Free Republic

Seattle’s lefty Mayor Katie Wilson admitted she was wrong to slam Starbucks and push for a boycott of the mega-coffee chain birthed in the Pacific City. Wilson, 43, issued a terse mea culpa to the New York Times this week as questions swirl about whether the liberal Northwest city can attract and retain businesses, including Starbucks, which recently chose to expand its footprint in Tennessee. The democratic socialist made waves last fall when she joined a barista union rally as mayor-elect and expressed her disgust with one of Seattle’s most recognizable businesses. “I am not buying Starbucks, and you should...

On a scorching hot afternoon in Havana, the line outside the state bakery stretches down the block. Inside, the shelves are almost bare. A man in a faded baseball cap tells me he’s been waiting for two hours for bread that might not arrive. Across the street, a gleaming black SUV with tinted windows idles outside a hotel mostly reserved for foreigners. Its lobby is stocked with imported whiskey; the air-conditioning is turned up to Arctic levels. This is not an unusual juxtaposition in today’s Cuba. I walk through Central Havana with Antonio Rodríguez, a 60-year-old university history teacher who...

Principled advocacy of the free market requires an understanding of the differences between genuine free enterprise and “state capitalism.” Although the Left frequently exaggerates and overemphasizes the evils of corporate America, proponents of the free market often find themselves in the awkward position of defending the status quo of state capitalism, which is in fact a common adversary of the free marketer and the anti-corporate leftist, even if the latter misdiagnoses the problem and proposes the wrong solutions... Indeed, corporatism, implemented by the state — whether through direct handouts, corporate bailouts, eminent domain, licensing laws, antitrust regulations, or environmental edicts...

Elf Aquitaine, until its privatisation in 1994, was much more than a oil company - according to prosecutors at the trial of Elf's top managers. They claim the state-owned firm worked as an unofficial arm of France's murkiest diplomacy. The close relationship between Elf and French officials is well-documented, and goes back to the presidency of General Charles de Gaulle. As the company expanded into Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, Elf paid secret "commissions" to African officials with the blessing of French governments. By the 1980s Elf had operations in Gabon, Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon, Angola and Nigeria - which,...

FORT WORTH, Texas — A teenager arrested in connection with a string of south Fort Worth car arsons has been linked to a viral social media video developed overseas by an extremist hate group, police said Tuesday. The Fort Worth Police Department (FWPD) said, on Jan. 6, it became aware of a concerning video shared across multiple social media platforms, which depicted an individual wearing a hockey mask delivering explicit threats of mass violence, stating intentions to kill indiscriminately, and expressing a lack of regard for human life. Fort Worth police, in coordination with the Fort Worth Arson Unit, determined...

In 2002, my classmate Graham Platner ran for student-body president of John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor. I remember watching him in our auditorium debate his fellow candidates. He was the radical, wearing a revolutionary proletarian costume: overalls and a red armband... I don’t recall the issues they discussed, but I do remember Platner proposing collective action to overturn some school policy — saying something along the lines of, “They can’t suspend us all.” The history teacher serving as moderator interjected to remind Platner and everyone else that, yes, in fact, they could... Students elected the safe candidate, a...

...Exhaustion helps explain why ideas once treated as radioactive — socialism, in particular — are now discussed less as utopian fantasies and more as possible exits from a stalled national project. For younger Americans, the appeal is less ideological romance than hunger... They face unaffordable rents, unstable work, medical debt and student loans that metastasize faster than they can be paid down... When people can’t eat, can’t save and can’t think clearly, the abstractions of “free markets” lose their magic. Systems are judged not by theory but by outcomes. Right now, the outcomes for average Americans are brutal. This is...

A stunning new poll by The Heartland Institute’s Glenn C. Haskins Emerging Issues Center and Rasmussen Reports reveals that 51% of young Americans who are likely to vote in the next presidential election would like to see a democratic socialist in the Oval Office. The survey found that nearly three-in-10 young Americans who voted for President Trump in 2024 would prefer a democratic socialist win the presidency in 2028. Those earning less than $100,000 per year and those earning $200,000 or more also voiced strong support for a democratic socialist in the White House whereas the only income cohort to...

The full nationalisation of British Steel is expected to be announced in the king’s speech this week, a year after the government took over the daily running of the loss-making business from its Chinese owner. The steelmaker, which employs 3,500 people at its plant in Scunthorpe, came under government control last April amid fears that its owner, Jingye, was planning to shut down the site. British Steel operates the last two remaining blast furnaces in the UK, but its economic control remains with the Chinese company, which bought it out of insolvency in early 2020. An announcement confirming the plans...

Two Republican terror groups opposed to the Good Friday Agreement have denied they are involved in any plot to kill Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. The Irish National Liberation Army and the Continuity IRA said this weekend there are no plans to assassinate Sinn Fein leaders. They also condemned any threats to the two Sinn Fein MPs even though they were political enemies. The INLA and its political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, described claims by Adams that he and Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly were under threat as 'nonsense'. An INLA spokesman told The Observer that the allegation...

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., criticized the Democratic Party’s shift toward socialism and progressive policies during an appearance on ‘Real Time with Bill Maher.’

“It’s a coming attraction of what is coming next,” Kirk told Tucker Carlson. “Zohran Mamdani the…Muslim communist that is running for mayor in New York City…most people are missing the point of really what this is. This is another distress signal by young people to say, ‘Hey, if you’re not going to fix our life, economically, we’re going to get very radical politically.” … “Let’s take a step back. President Trump won the youth vote in many states across the country,” Kirk stated. “12, 13 years ago when I started Turning Point, if you would have told me that a...

Nato is “disintegrating”, Poland’s prime minister has said after the United States announced it was withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany. Donald Tusk made the dire assessment of the Western alliance on Saturday amid an escalating war of words between Donald Trump and Germany over Berlin’s criticism of the war on Iran. In a post on X on Saturday, Mr Tusk wrote: “The greatest threat to the transatlantic community are not its external enemies, but the ongoing disintegration of our alliance. We must all do what it takes to reverse this disastrous trend.” On Friday evening, the US department of defence...

During a May Day rally in Chicago, several demonstrators — including students participating in a walkout encouraged by teachers — struggled to explain the core ideologies they were championing, according to on-the-ground reporting by Fox News senior correspondent Mike Tobin. Tobin spoke with a Chicago Public Schools student, Cody West, who was carrying a "Party for socialism" sign. When Tobin asked the student if he believed in or knew what socialism was, West admitted, "not really, not too much." West mentioned that some teachers told students "it's a walkout, you guys can just go, go protest." A Chicago Teachers Union...

South Africa Now Hunting Down African Immigrants, Asking Them To Leave.

The DSA and other socialists want to make Mamdani the new Obama, but in his honeymoon period he’s underwater among New Yorkers and after working hard to try and elect his candidate in the West Village of Manhattan, of all places, she lost badly instead. You may remember Lindsey Boylan for being the woman whose claims helped take down Cuomo. I gave her a little too much credence at the time but since then she’s proven to be remarkably flexible.

The national wage floor is so low that it might as well not exist.Do you want to know the good news about the minimum wage? In most parts of the country, it is practically irrelevant. The last federal minimum wage increase went into effect on July 24, 2009, raising it from $6.55 an hour to $7.25. We have experienced nearly 50 percent inflation since then, yet the minimum wage has stayed the same. Even in 2009, only 4.9 percent of workers were actually paid $7.25 an hour, and that number has dropped to 1.1 percent today. This is good news:...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked his first 100 days in office Sunday alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, touting what he described as sweeping achievements driven by government intervention. Mamdani cited key wins, including securing $1.2 billion for universal childcare, advancing plans for five publicly owned grocery stores, pursuing legal action against landlords and boosting investment in services such as sanitation and infrastructure. In a reference to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her critique that socialists "eventually run out of other people’s money," Mamdani defended his administration’s approach. "I have thought often of the Margaret...

Maggie Thatcher, easily one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, was a no-nonsense woman. She became Prime Minister of the UK in 1979 and would rescue her nation from the economic quagmire created by the policies of her leftist predecessors. Maggie was the daughter of a merchant. And as one might expect as the daughter of someone who had to deal with customers and vendors and regulators and all the while make sure there was something left in the bank at the end of the month, she was a straightforward and pragmatic leader. For someone born almost exactly...

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and first lady Rama Duwaji have been invited to the Met Gala — but won’t be attending, sources tell Page Six. New York City’s mayor is traditionally invited by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the lavish event every year, but we’re told that Mamdani, 34, won’t be joining Condé Nast’s Anna Wintour and her coterie of celeb guests on Monday, May 4. “He’s not coming,” said a source. “And it would be foolish if he did … can you imagine? It goes against everything he believes in.” Indeed, the event is being financially subsidized by Amazon...