Free Republic

Advertisements are always mirrors of society, and sometimes what they reflect is ugly and startling. This week, American Eagle, which brought us baby tees and low-rise denim in the aughts, debuted an advertisement campaign starring actor Sydney Sweeney. Sweeney, 27, is featured doing all sorts of Americana things in her American Eagle denim — like leaning over the hood of a white Mustang or lying on the floor holding a long-haired German shepherd puppy. At the end of each video, an off-screen voice speaks over blocky letters declaring that Sweeney — blonde, blue-eyed and white — “has great jeans.” The...

The Trump Administration has frozen billions in federal grants to Harvard University, threatened its tax-exempt status, and sought to dictate its curriculum and hiring. Now the government seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back. And for what purpose? That’s how we read the Department of Homeland Security’s move Thursday to bar foreign students from attending the world-renowned institution. That’s 6,800 students, or a quarter of Harvard’s student body, whose futures are suddenly in disarray. It’s also a short-sighted attack on one of America’s great competitive strengths: Its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest....

(NEXSTAR) – The “Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act” was introduced in the House earlier this month, as progressives try for a second time to shorten the standard workweek from 40 hours to 32. The bill, introduced by Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), proposes amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to shorten the standard workweek by eight hours for non-exempt employees. (A non-exempt employee is someone who is currently entitled to overtime when they work more than 40 hours in a week.) It would effectively mean either shorter workweeks or more overtime pay for hourly workers. While the law, if passed, wouldn’t immediately...

Washington. A deadly fire at an aerospace research institute in Tver, northwest of Moscow. Another blaze at a munitions factory in Perm, more than 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) to the east. And fires in two separate oil depots in Bryansk, near Belarus. Coincidences, or a sign that Ukrainians or their supporters are mounting a campaign of sabotage inside Russia to punish Moscow for invading their country? Since the blaze at the Central Research Institute of the Aerospace Defense Forces in Tver on April 21, which killed at least 17 people, social media has leapt on every report of a...

Further military threats have been made against the Socialist Party (PSOE) government in Spain. Following Spanish General Mena’s threat to deploy the military to oppose the passing of a statute granting greater autonomy to Catalonia, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has attempted to downplay the incident as the actions of a maverick. But the British Financial Times reported that Captain González of the notorious Legionnaires has now published a letter attacking Zapatero and describing widespread hostility in the military to the Catalan Statute which he says threatens the unity of the Spanish “fatherland.” González threatened to march his troops...