Free Republic

A U.S. Navy veteran and his wife were subjected to the full weight of the government’s iron fist as Child Protective Services—backed by armed deputies—stormed their home and seized their one-month-old, breastfeeding infant. There was no warrant. No due process. No criminal charge. This happened not in communist China, nor in North Korea. It happened in suburban Virginia. In America. In 2025. Farzin Yazdani, a Navy veteran, father, and respected engineer, has become the latest victim of a weaponized family court system—a system increasingly aligned with radical bureaucrats and progressive ideologues who seem hellbent on dismantling the American family under...

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) defended California law allowing teachers to not tell parents about students changing their gender identity by stating that under the prior law, “a teacher would be fired if a teacher did not report or snitch on a kid talking about their gender identity. I just think that was wrong. I think teachers should teach. I don’t think they should be required to turn in kids.” After Newsom criticized Democrats, host Bill Maher asked, “So, what do you say to people who say, well, this sounds all very good,...

The issue of sex trafficking minors is often treated as a cut-and-dry issue: Soliciting minors for sex is BAD. All caps. We have to protect children. No room for daylight. But we all know that real life is more complicated than a pat answer. Nothing is wholly black and white. Not every act of sexual solicitation is made through a car window on a dark street, not every payment is money left by the bedside table — and not every sexual act committed by a minor is inherently sex trafficking.

Jim McCarthy is a 57-year-old public-relations boss known for being unusually combative with the press. As the head of the boutique firm CounterPoint Strategies, which has offices in New York and Washington, D.C., he is a spokesperson for big seafood (he helped “the shrimp industry to go hard at the AP just a few weeks ago”) and big vape (“my poor little vaping guys,” as he describes the industry to me, referring to its alleged persecution by the FDA). He speaks in a mannered drawl in keeping with his role as the flack who represented Augusta National Golf Club in...

CPS profits from family separation, turning child welfare into a billion-dollar industry where courts, agencies, and service providers cash in on every removal. It’s a racket that must end. Child Protective Services (CPS) and its various counterparts—such as the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), the Department of Family Services (DFS), the Department of Children and Families (DCF), and other similarly named agencies—operate under the guise of protecting children. In reality, these agencies have become an industry unto themselves, profiting off the removal of children and the destruction of families. Every child taken from their home represents a payday...

Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago public school officials falsely claimed last week that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived at an elementary school, as President Donald Trump’s administration continues enforcement operations targeting violent illegal immigrant offenders in the sanctuary city. ICE said its agents never arrived at Hamline Elementary School, located in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood, and the US Secret Service released a statement saying it was their agents who stopped by on Friday to investigate a threat made against an unspecified government official. Chicago Public Schools later admitted their mistake, citing a “misunderstanding,”...

Horrifying bodycam footage shows the moment a Georgia mom was arrested for allowing her 10-year-old son to walk less than a mile into a small town. Brittany Patterson, 41, was captured on police bodycam footage being handcuffed and taken into custody on October 30 after she left her son, Soren, home alone. Patterson was charged with reckless endangerment and taken into custody where she had her fingerprints and mugshot taken. The mother had left her home to take one of her older children to the doctor, while Soren, who is 11 years old but was aged 10 at the time,...

John was out shopping for his youngest son’s birthday in July 2021 when he received a panicked call from his wife. A state child welfare worker and police officers were at their home, trying to take away their autistic son. The social worker claimed the Christian family’s refusal to affirm his apparently newfound sexual orientation was child abuse. John raced home in time to record a video of the harrowing encounter. “I’m going to take the child with me,” Edwina Nimley, a casework specialist for the Maryland Department of Human Services, can be heard saying in a video of the...

They spoke no Spanish, while their migrant students spoke no English. Chicago has a $9.9 billion budget. Its teachers’ unions, who control the city and have one of their own in the mayor’s office, get everything from free abortions to weight loss surgeries, to $145,000 salaries even though their students know absolutely nothing. In math, 19% of Chicago third through eighth graders were proficient on the IAR’s 2024 test, a 2 percentage point increase from the previous school year. During the spring of 2023, 17% of elementary school students were proficient in math, but in the spring of 2019, 24%...

A Montana couple who lost custody of their 14-year-old daughter after refusing to let her transition claims the teen was taken by the state without a warrant. Todd and Krista Kolstads filed state and federal lawsuits claiming their child, born Jennifer but currently identifying as Leo, was taken from them because they opposed their gender transition due to their religious beliefs. In one of the suits, they claim the state's Child Protective Services lied to a court judge in order to take the 14-year-old child without a warrant, as reported by the Daily Montanan. The teen was removed from their...

A Montana family is transitioning through a nightmare right now, thanks to the left’s evil, twisted, and ghoulish transgender movement. After parents Todd and Krista objected to their 14-year-old daughter Jennifer’s gender transition plans, the state Child Protective Services got involved and medically kidnapped the young girl and is now helping her transition into a boy. This is the type of story you’d expect to read about in some backwoods foreign hellhole, but it’s happening right here in the US, and in a red state of all places. It all started in Glasgow, Montana, when Jennifer started identifying as a...

In a controversial and heart-wrenching case, Montana’s Child Protective Services has been accused of forcibly transporting a 14-year-old girl from her family in Montana to Wyoming for gender transition treatment, leading to a complete revocation of her parents’ custody. The family’s media representative, Mattie Watkins, has disclosed a distressing account to The Gateway Pundit involving the Kolstad family of Montana. Todd and Krista Kolstad have been embroiled in a legal and emotional struggle for their 14-year-old daughter after Montana CPS took drastic action that is tantamount to “kidnapping.” In April 2023, the Montana legislature passed State Bill 99, which banned...

An annual report from the Inspector General of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) revealed that millions of dollars worth of tech devices were reported lost or stolen “without appropriate search and recovery efforts.” The fiscal year 2023 annual report released Tuesday states CPS schools reported 77,505 tech devices as lost or stolen during the 2021-22 school year, totaling well over $23 million in original purchase price. The discovery, as a result of the district’s first post-COVID-19 inventory, calls the numbers “unacceptably high” and says the oversight process is in need of a “serious overhaul.” The report said the missing items included...

The Virginia mother of a six-year-old boy who shot his teacher with her gun has been banned from contacting her child until he turns 18, a judge ruled on Friday. Deja Nicole Taylor, 25, was charged with felony child neglect after her son shot his first-grade teacher Abigail Zwerner, 26, in her Newport News classroom in January. She has now been sentenced to two years in prison - which is a harsher sentence than the six months prosecutors recommended as part of a plea deal. The Newport News Circuit judge sentenced Taylor to five years in total, with three years...

Abigail Martinez, a mother who lost her daughter to suicide, is seeking justice and protection for families facing similar situations. First Liberty Institute has submitted a brief to the Supreme Court on her behalf, urging the court to uphold parental rights in a case involving the removal of a child from Christian parents due to their religious beliefs about sexuality. Abigail’s daughter, Yaeli, struggled with depression and sexuality, and was ultimately taken from her home and given gender-transition treatments without parental consent. (Trending: Top Democrat Loses In Historic Landslide) “My child was a number in the system. I don’t want...

US records show Starmer met with Attorney General Eric Holder and a host of American and British national security officials in Washington in 2011, when he was in charge of Julian Assange’s proposed extradition to Sweden. Starmer was in Washington three times while in charge of Assange’s proposed extradition to Sweden. Starmer led five-person British delegation that met with Holder for 45 minutes in Washington in November 2011. Delegation included the UK liaison prosecutor to the US, who dealt with extradition. Meeting was also attended by head of US Department of Justice’s national security division. CPS refuses to clarify to...

ELLIS COUNTY, Texas — A mother was arrested in Italy, Texas, after she allegedly stabbed three of her children to death and and injured two more of her children Friday, sources told WFAA. The mother has been identified as 25-year-old Shamaiya Hall. Sources said three elementary school-aged kids (a 6-year-old and two 5-year-olds) were found dead inside a home near Stafford Elementary School in the small Ellis County town on Friday afternoon. Two other children (4-year-old and 13-month-old) were injured and were transported by helicopter to a local hospital with stab wounds. Their conditions are unknown. Child Protective Services confirmed...

Anderson, of Ocean Springs, is accused of opening fire while sitting with her 10-year-old daughter in her SUV outside Motel 6 in Bay St. Louis after police called child protective services at 4:30 a.m. Thursday, Anderson — who had no criminal history and was reportedly well-liked in the community — had spent 30 minutes speaking to Sgt. Steven Robin, 34, and officer Branden Estorffe, 23, before flipping out and gunning them down, according to Bay St. Louis police. Police said they believe the troubled mother fatally shot herself — but one of the officers also fired a shot, so an...

The shocking moment that a Child Protective Services worker in Texas told a 14-year-old girl to become a prostitute has been caught on video. The teen's mother Keisha Bazley told Fox26: 'My daughter told me that the worker had been telling her she should do these things, so she said she decided to video her.' Bazley told the station that she has nine children. When she began having problems with her 14-year-old daughter, she reached out to CPS for help. She said that the unnamed teen was causing trouble at school and running away from home. The teenager is one...

Bazley told Fox 26 Houston that her teen daughter told her that one of the CPS workers was encouraging her to become a prostitute. The teen daughter told the CPS worker that she wanted food and the employee told her to become a prostitute. The 14-year-old videotaped the disturbing conversation and showed her mom. The CPS employee was terminated, according to Fox 26 Houston. In the video, the girl tells the CPS employee she wants food. The CPS worker tells her to be a prostitute