Free Republic

The U.S. State Department said Wednesday that it is restarting the process for foreigners to apply for student visas but says all applicants must have their social media accounts set to ‘public’ to allow review by officials. Consular officers will be looking for activity, posts and messages showing “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States,” the department said. The announcement is the latest step in the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students, and the U.S. said applicants who refuse may have their applications rejected.

A boozed-up wrong-way driver flipped his car and slammed into a tree on Long Island Sunday night, killing a 19-year-old woman and injuring six other passengers, authorities said. Luis Gonzalo Barrionuevo-Fuertes, a former East Hampton High School graduate, was allegedly behind the wheel of a Toyota Camry while driving in the wrong direction on Old Stone Highway in East Hampton when he swerved to avoid slamming into another car around 7:30 p.m. The car overturned and struck a tree, killing 19-year-old passenger Scarleth Urgiles, East Hampton police said. The East Hampton High School student was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Supreme Court gave transgender activists and the gender ideology movement a possible lifeline Wednesday in upholding Tennessee's law prohibiting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery as treatment options for gender-confused youth, presumably protecting similar laws in half the states: It adopted their language, say opponents of gender ideology. The 6-3 majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts in Skrmetti v. U.S. repeatedly uses the phrases "transgender boy" and "transgender girl" to describe females who identify as boys and males who identify as girls, respectively, and explicitly specifies what he's doing in a footnote. It also refers to each by...

Constitutional attorney Alan Dershowitz said Wednesday that the Supreme Court should have ruled unanimously in favor of Tennessee’s restrictions on child sex changes, calling it “a simple, simple, case.” The Supreme Court upheld SB1, which was passed by the Tennessee legislature in March 2023, in a 6-3 ruling released Wednesday morning. On “The Dershow,” Dershowitz expressed shock that it was a 6-3 decision. “The Supreme Court decided today in a six-to-three decision. [It’s] shocking to me it was six-to-three. It should have been nine-nothing, in a six-to-three decision, decided that a state, Tennessee, had the right to restrict certain kinds...

Israel recently learned from its agents inside Iran — presumably native informants working with Mossad — that Iran’s nuclear scientists had successfully completed tests of their design of a nuclear weapon. This meant that Iran was potentially only weeks away from being able to produce such a weapon, and that intolerable threat had to be dealt with without delay. More on Israel’s discovery that prompted the attack, can be found here: “Israel found Iran carried out key tests for nuke design ahead of strikes — report,” Times of Israel, June 15, 2025: Israel recently learned from its agents inside Iran...

PART OF THE MAKE-OVER FOR BOTH ARE PHARMACEUTICAL CEOs of BioNTech, Pfizer, J&J and Merck Make List of Highest-Paid Pharma Execs. We Spent a Year Investigating How the FDA Let Risky Drugs Into the U.S. Market. Our investigation revealed a previously unknown practice within the FDA that allowed more than 150 drugs or their ingredients to enter the U.S. over the past decade, despite being manufactured at factories banned from shipping their products here.

The pilot of a small private jet that crash landed in southern California last month and killed everyone on board, including a famous drummer, clipped a power line during landing while flying too low a preliminary report has revealed. The Cessna 550 Citation plummeted into San Diego's Murphy Canyon neighborhood in the early hours of May 22 as it made its final approach for Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport. Daniel Williams, a former drummer for metalcore band The Devil Wears Prada, and famed music producer Dave Shapiro - who is believed to have been the pilot - were among the six people...

How gullible can Audie Cornish be? On Thursday's episode of CNN This Morning, host Cornish claimed that in addition to Iranian leaders: "The people of Iran are striking a defiant tone." Audie's evidence: a video clip of a motorcycle parade in Tehran, featuring people waving Iranian flags. Can Cornish possibly believe this was an authentic, organic demonstration of the views of most Iranians, and not an astroturf event staged by the regime? What does Audie think would happen to people who tried to stage a "No Ayatollahs!" protest in Tehran?Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Donald Trump made his first round of judicial picks, and he’s hitting it out of the park with exactly the kind of nominees we need to help fix the broken bench. Let’s take Emil J. Bove, the president’s nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Of course, the left hates him. It hates him because Trump picked him. It hates him in particular because he helped Donald Trump successfully beat the false lawfare charges against him.

While the Supreme Court’s 2024-2025 term is winding down, Associate Justice Samuel Alito is not. On June 6, the George W. Bush appointee participated in a sit-down interview with the Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson. Released on Wednesday, the roughly hour-long exchange covered a variety of issues relevant America’s ongoing political discourse. From the importance of maintaining free speech in society to the weaponization of nationwide injunctions, here are the most insightful remarks from one of the Supreme Court’s most senior justices. History of Originalism After alluding to the activist nature of the Supreme Court under former Chief Justice Earl Warren,...

Two weeks ago, legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong was signaling a big turn toward war. We all know Ukraine is out of control with no peace deal in sight, and now the Middle East is blowing up too. Armstrong says, “I think Trump has been kind of snookered into this . . . Netanyahu knew he could not get the nuclear. Now, he says we are losing because they have not been able to achieve that. So, Netanyahu says President Trump, please go in and attack Iran and eliminate that, which is World War III. . .....

Earlier this week FBI Director Kash Patel exposed a Chinese plot in 2020 to create THOUSANDS of fake mail-in ballots in the 2020 presidential election. According to Kash, the communist Chinese were involved in a plot to create thousands of fake mail-in ballots in 2020 using fake voter registrations. And, it should be clear that China was not creating fake ballots to assist Donald Trump. The Chi-Coms detested Trump and what he had done to their economy. Trump was the only US president in decades to take on the Chinese Communist Party. * * * * * * * *...

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are reportedly receiving a 400% pay raise for the upcoming season, as revealed in their Netflix series "America's Sweethearts." This "life-changing" increase comes after years of advocacy for higher compensation, so the cheerleaders didn't need to work two jobs. Veterans are expected to earn around $75 per hour, significantly up from the previous $15 per hour.

Over 2.1 million Americans have dropped out of college without earning a degree, a troubling trend that raises concerns about whether universities are prioritizing politics over academic achievement. Universities hire more DEI staff than history professors while millions of students leave without degrees ... Over 2.1 million Americans have dropped out of college without earning a degree, a troubling trend that raises concerns about whether universities are prioritizing politics over academic achievement. A June 4 report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that college non-completers rose by 2.2 percent in the past year. Citing a lack of direction,...

Absent the leaders in Beijing acting like they will be the next Golden Horde, America’s fleet of aircraft carriers might have been headed for the mothball fleet, floating museums, or candidates as artificial reefs. That’s not going to happen. The odds are that the Trump administration will extend the lease on life for carrier-centric fleet operations for another generation. Here is why.

Astartup led by a Canadian battery chemist is racing to crack a made-in-America energy breakthrough even as Trump’s tariffs cast a long shadow over the battery supply chain. Boston-based Pure Lithium is building a pilot plant for a new kind of lithium metal battery, one it claims could outperform today’s lithium-ion cells, and, crucially, be built entirely without Chinese inputs. These efforts come at a crucial time for the U.S., as the world’s biggest economy moves to loosen China’s grip on the global supply of critical minerals. China dominates minerals China’s dominance in this space continues to pose a strategic...

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor of California, has waded into the immigration debate during a forthright appearance on The View, with his remarks going viral across social media platforms..

A Mesa mom is back in Mexico just days after she was detained by federal immigration agents while on the job at a Valley restaurant. She admits she was living in the U.S. without documentation but claims she is far from being the “dangerous criminals” the Trump administration said they are targeting. Friday was like any other day for Karime Diaz, who was working her shift at Oregano’s in Mesa. That is until federal agents walked in. “As I got in there after like half an hour maybe, FBI and ICE showed up to my work place,” she said. Karime...

On June 1, 2025 crude oil was $60.00 per barrel. As of this morning crude oil is $76.50 per barrel. Today will be a slow trading day as it is a holiday.

U.S. — In an explosive new interview, Tucker Carlson laid into Senator Ted Cruz for not knowing the name of the Iranian Ayatollah's favorite starter Pokémon. The interview ranged in topics from Iran to Ukraine, but the most damning moment was when Carlson stumped Cruz with a simple question about Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's favorite starter. "What's the favorite starter Pokémon of the ayatollah, by the way?" Tucker asked 90 minutes into their 2-hour interview. Cruz, visibly caught off guard, was forced to admit he didn't know. "At all?" Tucker pressed, incredulous. "You don't know the favorite starter...