Free Republic

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled against a school district in Virginia for reinstating a Confederate school name, saying the move violated the constitutional rights of black students. U.S. District Judge Michael F. Urbanski ruled that Stonewall Jackson High School students in Shenandoah County, Virginia, cannot be forced to bear Jackson's name and its pro-slavery associations.

Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Marks a New EraI first heard Charlie Kirk speak on a bitterly cold February night in 2018 at the University of Michigan. I went to the event out of curiosity, nudged by friends active in campus conservative life. At the time, I saw myself as a different kind of conservative—graduating early, serving as a campus ambassador for a proper, center-right Washington think tank that prized bipartisan respectability. Kirk, just a few years older than I, was the bomb-thrower who never went to college. I was skeptical of where the Right might be headed; Charlie was steering the...

Charlie Kirk, Martyr“For they killed him in his kindness.”This is who they chose to kill: the affable man whose main act was having good-faith political debates with college students. The man who, since fatherhood, was turning more toward Christianity as both a purpose and a theme. He was a partisan to be sure, but he was nowhere near the outer limits of the American tradition, especially given his relentless fixation on Lincolnian persuasion as a stabilizing force in a slowly disintegrating polity. The ones who kept losing debates with him didn’t feel that way, of course, but they were only...

https://x.com/charliekirk11 is Charlie's X account. If you didn't make a habit of reading it (like me), there is so much good in here it's a wonder to peruse. No wonder they had to kill him to silence him. May God raise up 100 in his place.

How the UK’s Online Safety Act Impacts AmericansSUMMARYThe United Kingdom’s Online Safety act went into effect on July 25th.X has warned that the OSA, which allows the UK to fine American companies at 10 percent of their annual global revenue, threatens free speech worldwide.The OSA’s provisions allow the UK government to force a company’s business partners, including advertisers and payment processors, to boycott them.American employees of non-compliant tech companies to face criminal charge and up to two years in jail in the UK.The Online Safety Act went into force in late July. Framed in the media as a child safety...

And of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out. I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win. “It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.” We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were...

There’s a reason Libertarians fail to solve issues. They are the political equivalent of a debating society arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin at one time while sipping tea and congratulating themselves on how astute they are. I suppose it’s the inevitable result of pursuing an ideology that relies on people acting directly against their human nature to succeed. Lofty diatribes over how people ought to think and act are fine when trying to persuade people to think and act in a particular way, but they’re utterly worthless (and ultimately dangerous!) when relying...

Lesbian women using their partner’s egg in IVF may face higher medical risks, research suggests. The study, the first of its kind, found that such women may have a greater chance of complications such as pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes. Co-IVF, also known as reciprocal IVF, is an option for lesbians and trans men who want to start a family. Embryos are created from the egg of one partner and donor sperm before being implanted into the second partner to carry the pregnancy.

A group of Navy SEALs penetrated North Korea in early 2019 in an attempt to compromise North Korea's nuclear communications channel. The mission may or may not have been compromised, and the resulting shootout, according to The New York Times, left a handful of North Koreans, possibly civilians, dead. The question is, why is this story running now? The Mission In 2018, as President Trump was engaged in high-wire nuclear diplomacy with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, a Navy SEAL team was dispatched on a high-risk, high-payoff mission to bug the communications network used to discuss nuclear strategy and...

A federal appeals court on Thursday declined to allow U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to refuse to issue passports to transgender and nonbinary Americans that reflect their gender identities. A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to put on hold an injunction issued by a trial judge barring the U.S. Department of State from enforcing a policy it adopted at Trump's direction.

For what seems like forever, conservatives have been calling out the train wreck that is the American educational system. Instead of teaching things that will help students become responsible, productive citizens, the agenda is all woke, and Donald Trump sucks. It is a good guess that we have at least two generations of budding young leftists who have been taught literally nothing about America, its friends, and enemies, and most importantly, the true difference between capitalism and communism, and what both systems of government really offer their citizens. Recently, that indoctrination was on full display. This is one kid. There...

A civilization confident in itself reads the Iliad. A civilization in decline denounces it. Guess which one we are. A confident civilization does not quake at the sight of Homer. It does not avert its gaze from Pericles or issue trigger warnings before mentioning Caesar. It does not treat the Iliad like some toxic spill to be cordoned off by hazmat crews. Yet ours does. As Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath warned in Who Killed Homer?, the gravest threat to the classics is not public indifference but professors themselves—men and women who, having ceased to teach Homer, now cower...

It looks like another Democrat darling has tripped over his own carefully crafted narrative. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) just had a public meltdown when confronted about a glaring and long-running falsehood: his claim to having received a Bronze Star. For years, Moore casually let the military honor bolster his public image, political resume, and book sales — but now, under scrutiny, he’s suddenly claiming it "wasn't something I even thought about.” That’s a hard pill to swallow, considering the Bronze Star is not just some casual decoration. It’s one of the U.S. military’s most prestigious awards, given for heroic...

When a man can declare himself a woman, how do we know what is true or false anymore? The institutions we might once have looked to – from academia to journalism to science – have all rallied around the absurdity that we can change sex at will. Here, Wesley Yang – essayist and author of The Souls of Yellow Folk – explains how a ‘successor ideology’ has captured the liberal mind. It has swapped tolerance and pluralism for brutal authoritarianism. And it has redefined reality itself, embedding lies in the fabric of our institutions. Democracy, Wesley says, is our only...

The U.S. Air Force will provide full military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran fatally shot inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by then-Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd. The development comes after Judicial Watch wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth urging him to “make a new determination granting military funeral honors” for Babbitt, which had been denied by the Biden administration. Senior counsel Robert Sticht asked Hegseth to consider two recent updates related to the case.

The Texas redistricting battle is entering a new front as the fight turns to the courts, where Democrats and civil rights groups are expected to challenge the newly passed maps. Texas House Democrats who had fled the state to stall the maps said that they were returning “to the House floor and to the courthouse” this week — and several groups signaled they are ready to sue as soon as Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signs the legislation. But experts forecast Democrats will face an uphill climb to stop or even stall the maps, which could net five GOP House seats,...

Ethel Caterham, born in 1909, celebrated her 116th birthday in Surrey, She is now the world’s oldest living person. Ethel Caterham, the last surviving Edwardian and officially the world’s oldest living person, marked her 116th birthday surrounded by family at her care home in Surrey. Born on 21 August 1909 in Shipton Bellinger, Hampshire, Ethel Caterham came into the world during the reign of King Edward VII and the premiership of Herbert Asquith. Ethel Caterham, the second youngest of eight siblings, grew up in the twilight of the Edwardian era. She became the world’s oldest living person in April following...

I am generally bullish about Democrats’ chances of retaking the House majority in 2026. That’s because the history of midterm elections is pretty overwhelming when it comes to seat losses for the president’s party. When a president is unpopular in polls—as Donald Trump is today—those losses are even steeper. And yet, I don’t think a Democratic-controlled House is in the bag just yet. Why? Well, for much of the past year, I have been hearing from smart Democratic strategists who insist that their party has fallen badly behind Republicans in one of the critical nuts and bolts needed for winning...

Beware Universal Mental Health ScreeningHow would your child score on a common mental health screening? A mental health professional might view the results and conclude that your child has a mental health problem…that needs to be psychiatrically diagnosed and treated, even medicated. Will this help your child thrive? Or will it reshape their identity in undesirable ways? Will you be comfortable with your child taking medications that alter their developing brains and could perturb their sexuality? When your child reaches adulthood, will they be able to withdraw from these drugs, or will they despair to find out that their body...

Blackfeet Chief Two Guns White Calf was my great uncle and a great American icon. Americans know his face: he was the face of the Washington Redskins for 48 years, until he was cancelled in 2020. Americans once knew his story. White Calf defended tribal traditions in our Blackfeet homeland in Montana, where many of us still live today. He went to Washington D.C. where he forced the U.S. government to honor Indian treaties. He served as a model for the U.S. Mint’s famous 1913 “Indian head” nickel. White Calf’s face is still a collector’s item. ... White Calf became...