Free Republic

We have uncovered new information and accusations about the cargo airline operating the Amazon Prime Air plane that crashed in Miami on Sunday, killing five people in a van inside the airport perimeter and in a Toyota Corolla outside the perimeter. This cargo airline, called 21 Air, has a documented history of hiring foreigners who can’t follow instructions from air traffic controllers, as well as a reputation for hiring incompetent pilots who can’t pass basic training at other airlines, according to industry professionals who say they have first-hand knowledge of the company’s operations. We’re going to go through the evidence...

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III on Tuesday announced that he would retire at the end of the year, the Washington Post reported. His retirement comes amid pressure from the Trump administration, which has worked to revamp many of the Institute's museums and displays. Last year, the administration notified the Smithsonian that it would review museum exhibits ahead of the 250th anniversary of the United States.

In one of his Truth Social bombs, President Donald Trump insisted we should rename Lake Ontario to Lake America after Canada refused to accept his trade negotiation terms. It obviously echoes his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. It's easy to find these whole geographic kerfuffles unnecessary. But the media hated the first one so much that the Associated Press found itself restricted from the White House press pool for refusing to accept the new Gulf terminology. What they hate is anything Trump does to add a patriotic pro-America tinge to something that they associate...

CareerSource Polk President and CEO Stacy Campbell-Domineck has been temporarily removed from her position as executive director without compensation while an independent review examines the organization’s management and governance. The Polk County Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday, Sept. 1, to approve two resolutions involving CareerSource Polk, the local workforce development organization responsible for connecting job seekers with employment and training opportunities. The first resolution immediately removed Campbell-Domineck from the executive director position until the governance review is completed. The second allows the county to bypass its normal consultant-selection procedures so the review can be conducted on an expedited...

Off target. A popular chain store released it’s modern version of what some shoppers describe as the modern Jim Crow Halloween outfit. Target has spent the last several years learning an uncomfortable lesson about corporate activism: once a company decides to enter the culture war, there may not be an easy way out. The retail giant is once again facing controversy after pulling a Halloween costume that critics reportedly complained was offensive to black Americans, making only the latest political headache for a company that has repeatedly found itself caught between progressive activists demanding that it embrace ‘social justice’ and...

If poor Jason Arday killed himself, it will be necessary to work out why. To do so, it will help to know why he resigned his professorship. It seems highly unlikely he resigned if Cambridge University did not want him to. It had defended him in public throughout, after all. Yet if he had been confident of Cambridge’s continuing support, why did he sacrifice the benefit of its protection? If Cambridge suggested to him that its protection would, for whatever reason, shortly cease, what caused its change of mind? What a terrible shock for him if the institution which had...

A routine knee replacement meant to restore 72-year-old Glenda Dorton's mobility has instead left her facing an uncertain future after her family says the wrong medication was injected before surgery. The Centerville, Tennessee woman arrived at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital Midtown in Nashville on August 14 expecting a procedure that millions of Americans undergo each year. Her family says the operation itself went well, but what happened before it began changed everything. According to her daughter-in-law, Kristina Dorton, the medication placed into Glenda's spine for a pre-surgical epidural was not the intended anesthetic. She says it was potassium, a drug...

Nathan Cofnas, the U.S. academic who raised plagiarism concerns over the late Cambridge professor Jason Arday, said on Thursday he had been suspended by Belgium’s Ghent University and was under investigation for discrimination. Arday, once hailed as Cambridge’s youngest Black professor, was found dead, aged 41, in London last Friday, days after resigning from his post. Arday had denied the allegation of plagiarism but acknowledged making mistakes. “I was just suspended by Ghent University. They will almost certainly fire me,” Cofnas wrote on his X account. In a post a few hours earlier he said he was “under investigation by...

A former New York City Police Department sergeant from Orange County pleaded guilty to driving in the wrong direction on the Taconic State Parkway while intoxicated and striking another vehicle, causing a driver's death, state Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday. Tiffany Howell, of Warwick, who was off-duty at the time, pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide and second-degree manslaughter before Judge Anne Bianchi in Westchester County Court, James said. Howell, 48, crashed head-on into a car driven north by Manuel Boitel at 11:37 p.m. on Jan. 22 while she was driving south at more than 50 mph with a...

A San Francisco high school where students get top grades simply for showing up now has the highest acceptance rate in the state to the prestigious University of California, Berkeley — as critics blame rampant grade inflation and rock-bottom standards for a surge in ill-prepared college students who end up dropping out. Mission High School had a 45% acceptance rate into the elite university, with 34 out of its 76 applicants gaining admission last fall, far ahead of the state average of 15%, according to data compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle. But it’s not because of superior academics, critics...

Daniel Huff, a former White House lawyer, noted in a recent analysis that the drive toward diversity and inclusion in the airline industry has put passengers at risk. In an article for the New York Post, Huff wrote that President Donald Trump was right to rescind diversity efforts at the Federal Aviation Administration. That's because female and minority pilots -- many of whom entered the industry amid a drive toward diversity among pilots -- were responsible for half of pilot-error crashes. Despite making up 10 percent of pilots, they were responsible for four out of eight such crashes since 2000....

Cambridge University is England’s second-best university, but it’s now bottom of the class. As the case of Jason Arday confirms, no one does dumb like the smart people. In 2023, Cambridge made Arday a professor. He became the professorial chair of sociology and education. These fields produce politicized gibberish and call it scientific research.

The University of Cambridge is facing serious questions about its academic standards and push for diversity after its youngest black professor resigned amid allegations of copying other academics' research. Jason Arday's appointment in 2023 was hailed at the time as a progressive moment. Now, Cambridge says it has launched an investigation after "new information" emerged about his academic qualifications and honorary appointments. There are two fundamental questions for the university. Did it fail to adequately check Arday's credentials when appointing him, and did it defend that decision because of an institutional push to position itself as more diverse?

Jennifer Lackard has been terminated, the Mount Vernon Police Department said. A public safety official for a New York state police department faces criminal charges, including attempted murder, for allegedly helping her son flee a gang-related shooting in New York City, according to authorities. Jennifer Lackard was arrested on Tuesday in connection with a June shooting behind a Bronx courthouse, police said. The high-ranking Mount Vernon Police Department deputy commissioner is accused of "acting in concert" with her husband and their son in the incident, according to an indictment charging all three with more than a dozen counts -- including...

The percentage of high-ranking officer nominations going to women is currently at its lowest level in over two decades.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s blocking of promotions for high-ranking women in the military has contributed to the lowest percentage of such nominations for women in at least 25 years, according to a New York Times analysis.Eight of 201 candidates for high-ranking posts this year have been women, or 4 percent — less than half the average percentage of the past 10 years.More women could still be promoted this year. And the number of women nominated for promotion in any year is relatively...

The director of African American Affairs at Minnesota State University (MSU), Mankato is no longer employed by the university after a federal jury convicted him of a tax fraud scheme prosecutors said generated approximately $387,000 in fraudulent tax refunds. Cortez Hollis worked in the university’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) division, where he led the African American Affairs office. A federal jury found Hollis guilty in June on 20 counts of aiding or assisting in the preparation of false tax returns, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Hollis owned and...

If The Onion or the Babylon Bee wanted to spoof the absurdity of DEI — the woke ideology of “diversity, equity and inclusion” — they couldn’t have invented a character as unbelievable as Jason Arday. *** Born in 1985, in 2023 he became the youngest black man ever to hold a professorship at Cambridge University. Naturally, he had to overcome great adversity to do so. *** because Arday, the son of a Ghanaian immigrant to London, isn’t just black, he’s autistic and was nonverbal until the age of 11, according to the glowing media profiles he’s received. And he’s epileptic,...

This video discusses the downfall of *Kerri Greenidge*, a former tenure-track associate professor at *Tufts University* (0:54, 6:53). Her 2022 book, *The Grimke Sisters: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family*, which initially received significant acclaim and awards, was later exposed for containing major academic inaccuracies (1:15, 3:05, 3:50). **Key findings regarding the book's flaws include:** * **Fabricated Sources:** *Greenidge* cited non-existent letters in the *University of Michigan* archives (4:40). * **Sensationalized History:** The book inaccurately described the burning of *Pennsylvania Hall* in 1838, claiming the *Grimke* sisters led women to safety from an active fire when, in reality,...

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is being mocked online over the "irony" of saying she is "very, very mindful and scrupulous" about being impartial during a guest appearance on former first lady Michelle Obama’s podcast, "IMO." During an appearance of more than an hour on the podcast, Jackson, a Biden appointee to the Supreme Court, stressed the importance of being unbiased, saying, "You really have to be focused on that." "There are lots of limits on what judges can do, and I try to be very, very mindful and scrupulous with respect to that because, as you say, our...

The Walt Disney Company has dramatically escalated its showdown with the Federal Communications Commission, accusing the agency of carrying out a politically motivated campaign on behalf of President Donald Trump that could strip broadcast licenses from some of Disney-owned network ABC’s biggest television stations. In a 109-page filing, Disney argued the federal agency’s actions amount to retaliation over the entertainment company’s programming, including criticism of the president by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and scrutiny surrounding Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. “The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of...