Free Republic

A California school district has enacted a new rule for young girls who are uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with biological males pretending to be girls, requiring the girls to file a mental health accommodation request.The Temecula Valley Unified School District TVUSD has reportedly enacted a rule that tells female students who feel uncomfortable sharing bathroom space with biological males must file a mental health accommodation request under federal law if they want privacy.The move has prompted outrage from parents and others who say that the rule treats those girls who object to sharing private space with biological males as the...

[Catholic Caucus] Leo XIV: Small Signs that Confirm Initial ImpressionsA downsizing of the green magisterium, free from eco-idolatry, and the centrality of Christ in preaching. Mercy is a gift of grace, but not without conditions. Many small signs that give good hope. Meanwhile, Pope Leo receives Cardinal Burke. On the table, also the future of the Mass of Catholic Tradition?More than one hundred days since the beginning of his Pontificate, many small signs seem to confirm what has so far been said, analyzed, and foretold about the figure of Pope Leo XIV—both from the perspective of governance and of the...

In recent years, researchers led by Abel Méndez—lead author of the new study and director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico—have contributed significantly to that evidence through the AWOW project. In August 2024, Méndez and his colleagues published findings that suggest the Wow! Signal stemmed from the sudden brightening of a cold hydrogen cloud due to a transient source of radiation such as a magnetar. These neutron stars have magnetic fields strong enough to excite the atoms in hydrogen clouds and elicit a burst of brightness. Re-evaluating the Wow! Signal Now, Méndez’s team has meticulously...

RICHARDSON, Texas — Three bounty hunters face kidnapping charges after mistaking a man for a suspect with a similar name and taking him into custody at a home in Richardson, police said. Alan Hinton and Devon Allard Carter each face charges of aggravated kidnapping and execution of a capias or arrest warrant, according to a statement from Richardson police. A third suspect also faces charges, but he has not been arrested yet, police said. The incident unfolded on June 1 at a home in the 3800 block of Aberdeen Court in northeast Richardson, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. The...

I went to prison for defending the Constitutional separation of powers. John Bolton (an occasional contributor to The Hill) may well wind up in prison, too if investigators uncover evidence and prosecutors decide to bring charges over his alleged classified disclosures. When Bolton wrote his book, “The Room Where It Happened” — reportedly receiving a $2 million advance — he wasn’t just dishing gossip. He was sharing information about Oval Office conversations and national security that should have stayed secret — either by law or under executive privilege. A federal judge already spelled this out in black and white. In...

Amid Bruce Willis' nearly three-year battle with dementia, the actor's brain is "failing him," and his ability to communicate is fading, according to his wife Emma Heming Willis. "Bruce is still very mobile. Bruce is in really great health overall, you know," Heming Willis told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in the ABC special "Emma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey," a preview of which aired Tuesday on "Good Morning America." "It's just his brain that is failing him." Willis' family shared publicly in 2023 that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a type of dementia that impacts one's personality...

--SNIP-- Almost 84 percent of SEPTA’s budget comes from taxpayer subsidies, not riders. And they still can’t make it work — and have shown little willingness to embrace reality and change. SEPTA is pretending to be “broke” to cause crises to get more taxpayer money. They have $400 million in reserves and millions more in designated taxpayer funding. The present system cannot be supported without a never-ending, ever-growing annual subsidy from non-riders needed to prop up an outdated, non-customer friendly, bureaucratic, politically operated, unaccountable system. They want money, not reform. Democratic politicians — from Shapiro to the state House, to...

Speaking from the Oval Office Monday morning, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller gave additional details about how the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department was cooking the books on data in order to make the argument crime was "going down." "When we share the results, it will stun you," Miller said. "There are even accusations that murders and homicides were reported as accidents not murders. This is how severe the manipulation of the crime data has been in this city. It will all be uncovered and it will all be brought to light." The Department of Justice launched an investigation...

ChatGPT gave a 16-year-old California boy a “step-by-step playbook” on how to kill himself before he did so earlier this year — even advising the teen on the type of knots he could use for hanging and offering to write a suicide note for him, new court papers allege. At every turn, the chatbot affirmed and even encouraged Adam Raine’s suicidal intentions — at one point praising his plan as “beautiful,” according to a lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court against ChatGPT parent company OpenAI. On April 11, 2025, the day that Raine killed himself, the teenager sent a...

Though the likely 2028 candidates are JD Vance, Marco Rubio, or Ron DeSantis, one can’t help but wish that we might have our own Giorgia Meloni.“I am Giorgia!” she proclaimed in a now-famous speech. “I am a woman. I am a mother. I am Italian. I am a Christian, and you can’t take that away from me.” And three years after this defiant 2019 appearance on the political stage, Giorgia Meloni added yet another powerful proclamation: “I am the Prime Minister of Italy.” In the three years since, she has become perhaps the most consequential of European leaders, the...

The illegal immigrants who streamed into New York City over the past four years led to an increase in crime near the hotels where they were housed, according to a new academic study that lends some credence to President Trump’s claims of a Biden migrant crime surge. William LeRoy, an incoming professor at Charles University in Prague, crunched crime report data around the hotels where the migrants were being placed. He found that arrests of Hispanics — the dominant demographic of the largely Venezuelan newcomers — rose in the immediate areas around the hotels.The big increase came in lower-level thefts.“The...

Last week’s FBI raid targeting former National Security Adviser John Bolton reaches beyond alleged mishandling of classified documents in relation to a book he published in 2020, according to a report from Fox News citing a Trump Administration source. The report has fueled speculation that the former Trump official could face criminal charges. Legal experts have long speculated that Bolton could face legal troubles due to his 2020 book “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” in which he trashed his former boss extensively. A lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleged...

WASHINGTON — A watchdog investigation into former special counsel Jack Smith over his prosecutions of President Trump is based on an “imaginary and unfounded” premise, Smith’s lawyers wrote in a letter obtained by the Associated Press on Tuesday. The letter marks the first response by Smith and his legal team to news that the Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog office, had launched an investigation into whether Smith engaged in improper political activity through his criminal inquiries into Trump. The attorneys told Jamieson Greer, the acting head of the office, that his investigation into Smith was “wholly without merit.”...

Discovered within the darkness of Petralona Cave, this remarkable skull - which belongs to an archaic species of human - is notable for the fact that it has a stalagmite growing directly through it. Initially found in 1960 and often referred to as "Petralona Man", this intriguing specimen has long left paleoanthropologist's scratching their heads. A recent study has concluded that it is neither Neanderthal nor human, leaving a question mark over exactly which species of archaic human ancestor it actually belonged to. The 'Petralona Man' skull. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 NadinaThe skull is also now believed to date...

The result, legal experts say, is an escalation in the way Trump officials seek to penalize, remove or even jail adversaries.President Donald Trump’s move to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook on Monday was the latest illustration of his administration’s surprising new weapon against its enemies: their own mortgages.Trump and other officials raised allegations of mortgage fraud last week against Cook, a prominent economist put on the Fed board by President Joe Biden. The Justice Department is investigating the claims now, and Trump says the allegations alone are enough for him to push her out of her seat. Additionally, the...

Socialism is defined as a system of social organization where the ownership of property and the distribution of income are subject to social rather than private control. This definition reflects the early understanding of socialism as a form of social democracy, where the government plays a role in the economy and distribution of resources. It’s interesting that we see on the horizon those who have come into America asking for asylum from the oppressive and destructive measures of the government that they allegedly sought asylum from. Then, they attempt to implement the very government here in America that they fled...

The director of Federal Housing Finance Agency could win the president an opening on the Federal Reserve board.Bill Pulte finally may have captured a head at the Fed.For weeks, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency has publicly called for the firing of Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, and issued warnings on social media about a crackdown on mortgage fraud.That crackdown appears to have now ensnared a different member of the Federal Reserve Board, Lisa Cook. On Monday evening, President Trump fired Ms. Cook because of allegations that she falsified records to obtain favorable terms on a...

A 17-year-old girl in her third trimester of pregnancy was gunned down in a road rage incident in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, over the weekend. According to the Tangipahoa Sheriff’s Department, Katelynn Strate was a passenger in a vehicle with two others when another driver began tailgating them. The other driver, 54-year-old Barry West, fired a shot, and it struck Katelynn Strate in the head. Katelynn Strate delivered her baby at 27 weeks before she was taken off life support. The baby is reportedly healthy and in the NICU.

BALTIMORE (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday threw out the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Maryland’s entire federal bench in an emphatic ruling that underscored the extraordinary nature of the suit, slamming it as “potentially calamitous.”U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen, who was nominated by President Donald Trump, also criticized the administration’s attacks on the judiciary, highlighting in a footnote that White House officials in recent months had described judges as “rogue,” “unhinged” and “crooked,” among other epithets. “Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system, this concerted effort by the Executive to...

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has disputed President Donald Trump’s characterization of Baltimore.President Donald Trump described Baltimore as a "hellhole" while talking about crime during Tuesday's cabinet meeting. The president was addressing Maryland Governor Wes Moore's invitation to walk the streets with him when he made the comment. "I'm not walking in Baltimore right now," President Donald Trump said. "Baltimore is a hellhole." Following President Trump's order for the National Guard to respond to crime in Washington, he has suggested a similar move in other cities, including Chicago, New York and potentially Baltimore. Moore has disputed President Trump’s characterization of Baltimore....