Free Republic

Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis poet, wife and mother, was shot and killed Wednesday by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer, setting off nationwide protests over the officer’s actions and the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. Good’s poem, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” was the 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize winner at Old Dominion University. ….. Her poem “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” was selected from about two dozen submissions as a prize winner. The poem reads (stylized as per https://poets.org/2020-on-learning-to-dissect-fetal-pigs):

Conan O’Brien warned comedians giving in to their anger at President Donald Trump that they are being “co-opted” and not making much of a difference. In a conversation with Oxford Union on Tuesday, O’Brien noted he often hears people say how “great” Trump must be for comedians. The one-time Tonight Show host argued the opposite, saying “talking crazy” is part of Trump’s brand and it makes it difficult to structure satire around it. O’Brien cited Trump’s construction of a White House ballroom as something sketch comedy writers would likely come up with to mock Trump — except it’s reality. “Comedy...

Eleven days after Charlie Kirk was killed in September, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the third-term Georgia congresswoman, was watching his memorial service on TV as the luminaries of the conservative movement and the Trump administration gathered to pay tribute to the young activist. What stayed with Greene long afterward were the last two speakers who took the stage. First there was Kirk’s widow, Erika, who stood in white before the crowd filling the Arizona stadium, lifted her tear-filled eyes and said that she forgave her husband’s killer. And then there was President Trump. “He was a missionary with a noble spirit...

Archaeologists might have discovered a major milestone in the quest to prove Noah’s Ark’s existence — pottery fragments near the supposed site of the Biblical boat. Prof. Dr Faruk Kaya of Agri Ibrahim Cecen University said the pieces were found close to the alleged Ark outline at the Dogubayazit site on Turkey’s Mount Ararat, according to Turkish media, the Daily Mail reported. The 538-foot-long boat-shaped geological structure has been the focal point of the Noah’s Ark debate for decades, having been described in the Bible as the legendary life raft’s final resting place.

THE WORDS “retirement community” summon up images of easy chairs, overcooked food and endless daytime TV. Latitude Margaritaville, a community being built near Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, quickly disabuses these. “There was a toga party this past weekend,” says Lynette, a resident. “There was a live band, and it was a riot.” Barbie, another of the community’s “ambassadors” (residents employed by the developers to help sell it to potential newcomers), compares living there to “starting college all over again”. There are, she says, “drinks on the driveway, cocktails on the concrete”. If Margaritaville’s residents are representative of their...

The US comedian whose late-night show was briefly cancelled after pressure from Donald Trump’s government is to urge UK audiences to stand up for free speech. In a defiant alternative Christmas message on Channel 4, Jimmy Kimmel will liken the first year of Trump’s second administration to the rise of fascism. Sitting beside a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, Kimmel will quip: “From a fascism perspective, this has been a really great year.” He is also expected to warn that press freedoms can be snuffed out quickly, and urge UK viewers to resist attacks on free speech....

ANYONE WHO has stood in a long queue at border control, or bypassed one, knows that not all passports are created equal. Citizens of some countries can speed through the gates; citizens of others must submit to interrogation and delay. Henley & Partners, a consultancy that helps rich people acquire citizenship in attractive countries, ranks passports by the number of countries their holders can enter without a visa. Its latest assessment of passport power shows that America is sliding down the table. Our map below shows how countries compare this year. Asian countries dominate the top of the table. Singapore...

When describing U.S. President Donald Trump’s governing style, and particularly his relationships with other countries, two words tend to come up frequently: “mercurial” and “transactional.” The latter suits several U.S. allies, partners, and even adversaries just fine, while the former has buffeted even some of Washington’s closest and most enduring partnerships over the past year. In examining which countries have benefited the most and least from the second Trump administration, we intentionally excluded the parties to the two biggest conflicts that it is trying to mediate—one between Israel and Hamas, the other between Russia and Ukraine. Both of those conflicts...

I am in shock right now, and completely heartbroken for his family and friends. Unfortunately about an hour ago, news broke that Adam The Woo has passed away. I don't want to believe it, and it's so difficult to accept, but his father and several of his close friends have confirmed it, yet that's all the information that is available right now. I never got to meet Adam in person, but he was absolutely instrumental in my own personal youtube journey, and I always hoped one day to just have a conversation with him about the mechanics of youtube, and...

Young America’s Foundation is the leading organization for young conservatives. With more than 60 years of history and contacts on more than 2,000 campuses, we help students like you find support, promote your conservative views and take action. Get involved with YAF today:

The Trump administration has acted to ban gender-affirming care for minors across the country. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Thursday it could pull federal funding from any US hospital that offered transgender surgeries or pharmaceutical treatment. The department's announcement said the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will release a notice of proposed rulemaking that will bar hospitals from performing 'sex-rejecting' procedures on children under 18 if the institutions want to participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs. 'These procedures include pharmaceutical or surgical interventions of specified types that attempt to align a child’s physical appearance...

Quick, get this man a copy of Return of the God Hypothesis. Elon Musk in an interview with Katie Miller:KATIE MILLER: Who do you look up to the most? ELON: The Creator. MILLER: What’s your position on God? ELON: God is the Creator. MILLER: You don’t believe in God though, do you? ELON: Well, I believe this universe came from something. People have different labels.It’s the season of the unexpected convert, isn’t it? Obviously, I have no privileged information about where if anywhere Musk has landed in any hypothetical spiritual search. But he went out on a limb in saying...

President Trump referred to the late actor and director Rob Reiner as having “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME” in a social-media post Monday less than a day after authorities said the Democratic activist and donor and his wife were found dead in their Los Angeles home. Trump said Reiner, a critic of the president, was “tortured and struggling” and attributed the death “to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump,...

Trump’s tariffs and immigration raids are driving the latest farm crisis. White farmers have stood by him year after year—and still do. On Monday, Donald Trump announced that his administration will give farmers a $12 billion bailout—a tacit admission that his trade policies suck. Farmers have spent much of the last year complaining about rising production costs, falling crop prices and the loss of multiple markets due to Trump’s tariffs and the trade wars they have launched. All in all, farmers are projected to lose roughly $44 billion in profits this year, in large part because of Trump administration policies....

With climate change steadily dismantling the icy habitat essential to their existence, new research suggests polar bears are rapidly rewiring their own genetics in a bid to survive. The species is being forced to adapt to the harsher reality of a warming Arctic, in what scientists believe is the first documented case of rising temperatures driving genetic change in a mammal. Researchers from the University of East Anglia in Britain say these findings, published Friday in the journal Mobile DNA, offer a rare glimmer of hope for the species. "Polar bears are still sadly expected to go extinct this century,...

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino on Thursday brushed off questions about his past claims of a cover up in the case of who planted pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican national committee offices a day before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. When Fox News’s Sean Hannity reminded his former colleague of his past social media comments, Bongino said the FBI was “pretty comfortable we have our guy.” “Listen I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions,” the former political commentator continued. “That’s clear. And one day I will be back in that space, but that’s not...

2025 FORMULA 1 ETIHAD AIRWAYS ABU DHABI GRAND PRIX Live Thread Circuit: Yas Marina Circuit, Yas Island First Grand Prix: 2009, Number of Laps: 58, Circuit Length: 5.281 km, Race Distance: 306.183 km, Lap Record: 1:25.637 Kevin Magnussen (2024)

Doctors have admitted to performing “non-standard” gender-affirming procedures on youngsters and sometimes base treatment purely on cosmetic goals — as they see a spike in patients seeking out “nonbinary” surgeries. The medical professionals copped to sometimes even performing the life-altering procedures with little to no assessment of an individual’s mental health or gender identity, newly emerged videos obtained by The Free Press show. The recordings, some of which have been made at closed-door medical conferences in the US within the last few years, captured clinicians openly discussing how they were trying to fulfill a patients’ desires — even if it...

WASHINGTON — The US Postal Service’s promised all-electric fleet is still woefully behind schedule, with more than $3 billion in taxpayer funding out the door and just 612 of the expected 35,000 battery-powered delivery trucks built, according to a letter sent to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and obtained by The Post. Former President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) set aside $3 billion for what Ernst has since ripped as a green “boondoggle” that saw almost all of that amount paid to Wisconsin-based defense contractor Oshkosh to build the environmentally friendly mail trucks. Ernst, who chairs the Senate’s DOGE...

Trump's MRI scan that was conducted in October, reading the results of the examination during Monday's press briefing that showed he was in good health. Trump's health has fallen under increasing scrutiny from the media in recent months, including when it was revealed that Trump underwent a second routine physical for the year in October, which included an MRI scan. Leavitt reported the medical imaging procedure found Trump as healthy. "As part of President Trump's comprehensive executive physical advanced imaging was performed because men in his age group benefit from a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health," Leavitt read...