Free Republic

The Illinois Board of Higher Education suspended its state-wide diversity, equity and inclusion scholarship program this month after the Justice Department threatened to sue. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she is “committed to rooting DEI out of American institutions, including in the education system.” She should turn to the University of California system. The UC Board of Regents oversees two main diversity programs: the President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, or PPFP, and the Advancing Faculty Diversity Program, or AFD. PPFP was founded in 1984 to recruit “women and minority Ph.D. recipients” to the UC faculty, and its 2024 cohort includes no...

Tens of thousands of New York City residents have fled the Northeast for warmer climes in a five-year period — taking nearly $14 billion worth of income out of the Empire State. A new report by the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission found around 30,000 Big Apple dwellers moved to Florida between 2017 and 2022, many of them ending up in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. The report chalked up the mass migration to factors including lingering effects of the pandemic, as well as general affordability, quality-of-life concerns and safety. The city has seen a reduction in its adjusted gross income...

A department store has sacked its CEO after an investigation into alleged conflicts of interest. Kohl's announced that Ashley Buchanan, who has been CEO for six months, was relieved of his duties after the company claims it found evidence he favored certain vendors. The department chain said Buchanan didn't disclose this relationship in accordance with its company policies. Buchanon's release comes after an independent firm concluded the ex-CEO 'violated company policies by directing the company to engage in vendor transactions.' The company said the sacking is not attributed to the company's performance, though, the brand is facing some serious headwinds....

On Wednesday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said that her disagreement with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) over his rhetoric about oligarchy was just over the word and “It’s not that I disagree on the concepts or on the principles, and he’s right.” She also stated that the debate in the Democratic Party isn’t “about moderate versus progressive and whatever all of that means.” Co-host Geoff Bennett played a clip of Sanders saying, “I think the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are. I think they understand very well, when the top 1% owns...

Department of Education newsletter claiming Israel is committing “genocide in Gaza” was sent out to hundreds of teachers — prompting fuming Jewish educators to call it out as another example of ingrained antisemitism in the city’s public school system. The 14-page “Teacher Career Pathways” spring 2025 newsletter — which sports the logos of the city DOE and the United Federation of Teachers union — went out over the last week to “master teachers” across the system’s 1,800 schools. “The genocide in Gaza, among other global injustices, emphasized the urgent need for student voices to be centered and heard,” it said....

Seattle’s May Day celebrations are set to begin Thursday with a rally at Cal Anderson Park at noon, focusing on workers’ and immigrants’ rights. King County resident Hilda Ortiz plans to attend the event, which she says has taken on new and serious significance. “Everybody’s afraid, I mean, even people that have legal status,” Ortiz said. Ortiz noted that some individuals, fearing immigration crackdowns under the Trump administration, are too afraid to attend the rally and march. She asked them to create posters that can be displayed at the event. “That way they are represented in some way, and they...

She’s cracking. Gov. Kathy Hochul sounded off Wednesday about the “outrageous” price of eggs — jokingly telling New Yorkers to make chocolate cake with applesauce instead. The unprompted recipe suggestion came as Hochul, during a news conference in Midtown, slammed President Trump’s tariffs for driving up prices on everything from avocados to children’s toys. “And I’m done talking about the price of eggs — just give up eating them,” she said, drawing laughter. “It’s just outrageous, outrageous.” “You can make a really good chocolate cake with applesauce,” she added. “I digress, it’s also vegan.”

The text of the agreement, made public by Ukraine’s government, made no mention of the security guarantees that Kyiv had long sought. The minerals deal signed between the United States and Ukraine on Wednesday could bring untold money into a joint investment fund between the two countries that would help rebuild Ukraine whenever the war with Russia ends. But Ukraine’s untapped resources that are the subject of the deal will take years to extract and yield profits. And those could fail to deliver the kind of wealth that President Trump has long said they would. It is not yet clear...

Blackouts are becoming longer and more common in Xcel’s Colorado service territory, with 90,000 customers experiencing 6 or more outages in 2024.. Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest electricity provider, is having increasing difficulty answering customer calls, sending out bills and keeping the lights on, according to two reports by state utility regulators. Blackouts more than doubled in 2024 and customer complaints have jumped 100% in three years, according to a Colorado Public Utilities Commission briefing Wednesday on outages. Outages have become more prevalent across Xcel Energy’s service territory which includes zones from the northeast, near Sterling, to Greeley, the Denver metro...

Failed Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris looks around America today and sees a whirlwind of change driven by Donald Trump’s triumphant return to the White House. She told supporters Wednesday night she doesn’t like it. No, not one bit. In a 15-minute speech to an elite audience of Democrats in a gold-trimmed ballroom at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, the former vice-president was making her first major speech since losing November’s election. The crowd included Democratic donors, candidates and elected officials. Among them were Eleni Kounalakis, the lieutenant governor of California and former California Congresswoman Katie Porter, both of...

Trump’s counterrevolution presses on—quietly, methodically, and morally—while a flailing opposition offers only chaos, debt, and deflection in response. Despite the media hysteria, Trump’s counterrevolution remains on course. Its ultimate fate will probably rest with the state of the economy by the November 2026 midterm elections. But its success also hinges on accomplishing what is right and long overdue—and then making such reforms quietly, compassionately, and methodically. No country can long endure without sovereignty and security—or with 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants crossing the border and half a million criminal foreign nationals roaming freely. The prior administration found that it...

(WHTM) — A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States Government of over $1 million in SNAP and Medicare benefits. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, James Sessoms, 60, of Philadelphia, pled guilty today to one count of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) fraud, seven counts of false statements in connection with health care benefits, and seven counts of Social Security fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says that in October of 2024, Sessoms was charged by indictment with those offenses after he used stolen identities and Social Security numbers (SSNs) to file for SNAP and Medicaid benefits. The...

In just the last month, the Supreme Court has heard three important religion cases, culminating in yesterday’s argument over a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma. Judging from the justices’ questioning, the side pressing religious-freedom claims seemed likely to prevail in all three. That would extend a remarkable winning streak for religion at the Supreme Court. Since 2012, the pro-religion side has won all but one of 16 First Amendment cases about the government’s relationship with faith. (The exception: The court rejected a challenge to the first Trump administration’s ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.) The court has been...

President Trump said Wednesday that he’d like to see legendary sportscaster Stephen A. Smith run for president — after the Bronx native peppered him with questions about his anti-DEI policies. “I’ve been pretty good at picking people and picking candidates, and I will tell you I’d love to see him run,” Trump, 78, said in a NewsNation interview. *** “Stephen A, he’s a good guy. He’s a smart guy. I love watching him,” Trump replied to O’Reilly’s idea. “He’s got great entertainment skills, which is very important. People watch him. You know, a lot of these Democrats I watch, I...

A Democratic House lawmaker, known for his jaw-dropping remarks, repurposed a Holocaust-era poem on Wednesday to argue that the Trump administration is targeting “Latinos outside of the Home Depots.” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who once worried Guam could sink from overpopulation, subjected lawmakers to his bizarre variation of German theologian Martin Niemöller’s famous “First They Came For …” poem during a House Judiciary Committee hearing – leaving some people stunned. “You know, first they came for the Latinos outside of the Home Depots, trying to get work so that they could feed their families,” Johnson began. “And I didn’t say...

The liberal Jewish establishment comes out against fighting antisemitism.. “I’m appreciative of President Biden’s historic initiative on antisemitism and thankful to President Trump’s strong condemnation of Anti-Semitism and his promise to bring back consequences to antisemitic behavior,” Abe Foxman, the former longtime head of the ADL told a crowd at at an event commemorating the Holocaust. “But as a survivor, my antenna quivered when I see books being banned, when I see people being abducted in the streets, when I see the government trying to dictate what universities should teach and whom they should teach.” The Holocaust inversion that had...

The U.S. and Ukrainian governments touted the signing of a controversial minerals sharing deal as a launchpad for expansive bilateral economic cooperation -- and as a signal of America's long-term investment in a free Ukraine. The full details of the agreement are yet to be released, with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal expected to present the deal to the Ukrainian parliament -- the Rada -- on Thursday. The deal will also need to be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament, members of which suggested on Thursday it was too early to fully evaluate the agreement. "I don't know what we have signed,"...

I started my week off by writing about a horrific situation involving the Buffalo Public Schools in New York actively hiding abuse, including sexual abuse, from police. I spoke with the detective who unveiled these allegations by phone on Monday night. Detective Richard Hy, aka Angry Cops on YouTube, is a great guy who told me a lot about what happened. A lot of you read those stories and you were outraged, too. Any decent person would be. This is not the kind of thing anyone should be fine with. Only evil people would try to downplay what happened, right?...

From the killer barber of “Sweeny Todd,” to Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins,” musicals have long dealt with morbid subject matter. Now a musical based on Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old man accused of gunning down the CEO of a healthcare company in cold blood, is on its way to San Francisco. “Luigi the Musical,” billed as “A story of love, murder and hash browns,” is due to open in June at the Taylor Street Theatre, formerly the Exit Theatre. The show is described as a “wildly irreverent, razor-sharp comedy that imagines the true story of Luigi Mangione, the alleged corporate assassin turned...

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — The Connecticut House of Representatives voted Wednesday to advance a new piece of gun legislation that could open firearms makers and retailers up to more lawsuits.