Free Republic

Defiant Columbia University graduates wore zip-tie handcuffs, brandished pro-Palestinian signs and even went as far as tearing up a diploma on stage during the Ivy League’s first commencement ceremonies last week. The protesting students were caught on camera storming across the platform on Friday to accept their degrees during ceremonies that were significantly pared after weeks of violent anti-Israel demonstrations on campus. In one of the most belligerent displays, Tarsis Salome, a Columbia social work graduate, charged forward with her zip-tied hands above her head as those in the audience cheered her on.

New Yorkers are fortifying their homes with panic rooms and bullet-proof doors like never before over fears about crime, migrants and national turmoil — and it’s not just the city’s elite partaking in the trend. “Not every [customer] is an ultra-rich stockbroker — a lot of them are just people, middle-class kind of people,” said Steve Humble, founder of the home-defense contractor Creative Home Engineering. “I’d say the pandemic really kicked off an uptick. Business was really good throughout the pandemic time, and it really hasn’t slowed down,” said Humble, who specializes in top-of-the-line secret doors disguised as bookshelves, fireplaces,...

President Joe Biden’s policy of mass migration is forcing up housing inflation, so pushing up interest rates and mortgage rates, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Housing prices should have dropped amid the recent supply of new apartments and homes, but have “not behaved the way we thought it would,” said Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.. “I still think it will, but if it doesn’t, we’re going to have a hard time” bringing inflation back down to the target of 2 percent, Goolsbee told the Journal for a May 11 article.

America’s attention to Arctic security has intensified in recent years. Our force structure has grown deliberately, a word that usually means “on purpose.” For this Alaskan, particularly when Russia and China practice war games with live ammunition in Alaska’s fishing grounds, “deliberate” can also mean “slowly,” or “not fast enough.” More intensive U.S. security “deliberation” might best be directed now toward Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, too. In geopolitics, the Antarctic has been quiet to date, or at least less competitive. A great circle air route over the South Pole has less traffic, and southern shipping has less strategic significance...

President Biden wants to let the tax rate cuts that President Trump and Republicans passed without Democrat support, in 2017. Biden and others continue to intentionally lie that the tax cuts "cost" the government $2 trillion and increased the debt and deficit. That essentially was the prediction of Congressional Budget Office. The problem is predictions are not facts. Here are the facts that show that the government has collected a huge amount of additional revenues after the tax cuts were passed, and additional revenues do not cause increased debt. The problem is that the government is spending more. Individual income...

Americans consistently voice their disapproval on the state of the economy in recent polls, largely because of the stratospheric cost of living. But apologists for the Biden administration point to the low unemployment rate of 3.9% in April as proof of the economy’s strength. Yet this is a hollow talking point since the real unemployment rate is likely between 6.5 and 7.7%. The unemployment rate is the percentage of people in the labor force who don’t have a job. That means the unemployment rate can change if either the number of people unemployed or the total size of the labor...

Proving that the Big Apple still has plenty of juice, a report finds that it holds more millionaires than any other large metro area in the word. Indeed, New York City’s count of millionaires is up 48% from just a decade ago. The data, compiled by Henley & Partners, show that nearly 350,000 New Yorkers — one in every 24 — have at least a seven-figure liquid net worth.

While it’s true that some things get better with age, the United States’ aging transmission infrastructure is not one of them. Updated transmission infrastructure is crucial to reducing emissions and ensuring dependable electricity service. Congress has passed green energy laws to help make this update happen, but now it’s up to a little-known government commission to fully realize the benefits of our transformational climate laws. And they need to act before it’s too late. It would be an understatement to say our country’s existing transmission infrastructure—the energy cables, towers and transformers that move energy between a generation system and the...

Dozens of students walked out of Duke University’s commencement ceremony on Sunday to protest guest speaker Jerry Seinfield over his support of Israel during the war in Gaza. Video of the incident shows a group of students walking out of their seats and carrying a Palestinian flag as soon as the comedian and TV star was called to the stage. The attention to the protesters was quickly diverted by the cheering crowd, who chanted, “Jerry! Jerry!” as Seinfeld would go on to give his speech and accept an honorary degree from Duke.

Employees at an Apple store in a Baltimore suburb voted to authorize a strike on Saturday, setting up what could be the first work stoppage at any Apple retail store in the country. The Towson, Md., employees claim the tech giant isn’t bargaining in good faith as they negotiate a union contract. The group of about 100 employees are organized under the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers’ Coalition of Organized Retail Employees (IAM CORE). The location was the first Apple store to form a union in 2022 of over 270 retail locations nationwide.

A just-released report from Scholaroo indicates that the U.S. national average for credit card debt has escalated to $6,555, with New Jersey residents leading the nation with an average debt of $8,155 per credit card. Scholaroo, a national firm matching college students with potential scholarships, surveyed more than 2,000 people across the United States during the final quarter of 2023.Coming in at a close second is Connecticut, with an average debt of $8,011 per credit card, followed by Maryland, New York, and Alaska—all with average credit card debts of more than $7,600 per card. Rounding out the top 10 states...

[WILDWOOD, N.J.] Former President Donald J. Trump returned to South Jersey as he continues to put the Garden State in play. He held a Saturday night rally for 100,000 Trump supporters, who packed out the Wildwood Beach boardwalk, beachfront, and bars and restaurants, in addition to the more than 20,000 tickets distributed for inside the fences.Read: Trump Drawing Thousands to Rally in Wildwood As People Camp Out on New Jersey Beach OvernightTrump Rally Draws Between 80-100k on the Beach in Wildwood, NJ; May Be 'Largest' in 'State History'“Even on television, they said [it] might be the biggest political rally they’ve...

California Democrats are frustrated by many of their consumers. No matter how much they plead, whine, and cajole, people simply aren't buying electric vehicles in the numbers the state is demanding. And progress in getting charging stations up and running is far behind schedule. Also, all of the electrical power being flushed into these systems is expensive. But don't worry about any of that. Gavin Newsom and the Democrats have a plan to address all of these woes. In order to subsidize the cost of electric vehicles and encourage more people to buy them, they're going to tack on a...

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, has threatened former President Donald Trump with a new investigation into his reported promises to Big Oil. The Washington Post reported this week of a deal that Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, reportedly offered to top oil executives at a Mar-a-Lago dinner last month—raise $1 billion for his campaign and he will reverse dozens of President Joe Biden's environmental regulations and prevent new rules, according to people with knowledge of the dinner. According to the Post's sources, Trump said gifting him $1 billion would be a "deal," because of the taxation and...

The latest Trustees Report projects the Social Security retirement trust fund will run out of money by 2033. The trust fund has been bleeding cash since 2018, and it's getting worse every year. Congress has several options to mitigate the potential benefit cuts facing 70 million retirees. There might only be enough funds to pay out 79% of retirement benefits unless Congress acts. Retirees could be in for a rude awakening in the near future unless Congress makes some changes to Social Security. The most recent Social Security Trustees Report indicated the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund will...

Robberies in New York City are surging, police data show. While most major crimes are down, including shootings and murders, robberies shot up 5.6% so far in 2024 over the same period in 2023 — to 5,522 from 5,228 as of May 5. Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, pointed out that robberies have a low arrest rate — with only about 25% of cases solved because victims typically don’t know their attackers.

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher reacted to New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn arguing that the paper shouldn’t be an instrument for the Biden campaign and only write negative stories about Republicans while writing solely positive stories about Biden by stating that this is what the paper does now. Maher said, “Now that I’m doing interviews…the big question that people are asking me, I see every interviewer ask the same question, which is like, you make fun of the left a lot more than you used to. Yes, I do, because they’re goofier and...

Gavin Newsom proposes a mix of spending cuts and using reserves to balance the state budget. He says that core services will be largely untouched, but some existing programs would be affected.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced his proposed $288 billion state budget, which would cut thousands of vacant state jobs and funding to more than 200 state programs in order to close the state’s $27.6 billion deficit. Newsom revealed his budget proposal on Friday for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which starts on July 1, citing the importance of accountability and responsibility, according to ABC7 News. This comes a month after state officials agreed to reduce California’s deficit by $17.3 billion after Newsom announced in January that the state’s deficit was $37.9 billion. The state deficit ended up being closer to $45...

Once an economic powerhouse that was the envy of much of the world, there is deep concern in Tokyo that the economies of China and Germany have already surpassed Japan's — and that India's will do so next year. The announcement that in 2025 India will overtake Japan in nominal gross domestic product in dollar terms has shocked Tokyo, which had until 2010 been the undisputed second-largest economy in the world but is now on the brink of slipping to fifth place. In estimates released in late April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicated that India's nominal GDP will reach...