Free Republic

Milwaukee Public Schools announced in September that it would stop hiring new international teachers to help fill desperately needed empty positions. The change comes after the Trump administration announced it is overhauling the H-1B visa program, which MPS uses to fill the jobs. The H-1B program is designed to help U.S. employers hire international applicants to work in specialized industries like tech, education and engineering. The visa is limited to about three years and can be renewed. Among the changes is a hike in the fee for new applications to $100,000. Previously, it cost an employer around $3,000 to hire...

President Trump said Thursday he’s still weighing the idea of giving Americans up to $2,000 in rebates derived from the revenues his tariff agenda has generated. Trump’s proposal to share some of the hundreds of billions of dollars the federal government has collected since he slapped foreign nations with steep levies in April comes as the Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments in a case next month that will decide whether the president has the power to impose such sweeping global tariffs. “They’re just starting to kick in,” Trump said of the tariffs in an interview with One America...

Same trio of Democratic caucus members join Republicans in failed vote as both sides dig into positionsSenate Democrats blocked Republicans’ attempt to reopen the government again, all but guaranteeing that the government shutdown rolls through the weekend.After a day off to observe Yom Kippur, lawmakers made little progress in finding an off-ramp to end the shutdown, which entered its third day on Friday. And as the government remains closed, both sides appear to be digging further into their positions.Senate Republicans’ attempt to reopen the government failed on a largely party-line 54-44 vote for a fourth time, with the same trio...

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Europe bankrolled China’s rise through green dogma—Trump and Vance warn America must choose sovereignty and strength or repeat Europe’s surrender.I serve as a Member of the European Parliament, and for many years, I have advocated for the automotive industry. I have spent years fighting misguided climate and automotive policies that cripple our industries. From that front-row seat, I can tell you plainly: Europe’s leaders have bankrolled China’s empire. If America follows the same path, you will hand Beijing the 21st century.As President Trump reminded the United Nations, nations that surrender their sovereignty in pursuit of applause inevitably collapse into dependence....

A Tesla Cybertruck owner visiting Chicago for a conference captured video of a woman wiping dog feces on his vehicle, which features a distinctive American flag wrap with President Donald Trump’s signature in gold on the tailgate. Internet sleuths quickly identified the alleged perpetrator Fox 32 Chicago reports that John Evans, a visitor from Savannah, Georgia, parked his distinctive Tesla Cybertruck in Chicago’s Northalsted neighborhood on Wednesday while attending a conference. The vehicle, covered in an American flag wrappingand featuring President Donald Trump’s signature in gold leaf on the tailgate, caught the attention of a passerby who took offense to...

@RonPaul President Trump is considering "stimulus" checks (again). We should all remember the last time that President Trump sent out "stimulus" checks. It was the "CARES Act," which ignited the massive inflation that we're still suffering from today. How can a government that has no money, that racks up record deficits, be in a position to give out "rebates" anyway? They're not. Tariffs revenues (that Americans overwhelmingly pay) don't put the government into the black, and capable of giving "rebates." The government is way in the red. That means the "stimulus" checks will have to come from the Fed counterfeiting...

Just ahead of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City two weeks ago, the Secret Service announced a major intelligence bust. "The U.S. Secret Service dismantled a network of electronic devices located throughout the New York tristate area that were used to conduct multiple telecommunications-related threats directed towards senior U.S. government officials, which represented an imminent threat to the agency’s protective operations," the Secret Service announced in a statement at the time. "In addition to carrying out anonymous telephonic threats, these devices could be used to conduct a wide range of telecommunications attacks. This includes disabling cell phone...

The far-left Wall Street Journal reports that at the end of 2024, there were only 100,000 motion picture jobs in Los Angeles County, compared to 142,000 two years earlier. That’s a 30 percent collapse. The Journal spends a thousand or so words laying out the symptoms without diagnosing the disease causing it. Here are some of the report’s bullet points: * After the boom that saw the studios spending billions to bulk up their streaming services with lousy TV shows and movies, that screeched to a halt a few years ago. Compared to 2022, 30 percent “fewer movies and TV...

They played into their own checkmate.Earlier this week, Uncle Sam’s red-white-and-blue getup, a la Cinderella’s dress, morphed into dirty rags once the clock struck midnight.If an unpropitious way to start the fiscal year, it seems more honest than the 365 days that preceded. October 1, after all, admitted that the federal government is broke. The days before it, a la Kevin Bacon in Animal House, insisted “All is well!”The counterintuitive, Baconesque, if you will, message of the government shutdown is: Remain calm. All is well!The real problem, of course, occurred not on October 1, when rules forced the federal government...

The government of Japan this week extended the application of nine laws related to spousal rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples, a significant, if limited, victory in the country’s slow march towards marriage equality. The Japanese constitution currently defines marriage as “mutual consent between both sexes.” It does not recognize same-sex unions. Three of eight of Japan’s regional high courts in the last few years have ruled that the government’s failure to grant legal recognition to same-sex couples is unconstitutional. In its Tuesday announcement, the government said it will consider same-sex couples to be in “de facto marriages” under the...

Foreign spy services from China, Russia and elsewhere are engaged in low-level warfare targeting the U.S., and American counterspies should be “operationalized” to defeat them, according to a counterintelligence adviser to the Pentagon. Shane McNeil, now studying for a doctorate at the Institute of World Politics, said the U.S. government needs to stop using counterintelligence (CI) against foreign spies as a legal compliance back office.“In today’s battlespace, CI isn’t a support function — it’s a warfighting discipline,” Mr. McNeil, a counterintelligence adviser to the military’s Joint Staff at the Pentagon, stated in an online article.If the Pentagon wants to survive...

Ever since Combs's downfall amid allegations of sex crimes - which he denied - 50 Cent has been giddily trolling him on social media. July, Combs was acquitted of the most serious charges against him, sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. However he was found guilty of two lesser charges of transportation to engage in prostitution, which he is being sentenced for today. 50 Cent was among the first to speak out, sharing a photo of himself with a huge smile he wrote, 'Diddy beat the Feds that boy a bad man beat the Rico....' As the date crept nearer, 50...

FORT WORTH, TX (September 30, 2025) – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) secured another landmark victory for individual liberty when Chief District Judge Reed O’Connor for the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas ruled that the federal ban on firearm possession, storage, and carry at United States Post Offices and related properties, including post office parking lots, violates the Second Amendment in the FPC case of Firearms Policy Coalition v. Attorney General Pam Bondi. As Judge O’Connor explained, “it is hard to envision that the Founders would countenance banning firearms in the post office—particularly because they did...

Another high-ranking prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia has been fired. Last month, President Trump fired Erik Siebert as the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia because he refused to bring charges against Letitia James, Comey, Schiff, and others. Shortly after Siebert’s firing, Lindsey Halligan, the new Acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, indicted former FBI Director James Comey. However, the night before Lindsey Halligan indicted Comey, Deep State prosecutors in the EDVA, leaked a memo in an effort to defend Comey. “Two sources familiar with the matter tell me prosecutors in the EDVA...

Something as small as a deer tick can destroy your life. We as a nation are generally very tolerant, but our tolerance is being abused severely. What was once a small problem is growing into a larger problem and it is well past time to take this seriously. Islam is showing its teeth to America. It wants to do away with our Constitution and government. Muslims in the USA are openly calling to abolish the Constitution and replace it with Sharia law. They don’t plan to coexist. They don’t plan to integrate. They plan to dominate. Wake up, America. This...

Bari Weiss is set to become CBS News editor-in-chief as Paramount is expected to acquire her digital outlet the Free Press for $150 million.The appointment represents new owner David Ellison’s effort to shake up the traditional network after a recent Trump-related legal settlement.Some industry observers question whether the outsider can navigate CBS’s entrenched newsroom culture without alienating the network’s existing audience. CBS News will learn a lot about its future next week when Bari Weiss, founder of the upstart news site the Free Press, is expected to enter the hallowed halls where Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace once roamed. Weiss,...

The White House has rolled out a memo, named A Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education to nine of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, including MIT, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania among others. The document dictates how universities should admit students, hire faculty, and shape campus life, linking compliance to federal rewards. At the heart of it lies a measure that could redefine the future of US higher education: a proposal to cap international undergraduate enrolment at 15 per cent. The nine-page directive goes further, restricting the number of students from any single country to no more than...

The president argues that the federal bureaucracy is useless. Shutdowns tend to reinforce that view.For any party shut out of power in Washington, there are only bad options and worse. Try to project sobriety and your base calls you weak; lodge a bunch of protests and you mostly look small. Everything you do registers between feckless and futile.So I can understand how Democratic leaders came to see a government shutdown as their last, best recourse. It’s half performance for their own furious voters, half primal scream at the unfairness of the universe.It’s also a shortsighted gambit that will do more...

Red wood ants (Formica rufa) pheromone transmission. (Photo by Yuriy Bartenev on Shutterstock) In A Nutshell * Red wood ants carry Fructilactobacillus sanfranciscensis, the sourdough bacterium that can seed milk and trigger yogurt-like fermentation. * In lab conditions, four live ants added to warm milk led to curdling by morning at about pH 5 (store yogurt is ~4.2), with mild tang and grassy notes. * Ants contribute formic acid (about 1–2.5 g/L measured in the yogurt), lowering pH; ant-borne bacteria then make lactic and acetic acids and enzymes that cut milk proteins. * Only live ants yielded stable, desirable communities;...