Free Republic

When Englishman Thomas Pellow was 27, he led a slave-hunting expedition to the West African coast. His orders were to plunder the villages, kill the adults and capture the children. But Pellow was not a mercenary employed in the transatlantic slave trade, which sent millions of its victims across the ocean. He was a slave himself – taken prisoner as a child by the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail. And 300 years ago, he was far from alone. The sultan owned an estimated 25,000 European slaves, many seized in raiding expeditions on the south coast of England as well as countries...

Once, not too long ago, people with ideas aspired to enter politics by presenting their ideas, which were debated during rallies and speeches. Worthy candidates laid out a map to follow for election, and voters judged the best route. Within the past year, many high-profile Democrats have replaced maps with megaphones and words that would make World War II-era merchant marines proud, remaining confident that their volume equaled clarity, while anger equaled authenticity. Although rhetorical shifts such as these grab attention for a single moment, the speakers never learned the lesson that attention without persuasion turns into nothing but a...

United States District Judge Nancy E. Brasel sentenced Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, age 36, to 28 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release for his role in a $300 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally program to feed hungry kids during the COVID-19 pandemic. Farah helped orchestrate the largest known COVID-19 fraud scheme called Feeding Our Future in Minnesota. Farah and his co-defendants stole more than $47 million by claiming to serve 18 million meals to kids at more than 30 food distribution sites. Farah was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $47,920,514. He's...

NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is a silver-spoon socialist shamelessly living in a dirt cheap rent-stabilized apartment – and it’s time to move out, fed up neighbors and critics told The Post. Mamdani, 33, who rakes in $142,000 a year as a state assemblyman and whose wealthy family includes his filmmaker mom and professor dad, has been living in a $2,300-a-month, one-bedroom pad in Astoria — galling facts that reached critical mass Saturday. “It’s unfortunate that he supports policies that are great for the fortunate few [who] get these apartments,” said Jerry DeFazio, 33, a mechanical engineer who lived in...

Key Democrats say they are done with it. Polling shows Americans are tired of it. But can Democrats successfully move on from “woke” and redefine their identity moving into the 2026 elections? After the 2024 elections, leader after leader in the Democratic Party joined the chorus, blaming “woke” for the party’s travails. James Carville, who was a key Clinton strategist, said during an episode of his podcast, that the “woke era” “killed” Democrats in the 2024 elections, adding that, while he thinks the party is “beyond it” at some level, “the image stuck in people’s minds that the Democrats wanted...

Lawyer and Democrat lobbyist Nathan Daschle discusses the Democratic Party in the wake of the 2024 presidential election. “After the 2024 elections, I think the Democrats have had to reflect a little bit on what at least some people call the woke agenda,” Mr Daschle said. “I’m not even sure if that term is fair because underlying it are some legitimate sensitivities and some legitimate concerns, but I do think that the Democrats after 2024 did take a hard look at themselves.”

Two Lacey parents have been found not guilty of attempted murder in connection with an assault on their teenage daughter. Ihsan and Zahraa Ali were accused of trying to kill their teen daughter outside Timberline High School last fall. After three days of deliberations, a jury found both parents not guilty of attempted murder. However, the girl’s father, Ihsan, was found guilty of assault and unlawful imprisonment. The mother, Zahraa, was only found guilty of violating a court order, but was determined to be not guilty of attempted murder, unlawful imprisonment or assault. Sentencing for both parents is set for...

Somebody had to say it. It has been noted on many an occasion that we aren't all getting along. The United States of America in 2025 is a fractured place. What was once a casual political divide has become deep and difficult to navigate. One could say, "Well, it's everybody's fault," but it's not. The American Left is diving deep into reasons that they should be violent these days. They're hateful. They're combative. And they wish you grievous harm. From the top down, Democrats have been gleefully advocating for violence against people like you and me. Their politics of hate...

The rapid growth of Islam in the United Kingdom has—largely on account of its rapidity—caught many in the country by surprise. London, Birmingham, Leicester … city after city has been transformed. The native, culturally British people of these isles have increasingly fled to rural parts as urban areas have ceased to resemble what they previously were. Concurrently, such cities and large towns have become places of extreme unsafety, especially for women. Now, in those rural refuges—often areas contending with considerable poverty and marginalisation—the government has set up ‘migrant hotels’ where significant populations of migrants, legal or otherwise, are sheltered at...

In political theory, hypocrisy is often regarded as a minor sin, the unavoidable cost of aligning ideology with the messiness of real life. But sometimes, hypocrisy isn’t incidental. Sometimes, it reveals the true nature of the ideology itself. And sometimes, as with Zohran Mamdani’s recent wedding, it isn’t just hypocrisy, it is performance art. The self-described Islamic Marxist and current Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Mamdani has built his career upon the aesthetic of struggle. He rails against landlords, billionaires, private property, and what he calls "capitalist theft." He advocates the abolition of prisons, the dismantling of the...

Watching leftists endlessly promote the same catastrophic policies is tiresome. Some quotations come to mind: - "“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.” -- Ronald Reagan - “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” -- Soren Kierkegaard Since so many of the worst cities in America are run by Democrats, one would think that their voters would eventually catch on. Those who do and are able, move away. Some take their...

Democrat Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh laid out his vision on Sunday to freeze rent, rapidly raise the minimum wage and refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Fateh, who is currently a Minnesota state senator, posted a video to his X account calling to “protect” Minneapolis from a “hostile White House,” increase the minimum wage by $20 by 2028 and prohibit the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) from “interacting” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The mayoral candidate, who announced his candidacy in December, has a platform that strongly resembles Democrat New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s. “Protecting all...

After meeting with leading New York City mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani, Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., issued a lukewarm statement through a spokesperson about the meeting and did not endorse his party's nominee. Mamdani, a New York state assemblyman and self-proclaimed socialist who has promised to overhaul New York City and launch massive new government programs, has been endorsed by progressive politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Despite winning the Democratic Party’s nomination over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by a wide margin, Mamdani has yet to be endorsed by the party’s top...

Socialist Zohran Mamdani called for ‘abolition of private property,’ resurfaced video shows New York City socialist Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is being ripped for advocating “the abolition of private property” — as a video resurfaced of him touting the radical position this week. “If there was any system that could guarantee each person housing — whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it a statewide housing guarantee — it is preferable to what is going on right now,” Mamdani said in the video shared by RNC Research. “People try to play gotcha games about...

Dozens of Democrat leaders are reportedly struggling to find a “coherent message” to fight President Donald Trump. The New York Times reported Sunday that, at private meetings and public events, Democrats “appear leaderless, rudderless, and divided.” […] “We have no coherent message,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said. “This guy is psychotic, and there’s so much, but everything that underlines it is white supremacy and hate. There needs to be a message that is clear on at least the underlying thing that comes with all of this.” Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar said, “Instead, what they see is chaos going up,...