Free Republic

Oregon Senate Democrats passed a bump stock ban late last week and the legislation also allows local municipalities to ban the carry of firearms in buildings where public meetings are held. A bump stock ban once existed at the federal level but the Supreme Court of the United States struck it down on June 14, 2024. In the majority opinion for the bump stock decision, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear the ban faltered in claiming bump stocks turn semiautomatic firearms into machine guns: Semiautomatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machineguns. This case...

The State Department has told U.S. embassies and consulates to expand vetting for all visa applicants who wish to come to Harvard University, including visitors as well as students, according to an email obtained by CBS News. In an internal email dated May 29 and sent by Secretary of State Marco Rubio's office to all U.S. diplomatic and consular posts, consular officers were told that this "additional vetting" applies to anyone wanting a visa to come to Harvard for "any purpose." That includes current or prospective students, faculty, employees, contractors, guest speakers and even tourists, per the email. The email...

The close relationship between the United States and Europe transcends geographic proximity and transactional politics. It represents a unique bond forged in common culture, faith, familial ties, mutual assistance in times of strife, and above all, a shared Western civilizational heritage. Our transatlantic partnership is underpinned by a rich Western tradition of natural law, virtue ethics, and national sovereignty. This tradition flows from Athens and Rome, through medieval Christianity, to English common law, and ultimately into America's founding documents. The Declaration's revolutionary assertion that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” echoes the thought of Aristotle, Thomas...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) seems to be vulnerable in his home state of South Carolina’s Republican primary, a Lynch for Senate poll commissioned with Pulse Opinion Research found. The top lines of the survey spell bad news for Graham, as 57 percent of Republican primary voters in his state “would not vote for Lindsey Graham if the election were held today,” according to the press release. The poll found that likely voters in South Carolina are “dissatisfied with Lindsey Graham and are just as likely to vote for a more conservative, America First candidate.”

An evenly divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states cannot provide funding to religious charter schools, turning away from a potential decision that would have fundamentally changed K-12 education.The 4-4 split meant the justices upheld the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling that both Sooner State law and the US Constitution prohibit taxpayer funding from going toward religious schools. Justice Amy Coney Barrett had recused herself from arguments, having taught at the University of Notre Dame’s law school for about 15 years. The school’s religious liberty clinic had been representing one of the parties in the case, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic...

Delaware Democrat Gov. Matt Meyer signed a bill on Tuesday legalizing physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients given six months or less to live. Meyers claimed the measure, called the End-of-Life Options Act, is about “compassion, dignity, and respect for personal choice.” The bill, which will take effect next year, allows those patients to request a prescription to self-administer and end their lives, Fox News Digital reported. “We’re acknowledging today that even in the last moments of life, compassion matters,” Meyer said at the bill signing. “Every Delawarean should have the right to face their final chapter with peace, dignity,...

Term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) is reportedly moving to block the Ohio Republican Party from endorsing Vivek Ramaswamy’s bid to succeed him. DeWine and his advisers hope to prevent the state party from endorsing Ramaswamy to replace DeWine in the governor’s mansion in Columbus. President Donald Trump endorsed Ramaswamy on the night he announced his campaign to govern the Buckeye State. The move pits DeWine sharply against Trump and Vice President JD Vance, NBC noted: The moves place DeWine sharply at odds with Trump and Vice President JD Vance, an Ohioan who has directed his political team to steer Ramaswamy’s...

A kayaker was attacked and killed by an alligator Tuesday afternoon at Lake Kissimmee State Park in Central Florida, according to authorities. Authorities were alerted to the incident just before 4 p.m. when a witness reported an encounter with the reptile. Video from the scene showed law enforcement officers using both boats and helicopters to respond to the scene and potentially search for the animal. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission released a statement that read, “Preliminary information indicates that a woman was canoeing when she encountered an alligator and went into the water. The woman was later recovered...

A former State Department budget analyst has pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $650,000 from the agency over a two-year span, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC. Levita Almuete Ferrer, 64, of Maryland, admitted to abusing her signature authority over a State Department checking account between March 2022 and April 2024 in her capacity as a senior budget analyst in the department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol. She wrote 60 checks to herself and three checks to someone else she had a personal relationship with, prosecutors said. She printed and signed each check before depositing all...

New York state legislators got one step closer to legalizing assisted suicide for terminally ill people on Tuesday. The state Assembly, following nearly five hours of emotional debate, passed the controversial “Medical Aid in Dying Act” 81-67, with around 20 Democrats breaking ranks to oppose the controversial measure. “Each and every life has value,” Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh (R-Saratoga), one of the legislation’s opponents, said on the Assembly floor. “Progress may not be on a straight line and will look different to each of us, but this idea of giving up and dying is not excelsior, ever upward. It’s incredibly...

I will admit, when I first read that Susan Rice was still ensconced on the Defense Policy Board well into the new Trump administration, I thought it must surely be fake news, some hallucination conjured by an overactive internet rumor mill. Yet, with the bitter taste of disbelief still fresh, the facts became clear. Not only had she lingered, she had lingered officially, and with all the institutional imprimatur the position carries. It is the sort of stunning oversight that shakes one's faith in the assumption that elections carry consequences. Rice, a veteran of Obama-era foreign policy failures and perhaps...

News ReleaseSecretary Chavez-DeRemer warns states could lose federal funds if illegal immigrants allowed access to unemployment benefitsWASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer is urging governors to comply with President Trump’s directives ensuring tax dollars are not spent on encouraging or rewarding illegal immigration. In a letter sent today, the Secretary reminds all states that failing to fulfill existing legal obligations will result in the loss of federal funding through the Title III UI administrative grant.“Our nation’s unemployment benefits exist solely for workers who are eligible to receive them,” Secretary Chavez-DeRemer wrote. “Unemployment benefits are not a handout for...

The Trump administration is reorganizing the State Department to eliminate offices it considers redundant and cut some programs it says do not align with U.S. interests, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday. "This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies," Rubio said in a statement, describing the moves as part of President Donald Trump's "America First" agenda. "Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist," Rubio said. Work that fell to...

Left-wing commentator and Harvard Law professor emeritus Laurence Tribe claimed Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that President Donald Trump’s administration was causing “an impending police state.” Tribe said, “I been in school for 50 years studying the constitution, teaching about it. It doesn’t enforce itself. It takes human beings of character to take it seriously. And when for whatever combination of cultural and social reasons, the nation selects someone who clearly has no respect for the constitution, someone who is cruel, someone who is without moral principle this is what we see. We see a tinhorn dictator interacting with a wannabe...

Conservative critics have long accused the department of helping to censor the American right... The only office within the US State Department that monitors foreign disinformation is about to be eliminated, two State Department officials have told MIT Technology Review. The Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub is a small office in the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy that tracks and counters foreign disinformation campaigns.

An internal document reviewed by The Post targets spending on humanitarian assistance, global health and international organizations such as the U.N. and NATO... The memo, which was reviewed by The Washington Post, says that cuts contained in an early proposal from the White House Office of Management and Budget for the next fiscal year would leave a total budget of $28.4 billion for all activities carried out by the State Department and USAID, a separate agency that the Trump administration has sought to dismantle. That represents a decline of $27 billion, or 48 percent, from funding levels approved by Congress...

Talk about unintended consequences! In 2023, Maryland Democrats voted to stick it to the Catholic-Church by lifting the statute of limitations on suing for child sexual abuse after an investigative report of the Archdiocese of Baltimore showed over 600 children had been abused there since the 1940s. Now, this might have been well intentioned, but it was also a clear attempt, and a successful one, to damage the Catholic Church in Maryland. But while the lawmakers were busy high-fiving the destruction of those awful Catholics, they ended up stepping in their own trap. Much to their chagrin, they had forgotten...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) defended his comments about taking glee in Tesla’s stock — which his state’s retirement fund owns shares of — falling and stated that “It’s a little bit personal.” But it’s also because CEO Elon Musk is “attacking the portfolios of working Minnesotans and working Americans who’ve paid into these programs that he calls a Ponzi scheme.” Walz said, “It’s a little bit personal. I don’t want to be disingenuous. The guy does bother me. It’s a little bit personal. But look, my beef on this is, is that...

While Wisconsin's Supreme Court race is officially nonpartisan, Democrats and Republicans have both picked sides and are pouring fortunes into their efforts. As the votes are tallied Tuesday night, the ability to claim political momentum amid the upheaval of President Donald Trump’s second term will be on the line. What is being tested, though, is not so much whether large numbers of voters have changed their minds in the five months since the presidential election. When it comes to Trump himself, Wisconsin is an especially polarized state, with three straight presidential elections decided by less than 1 point. More likely,...

While numerous federal district court judges have issued ill-conceived restraining orders against the administration, I have long believed that it will prevail in its efforts to place control of the state in the hands of the elected executive, away from the deep state bureaucracy and its black-robed judicial allies. As the litigation of these matters proceeds, I think my belief will be justified. We will return to a constitutional republican form of government. For a day-to-day look at the progress of these multiple cases, I urge you to go to X and follow Professor Margot Cleveland, who is (bless...