Free Republic

A contentious budget resolution the Austin City Council passed last month has changed how city veterinarians spay pregnant cats and dogs, allowing the city to perform abortions without a waiting period. The resolution from Council Member Krista Laine replaced a 2019 rule that required the Austin Animal Center to hold visibly pregnant animals for two business days before conducting surgery to ensure rescue groups had time to pick them up. That hold-and-notify requirement no longer applies after the passage of Laine’s resolution on Aug. 13, meaning the decision of when to operate is left up to animal center veterinarians. “We...

My Grandmother died when I was 3 weeks old. (Fidelity to the Catholic Faith came down to me from her through my Mother.) When her whole family was shipping out from Ireland, the boat had just departed; the parents looked around: "Where is Lillian?" Her Auntie was holding her back on the docks. "Now you'll come back to us." They never did.A song, very popular at the time, reflects similar circumstances. The Irish must flee, or perish. In Kathleen Mavourneen (click to hear the music), her erstwhile suitor--maybe almost betrothed--on the day he must depart, not to see her for...

In the arena of champions, the greatest victories sometimes come not from defeating opponents, but from standing alone when the crowd demands your silence. For over a decade, the transgender debate has erupted from academic theory into a cultural battlefield, dividing families, destroying careers, and rewriting the rules of biological reality. What started as a push for tolerance has morphed into something far different—a movement that now targets society’s most vulnerable: our children.The issue should be straightforward, and honestly, it still is for anyone not drowning in academic gobbledygook. For millennia, humanity has understood that biological sex is binary and...

Men aren’t vanishing from fiction. The truth is more complicated (Cannot be posted due to FR rules.)

Students had protested ICE enforcement against Muslim terrorist supporters. Two questions. 1. Why is a Pakistani Muslim terrorist at the University of Delaware? It’s a losing proposition for America and doesn’t seem to have paid off all that well. 2. How long until officials and the media insist that Luqmaan Khan, like the D.C. National Guard Afghan terrorist, was just ‘sad’ and we need to be understanding of everything he went through… to try and kill us. A University of Delaware student has been charged with felony possession of a machine gun and had plans to attack the campus, police...

New research shows that a substantial proportion of children aren’t playing outdoors at all, even on the weekends...researchers focused on a subset of 2,568 children between the ages of 7 and 12, analyzing responses from surveys filled out by the children and their parents... All told, 34% of kids reported not playing outdoors during weekdays, and 20% reported not playing outdoors during weekends. And based on their parents’ responses, the more the children played outside, the better their social-emotional skills were on average. Children with these skills are more able to clearly express their emotions or build positive relationships with...

"Meaningful action must accompany any apology," wrote Pearce, who is now stepping away from social mediaGuy Pearce has apologised for sharing “misinformation and falsehoods” about Israel on social media whilst publicly voicing support for Palestine. “It has been brought to my attention that, in my support of Palestine, I have inadvertently re-posted articles, and/or statements, that have contained misinformation and falsehoods,” Pearce told Jewish News, per Variety. “I am aware how sharing inaccurate content can cause confusion and distress; for this I am deeply sorry. I will certainly endeavour to be more diligent in future to verify anything I share...

This guy really hates Donald TrumpThe current president of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, is arguably the most controversial leader in this nation’s history. Now, with that being said, U.S. citizens seem to either love or hate the guy; there isn’t really too much middle ground. However, in a TikTok video recently posted by the account @dnasleuth, a California man shows just how far he takes his disdain for President Trump. The clip has around 96K views and 300K likes as this older gentleman shows off his Trump voodoo doll. The TikTok begins with the elderly man...

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released “never-before-seen” images and videos of late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious private island in the Caribbean Wednesday as official Washington waits for the Justice Department to hand over its files on the infamous case. The eerie images show several rooms in the disgraced financier’s luxury retreat on Little St. James in the US Virgin Islands, including one room that looks like a dentist’s operating office and is decorated with what appear to be masks of notorious historical figures.

PURCHASE, N.Y. (DECEMBER 2, 2025) Today, PepsiCo announces a landmark global partnership with Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team beginning in 2026, bringing together three of its powerhouse brands – Gatorade®, Sting®, and Doritos® – with the iconic Formula 1 team. This multi-year partnership builds on PepsiCo's existing Formula 1 relationship and marks the first time that three category-leading PepsiCo brands will partner with an F1 team. Building on Formula 1's explosive growth trajectory and rapidly expanding fanbase, this partnership positions PepsiCo at the heart of the sport's global momentum through comprehensive integration across Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team’s operations, from pioneering hydration...

An unattributable aphorism says, “You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out.” Most Americans of just a decade ago would think it no more than a witty phrase. It couldn’t happen here, right? We wish we could be sure of that today, but we can’t. New York City elected a self-identified Democratic Socialist who denies he’s a communist but whose policy platform is dead red, his playbook tracking with Karl Marx’s nasty polemic. Portlanders elected Katie Wilson to be their mayor. Her wish list reads as if it could have been written by...

...first let me present the latest version of the chart (through 2023q3): ...young people have a lot more wealth than it appeared in past versions of this chart!.. this isn’t just the wealth of Millennials, and therefore the median age of this group is lower than in my past charts. The two dollar figures I highlighted are at the median age of 30 for these age cohorts (unfortunately we don’t have data for Boomers at that age).... when the 2022 survey data was released (read my summary of the data), young people had a lot more wealth than we thought...

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that President Vladimir Putin accepted some U.S. proposals aimed at ending the war in Ukraine and rejected others but that Russia was ready to meet U.S. negotiators as many times as it took to reach an agreement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was speaking after talks in Moscow between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner went into the early hours of Wednesday morning, with a Kremlin aide saying afterwards that "compromises have not yet been found." Asked if it would be correct to say that Putin had rejected...

Terrorist flags were raised on the Votivkirche, Vienna’s second-tallest church built in the 19th century. The Archdiocese condemned the act, distanced itself firmly, and is weighing legal steps while police investigate without named suspects.

U.S. — In addition to preventing people from entering the United States from various nations around the world, the White House revealed on Tuesday that Minnesota had been added to President Trump's third-world travel ban. The additional order would officially keep anyone from the foreign land of Minnesota from entering the U.S., eliciting a collective sigh of relief from Americans across the country who live in fear of encountering dangerous immigrants from the North Star State. "They're not sending us our best," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after adding Minnesota to the travel ban. "Murderers, rapists, criminals of...

Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi's former Cotswolds home has been plagued with fresh flooding again, months after the couple put it on the market and relocated to higher grounds. The couple is understood to be plotting a move back to the U.S. as they miss their friends and loved ones, and cannot afford to live through another British winter. This comes after Ellen DeGeneres opted for a new life abroad following allegations she fostered a toxic workplace on her cancelled eponymous show. DeGeneres and her wife, de Rossi, are still struggling to offload their former Cotswolds mansion, five months...

As a resident of Nashville, I have been hearing nothing but the suddenly close race in the Tennessee 7th Congressional District election for the last couple of weeks. It was all over the national news as well, even though the competitors, Matt Van Epps (R) and Aftyn Behn (D) were hardly household names. (The man they were replacing, the suddenly resigned Rep. Mark Green, was better known, though not always for the best reasons.) The possibility that Behn would win in a district that Donald Trump won by 22 points in 2024 had Democrats and all the ships in their...

A Methodist pastor in New York revealed last week plans to transition into a woman and said the 51-year-old now identifies as asexual. Rev. Phillip Phaneuf, of North Chili United Methodist Church in Rochester, made the announcement during a Nov. 23 Sunday service. The personal update was delivered from the pulpit while wearing a rainbow stole. “So I get to announce with joy that I’m transitioning,” Phaneuf said. “I’m affirming to all of you that I am transgender. The best way to put this is that I’m not becoming a woman, I’m giving up pretending to be a man. This...

The number of Gen Z college freshmen who are entering universities without high school math skills is skyrocketing — as SAT scores are plummeting, a stunning new report has found. Even more shocking — many of the students can’t even do middle-school level math, meaning their skills are fifth grade or below. Experts say this phenomenon, combined with steadily rising high school graduate rates, show that the country is suffering a massive grade inflation problem. The University of California San Diego, for instance, has reported a staggering 30-fold increase in the number of students unable to do basic arithmetic over...

One of Canada’s largest budget airlines is under fire after an agent tore up a family’s boarding pass and falsely told an elderly passenger he had “no right” to film after their flight was bumped. Jason Huang and his family, including his 73-year-old father, arrived at Edmonton International Airport in August to board a WestJet flight to Toronto when they were told at the check-in counter that the plane they had booked was downsized and that they would need to fly out several hours later, the CBC reported. Huang pressed the agents about why his family had been bumped from...