Free Republic

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum’s patience ran out during a Wednesday segment when American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten interrupted her — and called her “sweetheart” — before she was forced to backpedal and eventually apologize. MacCallum brought Weingarten in as a guest on “The Story,” where she asked about issues raised by a current case before the United States Supreme Court — Mahmoud v. Taylor — that involves a group of parents demanding an “opt out” for certain LGBTQ-themed lessons in the Montgomery County School District in Maryland. While Weingarten said that she could not comment directly on...

When I was in fifth grade at Central Elementary School, all the girls were obsessing over Judy Blume's "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." The school library had two copies, and there was a waiting list to borrow the book. But there was another problem: Mrs. Horvath, the school librarian. She would not allow children to check out the book without explicit parental permission. And for good reason. It includes mature themes, like masturbation, menstruation, and young girls obsessing over their breast size. When my name came up on the list, Mrs. Horvath marched 10-year-old me down to the...

The other day, a court ruled the Trump administration can, in fact, deport Columbia's pro-Hamas agitator Mahmoud Khalil. By engaging in activities that violated the terms of his green card, Khalil signed his own deportation orders. The Left rallied around the antisemitic protester, calling his detainment an affront to free speech and fascism. It was neither of those things.As always, the Left picks the absolute worst people to champion as sympathetic victims of the Trump administration's America-first immigration policies.And they've found another one. This time it's a lab worker at Harvard who was arrested by ICE.Dartmouth professor Paul Novosad posted...

Netanel Crispe @NetanelCrispe Jewish students aren’t allowed to walk through Yale’s campus anymore! Once again, my Jewish friends and I were blocked from walking through our own campus. We pay tuition to access these spaces, but Yale has allowed an antisemitic mob to take over and shut us out. 1:03 VIDEO: https://x.com/i/status/1914922140987494785 Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 @Bubblebathgirl · 15h This is antisemitism. Yale is allowing it. Defund.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California is spending $500 million to put an additional 1,000 electric school buses on the road as federal cuts and freezes paused efforts in other states to replace aging diesel-fueled fleets that are more polluting. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced Wednesday that 1,000 zero-emission school buses and related charging infrastructure will be provided to over 130 rural, low-income and disadvantaged school districts. The state grants add about 500 more charging stations for school buses to more than 200 stations already in operation in districts. The expansion contrasts efforts in other states that were hampered by the...

Amid the ongoing showdown between the Trump administration and the Ivy League, one university president has positioned himself as a leader of the academic resistance: Princeton’s Christopher L. Eisgruber. Earlier this month, the Trump administration suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants to Princeton as part of its investigation into racial discrimination and anti-Semitism at the New Jersey campus. Eisgruber, though, was defiant, telling the New York Times that he’s “not considering any concessions” and calling for other university presidents to follow his lead. This isn’t Eisgruber’s first bid for the spotlight. After the death of George Floyd...

President Trump signed an executive order this afternoon that targets the broken college accreditation system. Basically, colleges and universities become accredited through third-party agencies, which play a big role in determining whether these higher education institutions can receive federal funds. And, President Trump [requires] these college accrediting agencies to change their criteria to prioritize merit over woke ideologies. ... Colleges and universities are accredited to ensure they meet basic standards by third-party entities, not the federal government, though the Department of Education decides which accrediting agencies to recognize. The accreditation process has broad implications since the government uses it to...

President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday, revoking an anti-white racist Obama-Biden era school discipline guidance that was issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Education (DOE) in January 2014. The President signed a total of seven new education executive orders relating to college universities, AI in education, and DEI practices in schools. “The Federal Government will no longer tolerate known risks to children’s safety and well-being in the classroom that result from the application of school discipline based on discriminatory and unlawful ‘equity’ ideology,” the order titled “Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies” reads. In...

Illinois bureaucrats are here to protect your kids... from you. People can’t get out of Illinois fast enough. Only two other states lost more residents between 2023–24, and the state has actually lost population for 10 years in a row. The tax burden, weather, heavy regulation, and crime levels all contribute to its residents seeking an exit. So, taking this mass exodus into account, you’d think the state would try to appeal to the families that remain. Well, think again. The Cubs (and maybe even the White Sox) are more likely to win another World Series before Illinois considers the...

A 13-year-old Missouri boy was suspended from school after he posted a picture of Dr. Pepper cans in the shape of a rifle on Snapchat. The teenager, only identified as W.G., shared the image of his 'can art' to his personal account on September 14, and two days later his belongings were searched and he was suspended from Liberty Middle School for three days after they deemed it to be 'threatening' and an act of 'cyberbullying.' The photo did not contain any 'threatening language or anything that would suggest harm to anyone or anything,' it continued. Despite this, school officials...

A Congressional delegation traveled to Louisiana on Tuesday to demand the release of Rümeysa Öztürk, a PhD student at Tufts University, and Mahmoud Khalil, a 2024 Columbia University graduate, and to examine conditions at their separate detention facilities. It’s the first time a delegation has visited with either detainee. The visit was first reported by CNN. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) shared on X that he was heading to Louisiana to demand the release of Ozturk, one of his constituents. Markey was joined by fellow Democrats, Reps. Troy Carter (La.), Bennie Thompson (Miss.), Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern (Mass.). Ozturk’s arrest...

An Oakland woman was sentenced to four years in federal prison for leading a drug trafficking service that supplied methamphetamine and other drugs to “students and young professionals,” officials for the U.S. attorney’s office said. Natalie Marie Gonzalez, 31, pleaded guilty in September to one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. She was indicted in October 2023 along with three co-defendants for her role in managing an “on-demand drug trafficking delivery service” around the Bay Area known as “The Shop,” officials said. According to prosecutors, the delivery service had a menu of drugs for sale and required a $300 minimum...

Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed surprise Tuesday that schools in a state founded on religious liberty are now banning parents with religious objections from opting their young children out of LGBTQ storybook lessons. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, a majority of the Supreme Court appeared ready to side with parents who want to opt their children out of Montgomery County Board of Education’s mandated storybook readings involving pronouns, transgender children and pride parades. “I guess I am a bit mystified, as a lifelong resident of the county, how it came to this,” Kavanaugh said during oral arguments. “Can you just tell us...

Mesquite ISD’s $600 Million Bond Would Cost $1.1 Billion With Interest School district property taxpayers are already on the hook for $979 million in bond debt principal and interest. Yet the district’s bond marketing claims the billion-dollar debt will have minimal impact on Mesquite ISD taxpayers, who are already on the hook for $979 million in outstanding bond debt principal and interest. All this while only 42% of the district’s 38,000 students meet or exceed grade levels across all subjects

There is controversy at George Mason University after Nicholas Decker, an economics PhD student published an essay asking “When Must We Kill Them?” in reference to Trump and his supporters. The essay captures the growing violent ideation on the left, fueled by rage rhetoric from politicians and commentators. The danger is that, for some on the extremes of our society, the question is not “when must we kill them?” but “when can we kill them?” On his Substack “Homo Economicus,” Decker warns that “evil has come to America” and that Trump is “engaged in barbarism” and seeking “to destroy the...

The Illinois High School Association (IHSA) says it will continue to ignore a federal directive barring the participation of biological male athletes in high school girls’ sports. Previously, the State of Maine announced it would not comply with the directive, issued as an Executive Order by President Donald J. Trump in February, and now faces a federal lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). ISHA’s president, Dan Tully, claims that state law preempts the federal restriction and requires Illinois high schools to accommodate so-called transgender athletes, who are biological males, by allowing their participation in girls’ sporting events....

The Department of Education is poised to resume collections on defaulted federal student loans in May for the first time since 2020. While the first Trump administration paused referring federal student loans to collections in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the extended lapse has prompted Trump administration officials to worry that the federal student loan portfolio is "headed toward a fiscal cliff if we don't start repayment in collections," according to a senior department official. "The result has been that the federal government student loan portfolio has continued to grow, and we've got a record number...

Harvard University initiated legal action on Monday against the Trump administration, accusing it of leveraging federal funding to impose sweeping and unconstitutional demands on the institution, reports The Harvard Crimson. The lawsuit, filed in a US district court, alleges that the federal government’s decision to freeze billions in research funding constitutes an unlawful attempt to control the university’s internal operations. The legal complaint challenges a recent $2.2 billion funding freeze, as well as an anticipated additional $1 billion in cuts reportedly planned by the administration. Harvard contends that the freeze is part of a broader campaign to coerce compliance with...

Elite universities push for federal funding while ignoring legal and ethical obligations, fueling public distrust as they prioritize ideology over academic rigor and free speech. Harvard has refused to accept the orders of a Trump administration commission concerning its chronic problems with anti-Semitism, campus violence, and racial tribalism, bias, and segregation. Yet, unlike some conservative campuses that distrust an overbearing Washington, Harvard and most elite schools like it want it both ways. They do as they please on their own turf and yet still demand that the taxpayers send them multibillion-dollar checks in addition to their multibillion-dollar private incomes. Aside...

Hundreds of students and recent graduates have seen their visas revoked by immigration officials since United States President Donald Trump took office for a second time on January 20, 2025, with several also arrested. Many of the targets of the visa revocations and arrests are students who participated in pro-Palestine protests which erupted on campuses across the country in 2024 amid Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. Others are individuals with more indirect links to Palestine – or those who have shown support for Gaza on social media. The Trump administration alleges that these students spread anti-Semitism and pro-Hamas sentiment on...