Free Republic

The decision by Florida governor Ron DeSantis in 2023 to oust the radicals controlling the state’s tiny liberal-arts college, New College of Florida, has elicited frenzied reactions from the global Left. The effort by a democratically elected government to bring political balance, educational excellence, and fiscal sanity to a failed public institution of 800 students is seen as nothing less than a collegiate March on Rome. The reaction has rather proven the point: The leftist control of higher education has become so totalitarian that even the slightest hint of deviance is viewed as a mortal threat to the revolutionary project....

With the end of their convention, the Republican Party and Donald Trump have reached what in military theory is called the “culminating point.” “The culminating point of victory,” according to the Modern War Institute at West Point, “is the threshold when military advantages peak and then rapidly turn into disadvantages.” As an infantryman, I was taught that the culminating point is a paradox; it’s a moment of maximum vulnerability at a time when you believe you are at maximum strength. Let’s say your platoon has just taken a hill. Exhausted and jubilant, you’ve achieved your objective. Your troops have sent...

Donald Trump scored a significant court win Saturday as a state judge in Florida turned down attempts by the Pulitzer Prize Board to toss out a libel lawsuit Trump filed in 2022 relating to a series of reports in the New York Times and Washington Post on the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. In a 14-page ruling issued Saturday, Senior Judge Robert Pegg turned down arguments from the prominent journalism awards panel that their decision to bestow the national reporting prize on the staffs of the two newspapers in 2018 amounted to a statement of “pure opinion” rather than...

Russia’s Su-57 Felon Next-generation Fighter Has Its Wings Clipped: It hasn’t been a good summer for the Russian Air Force, and now the Ukrainians are adding insult to injury. One of Russia’s most vaunted warbirds – the Sukhoi Su-57 Felon – was destroyed by a Ukrainian drone strike in June. The resilient and intrepid Ukrainians have raised the stakes in the war against Russia by using drones in deep attack mode. The destruction of the single-seat twin-engine Su-57 Felon must have created another headache for air force leaders in Moscow because it is one of the jewels in the Russian...

J.D. Vance’s rise to the vice-presidential nomination is a watershed moment in American politics. For young conservatives like myself, the moment feels like a triumph, the culmination of curiosity and organization. For the country, the moment offers the first uncompromising choice for change in a generation. The moment calls for a reflection on how we arrived here and the choice before us. Will middle America forge a new consensus, achieved with echoes of the Jacksonian age? Alternatively, will the great city-states of the Democratic Party stymie the tide of discontent and preserve the neoliberal status quo?

Spencer is Associate Director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project at The Heritage Foundation. When conservatives do finally make it into an administration, they often don’t know what to do or how to seize the gears of power effectively. KEY TAKEAWAYS It’s past time to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right. The policy book Mandate for Leadership represents the work of more than 350 leading conservatives and outlines a vision of conservative success. The usual suspects in the permanent political class will be ready for the next conservative administration. Will we be ready for...

Joe Biden has been in Washington, D.C., for 52 years. Multiple generations have been born who have never known a time when Biden wasn't a figure in national politics. Multiple generations of Democrats have risen through the Senate in the time since he first went to Washington, D.C. All of that is to say that Joe Biden has not been a spring chicken since before the end of the Cold War. This is a man who, by any rational assessment of his past actions, campaigns, statements, and behaviors should never have been a contender for the presidency. The Democratic Party,...

On the Sunday evening after the attempted assassination of Trump, President Biden addressed the nation to say "we need to lower the temperature in our politics and to remember that while we may disagree, we are not enemies, we are neighbors, we are friends, coworkers, citizens, and most importantly we are fellow Americans. We need to cool down our political rhetoric." Ironically, only four days before the assassination attempt it was President Biden who told his supporters "it's time to put Trump in the bullseye." Biden admitted that "using the word bullseye was probably unwise." He said nothing about the...

How fares the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) project? The NGAD is designed to produce a new generation of fighter aircraft, replacing much of the Air Force’s legacy fleet and bringing a suite of new capabilities to the long-range strike mission. The NGAD was also supposed to revolutionize the defense industrial base (DIB) and change the way that the United States builds and buys fighter planes. But there are evidently some troubles. The Air Force seems to be backpedaling on its commitment to the NGAD, and the entire project appears to have left the DIB cold.

Upset that the Supreme Court's recent decision that a president has immunity for his official actions, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) has proposed legislation that "would declare that the actions taken by Trump on January 6, 2021 were unofficial and illegal. This will ensure that justice is done and eliminate the need for long and complicated court proceedings." Schumer explained that "a power that legislatures have invoked in the past was to specifically identify a person known to be a criminal as an outlaw. This meant that it would be legal for anyone to slay this outlaw. Every decent...

The Republican concern with China’s threat to America is understandable, arguably even laudable, as many of China’s economic, security, and human rights policies do, in fact, challenge America. When that laudable concern turns into a single-minded obsession, however, then it does more than a disservice to America. It becomes exactly that which it was supposed to deter: a threat to America’s security. Both former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, along with the Heritage Foundation and scores of conservative analysts, suffer from this obsession. If China were the only big country that matters in the...

Several top Democrats privately tell us the rising pressure of party congressional leaders and close friends will persuade President Biden to decide to drop out of the presidential race, as soon as this weekend. Why it matters: The 81-year-old president, now self-isolating with COVID, remains publicly dug in. But privately he's resigned to mounting pressure, bad polls, and untenable scrutiny making it impossible to continue his campaign, the Democrats tell us. Behind the scenes: The private message, distilled to its bluntest form: The top leaders of his party, his friends and key donors believe he can't win, can't change public...

CNN’s John King admitted that former President Donald Trump is on course for an unprecedented landslide victory this November. The CNN analyst says Trump could win as many as 330 electoral votes (only 270 are needed to secure victory). King explained: “If Donald Trump won, what we have here, dark red states, solid Republican.” “Light red states, leaning Republican.” “If he won just those right there, he would already have the path to 270,” King added. “He would have 272 electoral votes,” he explained. Watch VIDEO AT LINK.............. He continued: “Look what is different. We have Wisconsin as a toss-up....

New video emerges from Butler County, after assassination attempt. Police and SS couldn't get through the gate. Had to ram it with vehicle..............

The strength of the American Revolution was its respect for the past and its privileging of legal precedent and the rights of Englishman over any ideologies. The same rights they claimed were guaranteed in the royal charters and documents of incorporation that each colony created at their inception. Before some of the charters were signed in America and after others, the English Bill of Rights of 1689 restated the common law rights of Englishmen. Yet, that document isn’t the origin of the rights fought for by British Americans. The Petition of Right of 1628 reaffirmed the controls upon the royal...

Well, is it or isn’t it? Is this a light tank or a reconnaissance/observational vehicle? The M10 Booker has raised some eyebrows because it is not clear what role it will play in the future Army force. It was formerly known as the vague-sounding “Mobile Protected Firepower” platform, prior to its unveiling in 2023. At that point Army acquisition honchos regarded it as a “combat vehicle.” Moreover, a U.S. Army general tried to put a finer point on the Booker during its public christening round table event, as reported by the Military Times last year. “[I]n the [U.S.] Army, the...

Jonathan Elkhoury- جوناثان الخوري @Jonathan_Elk: The idea that only white people are colonizers is crazy. Arabs are one of the biggest colonizers in the world. Arab against antisemitism ✡️ @arab_leb2 Arabs are not victims of colonialism; they are part of it and have played a great role in it. Jul 8, 2024

At this moment, nearly every major Department of Defense program seems to be struggling. Technological bottlenecks, industrial capacity problems, workforce issues, and general bureaucratic confusion have produced delivery delays and cost overruns, even as the entire defense industrial base faces the challenge of competing with Russia and China. The major exception to these problems appears, surprisingly enough, to be the B-21 Raider. The purpose of the B-21 program was to produce a new generation of strategic bombers to replace the B-1B Lancer and the B-2 Spirit. The subsonic B-21 is designed to use stealth to penetrate enemy air defenses and...

Welcome to Restoration. The great story of Western civilization, our core creeds, and the Judeo-Christian moral framework on which our societies were built are all under siege. At least three ideologies are pedaled as alternatives: 1. Communism: This resurgent communism is cultural. It is firmly embedded in our core institutions. It is international in outlook, and breath-taking in its subversive ambition. And it again has traction among the young. 2. Technocracy: The Technocratic Managerial Regime, as analyzed by N.S. Lyons, is ascendent in most every nation it seeks to dominate. 3. Islamism: A radical and aggressively metastasizing version of Islam...

It remains to be seen whether or not President Biden remains the Democrats’ nominee for president, amid growing calls to replace him atop the ticket. But at this moment, the race is frozen in place. Indeed, Donald Trump’s lead in national polling — now sitting at 3 points (47 percent to 44 percent) per the RealClearPolitics polling average — has remained remarkably consistent for months. This is true even after Biden’s disastrous debate performance and the discontent it engendered among Democrats. Since last November, the race has been stubbornly rangebound, with Trump’s lead over Biden consistently within a 1 to...