Free Republic

The popular opinion among many on both sides of the aisle about why the 2022 red wave turned into a red trickle is that the overturning of Roe vs. Wade ruined it for the Republicans. To the surprise of no one who's been reading me for a while, I don't agree with the popular opinion. It was 40 years ago this spring that I first volunteered on a Republican campaign. I've seen a few elections. I cannot stress enough how one should never underestimate the ability of the GOP to blow an election simply because the party doesn't execute the...

Fifteen or twenty years ago, and for some years following, there was a great deal of publicity about bee colonies dying out. The cause of the decline was unclear, but most people assumed it was somehow our fault. Where I live, “Save the Bees” signs started cropping up in yards and in front of apartment dwellings, along with “All Are Welcome Here” and “We Believe In Science.” Some people let their lawns go wild, not, as one might suspect, because they were too lazy to mow, but because they hoped a weed-filled lawn would be good habitat for bees. But...

The following essay is adapted from the author’s new book, Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. It’s hard to survey the state of our country and not conclude that something is very wrong in America. I don’t just mean with our economy or the border or rampant crime in our cities, but with our basic grasp on reality itself. Our cultural and political elite now insist that men can become women, and vice versa, and that even children can consent to what they euphemistically call “gender-affirming care.” In a perfect inversion of reason and...

Former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel has come out against former President Trump’s promise to free the January 6 prisoners. McDaniel voiced her opposition during a Sunday interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” — the network where she is now a paid contributor. “I want to be very clear. The violence that happened on January 6 is unacceptable. It doesn’t represent our country. It certainly does not represent my party,” McDaniel told interviewer and co-worker Kristen Welker. “If you attacked our Capitol and you have been abused and you’ve been convicted, then that should stay,” McDaniel continued. McDaniel said...

Former Vice President Mike Pence was on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning. He told moderator Margaret Brennan that the use of the term hostages for January 6th defendants was “unacceptable.” “What do you think when you hear him refer to those people facing charges as hostages and patriots?” Brennan asked Pence. “Well, I think it’s unfortunate at a time that there are American hostages being held in Gaza that the President or any other leaders who would refer to people that are moving through our justice system as hostages and it’s just, it’s just unacceptable,” Pence responded.

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff (CA) on Sunday echoed John Brennan and said the Intel Community will sabotage Trump by withholding intelligence and ‘dumbing down’ his daily briefings this summer. President Trump will get intel briefings after he secures the GOP nomination this summer. Schiff said Trump can’t be trusted with classified information that reveals sources and methods. “We can’t trust that he will do the right thing,” Schiff said to NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker. WATCH: WATCH: Fmr. Intel Chair @RepAdamSchiff (D-Calif.) says he hopes the intelligence community will “dumb down” Trump’s briefings once he claims the nomination....

The Haley campaign is blasting out a new national poll from Marquette Law School, which shows their candidate vastly outperforming Donald Trump in a hypothetical match-up against Joe Biden. Yes, Trump leads Biden head-to-head in the survey by four points, but Haley absolutely blows Biden out. A national Quinnipiac survey published earlier in the week showed Trump trailing Biden by four points, while Haley led Biden by three points -- a net over-performance of seven percentage points for the former South Carolina governor. The Trump/Haley vs. Biden gap is even more pronounced in the MU Law numbers, at 14 percentage...

When the Trump-Russia operation began unraveling, it was clear that there was an international cast of characters involved in the frame-up. The operation to get Trump — in time to torpedo his election in 2016 and then subvert his presidency — involved the Hillary Clinton campaign, the CIA's John Brennan, who informed President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden of the operation, the FBI, which appeared to cover it up, a reputed Russian spy working for a Democrat think tank, a mysterious Maltese professor, an international honeypot, an Australian diplomat, and a British spy. It was the earthly equivalent of...

There’s the liberal media’s crusade against the former president, but then there’s E. Jean Carroll’s war against Trump, which is something otherworldly. She’s filed multiple lawsuits against Donald Trump. The first rendered a $5 million judgment against the former president. The latest suit, stemming from Trump calling Carroll a “whack job” during a CNN town hall event, led to a $83 million judgment. Her reaction to the ruling is unhinged and obsessive (via ABC News): Three days after a jury awarded her over $83 million for Donald Trump's repeated defamatory statements, columnist E. Jean Carroll vowed to use the money...

In France, Inès Corbière, the far-left daughter of two far-left members of the French National Assembly, has been very active recently on social media, enthusiastically vilifying Israel and Jews. She was caught on camera saying the same kind of things she has been posting; when she realized she was being recorded, she told the cameraman to stop filming her. And then she yelled at the cameraman that “I am an antisemite. I don’t give a damn.” She has now been arrested for her “pro-terror” media posts.According to her parents, she was misunderstood. She really meant to say the very opposite...

In many ways, Speaker Johnson didn’t bail out Democrats from a tough political predicament as much as he did his own Republican members.The outline of the spending agreement House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., cut with Democratic leaders sounds bad on its face. But the underlying reasons for that agreement seem far worse.As I wrote last week, “Speaker Johnson and Republican ‘leadership’ … bailed the Democrats out of the predicament they put themselves in last May.” To which I should make an important addition: In many ways, Johnson didn’t bail out Democrats from a tough political predicament as much as he...

Doesn’t it feel like United Airlines is becoming the ‘Bud Light’ of air travel? Their recent drive towards Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) seems heavily focused on transvestites, cross-dressers, and other assorted freaks. But unlike Bud Light, which was “merely” cynically trying to sell beer, United Airlines is potentially putting people’s lives in danger with their Drag Queen Flying Hour. You may have heard by now, but the CEO of United Airlines enjoys cross-dressing as a woman. Revolver covered this disturbing story. ... Have you noticed? The US aviation industry is crashing, both literally and figuratively. It’s like we’re watching...

There's been chatter about impeaching Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for years now, with such an effort looking increasingly likely in the Republican-controlled House. On Sunday, CNN put out a piece detailing how Republicans are united on impeaching Mayorkas, highlighting how that includes support from moderates as well. "From the far right and the Freedom Caucus to those more moderate, we have all been a part of this," Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) told the outlet. "We’ve all asked the tough questions, and I think we are at a point, and I believe that the American people agree...

Last week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, vetoed a measure that would have barred minors from receiving harmful transgender interventions such as puberty blockers and wrong-sex hormones. Amid intense backlash, he’s since tried to run damage control, signing an executive order on Friday that bans only trans surgeries for minors. We hope Ohio Republicans still override DeWine’s veto. There’s more going on behind the scenes of the medical establishment, however, especially as it relates to the “gender dysphoria” diagnosis. Gender dysphoria must be addressed in conjunction with contributing factors, such as adverse childhood experiences, but instead licensed clinicians rush...

Special Counsel Jack Smith hunted information on X users who liked or retweeted posts published by former President Donald Trump, according to redacted search warrants and other documents released Monday.According to the heavily redacted document issued to then-Twitter in January, the court ordered the social media giant to forfeit a bevy of information regarding Trump’s account, including “advertising information, including advertising IDs, ad activity, and ad topic preferences,” as well as IP addresses “used to create, login, and use the account” and privacy and account settings. The warrant also demanded information such as Trump’s search history, direct messages, and “content...

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof posited the idea in a recent piece that people who are worried about people breaking into their homes should get bear spray for self-defense instead of a firearm.Kristof wrote about the idea after home shootings involving Ralph Yarl and Kaylin Gillis.Elsewhere, brutes send their victims to the E.R.; in America, they send them to their graves. Foreigners admire our popular culture, our technology, our lifestyle, but are bewildered by our refusal to rein in guns. In the 1990s when I was Tokyo bureau chief of The Times, Japanese people regularly spoke to me about...

Iranian women who resist the hijab law face the brutal prospect of frozen bank accounts, drawing chilling parallels to the repressive tactics of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau against protestors. Iran is intensifying its efforts to enforce strict dress codes for women by instituting a new law that fines women 2.5 billion rials ($60,000) for flouting hijab rules. Last month, Iran’s judiciary chief reiterated that “removing one’s hijab is equivalent to showing enmity to the Islamic Republic.” This is all part of the Islamic Republic’s adherence to the Sharia, as it ramps up efforts even further to counter protests. The Quranic...

Get the latest from Brian Lilley straight to your inbox Saying 2+2=4 is an example of covert white supremacy, according to a group of influential math teachers in Ontario. Questioning them on their assertion simply means you are an anti-trans, anti-immigrant person who doesn’t like anyone who isn’t white. Welcome to another day in Ontario’s public education system. This latest round of insanity started when Toronto-based writer Ari Blaff published an article in the New York-based National Review. Blaff noted a workshop provided by math teacher Jason To, which dealt with overt and covert white supremacy in math. A slide...

Recently, the House of Representatives held the first in a series of congressional hearings targeting TikTok and the social media giant’s subservience to communist China. That led to some rather interesting admissions, including the fact that engineers in China (and by proxy, the Chinese government) do have access to the personal information of millions and millions of Americans. Without a good answer for that massive security issue, TikTok’s CEO borrowed a favorite strategy from the left. Namely, he claimed that any criticism of his company and the Chinese government is xenophobia. He also refused to comment on the Uyghur genocide...

The news was jarring to those who had come to regard Volodymyr Zelensky as a warrior for freedom, standing unflinchingly against a sinister, unscrupulous and powerful foe: in December, he signed a decree banning the Church to which millions of Ukrainians belong, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Last Sunday, thousands of those Ukrainians gathered outside the Church’s headquarters, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, to pray and show their support for the monks whom Zelensky has ordered to vacate the premises. This is the new Churchill? A man who evicts monks from their monastery and closes churches? But...