Free Republic

America’s top 1% enjoy a fifth of the economy’s income and pay nearly a third of its federal taxes. Many politicians think they should cough up much more. Zohran Mamdani, New York’s mayor, wants a new 2% city levy on incomes over $1m. Virginia, Rhode Island and Washington state are weighing up similar measures; Californians are likely this year to vote on a “one time” 5% levy on billionaires’ wealth. In Europe, too, there is a similar clamour to target the wealthy. France has seen a popular campaign for a wealth tax. And with Sir Keir Starmer weakened or doomed...

The aggressive push for socialism in America is not just a policy debate. It is a direct assault on the American founding and the prosperity it created. Under the guise of “progress,” bloated liberals are imposing a compulsory, state-led ideology and economy that mirrors failed socialist experiments of the past. In 1988, I escaped the crushing weight of communism in Romania, trading a life of state-mandated silence for the promise of American liberty. As a political refugee, America gave me the soil to rebuild my life from nothing. But today, America’s foundation is shaking. I look at the country that...

A powerful committee chaired by socialist wannabe LA mayor Nithya Raman has voted to hand over $6.6 million to a radical activist group that’s previously sued the City. Los Angeles City Council’s Housing and Homeless Committee greenlit more than $177 million in homeless spending contracts – including the fresh multi-million-dollar payday for Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, better known as SAJE. They want the LAPD abolished, the 2028 Olympics to be cancelled and to freeze rent. The $6.6 million in funding given to the SAJE comes despite the group having sued the City of Los Angeles over approvals for...

Foreign-born Rep. Shri Thanedar openly threatened to prosecute his political enemies this week — a reminder of what Democrats plan to do if they get power back. During a committee hearing Tuesday, Thanedar — struggling to speak English — threatened to prosecute Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott when President Donald Trump is out of office. “You better hope you get pardoned because you will be held accountable for the absolute disregard of the law your agencies have shown over the past year,” Thanedar threatened. “Your agencies have lost the trust of the American people, with millions taking to...

A quiet cold war is happening across America — one that many Americans might not be aware of if they’re not tuned into the changes underway in America’s Christian communities. On one side is the religious right’s use of scripture and faith to justify and defend President Donald Trump’s agenda — and growing Christian nationalist sentiment. On the other side is the reshaping of the American Catholic Church, under Pope Leo XIV. Through new appointments, orders to his bishops to speak out about immigration, and public comments critiquing the direction of the US under Trump, the pope is setting up...

The New Mexico legislature is considering what appears to be an unconstitutional bill, SB17. The bill creates considerable red tape and record-keeping requirements for gun dealers. It also bans the sale of numerous common firearms by simply requiring that dealers be forbidden to process background checks for those firearms. New Mexico requires dealers to run background checks for nearly all firearm sales.Excerpts of the bill from nmlegis.gov:A. Beginning on July 1, 2026, a dealer shall not sell or transfer any of the following firearms, ammunition or devices to a person who is not licensed pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 923,...

After a sometimes heated six-hour debate and a few failed amendments, the New Mexico Senate passed a gun bill that aims to stop firearms from getting into the wrong hands and ban the sale of certain types of weapons. With a 21-17 vote, Senate Bill 17 now heads to the House for approval. Sens. Joseph Cervantes of Las Cruces, Benny Shendo Jr. of Jemez Pueblo and Angel Charley of Acoma Pueblo were the lone "no" votes among Democratic lawmakers. All Republican senators voted in opposition. Senate Bill 17 would require licensed gun dealers to keep inventory records and implement security...

"Protests and sabotage marked the opening of the Winter Olympics in Milan as Italian police used water cannons and tear gas to beat back demonstrators."

The chaotic events led to five arrests, according to a security alert A chaotic scene unfolded in Milan Saturday as police deployed water cannons and tear gas against demonstrators just steps away from an Olympic ice hockey rink.A group known as the Unsustainable Olympics Committee organized demonstrations highlighting concerns related to the environmental, economic and social impact of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. Demonstrators also protested the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Italy, The Associated Press reported.The clash with police occurred near Milan’s Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, a newly built venue that has faced scrutiny...

Chaos Erupts in Milan as Radical Leftists Clash with Police over ‘Unsustainable’ Olympics MILAN, ITALY - FEBRUARY 07: Police use water cannons and tear gas to drive away protestersAlessandro Levati/Getty Images Kurt Zindulka7 Feb 202669 2:52 Violence broke out on Saturday as thousands of leftist protesters took to the streets of Milan to demonstrate on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics. With the eyes of the world’s media descending upon the Italian financial hub as it co-hosts the XXV Winter Olympic Games, various left-wing activist groups organised in Milan to promote their disparate agendas. According to a report from Milan’s...

Let's see how things are going in the communist utopia of New York, a month after Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor. Nearly two weeks after a massive winter storm hit the Big Apple, mountains of garbage line the still snow-covered streets (but not around Gracie Mansion, of course), and at least a dozen homeless people have frozen to death after Mamdani refused to force them into warming shelters despite the bitter cold. There were also blackouts, which is great when it's freezing outside.Oh, and the number of antisemitic incidents in the city has skyrocketed, and Mamdani...

A wave of school protests sweeping the US in response to the fatal shooting of two anti-ICE protesters in Minnesota has revealed how teachers unions have weaponized classrooms for their own left-wing agenda. The unions have revealed themselves as political operatives more concerned with indoctrinating kids than teaching them reading, writing and arithmetic. These disruptions didn’t materialize out of thin air. The teachers’ unions fired the starting gun by blasting out anti-ICE propaganda to teachers, urging them to rally against immigration enforcement and turn schools into battlegrounds for their partisan fights. The National Education Association is also pushing teachers to...

In the wake of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rise, his hard-left Democratic Socialists of America are looking to eat up more offices now held by older-school Democrats — and the moribund, corruption-plagued Dem establishment may lack the fortitude to resist. It certainly doesn’t show any hint of plans for a counter-attack: The old guard’s prospered so long by attacking Republicans from the left, it doesn’t have a clue how to stave off the same assault by the hard left. The DSA is targeting multiple seats in the Legislature this year, plus at least two House contests, and early signs are grim...

When United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas first appeared, the Obama era was only beginning, Obama’s ‘New Middle East’ was still far on the horizon, and the ‘Iran Deal’ had yet to be dealt. What made Jamie Glazov's magnum opus so remarkable was how thoroughly it not only recapitulated the ugly history of communism, but anticipated what was only an emerging alliance between two terrible ideologies united by their hateful mutual ambition to destroy civilization as we know it and love it. Even as it connected the dots between the two totalitarian ideologies, United in...

After Abigail Spanberger won the Virginia governor’s race going away in November, the consensus among the political chattering class was that it’s a foregone conclusion the Republicans will lose in next year’s midterms. The experts said this was a referendum on President Donald Trump, and an early sign that his America First movement is cracking. The same experts pointed to “key Democrat wins” in the New Jersey governor’s race and the New York City mayoral election as further indicators of a coming blue wave. To be so smug in their predictions, the experts had to ignore the fact that the...

VIDEOAs you can see, Minnesota Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan was regularly posting on TikTok right up to the day, January 25, 2026, when she was EXPOSED as being an Administrator of the Signal chat under the not very secret code name of "Flan Southside" directing Minneapolis insurrectionists with instructions on how to IMPEDE federal law enforcement officers. The very interesting thing is that her TikTok posts CEASED right after her exposure as one of the insurrectionist ringleaders in her role as "Flan Southside." It will be very very interesting to see what, if ever, she posts on TikTok the next...

This republic has changed dramatically in recent years -- politically, morally, and, perhaps most significantly, demographically. Section 15 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (a precursor to The Declaration of Independence) that was adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention on June 12, 1776, states: “That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” Does that appear to be the case today? Let’s go item by item. Clearly, many of us are not firmly adhered to...

Bruce Springsteen has responded to the recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis at the hands of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents with a new song titled "Streets of Minneapolis." You can listen to the song and read the lyrics below. "I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis," Springsteen wrote on Facebook. "It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti...

As described in Sean McMeekin’s To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism, where it has been adopted, communism has become politically dominant mostly at the point of a spear. In Russia and elsewhere, when Communism first took over the state, famine was an early result. By 1922, Lenin had to adopt a New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed at least some limited access to market-driven commerce in order to suppress a possible counter-revolution. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Khruschev was appalled by the empty shelves in Soviet stores. Shortly after McMeekin’s book got off the...

The protesting in Minneapolis is not a great thing for anyone, contrary to what some might think. Alex Pretti's death was just the latest incident where someone who was involved ended up being killed by federal agents, though it's the less clear-cut case of a justifiable shooting. What's clear, though, is that this is a very organized effort. The Signal chat that was used for coordination was exposed as involving none other than the LT. Governor of Minnesota, among others, and it illustrated just how coordinated it was. For most of us, this is a little concerning, but not the...