Free Republic

Last week, we warned of a coming anti-democratic backslide. Now, we see it happening. A parliamentary vote, led by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s lawmakers, today took away the independence of Ukraine’s key anti-corruption bodies — the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). Zelensky signed it into law the same day. Under the new law, the prosecutor general, a notoriously non-independent figure, will now oversee anti-corruption investigations — in a complete overturn of the system that was set up to be independent from other law enforcement bodies. In reality, it means that Zelensky’s office will be able to...

Courtney Wingo trusted Leatherwood Baptist Church in Anniston, Alabama, to take her 12-year-old daughter Kamryn on a youth trip in the Houston-area from June 4–7. But she believes the church betrayed her trust and risked her daughter’s safety. “This trip was executed with no proper planning, no consent, and no consideration for the safety or readiness of the children involved,” Wingo told MinistryWatch. “My daughter was unprepared and shaken by what she saw in the tent city. It’s deeply troubling to me that an adult in a position of leadership would act so recklessly — especially when responsible for other...

Could Barack Obama have orchestrated the “Russia hoax” – what Donald Trump has called “the crime of the century”? A closer look at Obama’s political rise in Chicago and his governing style in Washington suggests it’s far from implausible, and even likely. While the mainstream media has long celebrated Obama for his eloquence, historic symbolism, and aspirational rhetoric about “hope and change,” his career tells a completely different story. Beneath the polished image lies a consistent pattern of ruthless tactics and deceptive narratives straight from the Chicago machine playbook. “The Chicago Way” refers to a hardball and often corrupt style...

The party’s last rebuilding effort took nearly a decade and followed debilitating ideological battles. Some in the party see it as a model, up to a point. The Democratic Party had just lost another presidential election. It was hemorrhaging support among blue-collar voters and was seen as out of touch on cultural issues. It was struggling to find its next generation of leaders. The future seemed bleak. The year was 1984. Eight years later, Bill Clinton — a moderate governor fromArkansas who presented himself as a “New Democrat” — was elected to the White House, unseating a Republican president, George...

NSA general counsel April Doss advocated for banning Trump from social media for "insurrection," called for crackdown on GOP "disinformation."A top lawyer for President Donald Trump’s National Security Agency previously worked for Senate Democrats on their discredited probe attempting to tie Trump to Russia and has a history of partisan anti-Trump activism, a Daily Wire investigation reveals. April Falcon Doss is the current general counsel for the NSA, the powerful cyber-intelligence agency, according to the agency’s website. A longtime veteran of the agency, Doss also worked as an NSA intelligence lawyer from 2003 to April 2016. But in between those...

GREENVILLE, S.C. — The director of a summer camp at Bob Jones University between 2018 and 2024 is accused of criminal sexual conduct with a minor during his time as director, according to court records. Stephen Kopp was charged in April 2024 with second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor, court records show. The records say the victim was under the age of 16. An arrest warrant for Kopp said he engaged in intercourse with the victim multiple times between Nov. 16, 2023 and Feb. 16, 2024. It said Kopp was acting as a "custodial guardian" for the victim during...

Using a new method they developed for analyzing social-science data, a pair of sociologists was “surprised” to discover that, no matter how they sliced the data, they could not refute a 2012 study finding that children of same-sex “parents” fare much worse than those of married heterosexual parents.Multiverse MarvelsIn March, Cambridge University Press published Multiverse Analysis, a book by Cornell University sociologists Cristobal Young and Erin Cumberworth. The publisher’s description:There are many ways of conducting an analysis, but most studies show only a few carefully curated estimates. Applied research involves a complex array of analytical decisions, often leading to a...

For myriad reasons, I’m not fond of traveling, not the least of which is that traveling in the 21st century is such a horrible shlep. Having said that, I am a very well-traveled person. That means that I’ve visited more than my share of places that UNESCO has tagged as “world heritage sites,” and every time I see that designation, my hackles go up. That’s why I was just thrilled to see that Trump has dumped UNESCO (again).The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was formed out of the wreckage of WWII to bind humankind together and prevent future...

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” — Ian Fleming, Goldfinger “…probabilities cannot be bribed to deceive, and … they cannot be convicted of bearing false witness.” — Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 1, Chapter 15 On July 13, 2024, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, before witnesses and unimpeded by law enforcement, climbed onto the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building at the Butler Farm Show. He was 441 feet away from the stage on which candidate Donald Trump was addressing 15,000 enthusiastic supporters. From that perch, Crooks used a semi-automatic rifle to rapidly fire eight rounds at...

Facing pressure from the Trump administration, Children’s Hospital L.A. officially ended care for transgender patients Tuesday. The closure of the renowned program signals a wider unraveling in the availability of care for trans youths across the country, experts said.

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There was a theme to the Obama years: say one thing, mean another, and spin it all as “historic.” This week, Barack Obama trotted out that same tired formula—this time in response to the bombshell DNI report declassified last Friday. His statement? “Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.” Cute. But irrelevant. Because no one—certainly not the DNI—claimed Russia manipulated votes. That’s not the point. The actual claim from the Director of National Intelligence—now Tulsi Gabbard—is that Obama-era officials...

Bill Cosby said that when he learned of the death of Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who played his son on "The Cosby Show," he spoke with Phylicia Rashad, who played the mother. "We were embracing each other over the phone about a dearly beloved friend ... Malcolm was always embracing relationships with everybody he worked with," Cosby told "CBS Weekend News" anchor Jericka Duncan in an interview. Warner's death shocked the entertainment world Monday when it became known that the performer drowned in Costa Rica the day before during a family vacation. The 54-year-old was apparently pulled out to sea by a...

Who controls the Middle East’s unofficial press?Long before the messaging app Telegram became the go-to newswire for warzones and opposition movements in the Middle East, it played a pivotal and paradoxical role in some of the region’s most defining uprisings. From the Arab Spring to the Mahsa Amini protests in Iran, Telegram has functioned as a dual-edged tool: an encrypted refuge for citizen journalists and organizers, and at times, a channel quietly tolerated or even manipulated by authoritarian regimes. In the absence of free and independent media, the app has evolved into the region’s unofficial press, shaping not only how...

The climate alarmists regularly seize on weather events they believe will help them exploit their narrative. Naturally, they ignore contradictory information. So we see it as our duty to fill in the gaps from time to time. Following are a few examples that show why the global warming story is less scientific theory than conjecture in the service of a political agenda. - Let’s begin in the West Arctic, where the Northwest Passage is experiencing its third-highest level of sea ice extent in the last two decades. In 2009, Al Gore said, with his usual galling listen-to-me certainty, the Arctic...

WASHINGTON — Former CIA Director John Brennan ignored warnings from “veteran” officers and ordered the publication of a “substandard” intelligence report that claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election, according to a bombshell congressional report released Wednesday. The House Intelligence Committee had compiled the “egregious” errors by the CIA back in 2020 — errors that included burying intelligence that the Kremlin was preparing for a possible victory by Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The committee’s findings also show that “fabricated” information from the since-debunked Steele dossier —...

[Catholic Caucus] WATCH: Fr. James Martin Twists Sodom and Gomorrah Into A Story About MigrationAnthony Stine exposes how Fr. James Martin is attempting to rewrite scripture. According to Genesis 19, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah due to the practice of homosexuality. Ezekiel 16:50 adds that a sin of Sodom was that they did “detestable things.” The Hebrew word translated “detestable” refers to something that is morally disgusting. It is the same word used in Leviticus 18:22, where homosexuality is an “abomination.” Jude 1:7 also weighs in: “Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and...

[Catholic Caucus] San Diego bishop celebrates LGBT ‘All are Welcome’ Mass, allows ‘drag queen’ activist to speakSAN DIEGO (LifeSiteNews) — Auxiliary Bishop Ramón Bejarano recently celebrated St. John the Evangelist Church’s annual “All are Welcome” LGBT “Pride” Mass and allowed “Nicole” Murray-Ramirez, an LGBT “drag queen” activist and longtime San Diego City Commissioner, to speak during the Mass. Bejarano was the celebrant of the July 13 Sunday Mass, which was organized by St. John’s “LGBTQ Ministry” and had the full backing of the Diocese of San Diego under Bishop Michael Pham, one of Pope Leo XIV’s first bishop’s appointments. During...

Three Alabama men have been arrested for allegedly operating what local authorities described as an “abhorrent” and “horrific” child sex abuse ring out of an underground bunker near their homes in Brent, Ala. The Bibb County Sheriff’s Office announced this past weekend that William Chase McElroy, Dalton Terrell, and Andres Velazquez-Trejo have all been arrested and charged in connection with the child sex abuse case. Local authorities began investigating the case back in February, the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post announcing the men’s arrest on Saturday.

MESA COUNTY, Colo. — The Colorado Attorney General has sued a sheriff’s deputy following a state investigation that uncovered that the deputy illegally coordinated with federal immigration officials to detain a University of Utah student last month. ... But what seemed like a mundane encounter actually led to unlawful actions by that deputy, which helped federal officials detain the 19-year-old nursing student, according to Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. “This morning, our office filed a complaint against Mesa County Sheriff’s Deputy Alexander Zwinck,” Weiser said Tuesday in a press conference. “Unbeknownst to the driver, the sheriff’s deputy took a picture...