Free Republic

Today, March 31, 2025, marks 20 years since Terri Schiavo’s death. It’s a day that her family, particularly her brother Bobby Schindler, remembers not as a quiet passing, but as the end of a brutal, court-ordered ordeal. For the Schindler family, Terri’s death was no abstract ethical debate; it was a deeply personal tragedy, a wound that has not healed. Two decades ago, after a 15-year struggle to keep their daughter and sister alive, they watched helplessly as she was starved and dehydrated over 13 agonizing days, following a judge’s ruling to remove her feeding tube. This anniversary is not...

personal sovereignty There’s no two ways about it: The United States of America and its 50 state governments love putting people in prison. The U.S. has both the highest number of prisoners and the highest per capita incarceration rate in the modern world at 655 adults per 100,000. (It’s worth noting that China’s incarceration statistics are dubious, and they execute far more people than the United States. Indeed, the so-called People’s Republic executes more people annually than the rest of the world combined.) Still, that’s more than 2.2 million Americans in state and federal prisons as well as county jails....

Do you consider yourself rich in this present age? Here in the U.S., there’s always someone wealthier than us, so it’s easy not to think of ourselves as rich. After all, you probably didn’t take a rocket to space - like Jeff Bezos. However, if you consider the U.S., it’s one of the wealthiest nations ever in the history of the earth. The truth is, most of us reading this blog post do qualify as rich in this present age... What are the rich to do besides just enjoy their wealth? Do good. Each one of us should be always...

The Trump administration said on Monday that it was reviewing roughly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard, accusing the school of allowing antisemitism to run unchecked on its campus. In a statement on Monday, the administration said it was examining about $256 million in contracts, as well as another $8.7 billion in what it described as “multiyear grant commitments.” “While Harvard’s recent actions to curb institutionalized antisemitism — though long overdue — are welcome, there is much more that the university must do to retain the privilege of receiving federal taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars,” Josh Gruenbaum, a...

House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., told Newsmax on Monday that President Donald Trump's tariff actions are "all about fairness."The congressman told "Newsline" that the president is correct when he points to unfair trade policies imposed on the U.S. by a long list of nations."It's time that we push back," Smith said. "The prior administration was completely out to lunch when it came to trade policy."So thankful that we have President Trump leading on the world stage in this area."Smith said no one can challenge Trump's assessment of unfair trade policies."A recent study of 132 different countries...

The administration’s attacks are a case study in how executive power can be abused.For a month, President Donald Trump has been picking off his enemies among America’s top law firms. They have been vulnerable in part because they didn’t stand together. But some leading firms are now fighting back aggressively in what could be one of the epic battles of Trump’s presidency.Trump’s campaign against the major law firms has tested the guardrails of the Constitution as much as any other action since Inauguration Day. Trump has declared his motive: He wants revenge against lawyers who investigated him during and after...

California's formerly overrun border with Mexico is now virtually empty just months after Donald Trump's election, images show. Aid workers have begun packing up after weeks without seeing any migrants, SF Gate reports. 'To say there has been a dramatic change would be an understatement,' Jeffrey Stalnaker, acting chief patrol agent of the San Diego sector, said. Not long ago, the stretch along southern California was dealing with a record number crossings. December 2024 saw a record 301,981 people caught crossing the border illegally. The number of migrants caught crossing illegally stayed well above 200,000-a-month for much of Biden's time...

Area will be restored to a native California oak woodlandThe Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District removed about 150 eucalyptus trees in part of a nature preserve last month to replace them with native plants and improve the forest’s fire resilience. The trees were cleared from a 2.5-acre portion of the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve near Lexington Reservoir in Los Gatos as part of the district’s Wildland Fire Resiliency Program, which aims to promote healthy, resilient, fire-adapted ecosystems, reduce wildland fire risk and facilitate the response of fire agencies. “As a land management agency, we have a responsibility to...

Washington -- America’s craft brewers already have enough problems. Hard seltzers and cocktails are muscling into beer sales. Millennials and Gen Z don’t drink as much as their elders. Brewpubs still haven’t fully recovered from the shock of COVID-19 five years ago. Now there’s a new threat: President Donald Trump’s tariffs, including levies of 25 per cent on imported steel and aluminum and on goods from Canada and Mexico. “It’s going to cost the industry a substantial amount of money,” said Matt Cole, brewmaster at Ohio-based Fat Head’s Brewery. Trump’ trade war “will be crippling for our industry if this...

President Donald Trump will announce his reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, or “Liberation Day,” in his administration’s first Rose Garden event of his second term. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Monday that Trump will make his much-anticipated tariff announcement in the Rose Garden. “On Wednesday, it will be Liberation Day in America, as President Trump has so proudly dubbed it. The Cabinet will be here for the event. It will be our first Rose Garden event of this administration,” Leavitt told reporters outside the West Wing.

President Donald Trump has accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of attempting to “back out” of signing a long-awaited minerals deal with the United States. “He’s trying to back out of the rare earth deal and if he does he’s got some problems, big, big problems,” Trump stated on Sunday. “We made a deal on rare earth and now he’s saying, ‘well, you know, I want to negotiate the deal.’” “He wants to be a member of NATO, but he’s never going to be a member of NATO. He understands that. So if he’s looking to renegotiate the deal, he’s got...

Is this a big story yet?

Once upon a time, it was fairly common for highly educated men in the United States to marry less-educated women. But beginning in the mid-20th century, as more women started to attend college, marriages seemed to move in a more egalitarian direction, at least in one respect: A greater number of men and women started partnering up with their educational equals. That trend, however, appears to have stalled and even reversed in recent years. Gaps in educational experience among heterosexual couples are growing again. And this time? It’s women who are “marrying down.”

Some people need a break from TikTok. A mom sheepishly admitted she broke her foot after attempting a stupid TikTok challenge. Klaire Cave, 40, and her cousin Gemma Stephens, 29, were on vacation in Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria, on Saturday, March 1, for Stephens’ birthday celebration, when Cave decided to record a video following a trend she had seen online. After hanging out at a few bars, the women returned to their hotel room when Cave decided to replicate the #droppingthingsonmyfoot challenge, which is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds. In the videos, people drop increasingly heavy items on their feet from...

Although critics have bemoaned the Democratic response to President Trump as inept, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office has been working around the clock to fight Trump’s policies in court, with some success. Michael Newman, head of the civil rights enforcement section in California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office, was exhausted.Newman and his legal team had just worked all weekend, straight through that Monday and overnight into Tuesday on a growing pile of legal challenges to the Trump administration, and were overdue for some sleep.But on his drive home, he was alerted that the administration “cut half the Department of...

Nearly 60 percent of Americans disagree with President Trump’s handling of tariffs and trade negotiations two months into his second term, a new poll found, amid Trump’s escalating trade wars with Canada, Mexico and China. The sentiment surrounding Trump’s economic policies was the lowest among areas surveyed in the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Monday, while Trump received considerably higher marks on his sweeping immigration crackdown. Just 38 percent of respondents said they approve of Trump’s approach to trade negotiations with other countries, while 40 percent said they agree with his handling of the economy overall....

If you think America is just an idea, then you’ll gladly sacrifice the rights of Americans for the ‘rights’ of foreigners. Lately, it’s become fashionable for Never-Trumpers like David French to denounce the president’s new policy of revoking the visas of foreign nationals who agitate for terrorist groups like Hamas. It’s un-American, we’re told, to hold guests to a certain standard or to remove hostile foreigners from our country. This past week, French posted on X that “we can absolutely and totally dispense with the idea that Trump’s Republican Party defends free speech. We’re witnessing one of the most comprehensive...

[Catholic Caucus] Francis Can Only Sign with 'F' - Parolin Calls It "Not Ideal"Pope Francis governed the Church "even in the most difficult days" of his illness, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera (March 29). He "examined reports" and "made decisions" accordingly.There are matters that Vatican dicasteries can handle independently, based on the authority a pope has entrusted to them, as in the case of a canonization.Cardinal Parolin didn't give an example of issues alone the Pope alone can and must decide.He reiterated that Francis "cannot do everything he used to do".Asked about...

Failed vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) admitted during a recent interview he can sometimes be “a train wreck.” In an article published by New York Magazine, the Intelligencer told Walz “It doesn’t feel like the party was very bold when you and Harris got on the ticket in the latter half of the 2024 campaign.” Walz said he thinks they are “cautious by nature,” adding that “I said this and I told the vice-president, I said I know my strengths and weaknesses. I said about 90 percent of the time, I can be really good, but about...

“The current conflict between Europe and America is not reducible towards contrasting approaches towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” —Frank Furedi on Substack “Contrary to Western media's trash talk, Russian military has not been degraded. If anything, it has been significantly upgraded.” —Alex Krainer You’re going to see what a truly consequential span of weeks, looks like, as Western Civ goes into full churn on April’s doorstep. Remember, TS Eliot called it the “cruelest month.” Too many uncomfortable things are converging, too many ongoing operations are unwinding, too many tensions are breaking. The conclusion of “Joe Biden’s” Ukraine War fiasco looms....