Free Republic

A Tennessee teacher who was named Teacher of the Year has quit after accusing the school district of directing her to change a failing student’s grade. Samira Hardcastle, named the 2025-2026 Teacher of the Year at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Antioch, Tenn., submitted her letter of resignation in May after eight years teaching art in Metro Nashville Public Schools. “District leaders asked me to fabricate grades for a parent who sat in the office for hours until her daughter’s failing grades were changed,” Hardcastle said in an impassioned speech at Tuesday’s school board meeting. “It creates false entitlement....

WASHINGTON — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has made at least $174,000 annually for nearly eight years as a member of Congress, but like many of her “Squad” colleagues, she has yet to put a substantial dent in her student loan debt, according to House financial disclosures. The Bronx and Queens Democrat has owed between $15,001 and $50,000 in federal student loan debt since her election to the House in 2018. That’s the same amount she owes now, according to her August disclosure, where lawmakers report ranges for debt and income. The “Tax the Rich!” pol reported less than $81,000 in...

He’s losing his connection with reality. Days after getting booted from his family’s $1.75 million Virginia mansion, the Cornell University student who declared he’s “not interested in working for a Jew” is losing his mind over a new enemy: a 5G cell tower. In a bizarre Aug. 2 rant on X, Austin Franco claimed a mysterious 5G box outside the window of his new Ithaca, NY, pad is blasting harmful radiation right into his brain. “My head has been ringing for the past hour and I have a massive headache,” Franco, 19, whined in the midnight post. “The ping on...

The Cornell University student who declared he’s “not interested in working for a Jew” got tossed from his parents’ $1.75 million home in Virginia — and is now sniveling online for cash. Austin Franco, who went viral for declining a job interview at NYC startup VryfID for antisemitic reasons, took to X on Wednesday, declaring, “My parents are kicking me out.” But the hater did get some good news the next day, as Cornell revealed to The Post that, unlike his disappointed parents, Alexander and Diana, the liberal upstate college won’t kick him to the curb. The rising junior created...

Gone are the days of university freshmen reading classical philosophers like Plato or contemporary pedagogues like Ta-Nehisi Coates. These days, incoming college students are lucky if they can get through Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.” According to a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — a forum for 38 high-income, predominantly Western countries — a not insignificant number of adult students enrolled in higher education are now reading and doing math at a level which, in a more functional society, would be alarming for a middle schooler. The survey,...

Millions of student loan borrowers will need to switch to new repayment plans starting July 1 – and the plan you choose could make a huge difference in how much they owe each month. Roughly 7 million people enrolled in the now-defunct Biden-era SAVE program will need to enroll in new plans as their payments resume after nearly two years in limbo. President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act has cut down a handful of repayment options to just two, including the existing Income-Based Repayment plan, or IBR, and his new Repayment Assistance Plan, known as RAP. “The benefit of...

James Cartwright, formerly vice chairman to Joint Chiefs of Staff, was accused of lying to investigators A retired top US general pleaded guilty on Monday to making a false statement during an FBI probe into a classified intelligence leak about a cyber attack against Iran's nuclear programme in 2010. Marine Corps General James Cartwright, 67, formerly the vice chairman to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was accused of lying to investigators when he said he had not confirmed classified information to New York Times journalist David Sanger. Sanger wrote a book describing a joint US and Israeli operation that deployed...

The Department of Education announced Thursday that it has saved American taxpayers more than $1 billion by aggressively eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse within federal student aid programs. The department’s new report takes aim at previous policies, claiming that while citizens must present identification to board a flight or rent a car, the Biden administration had required identity verification for less than 1% of students applying for federal financial aid. "That ill-informed decision created a prime opportunity for fraudsters to exploit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form and steal taxpayer funds," the department stated in a press...

Missing University Of Alabama student James Gracey found dead on Barcelona beach. He was on Spring Break in Barcelona with friends. Very suspicious circumstances. If Gracey were an attractive female, his story would attract more nationwide attention. https://www.youtube.com/live/huc5YEJh8oE?si=OVuONt8TnCHVbTw4

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Linda McMahon is sending a letter to 43 million Americans with student loans — about 9 million of whom are in default — to notify them that the Treasury Department is taking over debt collection, The Post has learned. The letter describes the transfer of responsibilities as a way to protect taxpayers by improving the efficiency of the collection process — after loan repayments were paused through much of the Biden administration, with borrowers protected from delinquency through September 2024. “For too long, Americans have shouldered the consequences of poor leadership and persistent mismanagement of our...

My solution is simple and market based – make colleges co-sign or share default risk on any federally backed loan The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals just slammed the door on the Biden era’s SAVE student loan repayment plan. On Monday the court told a district judge to approve the Trump administration’s settlement with Missouri and kill the program for good. More than seven million borrowers who had been coasting in forbearance for a year and a half now face the music. They will have to switch to one of the old repayment options or start writing real checks. It...

BRASÍLIA (9 February 2026) — A Brazilian woman, Isadora Borges, is facing criminal prosecution after posting comments on social media expressing her views on gender ideology, exposing her to a possible prison sentence of four to ten years. In November 2020, Isadora Borges made two posts on X (then Twitter), peacefully expressing her views against gender ideology. One comment stated that “transgender” women “were obviously born male.” Another stated: “A person who identifies as transgender retains their birth DNA. No surgery, synthetic hormone, or clothing change will change this fact…” Her comments quickly gained attention online, and prompted Erika Hilton,...

The Education Department announced on Friday that it will delay the implementation of wage garnishment and other involuntary collection efforts affecting defaulted student loan borrowers. The department said the delay affects involuntary collections on federal student loans through wage garnishments and the Treasury Offset Program, which is used to seize some or all of borrowers’ payments from the government, including tax refunds and Social Security benefits. “The temporary delay will enable the Department to implement major student loan repayment reforms under the Working Families Tax Cuts Act...to give borrowers more options to repay their loans,” the department said in the...

The U.S. Department of Education has reported an end to more than $1 billion in attempted student aid fraud in 2025. These reforms were needed after the massive waste and fraud resulting from loosened rules during the Biden regime. “Federal investigators found nearly $90 million in aid had already been fraudulently disbursed, including over $30 million to deceased individuals and more than $40 million to bots posing as students,” according to a report from Campus Reform. That’s a lot of fraud, but it’s hardly surprising. Under Democrats, fraud and waste are rampant, as we learned in the era of DOGE....

A Louisiana immigration judge ordered Columbia University student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil to be deported to Algeria or Syria on Friday, according to documents published by the American Civil Liberties Union, leading his legal team to appeal on Wednesday to the New Jersey federal court overseeing his civil rights case. The Columbia University Apartheid Divest leader, who was detained on March 8 and had his green card revoked over his role in belligerent activism on campus, was on September 12 denied a twelve day time extension, a change of venue to New York, and a waiver for removability.

The State Department has revoked more than 6,000 international student visas because of violations of US law and overstays, the department told the BBC. The agency said the "vast majority" of the violations were assault, driving under the influence (DUI), burglary and "support for terrorism". The move comes as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on immigration and international students.While the State Department did not specify what they meant by "support for terrorism", the Trump administration has targeted some students who have protested in support of Palestine, arguing they had expressed antisemitic behaviour. Of the 6,000 student visas that were...

Less than half of student loan borrowers have been making their payments on $1.6 trillion of debt as they struggle to afford housing and groceries – and some are letting the bills pile up as a form of protest. Only 38% of the 42.7 million borrowers nationwide are in repayment and current following five years of leniency measures from the US government following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Education said in April. While most borrowers have loans that are less than $40,000, about 3.6 million Americans owe more than $100,000 each in federal loans totaling $656.7 billion – or...

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...

More than a quarter-million Chinese students attending college in the United States saw their futures plunged into uncertainty Wednesday when the Trump administration announced an aggressive crackdown on student visa holders from that country. With an estimated 277,398 students pursuing primarily undergraduate and graduate degrees, China ranks only behind India among foreign countries with the highest number of students attending college in the U.S., according to data from the Institute of International Education. Since China’s middle-class boom in the early aughts, its students have flocked to U.S. institutions, which in turn welcomed the enrollment boost and mostly unsubsidized tuition fees....

Universities and colleges across the country can thank Harvard for this latest development. If federal courts won't allow the Department of Homeland Security to deal directly with Harvard on compliance for the Student Education Visa Program (SEVP), the administration can simply make it more difficult for everyone instead. That seems to be the case today, although this may have accelerated a project that would have started soon anyway. After a federal court issued a stay that allows Harvard to continue enrolling foreign students, the Trump administration paused the entire program. Embassies and consulates have been ordered to stop conducting necessary...