Free Republic

A court has sentenced comedian Leo Lins to more than eight years in prison for inciting intolerance through a stand-up performance viewed by over three million people on YouTube. On Tuesday 3 June, Brazilian comedian Leo Lins was sentenced to over eight years in prison for making discriminatory remarks in a stand-up routine that targeted a wide range of minority groups — including black people, obese individuals, elderly people, those living with HIV, homosexuals, evangelicals, Indigenous communities, people from the impoverished northeast of Brazil, Jews, and people with disabilities. The federal court in São Paulo ruled that the right to...

If you were unfamiliar with the American analytics company Palanatir Technologies, prepare to hear about it on every news channel in the coming months. Donald Trump secured the presidency twice because he was the anti-establishment candidate. The White House has tasked Planatir with developing an extensive centralized federal database to house the personal data of every American citizen. In March 2025, Donald Trump signed an “Information Silos” executive order focused on “removing unnecessary barriers to federal employees accessing government data and promoting inter‑agency data sharing are important steps toward eliminating bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency.” Planatir was a clear choice. At...

Through relentless government action and social pressure, America’s operating vocabulary has become Orwellian. Most everyone has heard the meme, “He who controls the agenda controls the meeting.” Acknowledging that we can understand ultimate power would be controlling the words and language everyone uses lest they find socially or professionally ostracized. When our government removes social media posts that differ from government policy or suppresses speech by arbitrarily deeming it hate speech, we begin to look quite like Orwell’s fictional Oceania. But that’s just a start. All kinds of behavior and thought are being restricted, manipulated, or banned through the left’s...

Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) has renewed his call to repeal a little-known section of the 2021 Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act (IIJA) containing a federal mandate that all vehicles sold after 2026 must have a kill switch. In a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Wednesday, Massie questioned Michael Hanson who was representing the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) over the requirement for a kill switch that can disable vehicles based on a driver’s performance. Hanson affirmed that section 24220 the IIJA directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require advanced impaired driving detection...

Whatever sufferance President Trump may have enjoyed from congressional Democrats evaporated instantly just hours after his inauguration when he pardoned most Jan. 6 defendants. Why it matters: Even moderate Democrats who had hoped against hope that they could work with the self-styled dealmaker say the move bodes poorly. "We do want to work together, and hopefully that's what will happen," said Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), a leading member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. But "between Trump's very grim [inaugural] speech and ... the fact he ended the day by releasing hundreds of violent criminals back into our communities, I...

It looks like the Federal Communications Commission under Brendan Carr won’t be the only agency looking to tear down the government-backed dystopian activities of website traffic cop NewsGuard. Federal Trade Commissioner Andrew Ferguson issued a statement Dec. 2 joining his colleague Commissioner Melissa Holyoak in urging the agency “to investigate online platforms for unfair acts or practices relating to their opaque, unpredictable processes for banning users and censoring content.” Ferguson stipulated that “we must vigorously enforce the antitrust laws against any platforms found to be unlawfully limiting Americans’ ability to exchange ideas freely and openly.” Part of Ferguson’s antitrust push...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed three bills Tuesday to crack down on the use of artificial intelligence to create false images or videos in political ads ahead of the 2024 election. A new law, set to take effect immediately, makes it illegal to create and publish deepfakes related to elections 120 days before Election Day and 60 days thereafter. It also allows courts to stop distribution of the materials and impose civil penalties. “Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s...

"There needs to be deterrence"

Analysis In an unprecedented joint public appearance, CIA Director William Burns and MI6 Chief Richard Moore assert the enduring strength of their intelligence agencies Last week, the heads of major Western intelligence agencies made a striking public appearance, first with a provocative op-ed and then in a high-profile interview with the Financial Times editor. Although some questions remained unanswered, their statements provided critical insights into their covert and overt operations. William Joseph Burns, Director of the CIA, and Richard Peter Moore, head of MI6/SIS, both distinguished diplomats before their current roles, asserted with conviction that their organisations are more formidable...

There is a serious consequence to the fact that the nation’s socialist media are the marketing arm of the DNC. They are the gaslighting gatekeepers, the people who decide who is to be slapped with a “fact check” and suppressed and who is sanctioned as a “trusted source” and who is ignored. Thus, the media are free to propagate any propaganda for what is obviously their side, while mercilessly attacking pro-freedom media sources for the “crime” of telling the truth. This means that the left has become overly dependent on lies. Lying is the left’s only way to move “forward.”...

A Washington Post ‘reporter’ on Monday asked Karine Jean-Pierre what Biden is going to do to stop Trump’s live X interview with Elon Musk on Monday night. President Trump is back on X after taking some time away from the social media platform. Trump tweeted a campaign ad ahead of his highly anticipated live interview with Elon Musk on Monday evening at 8 pm ET. Washington Post reporter Cleve Wootson wants the government to intervene to shut Trump down with just a few months to go until Election Day. “One more, Elon Musk is slated to interview Trump tonight on...

CNN senior fact checker Daniel Dale said on Thursday that the media incorrectly labeled Vice President Kamala Harris the “border czar.” Media outlets rushed to erase their own reporting to downplay Harris’ role in managing the border crisis by saying she is solely responsible for addressing “root causes” in Latin American countries. Dale continued with this recent trend by saying the media wrongfully portrayed Harris as the “border czar.”

15 Times 2024 Was Orwell’s 1984“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.”The novel 1984 is author George Orwell’s cautionary tale of a future totalitarian government that uses mass surveillance to redefine truth and tyrannize citizens. Once a work of fiction, it now reads like a disturbingly accurate picture of the present day. From the left’s rejection of objective truths to the media’s manipulation of language, 2024 is looking increasingly like 1984....

Long before Stephen Harper’s Conservative government launched the multi-billion-dollar Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement that established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2007, it was already commonplace to refer to the legacy of those schools as a “dark chapter in Canadian history.” There was much that was dark about the schools. Many of the church-run, federally-administered institutions, whatever the good intentions of the religious orders that ran them, were dark and forbidding places that incubated disease, cultural dislocation, abuse and despair, for much of their history. Roughly 150,000 children are believed to have attended the schools, which the federal government...

Another ministry of truth operation tried to go after MRC Free Speech America’s credibility with a big swing and a miss. Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) bills itself as an “independent website that has promoted awareness of media bias and misinformation by rating the bias, factual accuracy, and credibility of media sources, large and small.” The website traffic cop went after MRC Free Speech America’s new website on May 17. It rated MRC Free Speech America’s “Factual Reporting” as “MIXED,” citing without any specific evidence that MRC Free Speech America promotes “propaganda,” “some conspiracy theories,” and uses “sources that fail fact...

Transexuals think we're after them, so they are developing the intention to come after us first. There is a long history of Jussie Smollett type, self-poised persecution-perception among trans-sexual and homosexual activists, devolving down ultimately to the fact that they are unable to force approval for their lifestyle, beyond maintaining the "we're born this way" argument. A year ago, the straw man was Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the Nashville Christian School shooter. There is some disagreement about the reasons for keeping their manifesto confidential: The school, the victims' families and the trans community feel it is an issue of damping down...

Automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras are becoming more and more common on American roads, thanks to one company. Flock Safety is a tech company that provides surveillance products to a wide array of clients. Its largest customer is law enforcement. Namely, governing bodies use the company's ALPR cameras to capture millions of U.S. driver plates all over the country. Many local citizens are unaware of the cameras. Chiefly, this is due to the quiet methods used to install them and utilize recorded data. Eric Fielder works in real estate. He recently noticed something unusual in his community. The resident...

Those with the cognitive freedom to consider whether or not biological warfare is a significant factor in current world politics, are free to add “● plagues”, to the list: “Top finance has an interest in all wars, revolutions, crashes and famines”. Now, ● plagues. Another way of considering the “wars” element in that list, is to examine, whether or not Russia has a common interest with NATO in maintaining perpetual war.The phenomenon can’t simply be explained as pandering to various nations’ armaments industries. (Failure has been noted of U.S. arms manufacturers to match Russia’s decisive development of hypersonic missiles.)This principle...

The phrase “arming teachers” has standard meanings: To provide teachers with arms or to force teachers to carry arms. “Arming teachers” puts teachers in a passive role, with someone else “arming” them. It is being used to oppose a mild gun law reform bill in Tennessee.The phrase is being used in an Orwellian way by those opposed to an armed population. It is used by the left to prevent teachers from being allowed to protect themselves and the children in their care. The phrase “arming teachers” has become equated with removing restrictions on the ability of teachers to arm themselves....

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” So begins 1984, author George Orwell’s frightening novel about citizens under the thrall of a dictatorship. “Big Brother is watching you” is a threat and a warning to the populace that is surveilled by the all-seeing eye of the “telescreen” that tracks their every move while also pacifying them with cheap entertainment and state propaganda. “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength” are watchwords of the shadowy, thuggish regime in Orwell’s cautionary tale of tyranny rampant in a future world where courage is quashed...