Free Republic

A woman was placed in handcuffs by police and fined £100 for feeding pigeons in London. Video footage captured by a passerby showed the woman being detained by a group of officers and council enforcement workers in Harrow on Wednesday. A notice later handed to the woman showed she had been stopped for breaching a Public Spaces Protection Order which covers town and district centres in Harrow. The woman, who was visibly upset at times, was surrounded by at least six police officers and two council enforcement officers. The incident unfolded at around 3pm on Wednesday on the High Street...

n Monday, Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) initiated an overhaul of the country’s constitution that will codify the rule of longtime dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, as “co-presidents.” The reform follows an escalating campaign of persecution against the Catholic Church, the last bastion of opposition against the Ortegas, who nonetheless claim that their regime is a beacon of “Christian socialism.” Days prior, they had celebrated the New Year by expelling all Catholic nuns from the country. Nicaragua’s attacks on the Church and broader descent into tyranny culminates the stunning fall from grace of an erstwhile...

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised to "defeat the decline and division offered by others" in his new year message, as he insisted 2026 would see people feel "positive change" in their lives. He acknowledged "things have been tough in Britain for a while" but said the public should now start to see improvements including lower bills, more police on the streets and new health hubs. It has been a difficult year for the PM, who has been battling slowing economic growth, poor poll ratings and speculation he could face a leadership challenge. In her own new year message,...

A retired San Francisco schoolteacher is accusing the city of running a “Big Brother” surveillance dragnet that illegally tracks everyday drivers. Michael Moore, a retired public school teacher, filed a federal class-action lawsuit Monday alleging sweeping Fourth Amendment violations. Moore says the city’s Flock license-plate reader system unlawfully monitors his movements as he drives to stores, his sons’ schools and family gatherings — all without a warrant or probable cause. San Francisco has installed roughly 450 to nearly 500 Flock cameras along major roadways, making it “functionally impossible” to drive anywhere in the city without having your license plate photographed,...

A UK teacher said he was reported to government counter-terrorism investigators and forced to resign just for showing high school senior-age students videos of President Trump. The politics teacher at Henley College in Oxfordshire, northwest of London, told the Telegraph he was accused of causing “emotional harm” to the students, who were all 17 or 18 years old — with child protective services suggesting he could be guilty of a “hate crime.” “They likened me to a terrorist. It was completely jarring,” the teacher, who asked for his name not to be used, told the paper. “It’s dystopian, like something...

As radical Islamist threats continue to plague Australia, politicians are pivoting to policing speech and tightening gun laws on law-abiding citizens—now openly admitting curbs on free expression are needed to shield their multicultural agenda.Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has unveiled a sweeping plan to combat what she calls rising anti-Semitism, but the measures conveniently sidestep the core issue of unchecked radical Islamism behind recent attacks, focusing instead on doxxing anonymous social media users and reviewing gun laws. In a joint news conference, Allan announced legislation that would force social media platforms to reveal identities behind anonymous accounts accused of spreading ‘hate’....

For many of us who grew up in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, Britain had a distinct identity—one rooted in tradition, culture, and a shared sense of belonging. But over the past few decades, that Britain has slowly transformed, replaced by a new, complex reality. From the days of neighborhood corner shops, Sunday roasts, and traditional family values, to a country that now feels more fragmented and uncertain. This video takes you through the journey of how Britain’s identity evolved and why so many of us feel like we're losing touch with the country we once knew. The slow disappearance...

Trump’s presidential blitz is realizing the dreams of conservative intellectuals in the Reagan-Bush era.Imagine a populist president who set out to create, “in the first weeks of his administration, a radically different perception of the presidency.” He could use “far-reaching executive orders” to “give various constituencies throughout the country the immediate conviction that this president, for a change, looks out for them.” The burst of presidential edicts would serve visceral as much as practical purposes: “The nation as a whole needs to be jarred by this newcomer’s determination to protect the country’s vital interests, perhaps by ordering, on national security...

Will 2026 be a year of great shaking for the United States? Coming into 2025, I thought that seismic activity would be a major global theme, and that has certainly turned out to be the case. This has been an extremely unusual year for earthquakes along the Pacific Ring of Fire, and volcanoes that have been dormant for ages are suddenly roaring to life all over the world. Here in the United States, we have been experiencing lots and lots of little earthquakes, but thankfully we have not been hit by a really bad one yet. Will our luck run...

The phrase “Woke Right” arrived almost overnight... James Lindsay traces the history of “woke” as a mindset rather than a policy list. For him, “woke” is a way of seeing the world through a single lens of power and grievance. It falsely elevates politics to a pseudo-theology—that of a cosmic struggle between oppressors and oppressed. It is inspired by resentment, which inevitably fosters online mobs, practices cancel culture, and treats ideological opponents as heretics who must be hunted down rather than debated. Lindsay argues that a similar pattern has emerged on parts of the Right. He points to Groypers and...

A man has been jailed for possessing and distributing extreme right-wing music and material.Norbert Gyurcsik, from Kestrel Road, Hereford, was arrested in May last year over albums in which lyrics breached terrorism legislation and intended to incite racial hatred.

Freedom of speech will be under even greater threat if the British government is able to do away with jury trials for almost all cases because legal studies show a judge sitting alone is far more likely to convict defendants in free speech than juries, the Free Speech Union warns. The Free Speech Union warns the United Kingdom risks losing “a check on governmental power and arbitrary justice” in “the biggest assault on our liberties in 800 years” if the government is able to push ahead this week with plans said to be looking at abolishing the right to a...

A comprehensive communication-scanning regime would allow national authorities to identify political opponents far more quickly -- a tool capable of making life hell for anyone inconvenient to those in power. It is Ursula von der Leyen’s personal flagship project: the surveillance of private chats. All signs suggest that as early as Wednesday, the EU will make a renewed attempt to establish a dedicated spying authority. Wednesday could mark a turning point in the history of the European Union. As MCC Brussels and MEP Martin Sonneborn warned on Monday, a decisive vote on the EU’s proposed “chat control” is scheduled for...

The EU is working at full speed to complete its online surveillance-and-informant network. By the end of the year, all EU member states are required to present so-called “Trusted Flaggers” -- institutions tasked with identifying “problematic” content -- to Brussels for accreditation. Politicians from Germany’s Christian Democratic Union appear especially eager. Hendrik Wüst, CDU politician and Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, is a child of the current zeitgeist. As the leader of Germany’s most populous state, he views it as his mission not merely to preach the dominant ideology of the CO2-neutral society, but to enforce it rigorously. Together with...

Ireland’s media regulator began an investigation into social media platform X on Wednesday over concerns it is not giving users a chance to appeal content moderation decisions and that its internal complaint-handling systems are not easy to access. The probe, the first opened by the regulator in its role supervising the compliance of platforms established in Ireland with the European Union’s Digital Services Act, will assess Elon Musk-owned X’s compliance with parts of the law. […] The investigation arose from concerns held by the Irish regulator’s supervision team, as well as information provided by a non-governmental organization, HateAid, and a...

UK Parliament/PA Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the BBC must fight to restore trust after criticism that a Panorama documentary misled viewers by editing a speech by Donald Trump. She said a review of the broadcaster's charter would ensure a "genuinely accountable" BBC, defending it as a "national institution". BBC director general Tim Davie earlier told staff "we've got to fight for our journalism" after the US president's threat to sue the corporation for $1bn (£760m). A leaked internal BBC memo said the Panorama film misled viewers by splicing together parts of Trump's speech on 6 January 2021 and...

Joey Barton has been found guilty of posting grossly offensive messages on social media. Barton was found guilty by a jury at Liverpool Crown Court of six counts of sending a grossly offensive electronic communication with intent to cause distress or anxiety. During his trial at Liverpool Crown Court, the ex-Manchester City and Newcastle midfielder, 43, said he believed he was the victim of a "political prosecution" and denied his aim was "to get clicks and promote himself". But the jury decided Barton, who also played for England in 2007, had "crossed the line between free speech and a crime"...

The First AmendmentCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.What are the limits on free speech in America? What aren’t you allowed to say? And who is allowed to restrict speech? Myth: You can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater.Fact: This famous phrase is derived from the 1919 Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States, but the full phrase is that “The most...

"Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable."

There have been countless examples of liberalism being a mental disorder.Here is another one:Two researchers from Western Michigan University have written a paper titled “Beneficial Bloodsucking,” which was published by the journal Bioethics this past July. (No, it isn’t about vampires.)The paper argues that intentionally spreading alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a potentially life-threatening allergy to red meat, could be not only morally defensible, but perhaps even necessary, in order to reduce animal suffering and combat climate change.Here are the authors, Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth, in their own words:Because promoting tickborne AGS prevents something bad from happening, doesn’t violate anyone’s rights,...