Free Republic

Marketplace plans from the Affordable Care Act no longer feel very affordable to many people, because Congress did not extend a package of enhanced subsidies that expired at the end of 2025. Last week, the House did pass legislation to extend the expired subsidies, and negotiations have moved to the Senate. Without a deal, an estimated 4.8 million will go without coverage this year. But even without a health plan, people will still need medical care. Many, like the Sorys, have been thinking through their plan B to maintain their health. The Sorys both lost jobs in November, within days...

Why does the famed leftist radio bastion have all its broadcasters speak in that insufferable whisper? Here is the somewhat disturbing answer. It is a common occurrence for a regular person to be flipping through radio channels, eventually to come across the style of radio presentation known as “NPR voice” — a soft-spoken, breathy, quietly pompous mode of vocal performance suggestive of an intimate conversation among a small circle of elites. The question immediately arises: Who could possibly find this manner of presentation appealing, and why? The answer lies in understanding NPR as the distilled essence of sociological, ideological, and...

Leaders of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private agency that has steered federal funding to PBS, NPR and hundreds of public television and radio stations across the country, voted Monday to dissolve the organization that was created in 1967. CPB had been winding down since Congress acted last summer to defund its operations at the encouragement of President Donald Trump. Its board of directors chose Monday to shutter CPB completely instead of keeping it in existence as a shell. “CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving,...

A strong majority of Americans say they're worried about the climate. So why do they hear so little about it in the news? …The problem has become even more acute at a time when the US president is openly hostile to the scientific consensus on climate change. Donald Trump and his allies have pushed misleading narratives about the trade-offs of green energy, drawing reporters into covering false controversies instead of facts and making the job of reporting harder. "The Trump administration is playing reporters like a fiddle on the issue of trade-offs" by bringing up red herrings and sending reporters...

Jonathan Franklin, a current University adjunct professor & former NPR correspondent who built his career on issues of race, culture, & justice, was recorded making openly racist remarks during an undercover date with James O’Keefe. Franklin, scheduled to teach a Georgetown course on interviewing & sourcing, labeled Black conservatives such as Candace Owens, Lawrence Jones, & Clarence Thomas as “coons,” & mocked his colleagues, saying he “works with stupid white people.” During the confrontation, Franklin attempted to assault an OMG cameraman before fleeing. Georgetown University records confirm Franklin is currently teaching students how to “interview sources effectively,” even as he...

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — With the remains of one hostage still in Gaza, the first phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas is nearly complete, after a two-month process plagued by delays and finger-pointing. Now, the key players — including Israel, the Palestinian militant Hamas group, the United States and a diverse list of international parties — are to move to a far more complicated second phase that could reshape the Middle East. U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan — which was approved by the U.N. Security Council — lays out an ambitious vision for...

A federal judge dismissed the Justice Department's cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, finding that the prosecutor overseeing them was unlawfully appointed to her role. That prosecutor is Lindsey Halligan, a 36-year-old former insurance attorney who served as one of President Trump's personal lawyers after his first term and joined his second administration as a White House aide.Trump appointed Halligan as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in late September, the day after her predecessor, Erik Siebert, resigned under pressure from the president to bring charges against Comey and...

Construction crews began dismantling the East Wing on Monday, even as the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) has not granted approval for the ballroom itself. According to NPR, NCPC chairman Will Scharf — who is also a Trump aide — said at a September meeting that the commission lacks jurisdiction over demolition or site preparation, only the “vertical build.” At an East Room event with the Louisiana State University baseball team, Trump acknowledged the noise from the construction happening “right behind us,” and added, “They wanted a ballroom for 150 years, and I’m giving that honor to this wonderful place.”

There could be as many as 104.1 million people who back domestic terrorism in the U.S. Most of America believes politically motivated violence is a problem in America, and there remains an alarming 30% who believe "Americans may need to resort to violence to get the country back on course," according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. That 30% includes 11% who "strongly agree" Americans must resort to violence to force their political agenda, and 19% "agree." With 347 million people in the U.S., 30% equates to 104.1 million supportive of domestic terror, including potentially more than 38 million who...

Every so often the media rolls its sleeves up and tries to once again get us all to eat gross, filthy bugs instead of delicious, healthy, clean meat. CBS ran this segment over the weekend arguing we should eat bugs because soybean farming is bad for the planet or something 🥴 Sadly, 2025 is no exception, with NPR once again making a bid to have us eat literal larva: In markets in the capital Kinshasa, tubs full of writhing white maggots line the alleyways, and women traders fry caterpillars, spiced with chili, over charcoal fires. "The more you eat caterpillars,...

A statue of President Trump holding hands with Jeffrey Epstein appeared briefly on D.C.'s National Mall this week, only to be removed after less than a day. The bronze-painted installation, titled Best Friends Forever, depicts the two men smiling at each other, each with an arm and leg raised as if in mid-frolic. "In Honor of Friendship Month, we celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his 'closest friend,' Jeffrey Epstein," reads the plaque, emblazoned with hands making a heart shape. September is widely recognized as friendship month. Trump has repeatedly downplayed his relationship with Epstein, the...

This morning the House passed a clean CR designed to fund the government through November, thereby avoiding the possibility of a shutdown at the end of this month. Democrats how vowed not to support it in the Senate.The vote was 217-212, with one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, joining Republicans in voting yes. Two Republicans — conservative Reps. Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Victoria Spartz of Indiana — and all other Democrats voted against the bill.The short-term funding bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, now heads to the Senate, where Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other...

Over thirty people across the country have been fired, put on leave, investigated or faced calls to resign because of social media posts criticizing Charlie Kirk or expressing schadenfreude about the conservative influencer's assassination earlier this week, according to an analysis by NPR. And more may be to come:

The world's leading authority on food insecurity has confirmed a famine in Gaza. In a report published Friday, the United Nations-backed group of experts finds that over half a million people parts of north Gaza are at risk of dying from starvation, and hundreds of thousands more people face catastrophic shortages as the famine spreads to other areas. "As this Famine is entirely man-made, it can be halted and reversed. The time for debate and hesitation has passed, starvation is present and is rapidly spreading," the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, report says. The images of skeletal children...

CNN is a seemingly endless fount of dumb ideas. Yesterday, we caught a CNN correspondent recommending that if Anas Al-Sharif was a Hamas terrorist, instead of killing him, the IDF should have asked Al Jazeera to fire him! Today, it was CNN contributor and former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro's turn. Criticizing Trump's use of federal agents to supplement DC police, Garcia-Navarro said the real solution to "girl brawls" is to have "better social media policies and better money for schools."So, limit teens to 15 minutes a day on TikTok, perhaps? Yup, that'll bring girl brawls and other crime by the...

intelligence report on the election that he had just recently received. The majority of this interview was spent discussing Russia's election interference to help Trump. We now know that Obama had just received a report informing him that did not happen. 2. It was extremely obvious throughout the entire interview that Obama was lying and that he knew the significance of what he was doing. 3. Obama finished the interview, left and returned to talk about a new "Intelligence Assessment" that would be dropping before Trump's inauguration. He was priming the media to be on the look out for the...

For decades, Republicans have argued that if supporters of NPR and PBS were so fond of keeping the purported “news” organizations operational, then they should have no problem forking over the donations needed to keep them going. As it turns out, that is exactly what is happening, with the New York Times reporting that in the aftermath of NPR and PBS losing their federal funding thanks to the GOP-controlled Congress, donations from private citizens have “exploded” at “unprecedented” levels: scoop: donations to NPR and PBS stations have exploded, with donors across the country giving in unprecedented numbers since Congress cut...

Champions of the almost entirely party-line vote in the U.S. Senate to erase US$1.1 billion in already approved funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting called their action a refusal to subsidize liberal media. “Public broadcasting has long been overtaken by partisan activists,” said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, insisting there is no need for government to fund what he regards as biased media. “If you want to watch the left-wing propaganda, turn on MSNBC,” Cruz said. Accusing the media of liberal bias has been a consistent conservative complaint since the civil rights era, when white Southerners insisted news...

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced today that it will be laying off its staff and shutting down. CPB is the organization that provides funding to PBS and NPR and now that funding is gone.For nearly 60 years, CPB has carried out its Congressional mission to build and sustain a trusted public media system that informs, educates, and serves communities across the country. Through partnerships with local stations and producers, CPB has supported educational content, locally relevant journalism, emergency communications, cultural programming, and essential services for Americans in every community.“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called,...

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced it will be shutting down operations after Congress pulled its funding at the direction of President Donald Trump. In a press release Friday, the CPB said it would begin "an orderly wind-down of its operations following the passage of a federal rescissions package" last month. "For nearly 60 years, CPB has carried out its Congressional mission to build and sustain a trusted public media system that informs, educates, and serves communities across the country," CPB said in its statement. "Through partnerships with local stations and producers, CPB has supported educational content, locally relevant...