Free Republic

As images of protests in Southern California have flooded television and social media in recent days, a key question has emerged: Why are so many protesters carrying Mexican flags at an American political protest? The sea of red, white and green Mexican flags at anti-deportation protests this week in Los Angeles has been seized upon by conservatives who argue that the demonstrations are inherently un-American, causing some protesters to consider leaving them at home. Photos of masked provocateurs waving Mexican flags atop burning Waymo taxis spread instantly across conservative social media this weekend. Republicans pointed to them as a prime...

During the early days of Donald J. Trump’s first presidency, lawyers at the attorney general’s office in Washington State would gather to strategize about what they saw as troubling directives being handed down by the White House.There were orders barring travelers from Muslim-majority countries, rolling back environmental rules and ending protections for young immigrants. Lawyers in Washington and other states controlled by Democrats believed the actions were endangering rights and lives.But there was one thing working to their advantage: Many of the administration’s orders were written in such a sloppy fashion, said Bob Ferguson, Washington State’s attorney general, that he...

To his detractors, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s cabinet looks like a rogues’ gallery of people with dubious credentials and questionable judgment. His supporters see something different. “It’s a masterpiece,’’ Eileen Margolis, 58, who lives in Weston, Fla., and owns a tattoo business, said of Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks unveiled over the past week. “If it was a painting, it would be a Picasso.” A “brilliant alliance,’’ is how Joanne Warwick, 60, a former Democrat from Detroit, described many of the nominees. “It’s pretty much a star cast,’’ said Judy Kanoui of Flat Rock, N.C., a retiree and lifelong Democrat who...

Her campaign pitch was moving, even high-minded. If Vice President Kamala Harris were elected to the White House, she would safeguard the ideals of a good nation. Voters had a choice, she said: democracy, constitutional rights and bedrock freedoms — or Donald J. Trump’s “chaos and division.” On Tuesday, the nation replied. The answer from more than half of voters seemed to dismiss warnings that Mr. Trump was a threat to principles on which the country had been founded. Abstract truths mattered less, voters said, than tangible issues, like the ability to pay rent or concerns over border crossings. In...

FOLSOM, Calif. — K.C. Alvey treads carefully when she and her dog, Stuart, walk the dappled trail behind their apartment in Folsom, California. Since the pandemic, her neighbors have included homeless campers along a brook known as Humbug Creek.There’s the man who periodically emerges from the brush, yelling in fear and tearing at tree limbs. There’s the hoarder who fled with his dog as a cleanup crew again cleared his massive campsite — shopping carts, three beds, throw pillows, art, books, mirrors on trees, rugs, torch fuel. Rogue campfires have been frequent.Until recently, federal appellate courts limited how far cities...

In New York City, the nation’s largest school district has lost some 50,000 students over the past two years. In Michigan, enrollment remains more than 50,000 below prepandemic levels from big cities to the rural Upper Peninsula. In the suburbs of Orange County, Calif., where families have moved for generations to be part of the public school system, enrollment slid for the second consecutive year; statewide, more than a quarter-million public school students have dropped from California’s rolls since 2019. And since school funding is tied to enrollment, cities that have lost many students — including Denver, Albuquerque and Oakland...

Finding the big picture in a political season of smallness Why, even in the face of wonders, we can’t look away from the presidential campaign ‘Now the fun begins,’ scientists say, but will we share it?