Free Republic

Dr. Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya appeared this week at Aspen Ideas: Health, addressing his previously controversial stance on COVID-19, as well as his plans as the new National Institutes of Health director. Bhattacharya was sworn in as the 18th director of the NIH on April 1. President Trump nominated him for the position in late November, and the U.S. Senate confirmed his position on March 25. The NIH is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, with Bhattacharya referring to it as “the crown jewel of American biomedical sciences.” In his conversation Tuesday evening with Stefanie Ilgenfritz, coverage chief for...

House raids over speech violations are becoming commonplace across Germany, even as violent crime explodes... On Wednesday morning at 6 a.m., a large-scale police operation was launched across Germany, targeting hundreds of individuals suspected of insulting politicians or spreading “hate and incitement” online. The massive crackdown saw police launch morning raids against 170 individuals, which saw police seize computers, cell phones, and tablets, and conduct searches in multiple locations across the country. The action, which was conducted by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), uses the new Criminal Code Paragraph 188 to target individuals accused of racism and hate speech....

At around 6 a.m. this morning, hundreds of people across Germany awoke to police officers at their door. Their only ‘crime’ is to have openly made critical or offensive comments on the internet, many about specific politicians. German police raiding right-wing Compact Magazine’s editor-in-chief’s home, Twitter This is not a scene from the Third Reich or the German Democratic Republic, but from the Federal Republic in the 21st Century. Officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) intend to make approximately 170 house visits today, to investigate ‘hateful’ or insulting comments made online. Suspects have had their tablets, laptops, and...

Police in Germany have executed more than 170 operations targeting people they referred to as “digital arsonists”. Starting early on the morning of June 25, officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office raided the homes of people suspected of running “criminal posts” online. The police move was not the first such in Germany, where it is flagged a “day of action”, targeting alleged authors of “online hate and hate messages”. This was the 12th time that the police took such nationwide action against so-called politically motivated crime (PMK). Two-thirds of those people whom officers hit had reportedly made right-wing radical...

Obama’s embrace of censorship speaks to the desperation of a party that can’t survive without uniform control of the information space.. The modern Democrat Party is many things. But an ardent defender of Americans’ First Amendment right to free speech is not one of them. This theme was front and center during a sit-down interview former President Barack Obama participated in at The Connecticut Forum earlier this week. At one point in his conversation with historian and author Heather Cox Richardson, America’s 44th commander-in-chief broached the subject of “propaganda” and how “[t]hose in power, those with money, exploit [the information]...

Even as other banks are backing down, the bank that debanked us doubles down. Last spring, 15 state attorney generals wrote to Bank of America warning that its politically motivated debanking targeting conservatives and religious people was under the looking glass. After taking office, President Trump directly challenged Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan to stop discriminating against conservatives. “I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank. What you’re doing is wrong.” But instead of ending its political discrimination, BOA launched a...

On January 20, 2025, the first day of his second presidential term, Donald Trump signed an executive order: “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” The bad old days of the “censorship-industrial complex,” allegedly responsible for suppressing online speech under President Joe Biden, were over.Except they weren’t. The driving force behind online censorship had never been the U.S. government, which meant that freedom of speech could not be restored by the stroke of a president’s pen. Rather, the European Union has wielded its Digital Services Act (DSA) to restrict the speech not just of Europeans but especially of Americans...

Partisan targeting or legitimate antitrust inquiry?The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking documents from the left-leaning nonprofit Media Matters to determine whether the self-styled watchdog conspired with other organizations to orchestrate illegal advertiser boycotts of conservative news sites in violation of antitrust laws. In 2024, Elon Musk sued the company for allegedly costing his X platform billions of dollars in lost advertising revenue, leading some observers to criticize the current FTC inquiry as a Musk-inspired alliance.What FTC SeeksThe FTC seeks communications between Media Matters and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) — a cross-industry initiative of the World Federation...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new visa restrictions the Trump administration is implementing against foreign authorities who it says are "complicit" in censoring Americans. "For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights," Rubio wrote on X. "Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans. Free speech is essential to the American way of life – a birthright over which foreign governments have no authority." Foreigners who work to undermine the rights of...

The White House has said it is “monitoring” the case of Lucy Connolly in an escalation of free speech tensions with Sir Keir Starmer. State department officials are examining the treatment of Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor, who was jailed for 31 months over a social media post about the Southport attacks. Judges threw out an appeal brought by the 42-year-old last week, meaning she will not be released before August. Campaigners raised her case with Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, as part of a wider effort to challenge what they regard as draconian hate speech...

The American public is still learning more about the Biden regime’s sinister nature and how it felt about its political opponents. On Friday, DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents that revealed that Americans who opposed the draconian and cruel COVID mandates were declared “Domestic Violent Extremists.” Michael Shellenberger’s Public and Catherine Herridge Reports first obtained the newly declassified records. Former FBI agent Steve Friend explained to Public that the designation created an “articulable purpose” for FBI or other government agents to open an “assessment” of individuals, which is often the first step toward a formal investigation. In other words, COVID...

At one time, most Americans (and virtually all academics) would have agreed with the famous saying, often attributed to Voltaire, “While I disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Over the last several decades, that has dramatically changed. Many academics now seem to embrace the opposite view—something like, “Since I disagree with what you say, I will do everything possible to silence you.” Is that an exaggeration? You won’t think so after reading Nicholas Wolfinger’s new book, Professors Speak Out: The Truth About Campus Investigations. Wolfinger, a sociology professor at the...

CNN’s Collins: Media Didn’t Help Shut Down Skepticism, Critical Thinking During COVID Video Source: CNN Ian Hanchett23 May 202544 1:10 During a portion of an interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that was aired on Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” host Kaitlan Collins argued that the media wasn’t involved in shutting down skepticism, critical thinking, and people making their own decisions during the coronavirus pandemic. Towards the end of the interview, Kennedy stated, “I would say be skeptical of authority. My father told me that when I was a young kid, people in authority...

The amazing part of communism is the ability to exert the most ridiculous statements oblivious of the irony or hypocrisy involved. It’s as if they assume that whatever they say will be given equal weight with obvious truths and common sense, when most of their statements are in conflict with both. In recognizing the dogma surrounding this, it isn’t so much that they put exaggerated lies forward as the truth, but that they seem to garner so many listeners. One must stand back and marvel, not at the lies or liars involved, but those who stand ready to accept it,...

When the BOY got off the podium, she assumed her RIGHTFUL spot as CHAMPION! The crowd erupts with applause. THIS is the way. Congrats to Reese Hogan, the REAL champ!!! VIDEO AT LINK......................

A California high school female athlete didn’t let coming in second to a male-born transgender competitor prevent her from standing in the top spot on the podium during placement at a state track and field meet. Reese Hogan, 16, was crowned second place in the triple jump at the CIF Southern Section Finals on Saturday — despite setting a new personal record for herself and the Crean Lutheran High School at 37 feet, 2 inches. Standing in first place, junior trans athlete AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley, who won titles in the girls’ long jump and triple jump, posed with...

Section 1 of the bill creates the "Kelly Loving Act". Section 2 provides that, when making child custody decisions and determining the best interests of a child for purposes of parenting time, a court shall consider deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual's gender-affirming health-care services as types of coercive control. A court shall consider reports of coercive control when determining the allocation of parental responsibilities in accordance with the best interests of the child. Section 3 prohibits a Colorado court from applying or giving any force or effect to another state's law that authorizes a...

In 1984, you could be tortured in Room 101 for believing that 2 + 2 = 4. Likewise, in Colorado you can be set upon by law enforcement for calling someone by the name their parents gave them or even for referring to them with factually correct pronouns. Leftist Governor Jared Polis has signed into law House Bill 1312: The law expands the state’s antidiscrimination laws, which apply to settings like workplaces and schools, to include provisions related to using a person’s chosen name and referring to them how they wish. “Antidiscrimination” is the Liberalese euphemism for government-imposed discrimination benefiting...

JOHN KERRY OUTS CIA AGENT Remember all of the outrage and liberal indignation awhile ago when former ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA agent? Evidently it was an unnamed Bush administration official that supplied the name....and the results of that investigation have yet to be made public. Well, it's happened again. Guess who publicly outed a CIA agent this time? Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. That's right...The Poodle's faux pas came yesterday as he was slamming U.N. Ambassador-nominee John Bolton at his confirmation hearings. Here's how it went down. For the majority of the hearings, Bolton...

Just a hair over a week ago (ten days to be exact), an official arm of the German government declared the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party - now polling as Germany's most popular party in the country - a 'right-wing extremist' group. Yeah, right - so big deal, no? I mean, they've been calling them that forever. Actually, it was a big deal. It made the epithet an official label, opening the party and every last one of its members to constant, sanctioned (instead of surreptitious) government surveillance. It was also the first necessary step in the process of...