Free Republic

The Republican-led Texas House has officially caved to the radical Left’s war on free speech—and shockingly, it’s being spearheaded by none other than the state’s own scandal-plagued former House Speaker Dade Phelan. On Tuesday, House Bill 366 passed with bipartisan support, making it a potential crime in the state of Texas to share or distribute AI-generated and “altered media”—including political memes—without a government-approved disclaimer on political ads. According to the bill: “A person may not, with the intent to influence an election, knowingly cause to be published, distributed, or broadcast political advertising that includes an image, audio recording, or video...

A Grammy Award-winning rock star left White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stunned with his question about free speech and political asylum during Monday’s briefing. Winston Marshall, the former banjoist with British folk group Mumford & Sons, called on President Trump to grant asylum to his fellow countrymen and -women who faced prosecutions over “hate speech” in the UK. Marshall, who left the band in 2021, claimed that people in his country faced “extensive prison sentences for tweets, social media posts and general free speech issues,” before ramping up to his question.

Meta’s Oversight Board expressed indignation at the social media giant for its January policy overhaul that axed fact-checking and eased restrictions on discussions about immigration and gender identity. The independent oversight board railed against the company for implementing the changes “hastily” with supposedly no transparency about “what, if any, prior human rights due diligence” was performed. Zuckerberg acknowledged that previous content moderation efforts had resulted in “too many mistakes and too much censorship.” President Trump had frequently criticized Facebook during his first term, culminating in his platform suspension following the January 6, 2021, Capitol events — a ban eventually lifted...

Under the banner of national security, the Biden administration fused behavioral surveillance with ideological profiling to create a system that was intrusive, biased, and unconstitutional. On April 16, Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Tulsi Gabbard declassified the Biden-era “Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” The release followed an April 2 declassification request from Stephen Miller’ legal organization America First Legal (AFL). While much of the document’s content had been publicly discussed in general terms, the newly declassified version reveals troubling new specifics. The declassified version features language that outlines how the Biden administration planned to operationalize counterterrorism efforts. It...

Indiana’s state treasurer repeatedly stood against big banks canceling accounts and releasing customer data of Christians and conservatives for viewpoint discrimination. A pending must-pass bill in Indiana’s Republican-run legislature would strip some of Treasurer Daniel Elliott’s powers and could give them to those same banks.... Elliott has been a key partner of a nationwide coalition of conservative financial elected officials, the State Financial Officers Foundation. As part of that coalition, he and some 25 other Republican state financial officers have fought financial discrimination against Christians and conservatives, ESG, and DEI.... In a 2024 Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) press conference, Elliott...

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified a shocking plan by former President Joe Biden’s administration for dealing with domestic terrorists. Last Wednesday, Gabbard released a June 2021 document titled “Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism” (henceforth “the Plan”). But despite the release receiving over 6.3 million views on X by Monday morning, the major media has ignored the document. While Americans are very familiar with many Biden era policies, the newly declassified document reveals that the actions were part of a coordinated action from early in the administration across a wide range of government agencies to target...

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents from the Biden administration Wednesday, revealing how “domestic terrorism” was used as a pretext to attempt to curb gun rights and target “misinformation.” Former President Joe Biden prioritized tackling purported domestic terrorism, and the newly released documents shed additional light on his administration’s strategy. IMAGE As promised, I have declassified the Biden Administration’s Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism. Read it here: https://www.odni.gov/index.php/newsroom/dig/4064-dig-strat-impl-plan-ct-biden

The police are making more than 30 arrests a day over offensive posts on social media and other platforms. Thousands of people are being detained and questioned for sending messages that cause “annoyance”, “inconvenience” or “anxiety” to others via the internet, telephone or mail. Custody data obtained by The Times shows that officers are making about 12,000 arrests a year under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. The acts make it illegal to cause distress by sending “grossly offensive” messages or sharing content of an “indecent, obscene or menacing character”...

A school board meeting in Maine’s capital city of Augusta on Wednesday night featured a contentious interaction between a parent in a “MAGA” hat and the school board president over the state’s ongoing controversy over trans athlete inclusion in girls’ sports. Augusta School Board Chair Martha Witham cut off local parent Nick Blanchard while he discussed the controversial issue and a petition he launched to have Cony Middle and High School Principal Kim Liscomb removed from her position, as seen in footage of the meeting. Liscomb is currently the president of the Maine Principals’ Association (MPA), which supports transgender athletes’...

European Union regulators are preparing to hit Elon Musk's X platform with a huge fine which could surpass $1billion for breaking disinformation laws, insiders have reportedly revealed. The move would likely to ratchet up tensions between the EU and United States, with tech billionaire Musk a close adviser to President Trump. The social media platform could also face forced product changes for failing to abide by the landmark law to combat illicit content and disinformation, sources told the New York Times. The penalties are expected to be announced this summer, the sources said, and will be the first to be...

Germany’s likely new coalition government, expected to be formed between the conservatives (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), is planning a law that could effectively ban politicians deemed ‘unpleasant’ or ‘populist’ from standing for election. A draft coalition paper, presented to the press last week, proposes a significant tightening of the country’s already repressive ‘incitement of the masses’ law. Under the proposal, politicians convicted more than once under the law would no longer be allowed to stand as a party candidate. Germany’s law against incitement of the masses (Section 130 of the Criminal Code) has long been a tool to...

As I listen in frustration to my liberal friends complain about encroaching authoritarianism in the United States and the danger of letting people express their opinions on X, I stand amazed at their admiration for allies in Europe, such as the UK or the European Union cracking down on people who aren't in lockstep with the ruling regimes. It is a testament to the power of groupthink and the power of propaganda and gives us a window into how otherwise civilized societies descend into barbarous madness that results in crimes against humanity. The analog isn't so much the rise of...

“A New World Order With European Values.” Emblazoned across banners and signs, those words met the participants at this week’s meeting of the World Forum in Berlin. Each year, leaders, executives, journalists and academics gather to address the greatest threats facing humanity. This year, there was little doubt about what they view as the current threat: the resurgence of populism and free speech. In fairness to the Forum, “a New World Order” likely sounds more ominous for some civil libertarians than intended. While the European Union is a transnational government stretching across 27 nations, the organizers were referring to a...

Joe Biden’s final act of shamelessness was pardoning his entire crime family in the final hours of his presidency. There’s a mountain of corruption that’s yet to be fully revealed. On the weaponization of government front, you’d think the sustained lawfare launched against President Donald Trump from the Department of Justice was evidence enough. Pro-life activists and the January 6 defendants also being ensnared by the Biden DOJ’s extralegal crusade on political dissidents. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. The Media Research Center found not one, not ten, but 57 anti-free speech and censorship initiatives aimed at chipping away...

Major AI service providers continue to deploy content moderation algorithms designed to suppress and manipulate viewpoints, actively enforcing censorship under the guise of moderation. From Foreign PsyOps to Domestic Thought Control The censorship and content manipulation we see today did not emerge organically—it was the result of government-directed psychological operations (PsyOps) repurposed for domestic control. What was once used in foreign influence campaigns to destabilize adversarial regimes or control narratives abroad was turned inward—against the American people. The Twitter Files, exposed by investigative journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, provided irrefutable evidence that U.S. government agencies used taxpayer dollars to...

After the Cold War, terrorism became the most pressing threat to national security. And social media became a major part of the battle. Benz told me in an interview that, during the war on terror, the U.S. military developed artificial intelligence tools to combat ISIS recruiters. AI reviewed ¬terrorists’ social media posts to determine “what kind of words they use, the dialect, the key words, the slang, the prefixes, the suffixes, sentiment analysis” and then restrict their online reach. However, in 2017, Benz was shocked to learn that a similar tool was being offered for sale to the private sector....

The defense of free speech by Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich, Germany, has led to open panic on the left in fighting to maintain European censorship and speech criminalization. The response of the American press and pundits was crushingly familiar. From CBS News to members of Congress, Vance (and anyone who supports his speech) was accused of using Nazi tactics. It is the demonization of dissent. In one of the most bizarre examples, CBS anchor Margaret Brennan confronted Secretary of State Marco Rubio over Vance’s support for free speech given the fact that he was “standing in a country...

Freedom of speech is a virus! And censorship is a vaccine!" Ursula von der Leyen called for “vaccinating” society against uncomfortable information .

France just made it clear—if you don’t fall in line, you’re finished. The government is shutting down C8, a massively popular right-wing TV channel, because it wasn’t “diverse enough.” Translation? It dared to challenge the state-approved narrative. Millions of viewers tuned in, but that doesn’t matter. The decision is final—C8 will be gone by next Friday. France’s top court backed the move, claiming the network failed to meet its obligations and lacked profitability. Since when did profitability determine a channel’s right to exist? This isn’t about contracts. It’s about silencing dissent. The media regulator, Arcom, hit C8 with fines and...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a truly Orwellian society where there is absolutely no freedom of speech, absolutely no freedom of religion and absolutely no freedom of the press? You may think that the rules that you are currently living under are bad, but the country that I am about to discuss exercises total control over the population. In this nation, you can only choose a haircut off a pre-approved list, and smiling on the wrong day can literally get you sent to a prison camp. Unfortunately, once you are sent to a...