Free Republic

We want to know who feels freer to speak in this moment, who feels they're being forced into silence, and the extent to which the right to free speech, as protected by the U.S. Constitution, might be changing for different people, for better or worse. Fill out the form below and an NPR journalist may reach out for an upcoming story.

Australian politician Chris Minns inadvertently said the quiet part out loud when he admitted that the existence of true “free speech” is incompatible with a multicultural society.The Premier of New South Wales tacitly admitted that in order to uphold the myth that ‘diversity is our greatest strength’, the freedom to say it isn’t must be censored.“I recognize and I fully said from the beginning, we don’t have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the United States, and the reason for that is that we want to hold together a multicultural community and have people live in...

Joe Biden’s final act of shamelessness was pardoning his entire crime family in the final hours of his presidency. There’s a mountain of corruption that’s yet to be fully revealed. On the weaponization of government front, you’d think the sustained lawfare launched against President Donald Trump from the Department of Justice was evidence enough. Pro-life activists and the January 6 defendants also being ensnared by the Biden DOJ’s extralegal crusade on political dissidents. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. The Media Research Center found not one, not ten, but 57 anti-free speech and censorship initiatives aimed at chipping away...

Seems like a good question, since large parts of America have yet to forgive Elon Musk for saving free speech here. Whatever Musk's other peccadilloes may be, he spent $44 billion of his own money to buy Twitter outright and immediately exposed how government pressured the platform to shut down dissent and debate during the Biden years. Musk uncovered the whole corrupt Big Brother-Big Tech Censorship Industrial Complex run out of the Departments of State and Health and Human Services and the abuse of "misinformation" to mean "anything that contradicts our positions." ... Musk hasn't abandoned the cause of free...

Major AI service providers continue to deploy content moderation algorithms designed to suppress and manipulate viewpoints, actively enforcing censorship under the guise of moderation. From Foreign PsyOps to Domestic Thought Control The censorship and content manipulation we see today did not emerge organically—it was the result of government-directed psychological operations (PsyOps) repurposed for domestic control. What was once used in foreign influence campaigns to destabilize adversarial regimes or control narratives abroad was turned inward—against the American people. The Twitter Files, exposed by investigative journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, provided irrefutable evidence that U.S. government agencies used taxpayer dollars to...

MIAMI (AP) — A company owned by President Donald Trump sued Capital One on Friday, claiming the bank unjustifiably terminated over 300 of the Trump Organization’s accounts without cause in 2021, shortly after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The suit was filed by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust and Eric Trump in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. The Trump Organization claims the decision by Capital One to close the accounts was an attack on free speech and free enterprise. The suit also claims the decision was a response to Trump’s political views. “Capital One has not and does...

Rose Docherty was arrested over her sign, which read: "Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want." A 74-year-old Scottish woman was arrested for standing near a hospital that performs abortions with a sign that read: "Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want." The woman's protest was in violation of an "exclusion zone" law, which bans anti-abortion protests or prayer vigils within a 200-meter radius of a facility that provides abortions. "I was approaching no one on that day. I wasn't calling out. I was standing quietly by the roadside," Rose Docherty, told...

The defense of free speech by Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich, Germany, has led to open panic on the left in fighting to maintain European censorship and speech criminalization. The response of the American press and pundits was crushingly familiar. From CBS News to members of Congress, Vance (and anyone who supports his speech) was accused of using Nazi tactics. It is the demonization of dissent. In one of the most bizarre examples, CBS anchor Margaret Brennan confronted Secretary of State Marco Rubio over Vance’s support for free speech given the fact that he was “standing in a country...

Many have touted today's ruling in the High Court against Ofcom as a "win" for free speech. The initial optics are, of course, great and the usual suspects are taking a victory lap... Tom Harwood's former employer Guido Fawkes proclaimed: GB News Victorious Against Two-Tier Ofcom Fantastic! The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. Unfortunately, after careful review of the actual decision in favor of GB News, I fear this will serve as a classic example of winning the battle but losing the war. Why be such a debbie-downer? Well... UPDATE: An Ofcom spokesperson says: "We...

President Trump welcomed British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to the White House on Thursday.President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Prime Minister Keir Starmer met in the Oval Office to discuss a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine and the future of NATO.At one point JD Vance called out Starmer to his face for infringements on free speech.“I said what I said,” JD Vance said during the Oval Office meeting.“We know that there have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British, of course what the British do in their...

Freedom of speech is a virus! And censorship is a vaccine!" Ursula von der Leyen called for “vaccinating” society against uncomfortable information .

...that was displayed in the police gym and then sent an unauthorized individual into the police facility to check.

France just made it clear—if you don’t fall in line, you’re finished. The government is shutting down C8, a massively popular right-wing TV channel, because it wasn’t “diverse enough.” Translation? It dared to challenge the state-approved narrative. Millions of viewers tuned in, but that doesn’t matter. The decision is final—C8 will be gone by next Friday. France’s top court backed the move, claiming the network failed to meet its obligations and lacked profitability. Since when did profitability determine a channel’s right to exist? This isn’t about contracts. It’s about silencing dissent. The media regulator, Arcom, hit C8 with fines and...

Freedom of expression is guaranteed in Article 5 of the Basic Law, the German constitution, which also makes clear that this freedom has limits in order to, for example, to protect young people, privacy or personal honor. The protection of personal honor plays a particularly important role in the German legal system, said lawyer Ralf Poscher, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg. “This originates from the time in history when notions of honor were even more important. They were then embraced by the middle classes too, and were incorporated into...

JD Vance will reiterate his concerns about the erosion of free speech in Britain to Sir Keir Starmer when the pair meet in Washington DC next week, he said. The vice-president used his speech at the Munich Security Conference to warn the threat to free speech and mass migration pose a greater threat to Europe than Russia. Singling out the UK, he said free speech was “in retreat” and Brexit voters had been betrayed by elites opening “the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants”. Asked if he planned to double down on his comments when the British Prime Minister travels...

A British judge has sentenced a man to 28 weeks in prison for sending “hateful” emails intended to “disparage, insult, and offend” London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, government minister Jess Phillips, and Matt Twist, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Jack Bennett, 38, was convicted of four counts of sending malicious communications and one of using a public communication network to send offensive emails. .. Bennett had been motivated to send his emails by the “perceived” incompetence of the authorities in tackling Muslim rape gangs, which preyed on primarily white, working-class girls in Britain virtually unchecked for decades.

Matt Taibbi gives his opening statement at today's House Judiciary Committee hearing on the "censorship-industrial complex." Transcript linked below video.

A Colorado bill could put doctors, government employees or morticians in jail if they accurately record the sex of deceased people who identified as transgender. The Colorado House is scheduled to hold a hearing on Feb. 25 examining legislation that would make it a crime not to abide by the chosen “gender identity” of deceased individuals on their death certificates. Medical experts expressed alarm at the attempt to erase biological reality from crucial state-issued documents. “It’s dangerous and absolutely nuts to threaten doctors with a misdemeanor if they won’t forge a death certificate. But it’s what I’d expect in Colorado,”...

It's not the most burning topic of the hour, but, as my days dwindle down to a precious few, I confess I have always marvelled at how one can make a multi-decade career on American telly despite having no obvious talent or skill - or ratings. Take CBS News, which is still out there apparently: Dan Rather, the parody "hard news" anchor, was unable to read prompter in anything approximating the cadences of human vocal delivery. Yet it was no obstacle to spending seventy-three low-rated years hosting the CBS Evening News. Why? I've never had a convincing explanation other than...

60 Minutes recently interviewed some politicians in Germany who like to prosecute people for insulting politicians. Their names are Josephine Ballon, Matthäus Fink, Svenja Meininghaus, and Frank-Michael Laue.Since they like to prosecute people who insult politicians, it is my moral obligation to insult them.I should point out that I have never actually been in Germany.My grandmother (on my mother’s side) did have three sisters who were murdered by the Nazis.As it says on my Twitter profile, I believe that every child should frequently watch Looney Tunes, the Three Stooges, Jonny Quest, and You Can’t Do That On Television. I grew...