Free Republic

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek signed legislation this week to permanently direct millions in state taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood, the state’s largest abortion business. The taxpayer funding is designed to replace federal Medicaid funding blocked by the Trump administration. House Bill 4127, which Kotek signed in March, requires the Oregon Health Authority to create a payment mechanism using state funds to backfill reimbursements lost since July 2025. It also establishes a permanent contingency plan should Congress cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood indefinitely. Oregon is the first state to enact such a long-term replacement plan. All Republicans in the...

Turning Point chapters continue to grow on California campuses months after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Campuses are seeing tensions rise as conservative students become more vocal both in and out of the classroom.

Using new data from the Gallup Workforce Panel, we document a persistent partisan gap in self- reported AI use at work: Democrats are consistently more likely than Republicans to report frequent use. In 2025:Q4, for example, 27.8% of Democrats report using AI weekly or daily, compared with 22.5% of Republicans. Democrats also report deeper task-level integration, using AI in 16% more work activities than Republicans. Consistent with this, Democrats are employed in occupations with higher predicted AI exposure based on task-content measures and report larger perceived differences in AI-related job displacement risk. However, in regression models the partisan gap in...

A brief moment at Donald Trump’s high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping has sparked fresh attention after the U.S. leader was seen raising a glass and appearing to take a sip during a formal reception. Footage from the event shows Trump holding a stemmed glass alongside Xi and other officials before bringing it to his lips. The moment stands out because the president has presented himself as a lifelong teetotaler—making even routine diplomatic gestures open to closer scrutiny. The reception formed part of a tightly choreographed state visit, where symbolism and protocol carry as much weight as policy discussions....

***** Tunes For Our Troops ~ The Freeper Canteen Music Dedication Presents: The Letter "Z" *****~ Support The Artists You Hear Throughout The Canteen ! ~ ***** Warning: Not all music may be appropriate for children! Please click with caution. Thank you! Tunes For The Troops This music is provided for the entertainment of our Troops, Veterans, Allies & their families! Enjoy the variety of musical selections that the Canteen DJs provide throughout the thread. Please ping any DJ with your requests for the Troops! All music is removed on Monday.Thanks to all the DJs for their time &...

A large Coca-Cola bottling plant in Southern California will shut down permanently this summer, ending a longstanding relationship between the company and the city. Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling made the announcement in a May 8 WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice – a legally required 60-day "heads-up" that employers must give to workers before a major layoff or office closure. "We regularly assess our locations, products, and services to ensure we can continue driving sustainable growth and innovation across our business," a spokesperson for Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling wrote to SFGATE. "As such, we have announced the closure of our Ventura...

n a move that's left progressive D.C. absolutely reeling, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro just announced that if your little angel is out running wild in one of those charming "teen takeover" thingies that have been terrorizing our nation's capital, you - yes, you, the parent - are going to face consequences. VIDEO AT LINK........ Parents, do your job. Or we will do ours. As Pirro says, taxpayers shouldn't have to keep footing the bill for what she calls "parental neglect." Breathe it in, folks, this is what sanity smells like! For those of you unaware,...

Despite Eurovision’s insistence it is apolitical, politics has always been part of the continent-wide song contest, as much a feature as whatever constellation of pyrotechnics and power ballads are on display that year. But where, previously, politics was somewhat of a punchline, a useful indicator for cynical fans to guess which country might award points to another, this year it is threatening to overshadow the entire contest. Five countries – Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Iceland – are boycotting this year’s event over Israel’s continued participation in it, marking the biggest crisis in the contest’s 70-year history.

We are in the midst of a headlong global birth crash—a plunge underway all around the world, in rich and poor regions alike, very possibly presaging an indefinite global depopulation, with our “peak human” moment coming much sooner than almost anyone imagined even a few years ago. This is not what demography’s experts long predicted. For decades, demographers simply assumed that the postwar drop in worldwide birth rates would lead to an eventual equilibrium, with childbearing converging in one region after another at a little over two births per woman, the level required for long-term replacement. They envisioned a mere...

A conservative law firm is suing state officials in federal court challenging Wisconsin’s ban on conversion therapy, arguing it amounts to unconstitutional “viewpoint discrimination.” The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, or WILL, announced the litigation Wednesday, saying it filed suit on behalf of licensed counselors Terri Koschnick and Joy Buchman, who both provide Christian faith-based counseling services. Gov. Tony Evers, Department of Safety and Professional Services Secretary Dan Hereth and members of the Wisconsin Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Counseling, and Social Work Examining Board are named as defendants in the suit.

We’ve been having a debate about “book bans” in recent years, but given the steep decline in student literacy, the deeper question is how any child would even notice whether a book is available in a school library. The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford recently published an eye-opening study documenting steep declines in student test scores, especially in reading. Over the past 10 years, reading scores have declined in 83% of America’s school districts. What looked like a COVID-driven catastrophe is instead part of a long-running trend. Reading scores were falling at a similar clip prior to the pandemic, from...

"Aria" was 13 years old when she was sexually assaulted by an imam, who told her he was "healing" her. A respected faith leader at a mosque in East London, Abdul Halim Khan would tell young girls and their parents they needed "curing" from "bad spirits". After attacking them, he warned the girls that if they told anyone about the abuse, the so-called cure would be undone, they would be cursed, or that harm would come to them and their families from black magic. "I genuinely believed he had supernatural powers," says Aria, which is not her real name. She...

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., introduced legislation to improve menopausal and mid-life health care for women, featuring AI for better diagnostics. The Advancing Menopause Care and Mid-Life Women’s Health Act calls for a strengthened public health apparatus for women’s midlife care, including public outreach campaigns, research programs and treatment. It specifically calls for more government oversight efforts to gauge the safety and efficacy of AI-powered devices for new treatments and diagnostic tools designed for addressing midlife, perimenopause or menopausal symptoms.

California is pulling the plug on the wildly recognizable Kars4Kids jingle after a judge ruled the charity’s ads misled donors about who actually benefits from their money. Orange County Superior Court Judge Gassia Apkarian found that the organization violated California false advertising and unfair competition laws by failing to disclose that donations primarily fund Orthodox Jewish programs tied to Oorah Inc., a New York- and New Jersey-based outreach organization. The ruling was published May 8 and comes after California resident Bruce Puterbaugh sued the charity in 2021, claiming he donated his car after repeatedly hearing the famous ad and believed...

Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee announced on Friday that he signed a document requesting not to be included on the ballot in Tennessee's 9th Congressional District. The congressman described the district determined by "new lines" as "nothing like the 9th district that I've represented." The Democratic primary in the district is scheduled to take place in August. Speaking after his announcement, Cohen described President Donald Trump as "the greatest threat to democracy, and to … decorum … and grace, that we've ever seen."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured a $10 million settlement in a case against Texas Children's Hospital over illegal sex changes in the form of surgeries and prescriptions being given to minors. As part of the settlement, the hospital will also be forced to fund a "detransition" clinic and treat those patients free of charge for the first five years. The settlement follows an investigation into the hospital begun in 2023 by Paxton's office accused of providing sex change treatments to minors after Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation banning children from getting puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone treatments. “Today...

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision allowing the abortion pill to continue to be dispensed through the mail as a Louisiana lawsuit proceeds. Key Takeaways: * The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision on May 14 stating that the abortion pill can continue to be dispensed through the mail as Louisiana's lawsuit proceeds. * Following the filing of a lawsuit by the State of Louisiana that sought to reverse the FDA's 2023 changes to abortion pill regulations, the Fifth Circuit paused mail order dispensing. * The abortion pill manufacturer Danco Laboratories filed an emergency application before the...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. —President Trump in his first term proved a windfall for the Southern Poverty Law Center, the antiracism nonprofit famed for its courtroom wins against the Ku Klux Klan decades ago. In 2017, the same year Trump took office and a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., turned violent, annual contributions and grants to SPLC surged from $50 million to more than $130 million and have remained above $100 million nearly every year since.

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Fourteen people were arrested and millions of dollars in stolen items were recovered from a retail theft scheme after undercover detectives infiltrated the operation, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister announced in a news conference Wednesday. Last week, the sheriff’s office served several search warrants, including one at a home in Lutz, which was identified as the base of the multi-state operation. The home’s garage was packed floor-to-ceiling with stolen items, which were grouped together and arranged like a makeshift store. Chronister said “customers” would request certain items, and the group behind the scheme would take them...

On Tuesday, I stood before the Fresno County Board of Supervisors and spoke my truth as a trans woman, a taxpayer, a daughter, a sister, a wife and a member of this community. I watched as three supervisors voted to erase the celebration and visibility of people like me. In a 3-2 decision, Supervisors Garry Bredefeld, Nathan Magsig and Buddy Mendes voted to bar the Fresno County Public Library from participating in the Fresno Rainbow Pride Parade and Festival, as well as from celebrating Pride Month entirely.