Free Republic

Multiple fires were set by Antifia militants at the University of Washington campus in Seattle on Monday night. A group of black bloc Antifa occupied the Interdisciplinary Engineering building and blockaded the doors. The building opened just a few weeks ago and the $100 million price tag was funded by private donors, taxpayers, a federal grant, Amazon, T-Mobile and Boeing. Activists blocked streets with bike racks and dumpsters and set them on fire. Antifa gathered rocks to throw at police. The fires were set around 10:30 pm local time and neither police nor fire fighters were on the scene as...

Columbia University’s radical protest leaders, including Khalil, aren’t just anti-Israel — they want America to fall and are taking steps to make it happen. Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats are demanding the release of Columbia University student and pro-Hamas protester Mahmoud Khalil. While House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) is accusing the Trump administration of “authoritarianism,” the Democrats are about to be embarrassed. Khalil is a leader of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, one of more than 150 pro-terrorism groups I identified in my comprehensive study for the Capital Research Center, “Marching Toward Violence: The Domestic Anti-Israeli Protest Movement.”...

**SNIP** "October 8, when I saw the protests in Times Square, and then I saw what was happening the next day on October 9, and at Harvard, where more than 30 student groups signed onto a letter blaming Israel on the attack on itself. And then we saw the same thing happen from campus after campus, from Columbia to NYU to Tulane to MIT, Cornell, Penn. It just felt like the world had lost its mind," she said. "The silence, the dismissal, the denial." "And so, by the end of October, I knew that I needed to document what was...

“As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist” The radical, anti-Israel mob has returned to the campus of Columbia University, after taking the summer off. Despite having months to prepare for this, the school looked like it was caught flat-footed, as protesters picked up right where they left off last spring. What are these people going to have to do before authorities take them seriously? As Columbia resumes classes, student activists vow to carry on with protests against Israel Columbia University resumed classes Tuesday with students sunbathing and eating...

The 8-month pregnant wife of pro-Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil has pled for her husband's release in time for the birth of their baby, following his arrest and detention by federal immigration officers over the weekend. "I urge you to see Mahmoud through my eyes as a loving husband and the future father to our baby. I need your help to bring Mahmoud home, so he is here beside me, holding my hand in the delivery room as we welcome our first child into this world," she told Newsweek in a statement issued via her husband's attorney, Amy E. Greer....

On Sunday, a group of keffiyeh-clad individuals huddled around a computer to discuss the "Palestinian resistance." Charlotte Kates, a member of the Israeli-designated terror group Samidoun, praised Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack for showing "the potential of a future for Palestine liberated from Zionism." Khaled Barakat, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine activist, lauded airplane hijackings as "one of the most important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in." While those speakers and other attendees were explicit in their support for terrorism against Jews, the event did not take place in Gaza, Doha, or Tehran. It took...

The pro-Palestinian activists who disrupted campuses across the nation are plotting their return for the new academic year. Demonstrators say all forms of protest are still on the table, despite the more than 2,000 arrests so far, as students try to figure out a new strategy to demand their schools divest from Israel, among other goals. “What we will see [is] the students will continue their activism, will continue doing what they’ve done in conventional and unconventional ways. So not only protests, not only encampments, kind of any — any available means necessary to push Columbia to divest from from...

JD Vance and his family were confronted by angry pro-Ukraine protesters during their trip to Vermont. The family was then moved to an 'undisclosed location'. US Vice-President JD Vance and his family were met with intense protests during their weekend trip to Vermont. Angry pro-Ukraine protesters criticized Vance for being 'mean' to Volodymyr Zelensky during the Ukrainian President's visit to the White House on Friday. The protesters booed Vance and told him to 'go ski in Russia"...

An official at the anti-Israel American Muslims for Palestine group who openly advocates for violence against the Jewish state contributed $2,500 to Democratic Party leader Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.) last year, according to campaign disclosure documents.

New York University has recently made headlines by suspending nearly a dozen students for engaging in protests. The suspensions are linked to students demanding divestment from Israel. As the debate on free speech and protest rights in higher education continues, these actions speak volumes about the current political climate. Protests and Suspensions Nearly a dozen NYU students were suspended for a year for their participation in protests demanding divestment from Israel. The protests, which took place during finals at Bobst Library, were organized by Shut It Down NYU to criticize Israel’s treatment of Gaza. NYU’s administration stated that suspensions were...

The governing body of Brown University, an Ivy League school known for its left-wing politics, rejected a proposal Wednesday to divest the university’s holdings from Israeli companies or companies with ties to the Israeli military. The Brown Daily Herald reported: Brown University will not divest from companies with Israeli military ties, its governing body voted Tuesday. The decision, announced publicly Wednesday, follows a recommendation against divestment issued by Brown’s Advisory Committee on University Resource Management, or ACURM. The committee voted 8-2 against recommending divestment, with one member abstaining. As Breitbart News had reported in May, Brown University was the first...

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want to protect the state’s Israeli financial holdings despite mounting public pressure to cut ties amid the ongoing war with Hamas. Sens. Steve Santarsiero, D-Doylestown, and Kristin Phillips-Hill, R-Jacobus, said they’ll soon introduce legislation to “uphold Pennsylvania’s steadfast support for Israel” by banning from state Treasury or pension funds from divesting from the nation and companies that do business with it. Santarsiero emphasized Israel’s role as a commercial trading partner, historical ally, and “the only true democracy in a volatile region of the world.”

Hamas’ gruesome terrorist attack against Israel has left the entire world in shock, primarily at the barbarity of Hamas’ actions but also at the monumental intelligence failure on the part of Israel’s vaunted security establishment. The tragic attack has also encouraged some healthy critical reflection on the Biden regime’s Middle East policy. In a colossal blunder worthy of the legendarily inaccurate financial commentator Jim Cramer, Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan just this month bragged that “the Middle East is quieter now than it has been in two decades.” Of course, no one can be expected to predict the future,...

And Disney takes another blow on the chin, this time from South Carolina. According to Moneywise, South Carolina State Treasurer Curtis Loftis has divested the state's money from Disney over the corporation not doing its fiduciary responsibility. Loftis blamed a "structural rot" within the company that he doesn't see it getting away from: “I think it's clear to anybody paying attention that there's a structural rot inside of Disney. It's deep, it’s pervasive, and I suspect Bob Iger, since his return as the CEO, now realizes it can't be fixed,” he told Fox Business Digital, adding that it “does not...

Over the Christmas weekend, Chicago surpassed the 750-murder mark for 2016. But as blacks lay dying on the streets of Chicago’s South and West Sides, a Black Lives Matter offshoot is more interested in traveling overseas to learn “resistance” from terrorists. The Dream Defenders bills itself as “an uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing.” But an investigation conducted by the Haym Salomon Center reveals the group’s embrace of anti-Semitism and collaboration with a State Department-designated terror group. In August, Black Lives Matter singled out Israel for condemnation, declaring it an “apartheid” state engaged in “genocide.” These...

Chevron Corp. turned out to be one of the top performing assets David Root included this year in the workplace retirement portfolios his firm manages for companies that offer employee 401k plans. And he makes no apologies for the investment. “If you didn’t have energy as part of your portfolio this year — which averaged 35% to 40% returns — you had no chance of outperforming the S&P 500,” said Mr. Root, CEO of DBR & Co., Downtown. Some fund managers guided by their environmental, social and governance values rather than pure financial considerations might have ruled out an investment...

Another state on Thursday announced that it would begin divesting its assets currently managed by investment giant BlackRock, accusing it of “[leaning] heavily into Environmental, Social, and Governance standards.” “As Florida’s chief financial officer, it’s my responsibility to get the best returns possible for taxpayers. The more effective we are in investing dollars to generate a return, the more effective we’ll be in funding priorities like schools, hospitals, and roads,” Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer, said in a press release. The divestment will involve “$2 billion worth of assets,” according to the statement. “As major banking institutions and economists...

BlackRock’s focus on the latest Wall Street craze—environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing—has turned into a risky affair for the world’s largest asset manager, a UBS analyst recently stated. Brennan Hawken, an analyst at the bank, downgraded the stock of BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) from Buy to Neutral and slashed the stock price target from $700 to $585 over growing pushback to its ESG efforts. “We are downgrading BLK to Neutral based on environmental pressure to earnings and risk from the firm’s ESG positioning,” he said in a note, adding that BlackRock could face increased regulatory inspection and the possibility of...

Louisiana State Treasurer John Schroder announced his state will divest funds from the multi-trillion dollar investment firm, BlackRock, due to environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies some claim boycott the oil, gas and coal industries. “Your blatantly anti-fossil fuel policies would destroy Louisiana’s economy,” Schroder said in a letter sent Wednesday to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. To avoid losing state money “to the detriment of our citizens,” the Louisiana Treasury will gradually divest funds from the financial firm, Schroder wrote. The Louisiana Treasury divested $560 million from BlackRock as of Wednesday. “Once complete, this divestment will reflect $794 million no...

The enablers of Hamas and its agenda are the absolute dregs of our society and should be treated as such at every opportunity. The express purpose of the Arab League's Resolution 1547 was to weaponize displaced Palestinian Arabs against Israel. This is incontrovertible and damning evidence that every single organization and business that is involved in the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement is at best a stooge and enabler, if not a willful participant, in an international fraud that abuses the trust of the entire international community to support the agenda of terrorists. Here is what the Refugee...