Free Republic

On Monday, the European Union (EU) formally announced that it would be launching an investigation into X, the platform formally known as Twitter, over alleged violations of laws meant to crack down on free speech. According to ABC News, the investigation will be the first one of its kind under new regulations passed by the 27-nation European bloc. In a post on X, European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement that “Today we open formal infringement proceedings against @X” under the Digital Services Act. Back in October, the EU asked X to hand over information regarding any possible efforts...

Americans are blessed to have constitutional rights, especially the First Amendment right of free speech. As Benjamin Franklin once wrote, whoever “would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.” Free speech is central to liberty, and this belief underpins the necessity of the First Amendment. This amendment holds the powerful to account and protects the right of Americans to express themselves freely.

@RealJohnDennis I was threatened tonight to be put “in the hospital a long time” by a prominent San Francisco real estate developer because I’m a Republican. It’s in a text exchange. Have screenshots. Called me a “MAGA bitch.” Should I name him? As I just said in a private thread, I’m sick of being threatened in this town because I’m a Republican. I’m furious at the moment. Want to sleep on it. I pushed back against his insults but did not threaten violence against this person. He brought that up all on his own.

Memphis — An After School Satan Club plans to begin offering activities to children at a Tennessee elementary school following Christmas break, officials said, and the move immediately proved controversial. The Satanic Temple plans to host the club at Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova, news outlets reported. It will begin meeting on Jan. 10 in the school's library and run through the spring semester, according to an announcement Tuesday posted on social media.

A New York appeals court has again upheld a gag order that bars Donald Trump from commenting about court personnel in his civil fraud trial, ruling Thursday that the former president’s lawyers used the wrong legal mechanism to fight the restriction. A four-judge panel in the state’s mid-level appellate court ruled Thursday that Trump’s lawyers erred by suing trial Judge Arthur Engoron, who imposed the gag order in October after Trump disparaged his law clerk. Instead, the appellate judges wrote, Trump’s lawyers should’ve followed the normal appeals process by asking Engoron to reverse the gag order and then, if denied,...

On Thursday, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that a high school teacher who was fired for refusing to use pronouns that didn’t match a student’s biological sex could have his lawsuit against the local school board reinstated. Peter Vlaming taught French in the West Point School District for seven years. A female student claiming to be male had a new preferred name. Vlaming used the new preferred name but simply avoided using the student’s preferred pronouns. The school demanded he use the student’s preferred pronouns, even when the student was not present. [snip] The Virginia Supreme Court agreed that the...

Claudine Gay and Harvard’s board wants everyone to know that they are committed to free speech. Their allies have circled the wagons around Gay’s claim that calls for violence against Jews and intimidation tactics fell under the penumbra of the First Amendment, while Gay and Harvard shut down an event shortly afterward that featured a conservative who had criticized Gay. Gay’s Harvard believed in free speech so much, in fact, that they responded to a New York Post inquiry about Gay’s alleged plagiarism by siccing their “defamation counsel” on the newspaper. The NYP revealed this episode last night, in which...

Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report" talks to Bret Weinstein about the decline of enlightenment liberalism; whether tribalism is Western civilization’s future; why Western civilization has been reversing course on racial equality; the missteps of the New Atheists and the challenge of reconciling past wisdom with modern problems; the societal consequences of rapid progressivism; the arbitrary nature and pointlessness of a lot of our education; the unintended impacts of discarding established norms; the human tendency to focus on immediate problems while avoiding thoughtful analysis to avoid unintended chaos; the need for a balanced approach that respects both conservative and progressive...

Former President Donald Trump has several viable avenues to have the Supreme Court throw out federal charges he’s facing for his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election, several lawyers and Constitution experts told The Epoch Times.His best case is that the charges encroach on his First Amendment rights, but he might also successfully assert presidential immunity or argue the law was impermissibly stretched by prosecutors, the experts said.President Trump was charged by Special Counsel Jack Smith on Aug. 1 with obstructing electoral vote counting by Congress on Jan. 6 and conspiring to do so in order to...

At a hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) grilled the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania about students at their schools publicly calling for Jews to be killed. "Is this appropriate behavior?" she asked. Penn President Liz Magill said "it depends on the context. First of all, there is the issue of freedom of speech. Under the US Constitution people are free to express their opinions. Second, there is the issue of freedom of religion. The Palestinian Authority tells its own people that killing Jews is for Allah. The repetition of...

A new report just released by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government has offered shocking new insights into the full extent of the FBI’s efforts to use government power and resources to target, intimidate, and harass Catholics, pro-life activists, and other members of the religious community. The December 4 report found, among other disturbing revelations, that the FBI “abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists” when agency operatives in Richmond, Virginia, circulated a memo designating so-called “radical-traditionalist Catholic[s]” as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” “The Committee and Select Subcommittee...

DC Circuit largely vacates Chutkan's restraining order

True Leadership Stops It.. People talk about the Weimar Republic that gave rise to Adolph Hitler but very few understand what the Weimar was all about. ... from deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.. The Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s was a world leader in most fields of art, science and intellect. ... Berlin had three opera houses, and Germany as a whole no less than eighty. Every middle-sized city had its own orchestra ... And in science, of course, the Germans were preeminent…. The Germany of 1920 had a significantly higher per capita educational level than...

Special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday made a court filing against former President Donald Trump outlining his intention to prove a series of allegations against him. The filing presents a narrative of Trump supposedly inciting violence, among other accusations, and delves into Trump’s conduct after the 2020 presidential election. Smith details some of the evidence he will be introducing to prosecute the former president, and if this filing is any indication, the case for proving he encouraged violence appears to be pretty thin.The document delves into various aspects of the former president’s conduct and highlights specific actions that Smith’s team...

THE CHRONICLEN OF HIGHER EDUCATION (Can only be linked to, per FR rules.)

The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and the state of Texas joined on Tuesday in a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department, alleging that the government agency funded censorship technology designed to bankrupt domestic media outlets with disfavored political opinions. The State Department is tasked with foreign relations and has no authority over domestic affairs, yet it took a government office designed for countering foreign terrorist propaganda, the Global Engagement Center (GEC), and unleashed it against Americans engaged in what it claimed was “disinformation,” according to the lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas on Tuesday night...

years-long abandonment of free speech has allowed radicalism and anti-semitism to fester on campus. Where free speech dies, institutional stupidity takes its place. ... Jewish students were mobbed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Harvard and protesters were heard chanting for an “Intifada revolution” on UPenn’s campus this weekend — leading the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to investigate both schools for Title VI discrimination violations. ... Students retreat into echo chambers where their beliefs go unchecked, and they are readily swept down radical rabbit holes in which Zoomer TikTokers are inexplicably celebrating the philosophy of Osama bin Laden. In...

Bureaucracy raises the cost of higher education while clamping down on speech.. Ignited by Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel, divisive domestic conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have driven a new wave of campus censorship. But the problem of stifled speech on campus for both students and faculty has been around long before Oct. 7. ... 1 in 10 college students say they have been threatened with disciplinary action – or worse, actually disciplined – for their speech. ... About one in six professors report that they have either been threatened with punishment or actually investigated for their academic freedom or...

Lieutenant Ted Macie, an active-duty officer in the Navy Medical Service Corps and whistleblower, has been barred from accessing his work computer by the Department of Defense (DOD).This action comes after The Gateway Pundit wrote about Lt. Macie’s exposé on the significant increase in heart-related issues among military pilots post-COVID-19 vaccination.Lt. Macie, who also holds roles as a Navy Health Administrator and Medical Recruiter, brought attention to these concerns through a video, echoing the initial alarms raised by his wife, Mara Macie, a candidate for Florida’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House against RINO John Rutherford.Mara Macie has been...

Silk is pissed off about being targeted by Jack Smith and the Biden Regime for being a Loyal Trump Supporter. Warning: Don’t listen if you don’t want to hear cussing!Reviewers: You SHOULD be pissed off! We ALL should be with whats happening with the corruption in this country!!He’s starting to be really evil and needs to be in prison. That is what Trump was saying. They will come after us