Free Republic

What do you call a nation where a high school student can graduate with honors—yet cannot read or write?You call it America in 2025.This week, we learned about Aleysha Ortiz, a 19-year-old who graduated from Hartford Public High School in Connecticut with academic distinction—despite being illiterate. She is now suing the school district, alleging negligence, emotional distress, and a complete abdication of duty by the educators and administrators who were supposed to serve her. Her story, reported by CNN, is both infuriating and emblematic of a national crisis that’s been engineered from top down.Aleysha’s early assessments showed severe learning challenges....

A Portland Antifa activist and "No Kings Day" recruiter has been arrested on felony charges in Portland after allegedly carrying out an attempted bombing attack on the freeway. Alexander Robert Wick, 38, of Portland, was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on felony charges including first-degree attempted arson, unlawful manufacture of a destructive device, possession of a destructive device, and first-degree criminal mischief. He also faces two additional misdemeanor charges of menacing and second-degree disorderly conduct, according to jail records. On June 14, Wick allegedly began throwing traffic cones and boards with protruding nails into the lanes of traffic...

A recent Oregon Court of Appeals ruling blew a gaping hole in the state police crime lab’s long-standing technique of matching a suspect’s gun to shell casings left behind at a crime scene. The court found that a forensic examiner relied on “subjective judgment” based on training and experience – not objective scientific methodology – when linking shell casings in a 2018 Portland shooting to a Taurus handgun.The decision threatens an untold number of similar prosecutions across that state that have relied on ballistic comparisons. It already has left prosecutors scrambling to adjust trial tactics while defense attorneys hope the...

A circus Drag Show is happening on the floor of the Oregon House of Representatives right now. I wish I could tell you this is AI folks, but it is very …very real. If this isn’t a perfect illustration of how much of a joke the Democrat-led Oregon government is, I don’t know what is. Just wow.

Afederal judge ordered the University of Oregon to pay $191,000 to Portland State University professor Bruce Gilley to cover his legal fees in a successful First Amendment challenge to its censorship of Gilley's comment "all men are created equal" in his retweet from UO's diversity, equity and inclusion office Twitter page, according to Gilley's lawyers. Gilley secured a preliminary injunction last summer that stops UO Equity's account on X, formerly Twitter, from blocking his interactions or "hiding, muting, or deleting" several kinds of his posts to its account. They settled in full this spring after nearly three years in court,...

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said Monday on CNN’s “News Central” that President Donald Trump “promoted” the violent environment that brought the shootings of Minnesota lawmakers over the weekend. Co-host John Berman said, “There was a state representative, Democratic leader of the state legislature in Minnesota killed over the weekend, a state senator shot. How would you describe the current political atmosphere in this country this morning?” Merkley said, “I feel like Trump has really popped the lid off of the rhetoric and the the sense of hate and violence and promoted this type of an environment. It’s profoundly disturbing for...

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are co-sponsoring a bill that would ban discrimination against transgender military members.The Fit to Serve Act would prohibit the Department of Defense from banning transgender service members from the military and would ban the department from listing gender identity as a qualification for service.The Fit to Serve Act was led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and co-sponsored by other senators, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)

(Oregon Right to Life) — A radical bill to expand assisted suicide in Oregon received strong pushback during a public hearing on Monday. SB 1003 would expand Oregon’s “Death With Dignity Act” (DWDA) to make it easier for practitioners to end the lives of medically vulnerable people through assisted suicide. SB 1003 came before the Oregon Senate for its second public hearing on June 2 following strong opposition and subsequent amendments earlier in the legislative session. Medical and mental health professionals and advocates for the medically vulnerable expressed vigorous opposition to the bill, noting that the amended legislation still poses...

Ranchers say their hands are tied as reintroduced wolves—listed as endangered—are feasting on cattle instead of hunting elk and deer.. Descendants of rewilded wolves are taking a heavy toll on cattle in Northern California and Oregon, killing calves and full-grown animals and putting stress on cow-calf operations and ranchers’ pocketbooks. Because wolves are listed as an endangered species under state and federal law, ranchers are hamstrung: They can’t shoot or harass these protected predators. The penalty for killing a wolf is steep; federal law carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, unless a rancher...

Oregon Senate Democrats passed a bump stock ban late last week and the legislation also allows local municipalities to ban the carry of firearms in buildings where public meetings are held. A bump stock ban once existed at the federal level but the Supreme Court of the United States struck it down on June 14, 2024. In the majority opinion for the bump stock decision, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear the ban faltered in claiming bump stocks turn semiautomatic firearms into machine guns: Semiautomatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machineguns. This case...

Oregon is once again at the forefront of expanding assisted suicide—and this time, the consequences won’t stop at its borders. SB 1003—is moving through the Oregon legislature that would dangerously expand the state’s so-called Death with Dignity Act. If passed, because of Oregon’s removal of its residency requirement in 2022, this law would affect vulnerable patients nationwide and further normalize suicide as a “solution” to potential suffering. What’s in the Bill: SB 1003 expands assisted suicide in three alarming ways: Broadens the Definition of Who Can Prescribe Lethal Drugs ○ Replaces “attending physician” and “consulting physician” with “prescribing provider” and...

Eleven people were hospitalized after being stabbed at a homeless services provider in downtown Salem, Oregon, on Sunday night, police said. A suspect was in custody after the violence at 7:15 p.m. at Union Gospel Mission, Salem police spokeswoman Angela Hedrick said. …… The suspect was described only as a man, and no identity was available. …… The incident took place at the Union Gospel Mission's 50,000-square-foot Men’s Mission, which opened in 2021 a few blocks north of the mission's old, circa-1960s facilities, according to the organization. It's across the street from the Salem Police Department.

The Post Millennial has obtained the identities of the violent leftist agitators who were arrested outside of Seattle City Hall on Tuesday while attempting to disrupt a pro-Christian rally. Seattle Police apprehended eight individuals on various criminal charges, including felony assault on a police officer. The defendants include trans activists, a public school teacher, and individuals who have documented involvement with the anarchist extremist group, Antifa. Of the eight people arrested, seven were booked into jail. Their ages range from 19 to 60 years old, and half of the accused live outside of city limits, according to police records obtained...

A series of devastating wolf attacks occurred over Memorial Day weekend at the Lost Marbles Ranch, Crystal River Ranch and McCabe Ranch, leaving two calves dead and others injured. A broad daylight attack at the Lost Marbles Ranch, carried out by three wolves from the notorious Copper Creek pack, took place in the heart of the calving grounds, a large meadow where ranchers actively monitor mothers and newborns during the critical calving season. The wolves separated a cow and a calf from the main herd, severely injuring the calf. While many in the public romanticize the idea of seeing a...

...Pacific Gas and Electric Company has finally revealed the staggering price tag for dismantling the century-old hydroelectric facility: $532 million. That’s the estimated cost PG&E submitted to state regulators on May 15, a half-billion-dollar teardown that will be funded by PG&E customers, many of whom also risk losing the year-round water supply the system delivers to 600,000 people across Northern California. ...Tony Gigliotti, PG&E’s senior licensing project manager, told SFGATE the half-billion-dollar figure is still a “very high-level estimate,” but it’s meant to reflect the full scope of the task ahead. “We did the best we could with the information...

SEATTLE — Some tense moments at the King County Jail Monday. This, as protesters arrested over the weekend appeared before a judge. Nearly two dozen people were arrested Saturday at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. That’s when a rally by a Christian pro-family group turned violent. Now Mayday USA is planning a rally of its own Tuesday, to call for Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell to resign. KIRO 7 has been pushing to get a response from the mayor. He finally responded late Monday. Just before 5 o’clock this afternoon, a spokesman for Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell released...

Since the beginning of the Oregon legislative session in January, my wife and I have been having ongoing discussions about whether we should leave Oregon for another state, where the leftists are not in control, or whether we should stay and fight to stop the landslide of insanity that grips Oregon right now and will cross borders to contaminate other red states. We have many friends here, established doctors and dentists, and a great one-story house between the mountains to the East and the Pacific Ocean to the west. We attend a strong church that teaches out of the Bible....

A battery fire broke out in a Hillsboro data center Thursday morning, prompting evacuation of the site but causing no injuries.“Right about 10:20 this morning our crews got called to a fire involving a battery or batteries,” said Piseth Pich, a Hillsboro Fire & Rescue spokesperson. “When they arrived they found batteries inside a room inside what we understood to be a data center. The fire itself was contained to the battery set there and hadn’t spread anywhere else in that room.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday he has recordings of business associates of President Trump’s pick to lead the IRS, former Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.), saying they expect to get favors from him once he is in office. Wyden cited recordings of two instances of people saying they expect to receive favorable treatment from Long. “Our staff investigators have on tape now tax promoters saying you met with them at the inauguration and promised [them] a favorable private letter ruling,” Wyden said Tuesday during Long’s confirmation hearing in the Senate Finance Committee....

The number of homeless people in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties is higher than ever, according to the latest numbers from the national biannual homelessness count. Known as the point-in-time count, the federally mandated census takes place every other year and is focused on creating a snapshot of who is homeless on one night in January. It is broadly understood to be an undercount, but officials still view the data as useful in identifying national trends and making comparisons between jurisdictions. Surveyors identified 12,034 homeless people in the tri-county region this January, with 87% of them residing in Multnomah County,...