Free Republic

Ed Martin makes the case for mercy in an age of lawfare and politicized justice. When the justice system becomes a political weapon, clemency stops being a “presidential privilege” and becomes one of the last guardrails against abuse. And that’s why the left is so scared. The second Trump starts issuing pardons, the media spin machine kicks into high gear. They treat his acts of clemency with the same tired bias they always do, suddenly acting like mercy itself is suspicious. What they never stop to ask is what mercy actually means when the justice system is no longer acting...

Wayne Allyn Root — businessman and ebullient, unapologetic conservative — wrote something the other day that caught my eye. Over an article about “The Great American National Divorce,” his headline blared: “Escape of the White People.” Describing the exodus of New Yorkers to Florida and Californians to Nevada, Root noted that interstate migration across America is speeding up. Why? Because Americans who are not die-hard leftists “can no longer live with radical, extreme, self-destructive, communist SUICIDE BOMBERS.” As Root repeatedly points out, Democrat-run states are destroying themselves. By electing “evil, communist madmen like LA Mayor Karen Bass, Chicago Mayor Brandon...

California’s In-Home Supportive Services Program is ripe for scams, experts say. California Governor Gavin Newsom is embroiled in a national fraud scandal. Thus far, much of the coverage has focused on alleged schemes related to unemployment insurance, hospice care, and food stamps. In this exclusive investigation, we shine a light on one of California’s largest initiatives: the In-Home Supportive Services Program, or IHSS, which pays family members and other individuals to provide home-based care for the elderly and disabled—at a cost of nearly $30 billion per year. On the surface, IHSS presents itself as an instrument of compassion, directing billions...

Earlier this week, the Trump administration took another step toward liberating the economy by rolling back a Biden-era rule that needlessly hampered oil and gas production. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said that, with this and several other deregulatory actions, the administration “is unleashing domestic energy and revising burdensome, unworkable Biden-era oil and natural gas policies.” That’s the good news. The bad news is that President Donald Trump has barely scratched the surface of the gargantuan administrative state, and other Trump policies are raising the cost of doing business, a report released today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute shows. In its...

Until the U.K.’s political and cultural elite can defend confidently what it means to be British, the nation will sacrifice women’s safety, Jewish security, and core liberal principles such as free speech. In Britain, March meant Ramadan. My local supermarket advised me to “Make this holy month meaningful” and offered “everything you need for Iftar, Suhoor, and beyond,” including a range of halal foods. At televised Premiership football matches, play stopped to allow Muslim players to break their fast. Days before Eid, Muslims gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to pray in public. The Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, hailed...

The Democrats have done their best to hide the data, but it is possible to use available information to extrapolate just how bad illegal alien crime is. The Democrats have done their best to hide the data, but it is possible to use available information to extrapolate just how bad illegal alien crime is. Every day, all over America, illegal aliens, legal immigrants, and naturalized Americans from a rogue’s list of countries to our South and from the Middle East kill, rape, rob, and defraud us, almost with impunity. Yet, if you try to prove it by citing reliable government...

In New York State, the annual budget is due by April 1. Here we are on April 7, and no budget has yet emerged. Word is that the Governor and legislative leaders are hidden away behind closed doors hammering out the details. Word also is that somewhere in this “budget” process, the seemingly unrelated matter of the deadlines of the Climate Act (for starters, 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030) are about to get extended. When the Climate Act (officially “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act,” or CLCPA) was enacted back in 2019, the deadlines, beginning in 2030, seemed...

Europe bets on California’s Gavin Newsom as a strategic counterweight to the Trump agenda. Donald Trump’s opposition to climate policy and mass immigration is putting massive pressure on Europe. There, preparations are underway to support California governor Gavin Newsom. He is expected, as the 48th president, to prevent a continuation of Trump’s policies. America remains a country of high social mobility and upward opportunity -- something we no longer see on today’s European continent. It may sound kitschy to many Europeans, yet America's vibrant economic centers, high geographic mobility, and the flexibility of its people still create the conditions for...

When intrepid young journalist Nick Shirley made his way to Minneapolis’s now notorious “Quality Learing Center,” he found not just a local scam, but also a too perfect metaphor for today’s Democratic Party. Operating behind the false front of a legitimate political party, Democrats have fashioned nothing more than a money laundering operation that exploits the anxieties of its base to empower and enrich its friends and allies. Although the seeds were planted long ago, those seeds have borne their dark fruit thanks to at least three helpful federal interventions and a major shift in newsroom zeitgeist. Exploiting migrants,...

Democrats can rebrand candidates, but they cannot hide a long record of condescension toward the very working-class voters they now need to win back. After failing to win Congress and the presidency in 2024, the Democrats conducted an internal postmortem of what went wrong. While they predictably did not divulge the full results, everyone knew what they had found. Their obsessions with the low side of 30/70 issues had especially alienated Democrats from white middle- and working-class voters. Yet middle-class whites still comprise about 40–50 percent of the population and are perhaps overrepresented in voter turnout. Democrats realize that their...

Explaining the decline of the Roman Empire in The Story of Civilization, Will Durant wrote: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.” The same could become true of the European Union (EU) in the 21st century. Postmodern illusions of a benign and righteous multiculturalism are allowing Islamist ideology—which has no reservations about its supremacist ambitions—to spread its roots with unprecedented virulence. Consider how a guilt-shame complex fostered by leftist academia in institutions, the media, and the public is eroding the Judeo-Christian ethos. Christmas is no longer Christmas but some silly secular celebration like...

The inmates are taking over the asylum, and the psychiatrists think it’s just wonderful. This, followed by this, may be one of the sharpest takedowns of the lunatic left-wing fringe mindset you’ll ever encounter. Melanie Phillips doesn’t dance around the issue — she goes straight for the jugular vein of the self-delusion that defines the modern left. Phillips teaches a masterclass in Left-Wing Victimology. It all begins with a neat little circle of vanity. Blue-haired leftists in Minneapolis, or Brooklyn, or San Francisco, or London, or Brussels tell themselves, “I’m liberal because I’m a good person; I’m a good person...

We reported some time ago on New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to create a “Department of Community Safety.” This is the initiative that gets characterized misleadingly as simply a plan to replace cops with social workers. It is much more than that. It is much more frightening than that. It is the ultimate fulfillment of the leftist vision of abolishing the police and substituting for them a cadre of individuals who will be empowered to forge the new society Mamdani and his Marxist supporters envision. The first step in this effort has been the creation of something called...

Those who wield power over life and liberty should share, at least proportionally, in the price of being wrong. Dr. Thomas Sowell, the renowned economist and social theorist, once observed: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” His insight highlights a fundamental disparity in governance. Politicians, bureaucrats, and judges routinely issue rulings and enact policies that carry enormous ripple effects on society -- yet they are insulated from the human and financial costs incurred when...

There’s nothing really new in the uproar surrounding the loss of a USAF F-15E Strike Eagle over Iran this past weekend. Media hysteria over the downing of a single U.S. aircraft has become a commonplace schtick in coverage of American wars over the past three decades. During WW II, the U.S. lost over 23,000 planes in combat. I kid you not, playmates: 23,000+ – and that’s only combat losses. Overall losses, including accidents, amounted to 65,164. The media talking heads would have had to be carried out in straitjackets if they’d been active at the time. Losses dropped sharply following...

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger (D.) and other local authorities are under fire over a recent string of very high profile and preventable crimes committed by illegal aliens in the sanctuary state. One of Spanberger’s first actions as governor was to sign an executive order barring state and local authorities from cooperating with federal authorities for federal immigration enforcement. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has pleaded with Spanberger and Fairfax County officials to stop releasing dangerous criminals back into the community without notifying ICE. In the past few weeks, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lodged...

The problems with defense of Europe are complex. Europe not wanting to defend itself is only one of them. Europe has been taking a lot of flak in the last two months in the midst of the Iran War, raising the question of whether its members are capable of or interested in militarily defending themselves. An example is a serious conflict that arose recently when President Trump asked the Europeans to help the U.S. open the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait has been mostly closed to traffic by the Iranians, and Trump insists that the waterway should be an open...

On Easter, the holiest day of the year, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Savior, and Treasure. Just saying those words out loud — Lord…Savior…Treasure — it is easy to recognize why modern socialist governments find Christianity so threatening. For if He is the King of kings, then all of our would-be masters in this world are pale imposters. If He alone is the Way and the Truth and the Life, then the marble halls of Big Government are just false paths leading to false idols that promise false salvation. If He is the only Treasure, then...

Feckless blue states are spending like there is no tomorrow, but tomorrow will come, and they’ll be demanding red state money to pay their debts. I begin by presenting three trends. One might even call them inevitabilities, and one might argue they’re not trends at all, but present realities that are intertwined and will tend to collapse in on each other, inevitably leading to the third inevitability. The first trend is a Congress of feckless fools: I’ll get to Lippencott’s final question momentarily, but our Congress does seem unable to accomplish anything of consequence, such as the SAVE Act, which...

SNIP Just as globalists in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and across Old (and increasingly Islamic) Europe turned the “Reign of COVID Terror” into an opportunity to bilk taxpayers, enrich elites, and grow the totalitarian national security State, the same globalist scum quickly turned the Ukraine conflict into another “emergency” requiring more taxes, censorship, and public sacrifice. All of a sudden, anything criticizing the official public policies of Western governments was labeled “Russian disinformation.” If you disagreed with whatever the West’s vaunted “experts” said, you were dismissed as “Putin’s puppet.” Pro tip for information warfare enthusiasts: When...