Free Republic

In 1883, when the Pendleton Act was passed, creating the US civil service, it must have seemed like no big deal. The forgotten Chester A. Arthur was the president. The fear of being assassinated like his predecessor James Garfield convinced him to back the legislation. The case for passage: government needs professionals with institutional knowledge. Technicians were changing the world, so why not government too? Science and engineering were the rage – electricity, steel bridges, telegraphic communications, internal combustion, photography – so surely public affairs needed the same level of expertise. Who could deny that civil service could do a...

The alphabet wars are, as you might think, primarily about sexuality, sex, and sexual morality. When looked at in those terms, as many liberals do or claim to, you can see, if you squint hard enough, the point they make about just letting people live their lives in peace. At least until you start thinking about the impact that allowing men into women's spaces and reality slaps you in the face. Most liberals only like to think about the issue as a question of tolerance. What do we care if some men want to wear dresses? In many cases, that...

American Statesmanship for the Golden AgeWe all should have a profound sense of gratitude for the many blessings our nation has given us.Editors’ NoteThis a lightly edited version of Vice President Vance’s remarks as prepared for the Claremont Institute’s 2025 Statesmanship Award Dinner.California generally—and Claremont in particular—has produced some of the most profound and revolutionary conservative thinkers of the last half-century.And for a great many of them, it’s because they understood what’s at stake if we abandon our American identity.And we’re lucky enough to have a few of them, like Michael Anton, now working in the administration with us.Now, Claremont...

A federal judge ruled Los Angeles police cannot force journalists out of protest areas or use nonlethal weapons against them after reporters alleged officers targeted them during anti-ICE demonstrations last month. U.S. District Judge Hernán D. Vera granted the Los Angeles Press Club's request for a 14-day restraining order against the city's police department after the group said it documented dozens of incidents in which officers forced reporters away from public spaces where protests were taking place, hit them with rubber bullets and nonlethal weapons and exposed them to tear gas. Vera's ruling is an emergency order giving the court...

When several countries endorsed the notion of some high-risk people taking the antibiotic doxycycline after unprotected sex to lower their chances of contracting a sexually transmitted disease, as the U.S. did last year, there was a theoretical concern the shift could drive antibiotic resistance in some bacterial infections. That risk no longer appears to be theoretical. In a newly published letter in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers reported a steep rise in resistance to tetracycline — the antibiotic class to which doxycycline belongs — in gonorrhea isolates collected from across the country since results of the studies investigating...

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that a trans teacher in Florida has no right to refer to herself with the gendered honorific “Ms.” or ask to be referred to with the pronouns she/her under what critics have called Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. The trans algebra teacher, Katie Wood, sued her employer, the Hillsborough County School Board, in 2023 soon after Florida’s anti-LGBTQ law was enacted. A lower court found that the law likely infringes on her First Amendment free speech rights and granted a preliminary injunction. However, the conservative-leaning appeals court overruled the lower...

Current and former USAID and State Department officials are using their expertise in undermining authoritarian regimes abroad against President Donald Trump and his agenda at home, according to a new report Monday. The Trump administration is still in the process of terminating thousands of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) workers by September as the agency restructures to fall in line with the president's "America First" policy. NOTUS reporter Jose Pagliery reported, however, that "Some of the democracy-building experts President Donald Trump fired this year from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department are now reapplying...

A pregnant physician who was denied a Covid-19 vaccine is suing the Trump administration alongside a group of leading doctors associations, charging that the administration sought to “desensitize the public to anti-vaccine and anti-science rhetoric”, according to their attorney. The lawsuit specifically takes aim at health secretary Robert F Kennedy’s unilateral decision to recommend against Covid-19 vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children. Kennedy’s announcement circumvented expert scientific review panels and flouted studies showing pregnant women are at heightened risk from the virus, and made it more difficult for some to get the vaccine. “This administration is an existential threat...

Two American veterans working with the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) have been injured in an attack while distributing aid to Palestinians. As reported by Fox News, the two veterans are reportedly receiving medical treatment and are in stable condition. GHF said the Americans were "highly decorated" veterans. "GHF has repeatedly warned of credible threats from Hamas, including explicit plans to target American personnel, Palestinian aid workers, and the civilians who rely on our sites for food. Today's attack tragically affirms those warnings," the organization wrote on X. Despite the attacks, GHF vowed that it was still committed...

Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia University, issued a private apology this week after leaked messages revealed she suggested removing a Jewish trustee over her pro-Israel advocacy, sparking a firestorm amid ongoing federal scrutiny of the university’s handling of antisemitism on campus. “The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong. They do not reflect how I feel,” Shipman wrote Wednesday in an email obtained by Jewish Insider, which she sent to “trusted groups of friends and colleagues.” The messages, sent in 2023 and 2024 while Shipman was co-chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees, were...

A new rite published by the Vatican on Thursday will allow priests to celebrate a Mass to exhort Catholics to exercise care for the Earth, in the latest push by the 1.4-billion-member global Church to address global climate change. For centuries, Catholic priests have been able to celebrate special Masses to pray for their country, give thanks after a harvest or ask God to end a natural disaster. The new "Mass for the care of creation," prepared by two Vatican offices, allows priests to pray that Catholics will "lovingly care" for creation and "learn to live in harmony with all...

Republican lawmakers are slamming the Trump administration’s decision to halt some U.S. missile and munitions shipments to Ukraine, warning it risks emboldening Russia at a pivotal point in the war.Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, said he would be “aggressively looking into this matter” following the White House’s acknowledgment that the Pentagon froze deliveries of critical air defense weapons due to concerns over shrinking U.S. stockpiles.“We must build up our own defense industrial base here in the U.S. while simultaneously providing the needed assistance to our allies who are defending their freedom from a brutal invading...

For reporters, it's hardly unusual to call sources on the phone to learn details or get quotes that will enliven their stories. Sometimes people will talk, sometimes they won't. But the president of the United States? In an almost unfathomable level of access, reporters who call President Donald Trump on his personal cell phone often get an answer — and an interview — from the leader of the free world on the spot. There's evidence that this is happening more frequently. Paradoxically, it's the same president who popularized the term “fake news” and has battled against the press for years...

The end is nigh. That seems to be the message this week from the three liberal justices at the Supreme Court when faced with the nightmarish prospect of parents being able to remove their young children from mandatory classes on gay, lesbian and transgender material. … Justice Sonia Sotomayor declared that there “will be chaos for this nation’s public schools” and both education and children will “suffer” if parents are allowed to opt their children out of these lessons. She also worried about the “chilling effect” of the ruling, which would make schools more hesitant to offer such classes in...

Joe Rogan had a big chat with Senator Bernie Sanders about climate change, and it got pretty spicy! Bernie told Joe that climate change is real and switching to things like wind and solar power could make lots of jobs. But Joe wasn’t having it. He pointed out that the Earth’s temperature has always gone up and down. There have been ice ages and hot times before.Joe even mentioned an article from The Washington Post saying that we might be in a cooling period now, contradicting Bernie’s idea that the last ten years were the hottest ever.Joe backed it up...

Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) president Stacy Davis Gates said on Monday that “all children belong to” the union. At the City Club Chicago event, Gates bashed President Donald Trump for lessening the power of teachers’ unions, calling his education agenda a “relitigation” of the Civil War while complaining about the failing state of Chicago schools. Quoting civil rights activist James Baldwin, Gates tells the crowd, “The children are always ours. Every single one of them, all over the globe.” Gates then mocks parents who would respond by saying “CTU thinks your children are its children.” “Yes, we do,” Gates said....

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is irredeemable and must be eliminated through legislation. Failure to do so leaves the door open for future administrations to reinvigorate it and reintroduce destructive ideas and agendas into U.S. foreign policy. The idea of “development” has become too obtuse and colonized by progressives to keep the agency limited in scope beyond the Trump administration.

On the 10th anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges (federally mandating “marriage equality”), it’s proper to ask whether same-sex marriage is a good idea. One reason to think that it’s not is the existence of an epistemic oddity, an oddity which strongly undermines any argument for same-sex marriage (hereafter “SSM”). The oddity in question is characterized by what may be called an "underdetermination asymmetry."Start with the following very simple observation.There are two ultimate positions in the SSM debate, and only two. On the one hand, there’s love or care as the basis of marriage, as in the view of SSM’s supporters....

Detransitioner Chloe Cole landed a final blow to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) after she threw an absolute hissy fit over the recent United States Supreme Court transgender ruling for kids.On Wednesday, SCOTUS upheld Tennessee's law barring "gender-affirming care" (including irreversible mutilation) for so-called "transgender" minors, which specifically rejected claims that "transgender" people are part of a protected class. Warren lost her ever-loving leftist mind and falsely claimed on X that "Trans kids suffer when they don't get medically necessary care. This is a brazen political decision by the Supreme Court. My heart is with trans kids and their loved ones....

Lou Christie, the pop singer who indeed had lightning strike in a big way with his “Lightnin’ Strikes” smash in the 1960s, died Wednesday at 82, his family announced on social media. No date or cause of death was given. Christie had three top 10 singles in the U.S. across a period of six years in the ’60s, the biggest being “Lightnin’ Strikes,” which was released in 1965 and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1966. Written by Christie with Twyla Herbert, the MGM-label single was famous for a soaring hook with a nearly Frankie Valli-level...