Free Republic

I am continuing to prepare for President Donald Trump’s trip to Budapest, where he will meet with President Putin. In order to negotiate an end to the war with Ukraine, it is necessary to know for what Putin sent his soldiers there. To clarify, I am not asking “why,” but “what for.” Since the beginning of Putin’s attack on Ukraine, political scientists, psychologists, and other experts have attempted to explain the attack based on Putin’s psyche: his desire to prove to world leaders that he is the most powerful, his dream of being remembered as the “gatherer of Russian lands,”...

Soros and his minions, that plethora of illicit NGOs that rob American taxpayers, along with his network of billionaires who are intent upon destroying America as founded, saw the fruits of their misspent dollars at work on Saturday as a few thousands of aging hippies, most of them recruited and paid, showed up at their local “no kings” protests and made utter fools of themselves.When confronted by a question about why they were participating, few, if any, could answer coherently. They cry “fascism” but cannot define it. Still, they “know” Charlie Kirk was a bad man! They are glad he’s...

Democracy is liberalism’s “political corollary.”Many people argue that democracy is incompatible with capitalism but they differ on whether democracy will kill capitalism or whether capitalism will kill democracy. Peter Thiel, for example, famously said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Thiel’s argument has a long pedigree. The classical economists from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill all worried that democracy would kill capitalism. Even Marx and Engels agreed with the analysis arguing that under democracy “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of...

President Trump offered these comments on the "reckless and completely unnecessary" 2025 government shutdown and praised OMB Director Russ Vought as the "Darth Vader" of budget cuts. "They call him Darth Vader. I call him a fine man," Trump said about Vought. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Over one million federal workers right now, as you know, are going unpaid. That's the Democrats' fault. And children, tourists—unable to visit the museums in Washington, D.C. We now have beautiful, safe streets, but we don't have the museums open. We should probably just open them. But we are doing things that nobody's ever done—nobody's...

Why Washington Must Accelerate the U.A.E. Chip PartnershipThe United States and China are locked in a technology cold war. Beijing’s latest move—restricting exports of rare earth minerals critical to advanced manufacturing of everything from semiconductors to defense systems—shows that China is willing to weaponize every advantage it has. But the trade war is only part of the story. China’s quest to become a hegemonic power runs through the Gulf, where it seeks to establish a military presence to secure energy and shipping routes vital to its economy. For years, Beijing has courted the region’s energy and capital-rich states through the...

Is the Catholic Church Growing or Shrinking in America?Back in March I wrote an article “Catholics Are Rapidly Losing Ground” in which I commented on a recent Pew Survey showing dire numbers about Catholicism, including the fact that for every person who becomes Catholic, over eight leave the Church. I didn’t try to sugar-coat the news and bluntly stated that this was very bad news for the Church, and that radical changes were necessary. The article went viral (it’s our most visited article in 2025 so far), and many other articles quoted it; in particular, many non-Catholics quoted me as...

One of Europe’s crown jewels, a centuries-old relic of irreplaceable artistic and historical import, has fallen into the hands of vandals intent on abusing it for their own selfish gain. I’m not talking about the heist at the Louvre over the weekend, in which thieves broke into the most famous art museum in the world and stole nine items from a collection of priceless treasures that once belonged to French royals of no less significance than Napoleon Bonaparte. I’m talking about the plunder of Canterbury Cathedral, in which a church founded by St. Augustine of Canterbury and famed as the...

What drives Trump’s politics is nostalgia for the age of coal, when dirty fuel and no environmental regulations created his version of a great America.Arguably, no technology freed the world from the drudgery and cold of premodern times more than coal. It fueled the Industrial Revolution and rising standards of living that transformed what a human life meant after 1800. The cost of this freedom soon meant slaughtered workers, rising carbon dioxide levels, and the threat of planetary ecological catastrophe. Today, arguably no technology dooms the world’s future more than coal, with its environmental destruction, pumping of carbon dioxide into...

A young man who filmed a video threatening ICE agents and then tried to lie his way out of it is about to learn the hard way that there are consequences. As The Gateway Pundit reported, teenage-looking individuals went on TikTok last week. They decided to piggyback off reports of bounties that have been issued against ICE agents trying to enforce our immigration laws. In the video, one of the young men smiles as he pulls down his mask. Rap music plays in the background, and his cronies stand behind him. There is also a threatening message in the video,...

Russia reiterated its previous terms for reaching a peace deal with Ukraine in a private communique sent to the U.S. over the weekend known as a "non paper," two U.S. officials said. The communique reiterated Russia's demand that it take control of all of Ukraine's Donbas region, one of the officials said, a stance that effectively rejects U.S. President Donald Trump's current position that the frontlines should be frozen at their prevailing locations.

...(setting aside the meaningless, for-show charges against a bunch of random Russians no one has ever heard of and no one will ever see anyway). I’ve followed this case closely since 2018 because, even among all the injustices carried out by Mueller’s thugs, this one stood out as particularly grotesque. I’ll write more about it later, but in short: Mueller’s team went through General Flynn’s old client list and targeted one of his former clients on a matter that had nothing to do with Trump or Russia, purely to pressure him into saying something damaging about Flynn and by extension,...

I've had a rough few days and have emerged from a cloud of medication to a barrage of intemperate emails from British readers demanding to know what I make of Jews being killed on the streets of Manchester, Jews being forbidden from attending footie matches in Birmingham, and Jews being arrested and interrogated for ten hours for perambulating the streets of London while wearing visible marks of their faith.Well, obviously, I'm shocked, shocked to find Jew-hate going on at Rick's Café Keffiyeh. But I'm not in the least bit shocked, shocked to find that yet again the public discourse in...

A U.S. marshal and a suspect were shot and wounded Tuesday morning, Oct. 21, during a traffic stop in South Los Angeles, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The shooting was reported about 8:50 a.m. in the 400 block of East 20th Street, according to Officer Luis Alanis, a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE officers and U.S. marshals pulled over an undocumented resident who had “previously escaped from custody,” Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. The suspect had rammed his car into law enforcement vehicles and tried...

In October 2024, pro-Palestinian activists marched on Columbia University’s campus, on New York’s Upper West Side, chanting “Resistance is glorious! We will be victorious!” They held up signs that read “LONG LIVE THE AL-AQSA FLOOD,” commemorating Hamas’s murderous assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7. One of my professors, struggling to make herself heard over the cacophony, told us that students had been emailing her, telling her that they did not feel safe and would be absent. Another professor told us that we’d be welcome to leave for “personal reasons.” Such turmoil had become a routine part of campus life....

Donald Trump hosted Republican senators at the new 'Rose Garden Club' on Tuesday for a ritzy lunch as Diet Cokes flowed, laughter filled the air and sunshine glanced off the yellow-and-white striped umbrellas. But despite the blue-sky ambience, the President couldn't resist the urge to pour scorn on Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who has frequently clashed with Trump on spending, military action and tariffs. 'We have everybody but one person here. You'll never guess who that is,' Trump joked as the other senators chuckled. 'Let me give you a hint - he automatically votes No on everything. He thinks it's...

I Picked One of the Most “Extreme” Catholic Colleges—and It Changed EverythingAttending a faithful Catholic university will make you stand out, not because of your pedigree, but because of the person you will be when you come out.When I tell people I go to Christendom College, the reaction is almost always the same: a raised eyebrow, a polite smile, and then, “Wait, that super strict Catholic school?” Yep. That’s the one. To be honest, I kind of thought the same thing before I enrolled. I wasn’t raised Catholic. I’m a convert who came up through public schools and a typical...

Team Trump sent several leading U.S. universities a proposed one-sided deal. They’re balking at the offer, and it’s worth understanding why.Donald Trump and his administration have spent much of the year targeting American higher education in a multifaceted campaign, but the story took an unexpected turn earlier this month when the Republican White House unveiled a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”The document, sent to nine leading U.S. universities, offered the schools a deal of sorts. The institutions would become eligible for preferential treatment in the distribution of federal grants, but in exchange for this special status, the universities...

How a Colorado slumlord’s psyop turned into a brand-new ‘forever war’ on Venezuela Earlier this month, a middle-aged woman with shaggy, silvery hair and a pleasant smoker’s contralto flew from Denver to Washington to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. “My name is Cindy Romero,” she began. “I am a wife, a mother of five, a grandmother of three, a part-time worker and student, and a former resident of Aurora, Colorado. I am one of the many victims across the nation of the violent transnational terrorist organization Tren de Aragua.”Romero’s journey from anonymous apartment dweller to MAGA heroine began...

U.S. District Court Judge Mary S. McElroy has issued an injunction preventing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from redirecting $233 million in Homeland Security Grant Program funds, following a lawsuit by a coalition of Democratic-led states. The decision comes amid concerns that the reallocations have curtailed vital counterterrorism and emergency preparedness resources. Additional states are considering joining the litigation, citing potential impacts on national security funding, as the case progresses. McElroy said, “This sort of last-minute changing of the way the funding happens, and especially when it happens right in the wake...

Long before the dramatic September 30 ICE invasion, the beautiful South Shore of Chicago was afflicted by an epidemic of absentee slumlords and government apathy. A few weeks before the 2016 election, Chicago Tribune sportswriter Teddy Greenstein—now a DraftKings executive, naturally—broke some tantalizing news: Tiger Woods was this close to signing a deal to design a luxury lakefront golf course right next to the site President Barack Obama had chosen for his new presidential library. The $30 million project would convert two existing public golf courses into one ritzier and more challenging PGA-caliber one, which would woo away bankers...