Free Republic

We are not yet three weeks into 2021, President-elect Joe Biden has yet to be inaugurated and already powerful forces on the right have made clear what will be the next front in their so-called culture war. This time, they’ve chosen transgender youth as their target, seeking to capitalize on insidious stereotypes about trans people, preposterous pseudoscience and a divisive cadre of supposed women’s rights campaigners who believe the only way to achieve gender equality is to oppress other people. These efforts to attack trans young people are driven by the same fundamental goals as previous attempts to restrict all...

Prior to entry into politics, Donald Trump was a celebrity loved by the media and adored by millions of Americans. He was a successful real estate developer and the star of a reality TV show. His life was fabulous, full of success and praise from across the country. It all changed for Donald Trump on June 16, 2015, when he announced his presidential campaign after the famous escalator ride. His media coverage immediately changed from positive to unrelentingly negative. During his speech, Trump told the truth about Mexico sending criminals into the country. He was immediately labeled a “racist” and...

This past August, on the second night of the virtual RNC, it was inspiring to see the secretary of Homeland Security swear in five new American citizens and each new citizen then recognized by President Trump. The process of obtaining American citizenship was educational. Nevertheless, the Democrats under Joe Biden seek to enable everybody who crosses our borders to do so easily, without penalty, and to quickly be given an array of benefits.Serving Citizens Comes FirstIt’s admirable when legal immigrants from other cultures influence the existing U.S. citizenry in positive ways. Concurrently, the "nation of immigrants" or "xenophobia" arguments used...

The knives were out for me in January 2017 when I arrived in Washington as the White House correspondent for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. You see, I worked for what scolds liked to call Sheldon Adelson's paper -- and that was a no-no. Adelson died Monday night, and I never got a chance to say this. Had he given me marching orders? I heard that question a lot in 2017. In fact, I didn't meet or talk to Adelson until 2018, when I introduced myself at an event ahead of the Jerusalem Embassy opening. The "marching orders" question is one...

“New Year’s Resolution From God to You.” (If you read the Jan. 3 study, then you are a witness.)Vol. 42 was the first Bible Study to involve husband David. That happened after he told me about his commitment to the verse, He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30).Upon hearing his explanation, I decided the verse along with David’s reasoning would be my next Bible study topic. But he pushed back. Only when I told him that I would write the study as a “new year’s resolution from which others would benefit” did David reluctantly agree. If you read...

Famously, Google’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil.” Maybe “famously” isn’t the right word. "Hilariously” is more appropriate because Google is, in fact, an evil company. But it’s not just Google. Name the tech giant and they are pretty much working in ways that are detrimental, if not downright destructive, to the United States of America and the freedoms we hold dear. Google not only tracks every keystroke you make, but it also manipulates your worldview without you even knowing it. The biggest problem with Google is the monopoly control they have over internet searches. They control almost everything people see...

WASHINGTON — After last week's deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump, members of Congress are expressing something once unthinkable: that some of their own colleagues may be endangering their lives. Not in a rhetorical sense, but in a direct and immediate way. "It's the most poisonous I've ever seen," Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said in an interview. "There's the overall sense that maybe if some of them have guns — and likely the ones who are more into conspiracy theories and QAnon with the pedophilic satanic rings — are we safe from them?"

There’s no question the Social Security retirement trust fund will run out of money, and the current recession will make that happen faster than previously forecast. The key questions now are: When will the trust fund be exhausted? How (and when) will Congress respond? How can individuals protect their retirement security?The 2020 annual report from the trustees of Social Security was issued last April and estimated the retirement trust fund would be depleted and unable to help pay benefits in 2034.That report was based on data through the end of 2019 and didn’t anticipate the sudden and severe recession caused...

Whatever really happened on 1/6 in the militarized Valhalla of a superpower that spent untold trillions of dollars on security since the start of the millennium, the elaborate psy op/photo-op circus – complete with a strategically photogenic MAGA Viking actor – could never had happened if it was not allowed to happen. Debate will rage till Kingdom Come on whether the break in was organic – an initiative by a few hundred among at least 10,000 peaceful protestors surrounding the Capitol – or rather a playbook color revolution false flag instigated by an infiltrated, professional Fifth Column of agent provocateurs....

“Whataboutism is the last refuge for someone who can’t admit they’re wrong,” says journalist Tod Perry, who demands that we “stop equating Trump’s Capitol insurrection to Black Lives Matter protests.” The Atlantic’s David A. Graham likewise declares that conservatives’ “complaints about double standards are mostly whataboutism.” Jeremy W. Peters of The New York Times scolded the right for responses that were “full of whataboutism.” What’s going on here? The left has come to embrace whataboutism as an all-purpose shield against any attempt to put events in a social, moral and historical context. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “whataboutism” as “the...

Joe Biden continues to get the old Obama band back together while assembling his cabinet and White House staff. (Seriously… are there no new people in the Democratic Party?) His latest addition, however, should raise some eyebrows even in his own party. Anita Dunn is having her career resurrected by Uncle Joe, signing on to be one of his senior advisors in the Oval Office. (She’s actually been working on Biden’s campaign since 2019, though primarily in the background.) If that name sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because she served as Barack Obama’s communications director briefly at the beginning...

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." —Euripides Amazon abruptly de-platformed Parler last week, terminating its web services hosting account with a speed and lack of notice clearly designed to ruin the company. Amazon covered up this action by a fig leaf of allegations that Parler did not adequately control incitements to violence, or that someone might sometime use Parler to suggest that someone think about using violence, ignoring the extent to which Facebook, Twitter, and other social media freely allow all sorts of Progressive groups to glorify, incite, and condone violence. By doing this, Amazon has exposed...

So we are to imagine that those who objected to Biden's having stolen the election are responsible for the violence at the Capitol? And that, going forward, any public official who questions Biden's win should be removed from office, and that any corporate leader who objects should be fired? All this when the truth is that Trump in all likelihood won the election. It is the perfect example of Orwellian speech. In his classic essay "Politics and the English Language," Orwell spoke of the condition where "words and meaning have almost parted company." If that "almost" is a measure of...

Leftists and their fellow travelers on the right like to talk about the "Cult of Trump." The evidence they present for this theory is nonexistent, as usual. But they're right to the extent that we have had this president's back more than any conservative president or political leader before him. What's the story behind our fervent support of Donald J. Trump? Answer: Trump is nothing more than an avatar, an embodiment of a large segment of the American people who have been marginalized and abused. That is why he is so "loved" by so many. That’s also why he’s "hated"...

In an article that was picked up by the Mercury News, Ethan Baron of the Bay Area News Group wrote Tuesday that “A week after false claims of a stolen U.S. presidential election drove a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Twitter is allowing a far-right supporter of President Donald Trump to claim the election was stolen.” Baron’s intention was clear: he wants Twitter to ban me, as it banned Trump, for telling truths they want buried. His article shows how monstrous and totalitarian the left really is: leftists think they can publicly call for the censuring and banning of...

In preparation for Election Day, Manhattan businesses boarded up in case violence erupted if Donald Trump won reelection. They had seen or already experienced destruction during the summer, when George Floyd's and other Black people's death at the hands -- or knees -- of police officers set off both legitimate protests and outright violent riots and looting. Now that Washington, D.C., has become a militarized zone because of the violence that descended on the Capitol building itself -- with both houses of Congress present -- we know that violence is a bipartisan problem. It's a poison in our national bloodstream....

The civil-rights movement, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. , helped deliver America from the historic sins of slavery and Jim Crow by forcing the nation to confront the full humanity of its black citizens. King’s words and actions glorified America by transfiguring its racial wound and revealing its redemptive promise. Yet today many black leaders have lost sight of King altogether and are aiding and abetting the crucifixion of their own people. Rather than hope, they see despair; rather than the Easter Sunday of true liberation, they offer the bleak Good Friday of never-ending misery. The history...

ccupied with shoring up the United States’ battered international image…But he’s spending his final days in office throwing diplomatic banana peels in the path of his successors by formally, but oh so very spuriously, designating foreign actors he doesn’t like as terrorists. The more obviously outrageous of Pompeo’s moves is that against Cuba,” noted NBC News on Jan. 13. “Secretary of State Pompeo Leaves No Bridges Unburned—Returning Cuba to the state-sponsor-of-terrorism list does nothing except complicate Mr. Biden’s intention to return to the search for better relations initiated by President Barack Obama and throw a sop to Trump-backing Cuban exiles...

Abortion ends a human life, but Americans wouldn’t know that from reading recent news reports. Instead, many in the media claim, abortion drugs “terminate pregnancies” and “expel” the “contents” of a woman’s uterus. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted the Food and Drug Administration’s request to reinstate a federal requirement that says women must obtain an abortion drug from a health care provider in person rather than by mail. As media outlets from CNN to NPR raced to report the news, their pieces stood out because of their language – words carrying abortion euphemisms. The court decision centered on the...

The punitive banishment of Donald Trump from Facebook and Twitter has met with almost uniform approval from the president’s critics. So has the decision by Apple and Google to remove Parler, a Twitter alternative favored by Mr. Trump’s supporters, from their app stores. Many Democrats see these actions as a righteous and justified silencing, especially in light of Mr. Trump’s encouraging words for the mob that violently invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6. Even many of Mr. Trump’s supporters concede that Twitter and Facebook owe him no platform—that only the government has a legal obligation to respect the First Amendment....