Free Republic

Today marks the birthday of Karl Marx, the 19th-century philosopher and economist widely regarded as the founder of communism. His ideas, which were most famously laid out in The Communist Manifesto in 1848, have long been controversial in the United States, where communism has historically been met with deep suspicion and sometimes outright suppression. However, despite its rarity, there are several openly affiliated Communist Party members in public office. Newsweek compiled a list of U.S. politicians who identify as Communists today. Why It Matters For much of the 20th century, communism in the United States was treated not just as...

A federal jury in the Northern District of Illinois has convicted an Illinois woman of unemployment insurance fraud for participating in a scheme that submitted nearly 700 fraudulent claims and caused more than $11 million in fraudulent COVID-19 relief benefits to be dispersed. Hiam Hmaidan, 54, of Orland Park, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and five counts of mail fraud, the Justice Department announced. She is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 2 and faces up to 20 years in prison. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Hmaidan operated the fraud...

Britney Spears reportedly caused a chaotic scene inside a Los Angeles-area restaurant after witnesses claimed the pop star screamed, barked, and behaved erratically. TMZ reported that the pop star attended the Blue Dog Tavern in Sherman Oaks on Wednesday with a man and a woman, and began acting strangely. The outlet reported that shortly after she arrived, Spears sat at a corner table in the venue and began yelling, barking, and behaving loudly. One witness who heard the screams described the scene as “kind of sad,” according to TMZ. A patron in the restaurant claimed they feared Spears might accidentally...

🚨 LMFAO!! Hakeem Jeffries just had a schizophrenic MELTDOWN on camera as his party gets pummeled in redistricting, and can no longer benefit from race-drawn seats "The GHOSTS of the Confederacy has afflicted the United States Supreme Court majority, and is INVADING and HAUNTING the nation right now!" "We know this unprecedented assault on black political representation, the likes of which we have not seen since the Jim Crow era." 😂🤡🤡

The road to working and studying in the United States may soon become much tougher for thousands of skilled professionals and international students. The Trump administration is preparing a fresh set of immigration restrictions that could affect almost every major pathway used by foreign talent, from H-1B work visas to student work permits and even employment-based green cards. While several of the proposed rules are still under review, immigration lawyers, universities, and companies say the impact is already being felt. Employers are becoming more cautious, students are growing anxious and legal experts say visa scrutiny has dramatically increased. For Indian...

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former top aide Dana Williamson pled guilty to federal fraud and tax charges after reaching a deal with prosecutors. Williamson, who was Newsom’s chief of staff from 2022 and 2024 and a top Sacramento power broker, appeared at Robert T. Matsui U.S. Courthouse in Sacramento Thursday to enter her guilty plea to counts of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, subscribing to a false tax return and making false statements. “Dana Williamson and her co-conspirators weaponized public trust for personal gain,” said FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sid Patel in a statement. “They stole from...

"Don’t Look Up" filmmaker Adam McKay unveiled the conspiracy theory that the oil companies may be responsible for the devastating Palisades fire and that corporations have “misled” people into thinking an arsonist was responsible for the fire. During an interview with left-wing, enviro podcaster Jesse Damiani, McKay made the wild clam that the oil companies are responsible for “blacking out the news communication” around the deadly and devastating fires. “The oil companies have been wildly successful blacking out the news communication, buying up our supposed representatives. So, there’s there,” the far-left Hollywood elitist told the podcaster. “I saw it with...

Academy Award-winning director Adam McKay unleashed a rant against voters blindly standing behind the Democratic Party. The lefty filmmaker — who directed such comedic classics as “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights” and “Step Brothers” — slammed “white liberals” during a recent interview on the “Urgent Futures” podcast. “It is incredible to watch people this far down the road still say you gotta stand behind the Democrat Party. The same party that wouldn’t convict Trump of a crime after he told a crowd, ‘Go to the Capitol,’” McKay said. “The same party where the previous presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, literally funded Trump’s campaign.”...

We're making our roads safe one way or another. The Supreme Court just handed down a ruling which will make trucking companies shake in their boots while billboard lawyers are dancing in the streets. This expands your ability to sue freight companies if they hire trucking companies with bad safety ratings and cause a car accident. Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC looked at a law called the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, which bans states from imposing economic regulations (like rate controls, routing mandates, or service requirements) that could affect with the interstate flow of goods. The law, however,...

DENVER — Colorado Democrat Gov. Jared Polis has signed a rare pro-life measure into law, expanding the window in which mothers can surrender their newborns to safe havens from 72 hours after birth to 30 days. The straightforward HB26-1024 expands the window during which women who decide they are unwilling or unable to raise a child can legally turn him or her over to a firefighter or hospital staffer. It takes effect August 12. Colorado Safe Haven for Newborns, the organization that backed the change, credits the original 2000 law with saving 99 newborns, but suggests the original window was...

When a new book dismisses abortion survivors and women whose abortions don’t go as planned as ‘social contagion,’ it doesn’t just misread a movement—it erases our lived reality—talk about a wrong and bad idea about women! In her new book, Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women, Sarah Ruden devotes part of her final chapter to me and to The Abortion Survivors Network by name. I should be flattered, I guess. (Hat tip to Katelyn Walls Shelton for sharing this chapter with me. If you aren’t following Katelyn yet, head over to her Substack for great content...

It was a classic Morning Joe setup on Thursday: tee up far-left Democrat Ro Khanna to blast China’s unfair trade practices--then watch him pivot straight into a sweeping central-planning agenda for America. His plan: • Create an “industrial investment bank” to fund government-selected factories in “the industries of the future” — batteries, new steel, new cars, new ships — specifically targeted at “places that were deindustrialized,” paired with investment and production tax credits. • Open a thousand new trade schools. • Open new tech institutes to prepare workers for AI and future technology jobs — again directing investment to “places...

A new report revealed that Iran has seized a ship laden with weapons and is taking it back to Iran. The so-called “floating armory” was based in the Gulf of Oman, according to Vanguard, a maritime risk management company. The ship is “bound for Iranian territorial waters,” Britain’s Maritime Trade Operations group said, according to the BBC. The BBC said the Honduras-flagged Hui Chuan had told Vanguard it was operating as a floating armory, designed to store weapons that would be needed by security companies that protect ships from piracy. The BBC said the ship was last documented to be...

Kuwait has struck Aytatoilet speed boats and taken IRGC on board into custody. Iran Ayatoiletry threatens revenge, calls it illegal. Bibi says he secretly visited UAE during start of war, UAE denies it. China has publicly said it is against IRGC plan to charge tolls to shipping at the Strait. And so on and so forth and doobie doobie doobie. Transcript linked below video.

In 2002, my classmate Graham Platner ran for student-body president of John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor. I remember watching him in our auditorium debate his fellow candidates. He was the radical, wearing a revolutionary proletarian costume: overalls and a red armband... I don’t recall the issues they discussed, but I do remember Platner proposing collective action to overturn some school policy — saying something along the lines of, “They can’t suspend us all.” The history teacher serving as moderator interjected to remind Platner and everyone else that, yes, in fact, they could... Students elected the safe candidate, a...

Hillary Clinton could not get to her keyboard fast enough. Within hours of reports that the Justice Department is considering settling President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, Clinton was on X accusing Trump of “shaking down taxpayers” and declaring that the “corruption meter is flashing red.” What Clinton did not bother to mention, and what the left keeps hoping you will forget, is why this lawsuit exists in the first place: a former IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn stole thousands of confidential tax returns, smuggled them out of government systems on personal devices including an iPod, and...

Sleep is critical to being in good health, regulating how people think and informing everything from mood to physical health. But the country’s lack of sleep is a problem for everyone, even for those lucky Americans who are able to get enough shut-eye. In addition to individual health, insufficient sleep creates a drag on medical spending, workplace productivity, and long-term health outcomes. America’s chronic inability to get enough sleep comes with a real cost attached, one that researchers have put in the hundreds of billions of dollars in annual economic losses. The other culprit is the thing that makes the...

In 1965, Ian Smith declared independence from Britain to preserve British civilisation. Fifteen years later, Zimbabwe was born and the collapse began. In this video, Freya breaks down how one of Africa's most functional states was dismantled, not by military defeat, but by Western liberal idealism that demanded revolution over evolution. The Zimbabwe that replaced it stands as one of history's most devastating proofs of what happens when politics ignores reality.

They want to add 150 to the House!............. 1:23 VIDEO AT LINK.............

The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 ignited the artificial-intelligence boom—and elicited a chorus of warnings from AI bosses of an impending jobs apocalypse. Never mind that they have reason to talk up the disruptiveness of their products, or that rich-world employment is near all-time highs—the dark message has landed. Seven in ten Americans think AI will make it harder for people to find work; nearly a third fear for their own jobs. A dearth of openings for college graduates—especially computer programmers—amplifies the dread. The past offers some solace for the anxious. Labour markets constantly change. Today’s offices would be unrecognisable...