.Russia has been pushing Ukrainian forces back at various points in recent months despite hundreds of billions of dollars worth of aid from the United States and its allies.Putin, at a meeting in the Kremlin with new Defence Minister Andrei Belousov, Secretary of the Security Council Sergei Shoigu, and top generals, said the work of the military was "proceeding according to the plan" approved by the General Staff."The...

"Today, based on evidence uncovered in @COVIDSelect's recent report, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commenced formal debarment proceedings against EcoHealth Alliance. EcoHealth will now face an immediate, government-wide suspension of taxpayer funds — including a hold on all active grants," read a tweet issued by the Subcommittee on May 15. Senator @RandPaul (R, KY), who has been the most ardent member of Congress demanding answers for the pandemic since its outbreak, celebrated the news with a tweet of his own. Paul wrote, "Finally, the Biden Admin. agrees to ban Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, who financed the...

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, argued that President Joe Biden should have pardoned Donald Trump after the Justice Department brought indictments against the former president and pressured New York prosecutors not to pursue Trump's ongoing hush money trial. In an exclusive interview on MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle,” Romney expressed his dismay in response to Republican lawmakers, including the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s vice presidential prospects, rallying to Trump’s defense outside of the Manhattan courthouse where Trump’s hush money trial is taking place.

Foreign terrorist organizations may seek to exploit "LGBTQIA+-related events and venues," including events during 2024 Pride month -- celebrated in June, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned in a recent public service announcement. "Organizations like ISIS may seek to exploit increased gatherings associated with the upcoming June 2024 Pride Month," according to the announcement, which the agencies issued last week. The announcement added that the threat is "compounded" by the "current heightened threat environment" in the United States. The threats could come online, in person or in the mail, according to the FBI and DHS... Nearly eight years...

Lavrentiy Beria, the most ruthless and longest-serving secret police chief in Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia and Eastern Europe, bragged that he could prove criminal conduct on anyone, even the innocent. “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” was Beria’s infamous boast. He served as deputy premier from 1941 until Stalin’s death in 1953, supervising the expansion of the gulags and other secret detention facilities for political prisoners. He became part of a post-Stalin, short-lived ruling troika until he was executed for treason after Nikita Khrushchev’s coup d’etat in 1953. Beria targeted “the man” first,...

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Beneath the azure skies of the Mediterranean, a dark cloud of tyranny and violence gathered. This was Fascist Italy, a nation where Benito Mussolini's iron-fisted rule smothered the voice of dissent and liberty. It was a time marked by the infamous years between the 1920s and 1940s, where the boot of fascism stomped upon the face of humanity. One cannot forget the bombing of Guernica on April 26, 1937, a horrific act of aggression during the Spanish Civil War. Orchestrated by the German Luftwaffe with support from the Italian Aviazione Legionaria and the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, which comprised regular army...

This week’s Liberal Media Scream features all three network Sunday public affairs shows going to bat for President Joe Biden’s betrayal of Israel for largely political reasons by suggesting he was just following a pattern set by former President Ronald Reagan. “Historians would say, ‘Why is it OK for Reagan to do it and not President Biden?'” NBC’s Kristen Welker said in a key example of the effort. At issue was Biden’s flip-flop to hold back weaponry Israel needs to push its effort to rid Hamas from Gaza after the terrorists shocked the world with brutal attacks on Israeli women,...

A group of nearly 100 migrants, including some young children, was observed marching away from the Rio Grande after breaching border barriers near the heart of downtown Eagle Pass, Texas. The migrants strolled through the city streets and were observed by residents who notified authorities of the breach. Although migrant crossings have been significantly reduced in recent months due to actions taken by Mexican authorities and the State of Texas, some migrants are still managing to make it into the United States. One resident captured several photos of the large migrant group strolling through her neighborhood on Tuesday just as...

Discussing the cooling of relations between Russia and the West, Solzhenitsyn’s analysis of the history of the previous fifteen years highlighted the sharpness with which he viewed contemporary events. When he had returned to Russia he discovered that the West was “practically being worshipped”. This was caused “not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda”. The positive view of many Russians towards the West began to sour following “ NATO bombings of Serbia”: “It’s fair to say that all layers of Russian society were deeply...