Free Republic

A national parents’ group filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against a public school district in Massachusetts for allegedly violating the U.S. Constitution by racially segregating students into “affinity groups” and imposing a student speech code. The lawsuit comes as parents and the education establishment across the United States are battling over critical race theory and the systemic racism that leftists argue plagues the nation. Almost 70 years ago, Supreme Court precedent established that “public schools cannot segregate students by race, and students do not abandon their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate,” states the legal complaint in Parents...

Liberal activists intend to harangue Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema on why she won't support President Biden's 3.5 trillion dollar Build Back Better Act - while she competes in the Boston Marathon. Grassroots activists have already 'bird-dogged' the representative - a phrase for putting a politician on the spot in an unexpected public place, forcing them either to commit to a position or to look foolish for dodging a question - in the bathroom at the college where she works, in an airport and later on the airplane. At the marathon on Monday, members of the Green New Deal Network from...

Summary: After nearly two decades of searching, NOAA Ocean Exploration, the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries' Maritime Heritage Program, the U.S. Coast Guard, and a number of academic research partners have located with "reasonable certainty" the final resting place of U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, 90 miles due south of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia. Having served for nearly 80 years, including in the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, the U.S. Navy, and as a ship of exploration in the Antarctic, Bear is considered one of the most historically significant ships in U.S. history for its long and meritorious service.

China’s government stripped Boston Celtics games from the internet in the country on Thursday, after outspoken Celtics player Enes Kanter called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator” and criticized Beijing’s autocratic policies in Tibet. There was no immediate comment from the NBA on the developments, which may mark a new friction point between Chinese authorities and the American sports league that draws billions of dollars of revenue from sales in China. NBA players and officials have generally steered clear of publicly criticizing China since an incident two years ago in which Beijing briefly stripped NBA games from Chinese television...

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday defended his COVID-19 vaccination mandate for state employees, arguing the “vast, vast majority” of the executive branch’s 40,000-plus workers are on board with the state’s public health message and are protected against the virus. Nearly 1,600 workers could face discipline after missing the Sunday mandate deadline set in place by Baker in August. But the governor said Monday that agency and Human Resources officials would connect with noncompliant workers to find out why they haven’t shown proof of vaccination or filed paperwork seeking an exemption for medical or sincerely-held religious beliefs. “We’ll work through...

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed a new state law Thursday that focuses on students' access to school meals, with provisions around free breakfast and lunch as well as unpaid meal debt. The new law also takes aim at a practice known as "lunch shaming," prohibiting schools from publicly identifying or taking punitive action against students who have unresolved debt for school meals. "The new law is both timely and critical because it boosts federal nutrition dollars to schools across Massachusetts, and keeps children out of what should be an 'adult only' conversation on school meal debt," said Patricia Baker, a...

John Kerry, who counts the disastrous Iran nuclear deal among his accomplishments, is Old Joe Biden’s man on climate change hysteria, but Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has revealed that even among a staff that includes the likes of Pete “Mr. Mom” Buttigieg and Jen “Yes, I Think You’re Stupid” Psaki, Kerry is a lowlight, or worse. “For weeks,” Rubio wrote at FoxNews.com on Friday, “rumors have swirled in Washington about President Joe Biden’s climate czar John Kerry and his opposition to taking concrete action against the Chinese Communist Party’s use of slave labor. Now, we may have an answer about...

Massachusetts high school investigates reports of racial slurs during football game © Thinkstock A Boston Roman Catholic high school has suspended football activities amid an investigation into reports of one of its players using racial slurs toward an opposing player during a game last weekend, The Associated Press reported. In a statement posted on St. John Paul II website, Cathedral High School players told their coaches about St. John Paul II players’ using racial epithets toward them during the contest. Cathedral coaches reported the incident to St. John Paul administrators and have open an investigation into the allegations, according to...

Massachusetts Republican Party chairman Jim Lyons is not happy with his party’s incumbent governor Charlie Baker — who is also not happy with Lyons. Baker told a reporter on Friday that Lyons should resign as Massachusetts Republican Party chairman — and Lyons wants Baker out of the party. The latest turn in the frosty relationship between the party chairman and the governor stems from Lyons’s support for Boston city council candidate Donnie Palmer, ignoring racially insensitive social media posts that the candidate made about Boston mayoral candidate Michelle Wu; Palmer supports Annissa Essaibi George in the mayoral race.

BOURNE — Bourne School Committee member Kari MacRae says she was fired from her new teaching position at Hanover High School over her social media posts. She remains on the committee despite calls for her resignation. She has said she won't resign. MacRae said in an interview Tuesday she is seeking legal recourse after her position as a business teacher at Hanover High was terminated Sept. 29. “I got fired specifically for a social media post I made," she said. "That’s a violation of free speech.” MacRae said Hanover High School Principal Matthew Mattos told her in a letter, which...

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., a Freedom Center Journalism Fellow in Academic Free Speech and President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the author of Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews. While vice president Kamala Harris has been conspicuously absent from her alleged role in securing the nation’s border, she did find time for an impromptu visit with students at George Mason University in Virginia recently. At that meeting, one of the tendentious students, clearly schooled in the heterodoxy in which oppressed and oppressor animate all discussions about the world, raised the issue of...

Having lost a Texas state Senate race in 2020, Pete Flores is taking another crack at a post in a newly drawn district, earning the endorsement of former President Donald Trump to boot. Trump wrote Tuesday in a statement from his Save America PAC: "Pete Flores will be a great state senator for the terrific people of Central Texas. With 27 years in strong law enforcement, Pete will stand for law and order, loves our military and our vets, and will fight to secure our border. Pete is strong on our second amendment and will fight for low taxes. Pete...

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) will conduct low-altitude helicopter flights over downtown Boston and the Boston Marathon race route, Friday, Oct. 8, through Monday, Oct. 11. NNSA’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) aircraft will measure naturally occurring background radiation as part of standard preparations to protect public health and safety on the day of the event. The aerial surveys are in support of the 2021 Boston Marathon. The public may see NNSA’s twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter, which is equipped with radiation sensing technology. The helicopter will fly in a grid pattern over the areas at...

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.) is silent on whether he will return a $3,000 donation from a prominent Palestinian activist who called Israel a "parasite" that "sucks the blood of America." Osama Abuirshaid, the executive director of American Muslims for Palestine, during an interview with Jordan's Yarmouk TV on Sept. 22 described Israel as "a parasite living off the American body" that "sucks the blood of America and scatters its attention," according to a translation from the Middle East Media Research Institute. Abuirshaid, who has a history of anti-Semitic comments, donated $3,000 to Meeks in March,...

Among many surprising developments during this pandemic, the most stunning has been the questioning of naturally acquired immunity after a person has had the Covid disease. We have understood natural immunity since at least the Athenian Plague in 430 BC. Here is Thucydides: ‘Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick and the dying found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience and had no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked twice—never at least fatally.’ – Thucydides We have lived with endemic coronaviruses for at least a hundred...

GOP gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl has landed a big deal endorsement. Former President Donald Trump is throwing his support behind the conservative candidate in a race where rivals are still lining up and Gov. Charlie Baker has yet to declare. “Baker is bad on crime, disrespects our police, does nothing for our Veterans, has totally botched the Vaccination rollout, presided over the collapse of the MBTA, and has seen crime go to record levels,” Trump said in his endorsement Tuesday night. Diehl has branded himself as a conservative counterweight in a race where most of the other candidates swing far...

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said on Monday that President Joe Biden “literally had not been aware of what had transpired” in upsetting France over last month’s nuclear-powered submarine deal the United States did with Australia. “President Biden asked me about it, and I told him, and expressed…,” said Kerry in an interview with French cable channel BFMTV. “You told Joe Biden that it was not the right…,” asked an interviewer. “He asked me. He said, ‘what’s the situation?’ and I explained exactly, uh… He was he had not been aware of that, he literally, literally had not...

Dorian Abbot is an associate professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He spends his days studying climate change and extrasolar planets. In a piece written for Bari Weiss’ Substack, Abbot says he’s never been particularly political. He uses an online tool to decide who to vote for. But a few years ago he began to have concerns about academic freedom. He says he mostly kept his thoughts to himself for several years but that changed last summer. In the fall of 2020 I started advocating openly for academic freedom and merit-based evaluations. I...

Former Vice President Joe Biden (right) and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry carry pizza boxes after an event on Biden’s “No Malarkey!” campaign bus tour in Decorah, Iowa, December 6, 2019. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters) In an interview with French television, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry helpfully explains that President Biden simply had no idea that the U.S.-U.K.-Australia deal on submarines would irk the French government, and “had not been aware of what had transpired.” Interviewer, surprised: You told Joe Biden that it was not the right- Kerry: He asked me. He said, ‘what’s the situation?’ and I...

At the end of the fiscal year 2020, 39 states did not have enough money to pay all of their bills. .... Total debt among the 50 states amounted to $1.5 trillion at the end of the fiscal year 2020 ... Retirement plans, such as pension and retiree health care benefits .. account for the majority of state debt ... on average, the 50 states had only set aside 64 cents to fund pension promises and 8 cents to fund retiree health care promises .... When states cannot make up investment shortfalls, then taxpayers have to make up the difference....