Free Republic

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida doesn't support broad student-loan forgiveness. But he does think bankruptcy should be an option for borrowers who cannot afford to pay off their debt. "It's wrong to say that a truck driver should have to pay off the debt of somebody who got a degree in gender studies. This is not the taxpayers that should have to do that," he added. "At the same time, I have sympathy for some of these students because I think they were sold a bill of goods. I think these universities knew that they could take all this federal...

I took a pretty liberal girl on a date to see William F. Buckley back in college, which would probably scandalize the current senior staff of his National Review, but I bet it would have made WFB smile. Buckley was also a graduate of the Army's former Ft. Benning School for Boys, but since his death, the Officer Candidate School has become Ft. Moore School for Boys, Girls, and Non-Binary Two-Spirits. This change for the worse is emblematic of how NR's conservatism has failed to conserve much of anything. In Buckley's absence, NR has tried to stand athwart history yelling,...

Join us, and thousands of American Patriots, this July 15 & 16 in West Palm Beach, FL as Turning Point Action brings together the most prominent and influential voices of our generation for an event unlike any other. Speakers - President Donald J. Trump, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, Dan Bongino, Steve Bannon, more...

A “parallel” online marketplace aiming to provide a solution for Americans who want to shop with businesses aligning with conservative values is looking to go public.A 12-ounce can of Bud Light on a railing at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Fla. on May 26, 2023. (T.J. Muscaro/The Epoch Times)Colombier Acquisition Corps, a publicly traded acquisition company, has announced plans to merge with online marketplace PublicSq, according to a June 30 press release. “We have witnessed the pronounced need for the values of Main Street to be represented on Wall Street. PublicSq provides that solution for an emerging parallel economy...

One of the Achilles’ heels of the conservative movement is the sense that we are mean to people.We think criminals should be punished more harshly than liberals do.We oppose initiatives that are sold as “compassionate” to marginalized groups.We criticize people like Dylan Mulvaney, who seems so happy-go-lucky.We oppose policies sold as catering to kids who are different from their peers.The list goes on. Even my family members think I support bullying transgender kids and don’t understand why I say mean things when they know I am not a mean person.Some of this is how we argue points, and some have...

Women in our society have traditionally been treated with a unique honor and respect. Were we always treated fairly? Not entirely -- there was a time when we couldn’t vote. There was a time when women couldn’t own property. True. But since forever men have been showing us, even in small ways, that what we have to offer society is paramount. We can make babies and without babies, mankind cannot fulfill even the most basic mandate -- multiply and fill the earth. In my misspent youth I found Gloria Steinem inspiring and myself ill-used. This phase petered out quickly because...

Republican delegates in North Carolina voted Saturday at their annual convention to censure Thom Tillis, the state’s senior U.S. senator, for backing LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and gun violence policies. . . . . Several delegates in Greensboro criticized Tillis, who has held his seat in the Senate since 2015, for his work last year on the Respect For Marriage Act, which enshrined protections for same-sex and interracial marriages in federal law. . . . . Several state legislators, including Sen. Bobby Hanig of Currituck County, criticized the decision, saying it’s a bad idea to create more divisions within the party...

I’ll first repeat the question in the headline: Are the results of a recent Gallup survey showing the biggest swing to social conservatism in nearly a decade shocking, inevitable, or somewhere in the middle?Whatever one calls it, it’s a major development — particularly with the 2024 election looming ever closer.Before we dig into the details of the survey, let’s revisit a football field metaphor I’ve long used to illustrate the U.S. political landscape. The largest portion of the field — say, between the 30-yard lines, for illustrative purposes — is comprised of decent, reasonable people, regardless of political affiliation. The...

Chile: major blow to president as far right triumphs in key constitution vote Chile’s far right has won an emphatic victory in a vote to select the committee that will rewrite its dictatorship-era constitution, after José Antonio Kast’s Republican party secured 22 of its 50 seats in a major blow to the progressive president Gabriel Boric. Boric beat Kast, an ultra-conservative lawyer often compared to Brazil’s former leader Jair Bolsonaro, in the 2021 presidential election. But on Sunday night it was Kast who was celebrating after 35% of voters backed Republicanos, the extreme-right party he founded in 2019. “This is...

The city of San Francisco has ended its 2016 law boycotting 30 states with conservative laws on the books.Seven members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to end the boycott, which prevented city employees from traveling to these locations or doing business with companies in these states. Four members opposed the repeal. “It’s not achieving the goal we want to achieve,” said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who sponsored the legislation to repeal the boycott. “It is making our government less efficient.”According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the board’s Budget and Legislative Analyst found the boycott racked up nearly $475,000...

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie slammed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis during an event with Semafor’s Steve Clemons on Tuesday, going so far as to muse that he doesn’t view his prospective 2024 Republican primary rival as a conservative. Christie seemed to relish the opportunity to launch a broadside after Clemon raised the topic of DeSantis and his ongoing fight with Disney: So let’s start off with this: I’m a conservative. And I believe as a conservative, the job of government is in the main to stay out of the business of business. Like I don’t think we should be...

The transgender culture war sure has taken off since those ornery conservatives, snubbed by Obergefell, grabbed hold of the issue and thrust it into the spotlight and down the throats of Americans everywhere — so say the media.It wasn’t a misprint, a Babylon Bee joke, or one of Sonny Hostin’s brainless musings. This claim came from none other than paper-of-record The New York Times, which attempted to make the case that after conservatives lost the same-sex marriage fight at the Supreme Court in 2015, “the religious right went searching for an issue that would re-energize supporters and donors,” and found...

Trump became the first president to be arrested this week. This historical milestone underscores the importance of Trump’s 2024 aspirations. The regime fears him more than any other candidate–that’s why the corrupt system wants him in jail. The persecution of Trump demonstrates why his 2024 bid is the best cause for the Right to rally around. I can already see the angry reader comments about how Trump was the WORST PRESIDENT EVER because he didn’t put every libtard in a prison camp. We all know Trump is not perfect. We all know about his follies and letdowns. We all know...

Wisconsin’s growing leftist base sees an opportunity to overturn all of the hard-fought reforms by flipping the state’s high court.On Tuesday, Wisconsinites will once again head to the polls in a race that has garnered national attention and set national spending records for a judicial race. According to the most recent Wispolitics.com tally, the two Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates and outside groups have combined for over $45 million in spending. What’s at stake? All of the reforms of the Gov. Scott Walker era, and more.Home to Walker, former Speaker Paul Ryan, former RNC Chairman and White House Chief of Staff...

If you Google "what is conservatism?" this is the definition you will receive: "Commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation." This is but one more illustration of the lack of objectivity wherever the Left is in control. The idea that conservatism means, by definition , "opposition to change or innovation" is nothing more than how liberals and leftists see conservatism. Why? Because the farther left you go, the greater the commitment to change and innovation. "Change" and "Innovation" are left-wing gods. That is why, for example, the mantra of the Barack Obama campaign and presidency...

Max Boot, one of the most bloodthirsty American analysts and commentators, has apparently woken up long after most Americans with half his education, about the limits of American power and the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thankfully for us, he has penned his reawakening in the pages of Foreign Affairs, that astute bulwark of the establishment, a journal of which I am, in fact, a subscriber.For 20 years, Boot has been calling for regime change, democracy building abroad, and even leaving American troops in dangerous brushfire to “polic[e] the frontiers of the Pax Americana.” Now, he says he’s changed......Boot’s...

WEST LAFAYETTE – “Trans hate kills” a crowd of over 100 protesters chanted outside of a speech by conservative commentator Michael Knowles on Thursday evening at Purdue University. The protesters came out to oppose Knowles, a Catholic conservative who has been critical of gender ideology. Flyers posted ahead of his speech accused Knowles of wanting a “genocide” of “trans people.” The Purdue University College Republicans hosted him along with the national Young America’s Foundation. The comments are apparently in reference to a speech the Daily Wire host gave several weeks ago at the Conservative Political Action Conference where he said...

Leonard Leo, a leader of the right-wing Federalist Society, hopes to transform American culture the way he transformed the judiciary. As Donald Trump’s adviser on judicial nominations, he helped put Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, making him central to the demise of Roe v. Wade. Now he wants to build a new organization helping reactionaries consolidate power in realms like Wall Street, Silicon Valley, journalism, Hollywood and academia. “I spent close to 30 years, if not more, helping to build the conservative legal movement,” Leo said in a video for the organization at...

The people in eastern Oregon are generally patriotic and sane, and they’re tired of being subjected to the misrule of the far-Left kleptocrats in Salem, who care about them only as a cash cow to fund their socialist pipe dreams. Accordingly, some have formed the Greater Idaho movement, which actually hopes to detach Oregon’s rural eastern counties from the state and attach them to Idaho. This movement, as fanciful as it seems, is gathering steam, and that has Democrats enraged. Whatever else it may be, their rage is revealing. Idaho Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow, a Democrat, said: “I’m very...

Thanks to rampant leftism, the business of America is no longer business but is, instead, selling woke ideology to bring about corporate socialism (i.e., fascism). Because the biggest corporations are on board with that agenda, the effect on conservative values and conservatives themselves has been devastating. However, it’s entirely possible that the bad economy (which they aggressively helped institute) will be their undoing. Justin Haskins, the Socialism Research Director at The Heartland Institute, took to Fox News to identify the 51 biggest companies advancing leftism and to offer ways to counter their influence.The information Haskins offers summarizes the 1792 Exchange’s...