Free Republic

The education story of the year has been the “Southern Surge.” An intrepid group of southern states have led the nation in post-pandemic recovery. In a decade, Mississippi moved from 49th to seventh in the nation on fourth-grade reading scores, despite remaining the poorest state. According to Harvard’s 2024 Education Recovery Scorecard, Louisiana is the only state to recover to 2019 achievement levels in both reading and math, while Alabama matched pre-Covid scores in fourth-grade math alone. All other states continue to lag prior achievement levels. Much of this success has rightly been credited to a handful of commonsense reforms:...

A crime that has haunted East Texas for more than four decades has finally found closure. The Texas Rangers announced this week that they’ve identified the last suspect in the 1983 Kentucky Fried Chicken murders. It was a case that shocked Texas and the nation when five people were abducted from a Kilgore KFC and later found executed on a remote oil lease in Rusk County.

One by one, they are singing, the men who used to do dirty deeds for the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, whether the United States will attack, and whether Maduro will fall. But these Venezuelans sniff change in the air. As more countries exit Venezuela’s orbit, more allegations are likely to emerge. Two of the men are in prison here in the U.S.: Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, the former spy mastermind, and Cliver Alcala Cordones, a former general, both of whom have written letters to President Donald Trump airing...

Democrats are allowing people to be murdered by illegal immigrants so they can brag that they are not cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is the reality of the most recent case in Fairfax County, Virginia. There, El Salvadoran national Marvin Morales Ortez had been jailed and charged with multiple crimes after “maliciously wounding” someone who was living in the same home with him. When the alleged victim did not show up to testify, Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano’s office dropped the charges, and a judge ordered Ortez to be released. He was then arrested after allegedly murdering...

The letter to chief federal judge in Miami is an extraordinary injection by Brennan's defense team and likely signals his lawyers fear an indictment is imminent. =============================================================== Former CIA Director John Brennan's lawyers have taken the extraordinary step of confirming their client is a "target" of a criminal grand jury investigation in Florida and are asking the chief federal judge in Miami to stop the proceedings on the grounds that the Justice Department is "judge shopping." The revelations came in a letter that defense lawyers Ken Wainstein and Natasha Harnwell Davis sent Monday to U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga,...

A federal judge ruled Monday to keep a temporary order in place, preventing Trump officials from re-detaining illegal Salvadoran immigrant and alleged gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia. “U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said she was concerned the administration might try to take Abrego back into custody ‘in the middle of the night’ before she could take steps to ensure due process in his case, and she dressed down a Justice Department lawyer for repeated misrepresentations by the U.S. government,” The Washington Post reported. “Once again, I’m making a finding that these representations, which are misrepresentations, are in bad faith,” she...

The group of men challenging their deportations include migrants who were deported to a prison in El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in March, over allegations that they were members of Tren de Aragua. ================================================================= Federal District Court Judge James Boasberg ruled Monday that the Trump administration must allow Venezuelan men who were deported earlier this year to return to the United States to fight allegations they were part of violent gangs. The group of men challenging their deportations include migrants who were deported to a prison in El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in March,...

The Department of Homeland Security has tripled its "exit bonus" for undocumented migrants who voluntarily depart the United States through self-deportation, increasing the financial incentive from $1,000 to $3,000 for those who register with the U.S. government and depart the country by the end of the calendar year. DHS says all qualified participants who leave by Dec. 31, 2025, will also receive free airfare to their home countries and be waived of certain civil fines or penalties tied to remaining illegally in the U.S., if they voluntarily self-deport using the rebranded CBP Home app. The smartphone app is modeled off...

President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior (DOI) announced on Monday that it is pausing leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects off the East Coast.“Due to national security concerns identified by @DeptofWar, @interior is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms,” DOI Secretary Doug Burgum posted on X. “ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED.”President Trump “is bringing common sense back to energy policy and putting security first,” Burgum added.In a separate news release, the DOI stated that the pause was also connected with “national security risks” identified by...

President Donald Trump enjoys a 50 percent approval rating, with a net approval rating of plus 9 points, according to the latest polling from InsiderAdvantage.The national poll of 800 likely voters, conducted on Saturday, finds that 50 percent of respondents approve of the president’s performance 11 months into his administration. Another 41 percent disapprove of the job Trump has done, while 9 percent are undecided.The poll shows that a substantial majority of men give Trump positive marks, while most women disapprove of his performance, continuing a trend seen in polling ahead of the 2024 election.Of the men surveyed, 59 percent...

STRENGTHENING NATIONAL SECURITY THROUGH COMMON SENSE RESTRICTIONS BASED ON DATA: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Proclamation expanding and strengthening entry restrictions on nationals from countries with demonstrated, persistent, and severe deficiencies in screening, vetting, and information-sharing to protect the Nation from national security and public safety threats.The Proclamation continues the full restrictions and entry limitations of nationals from the original 12 high-risk countries established under Proclamation 10949: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.It adds full restrictions and entry limitations on 5 additional countries based on recent analysis:...

In a powerful primetime address to the nation last night from the White House, President Donald J. Trump reflected on the transformative progress achieved in just 11 months — turning the tide on inflation and costs, securing the border, and honoring our military with a special Warrior Dividend — while promising even greater prosperity, tax relief, and renewed respect for America in the year ahead.Click here to watch President Trump’s address to the nationHere’s what you missed:“Over the past 11 months, we have brought more positive change to Washington than any Administration in American history.” (Watch)“For the last four years,...

The vice president of the Madison school board was arrested Friday night on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, officials said. The Madison Police Department confirmed to Channel3000.com that officers arrested Maia Pearson, 38, on Friday. Pearson serves as vice president of the Madison Metropolitan School District's Board of Education and was appointed by Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway to the City of Madison's Police Civilian Oversight Board. Madison police provided further details on what led to her arrest on Monday. Officers were called to a business on East Doty Street right before 11 p.m. after employees reported a vehicle had...

A Brown University custodian spotted depraved gunman Claudio Neves Valente pacing school hallways and peering into classrooms nearly a dozen times in the weeks before his mass shooting — and alerted campus security twice about the suspicious figure, a new report said. Derek Lisi, who has worked at the elite school for 15 years, told the Boston Globe he “knew something was off with” the mass shooter before the sicko opened fire in a lecture hall, killing two students, Dec. 13. While Lisi said he twice told the same security guard about a suspicious person lurking around the same building...

A trans woman who copped to slaughtering her parents tried to skip out on her sentencing in a Utah court because it would be too tough on her — as she revealed that she has converted to Islam, and made an excuse for the cold-blooded murders on Friday. “If only I had gotten help this would have been preventable,” said Mia Bailey’s lawyer — reading a statement she wrote. Bailey, 30, was handed a sentence of 25 years to life in prison on Friday, after the court heard emotional testimony from both her brothers, who say they fear for their...

A quick way to keep a couple of guys occupied is to pose this question, “Batman versus the Terminator—Go.” The typical American male can entertain himself for hours with such banal stuff as this. I know I can. Unlike Superman, Captain America, or the Flash, Batman is just a dude. Sure, he has ninja training and more cool-guy gadgets than Delta Force, but at his heart, he’s really no different from the rest of us. What always befuddled me, however, is how anybody could philosophically oppose his violent nocturnal forays into the Gotham underworld. Certain events are watershed moments in...

Nigerian authorities have secured the release of 130 kidnapped schoolchildren taken by gunmen from a Catholic school in November, according to a presidential spokesman, after 100 were freed earlier this month. “Another 130 Abducted Niger State Pupils Released, None Left In Captivity,” Sunday Dare said in a post on X on Sunday. In late November, hundreds of students and staff were kidnapped from St Mary’s co-educational boarding school in north-central Niger State. The attack came amid a wave of mass abductions reminiscent of the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of schoolgirls in the town of Chibok. The West African country suffers...

For a man who handed Joe Biden $5million for his 2020 election run, it might seem an impossible ask. But with an appeal against his 25-year prison term off to a shaky start, Sam Bankman-Fried's current language is a message he's ready to bend the knee to Biden's successor for a presidential pardon. The mop-haired crypto crook, who also dished out another $40million to Democratic candidates in the 2022 mid-terms, has always been a gambler. Even so, few who watched his spectacular downfall that year amid the $8billion collapse of his FTX crypto exchange might have predicted his latest spin...

Department says image was flagged by prosecutors before determining it posed no risk to survivors of late sex offenderThe US justice department said on Sunday it had restored an image it had removed a day earlier from the public release of investigative files related to Jeffrey Epstein after concluding that the photograph, which included within it a photo of Donald Trump, posed no risk of public exposure to victims of the late convicted sex offender.The justice department said the image had been flagged by federal prosecutors in New York for potentially exposing victims of Epstein. Its unexplained removal on Saturday...

At least six career staff were placed on leave after DHS opened an investigation into whether they misled the agency’s acting director, Madhu Gottumukkala, into taking the test. At least six career staffers at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were suspended with pay this summer after organizing a polygraph test that the agency’s acting director, Madhu Gottumukkala, failed. The Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation into whether the staff provided “false information” about the need for the test — which was scheduled after Gottumukkala sought access to certain highly sensitive cyber intelligence shared with the agency. This article...