Free Republic

Arizona State University(ASU) could be in hot water with the Trump Justice Department after a club there accused the university of refusing to allow a vigil for Charlie Kirk without a slew of extra expenses and difficulties. College Republicans at ASU explained that university leadership would not let them hold a prayer vigil without a venue much too large for their purposes or a budget with a massive amount of security and administrative fees to top it off. Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ‘s civil rights division, promptly responded with a warning to the university that its...

President Trump has cut hundreds of thousands of jobs from the federal work force, disproportionately affecting Black employees.When President Trump started dismantling federal agencies and dismissing rank-and-file civil servants, Peggy Carr, the chief statistician at the Education Department, immediately started to make a calculation. She was the first Black person and the first woman to hold the prestigious post of commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. As a political appointee, she knew there was a risk of becoming a target. But her 35-career at the department spanned a half dozen administrations, including Mr. Trump’s first term, and she...

Weren’t we assured that Barack Obama went “into and out of office with not a whiff of scandal”? Yes we were. Former Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen told us so, as did many others. But it wasn’t true. There are many, the most recent a claim that Obama, and then Joe Biden, pressured bank executives to deny services to conservatives. It’s a serious charge that, like the Russia hoax, makes Watergate look like a sandbox squabble. Here’s what we’ve learned: According to Fox Business, major bank executives said “they were under pressure by the Obama and Biden administrations to deny...

George Mason University’s efforts to diversify its workforce violate a civil rights law intended to end segregation, according to the Trump administration.Following a roughly six-week-long investigation of GMU’s hiring practices, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has found that the Northern Virginia-based university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race in public education.To resolve the alleged violation, the department has proposed an agreement that would require Mason President Gregory Washington to issue a statement and “personal apology … for promoting unlawful discriminatory practices in hiring, promotion, and...

A former DEI staffer at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire will receive a $265,000 settlement after she sued the school, alleging discrimination for being White. Rochelle Hoffman, a former employee at UW-Eau Claire, brought the case in 2023 after she was promoted to interim director of the campus's Multicultural Student Services office. The school's former vice chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and Student Affairs, Olga Diaz, was allegedly told by students that a White woman was not fit to preside over a position intended to serve students of color. "You hired a White woman as the interim director?" one...

In the wake of President Donald Trump's executive order outlawing debanking, major bank executives told Fox News Digital that they were under pressure by the Obama and Biden administrations to deny services to individuals and businesses for political reasons. "Those pressures were very, very real. When your regulator gives you a suggestion, it’s not a suggestion, it’s an order. The political stuff is very real, those pressures are real," a senior banking executive told Fox News Digital. Debanking refers to the practice of banks closing accounts or denying services to individuals or businesses, often with no explanation. The practice originated...

Less than one percent of customers who filed detailed complaints about checking or savings account closures with the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over the last 13 years accused banks of acting for political or religious reasons, even as the White House mounts a campaign to stamp out "systemic abuses" in the financial system that it says have wronged conservatives, a review of the agency's data shows. U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this month signed an executive order requiring banks not to discriminate against clients on political or religious grounds, a practice known as debanking, after citing what Trump called...

I was heartened to see my former employer, Duke University Health System, quietly reverse its commitment to woke racism this year. I had joined the internal resistance to its diversity, equity, and inclusion crusade and was fired because of it. Here’s my story. Without public notice, the 38,000-employee organization scrubbed its website of the commitment to DEI it had trumpeted in 2021, when it proclaimed racism a “public health crisis,” and “equity” as its cure. Now, all such fealty to DEI has been discarded with its new 2025 statement of values. The title of its 2021 pledge to patients –...

In the West, we keep our money in banks, not under mattresses or wall safes. Banks are safe and convenient, and they pay us interest on the money we store with them, because they then lend that money out and make a profit by charging interest to borrowers. That’s a good thing, as Jimmy Stewart explained in It’s a Wonderful Life. What helps power our economy is that we essentially loan our money to banks so that they can loan it to others who, in turn, can invest in the small business infrastructure that makes America grow.When dictators wish to...

DEI is collapsing under its own contradictions—no longer able to define who qualifies, who deserves preference, or why identity should outweigh merit. Donald Trump’s executive orders banning Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI)-related racial and gender preferencing have ostensibly doomed the DEI industry. But DEI was already on its last legs. Half of all Americans no longer approve of racial, ethnic, or gender preferences. DEI had enjoyed a surge following the death of George Floyd and the subsequent 120 days of nonstop rioting, arson, assaults, killings, and attacks on law enforcement during the summer of 2020. In those chaotic years, DEI was...

Under President Trump, some companies have been rolling back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, as the initiatives come under increased scrutiny. However, others have doubled down on their commitment, asserting that DEI programs are necessary to address historical inequities and foster a strong company culture. In April, Resume Builder surveyed 1,216 hiring managers about their company’s commitment to DEI. The survey found that while many hiring managers believe DEI benefits the workplace, some feel these initiatives should be reduced or eliminated entirely due to the challenges they present. Key findings: 61% of companies currently have a DEI program, 21%...

In another display of a double standard, patriotic Americans are being blocked from wearing pro-Trump or conservative gear at public concerts and sporting events. Yet, Pride and trans flags are allowed to be freely displayed. At venues like NFL stadiums, pro-Trump shirts or MAGA hats have been confiscated or banned, with fans told that political attire isn’t allowed. Meanwhile, displays of Pride and trans flags are embraced—often part of official event branding or venue-supported inclusion campaigns. In a video posted to X, a man taped himself being kicked out of a St. Louis City game for wearing a MAGA hat....

In contemporary lexicon, few terms have been reduced to shopworn tatters more than “fascist,” typically through mindless overuse against the current democratically elected occupant of the White House. To the degree that fascism references an economy corrupted by government collusion with private industry to enforce ideological conformity, however, efforts like “Operation Choke Point” targeting politically disfavored businesses actually merit that descriptor. In welcome news, however, Citigroup announced this month that it would no longer deny financial services to firearms retailers, moving the nation one step closer to an end of that execrable campaign. Americans expect government officials to protect our...

Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wants to hike property taxes for “richer and whiter neighborhoods” in an eyebrow-raising proposal The soak-the-rich proposal is buried in Mamdani’s campaign platform that calls to fix the city’s notoriously skewed property tax system, in which ritzy brownstones are hit at lower rates than homes and rentals in lower-income neighborhoods. “Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods,” the proposal reads. Democrats and many Republicans have long pushed to fix the out-of-whack system that ends up hitting poorer, often largely...

The Supreme Court has ordered New York courts to reconsider Diocese of Albany v. Harris, a case challenging New York’s abortion mandate, in light of Becket’s unanimous victory in Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission. In 2017, a group of Catholic and Anglican nuns, Catholic dioceses, Christian churches, and faith-based social ministries challenged New York’s mandate forcing them to pay for employees’ abortions. After New York courts declined to protect the faith groups, Becket and Jones Day asked the Supreme Court to step in. In 2021, the Justices reversed the lower courts’ rulings and told them...

A Wisconsin dairy farmer alleged in a federal lawsuit filed Monday that the Trump administration is illegally denying financial assistance to white farmers by continuing programs that favor minorities.The conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture in federal court in Wisconsin on behalf of a white dairy farmer, Adam Faust. *** The new lawsuit alleges the government has continued to implement diversity, equity and inclusion programs that were instituted under former President Joe Biden. *** . “After being ignored by a federal agency that’s meant to support agriculture, I hope my...

Boeing’s Air Force One project has fallen years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget amid continued labor and design hiccups. The Government Accountability Office said in a report this week that “ongoing design issues, modification rework, and workforce challenges” are still plaguing the manufacturer. The Trump administration has resorted to procuring a $400 million jet from Qatar to serve as the interim Air Force One. Boeing is continuing to battle production issues plaguing the jets that will serve as Air Force One, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The Pentagon told the congressional auditors that “ongoing design...

Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday revived a lawsuit from an Ohio woman who claimed she was the victim of reverse discrimination because her employer denied her a promotion because she is straight. In a unanimous decision in the case of Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, the high court tossed out a ruling by a federal appeals court that dismissed Marlean Ames' claims because she failed to clear a higher bar applied to members of a majority group in order for her employment discrimination case to proceed. (snip) The background circumstances rule required plaintiffs who are members...

‘You can’t say that it’s OK to discriminate against someone because they’re white, but not OK because they’re black. We all know it’s wrong.’The U.S. Supreme Court should extend its prohibition on reverse discrimination to American schools, not only workplaces, Federalist CEO Sean Davis said on Thursday. The moment came during an interview Davis participated in on Fox News’ The Will Cain Show when the host of the same name asked The Federalist CEO to comment on a SCOTUS decision released on Thursday in a case known as Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services. As The Federalist reported, the...

The Trump administration has escalated its battle with Harvard University, freezing all future grants and threatening to strip the school’s tax-exempt status. In response, Harvard has adopted some conciliatory measures— rebranding its DEI office and cancelling its racially segregated graduation ceremonies—but, behind the scenes, the university’s discrimination machine continues to operate at full capacity. We’ve obtained a trove of internal documents that reveal Harvard’s racial favoritism in faculty and administrative hiring. The university’s DEI programs are more than “unconscious bias” training. They are vectors for systematic discrimination against disfavored groups: namely, white men. As one Harvard researcher told us, “endless...