Free Republic

When I found Darshan Smaaladen earlier this month, she had joined several hundred of her neighbors at a “No Kings” demonstration in Orange County, California. Not that she was there to protest. “Rallies are great,” Smaaladen told me, “but they don’t get people out to vote.”A year ago, Smaaladen had helped lead a successful campaign to recall two ultraconservative members of Orange County’s school board. Now the 52-year-old mother of three was using the “No Kings” protest as a campaigning ground for Proposition 50, the ballot measure orchestrated by Governor Gavin Newsom that would redraw California’s district map to add...

Climate deniers use scientific aesthetics to reinforce and legitimize their message. At the same time, their main opponents, the climate activists, are portrayed as emotional and irrational. This has been demonstrated by researchers from the Universities of Gothenburg and Amsterdam, who have studied how climate deniers communicate online. "Disinformation is not just about incorrect facts, but about how these facts look and feel. In today's digital media landscape, messages are spread through images, memes and visual narratives that influence us in an instant, before we even have time to think. By understanding the aesthetic logic behind climate denial, we can...

All along we've been told this was about aggressive expansionism and applied a strategy of deterrence. That was wrong.With the imposition of new U.S. sanctions on Russian oil producers and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s dismissal of visiting Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev as a “propagandist,” the Trump administration’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine seem to be hanging by a thread. Their success or failure will depend on a simple premise: one must understand a problem in order to resolve it. Unfortunately, the West has been misdiagnosing the problem it faces in Ukraine for more than a decade, with increasingly...

The film dispels the comforting illusion that technology can shield us from a nuclear attack.Director Kathryn Bigelow’s new thriller, “A House of Dynamite,” is not simply a gripping film — it is a wake-up call. The movie dramatizes, in real time, the terrifying 30-minute window between the launch of a nuclear missile bound for the U.S. and its impact. In doing so, the film exposes a brutal truth that too many decision-makers and policy experts in Washington refuse to admit: Long-range missile defense will not protect us. Our only real path to escape nuclear catastrophe lies in reducing global arsenals.From...

Senator Rand Paul is tired of being the only Republican senator willing to stand up to President Trump. The libertarian spoke with Politico’s Dasha Burns just days after being deliberately left out of Trump’s gathering of GOP senators in the Rose Garden. “We have everybody but one person here,” Trump said Wednesday. “We’re just missing one person. You’ll never guess who that is. Let me give you—he automatically votes no on everything. He thinks it’s good politics. It’s really not good politics.”

As Rabbis Face Facts, Bible Tales Are Wilting By MICHAEL MASSING braham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation. Such startling propositions — the product of findings by archaeologists digging in Israel and its environs over the last 25 ...

The Trump administration is using an imagined enemy—“antifa”—to justify turning ICE into an ultra-violent, unaccountable army invading US cities. Portlanders deploying inflatable animal costumes, a brass band, mass ukulele renditions of “This Land Is Your Land,” naked bike rides, and other tactics in their ICE protests are undermining the Trump administration’s lurid claims that Portland, Oregon, is a “war-torn” city under siege by a violent left. It’s hard to portray someone dancing in an inflatable frog or chicken costume as a terrorist. This, of course, hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from officially designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization. Secretary of...

The federal indictment of New York’s attorney general centers on a home she purchased for a relative. It is an act that rings deeply familiar to many.To some Black families, it was an intimately familiar arrangement.A woman whose parents fled a life of sharecropping in the South was among the first in her family to achieve a prestigious career. She extended her help to relatives who had less, even buying a home for a grandniece in need of stability.The house sits at the center of the indictment of Letitia James, the New York attorney general, by the Justice Department. She...

A growing number of Republicans on Capitol Hill have raised concerns about President Trump’s expanding war against drug cartels carried out without consultation or authorization by Congress, and are pressing for more information and involvement in a campaign whose legal basis remains murky. Most in the group have not expressed explicit opposition to the strikes that have been carried out so far against boats in the Caribbean Sea and, this week, expanded to the Pacific. The vast majority of Republicans have enthusiastically rallied behind them, and this month, all but two of them voted to block a measure that would...

If only the peasants would just surrender! When I saw this headline in the opinion pages of the WSJ, I had high hopes that some scientist pointed out that politicians and bureaucrats can’t control the climate: We Can’t Stop Climate Change, So We Need to Prepare for ItSadly, I was wrong. The article was a pure piece of garbage, essentially claiming that despite the work of green pushers to scare everyone into capitulation to the radical green agenda, people just won’t cooperate. The writers complain that, “Around the world, people are giving priority to higher living standards, economics, and access...

Doctors have long known that heat puts a strain on the heart, kidneys and other organs. Those risks are exacerbated for pregnant people, as the body’s processes for staying cool are altered. It’s a problem that climate change, caused by the burning of fuels like gasoline and coal, is worsening. Intensifying extreme heat events, high temperatures well into the night and shattering weather records means more exposure for pregnant people, particularly in developing countries. Here’s what to know about the science of pregnancy and extreme heat: Pregnancy changes the body in myriad ways, which can make it more difficult and...

On Tuesday, Leighton Woodhouse wrote for The New York Times that conservatives are “spinning” a “mythology” that is “historically delusional.” The delusional mythology Woodhouse is referring to? The belief that Americans are a “group of people with a shared history.”According to Woodhouse, “The founding fathers were an assortment of people from different histories and backgrounds who coexisted — often just barely.” These “different” histories, however, were all rooted in Christianity. But Woodhouse wants readers to believe that this type of variety in Christianity proves America was born out of a multicultural diversity experiment.Of course it wasn’t. The colonists shared a...

Hunter Biden was furious with former President Barack Obama for leading then-President Joe Biden offstage with a guiding hand at a June 2024 fundraiser, according to a new book from ABC News' Jonathan Karl. An excerpt from the book, obtained by Axios, details how the younger Biden believed Obama had disrespected and embarrassed the president. "I almost jumped up on the stage and said, 'Don't ever f--king do that to the president of the United States again — ever," Hunter told Karl in an interview. The incident was one of many that contributed to criticism that Biden was too old...

Furloughed federal workers in Maryland stood in a food bank line Tuesday as the government shutdown continues and families try to figure out how to put food on the table. The Capital Area Food Bank began free food distributions for federal workers and contractors this week in Hyattsville. With an hour to go before food was handed out, a long line of people waited for help.

CNN's Harry Enten explained that the government shutdown is HELPING President Trump's approval ratings. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks. Do you agree with TYT's take?

Unicorns are supposed to be rare and mythical. But at Saturday’s No Kings protests I saw the largest outbreak in America outside a Lisa Frank store. They were everywhere, but I was surprised to see almost a dozen of them down in New Braunfels, Texas. As at many of the No Kings protests across the country, attendees embraced the example set by the taunting frog outside Portland’s ICE facility and came in outfits that you could find threatening in only the most silly and specific of contexts: Cookie Monster was there.But you don’t pass up a chance to meet a...

By the time the Pilsen Food Pantry opened on a recent morning, Ulysses Moreno had been there for two hours — with a line of people behind him that snaked around the corner. “This is a lifeline for me,” said Mr. Moreno, 39. He had lost his construction job a few days earlier, and with three teenagers at home, he wanted to make sure he could stock up. “Our food budget doesn’t stretch as far as it used to.” A few miles away, on Chicago’s glitzy Magnificent Mile, luxury hotels are bustling. Jewelry stores and designer boutiques do brisk business....

Virginia Republicans scored a monumental victory in 2021. After 12 years of sustained statewide losses, the party emerged from the wilderness and swept the three statewide races that year, led by outsider Glenn Youngkin, who became the commonwealth’s first Republican governor since Bob McDonnell left office in 2014.Virginia’s gubernatorial elections are unique in American politics in that no other state makes its governor a lame duck the moment he is sworn in, as term limits prohibit consecutive terms. No Virginia governor has ever run for reelection as an incumbent, although two governors have succeeded in winning nonconsecutive terms.The commonwealth’s proximity...

Palestinian Embassy in Egypt said it would open Monday, but Israeli PM refutes claimThe Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will reopen Monday for people returning to Gaza, the Palestinian Embassy in Egypt said Saturday, but the territory's sole gateway to the outside world will remain closed to people trying to leave. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office issued a statement within minutes, saying that the Rafah crossing wouldn't reopen "until further notice," adding that it would depend on how Hamas fulfils its role in returning all the bodies of the dead hostages. Israel's Foreign Affairs Ministry on...

President Trump has repurposed money to fund military salaries during the government shutdown. He has pledged to find ways to make sure many in law enforcement get paid. He has used the fiscal impasse to halt funding to Democratic jurisdictions, and is trying to lay off thousands of federal workers.Government shutdowns are usually resolved only after the pain they inflict on everyday Americans forces elected officials in Washington to come to an agreement. But as the shutdown nears a fourth week, Mr. Trump’s actions have instead reduced the pressure for an immediate resolution and pushed his political opponents to further...