Free Republic

An uber-woke, $65K-a-year New York City private school will allow “emotionally distressed” students to skip class the day after the election next week — in an eyebrow-raising move that drew ire from comedian Jerry Seinfeld, whose kids once attended the elite institution. In an email titled “Election Day support,” Ethical Culture Fieldston School upper school principal Stacey Bobo vowed to “create space to provide students with the support they may need” in the wake of the White House race, the New York Times reported. Students will not be assigned homework on Election Day and there will be no assessments on...

A pair of Christian students trolled by Kamala Harris and mercilessly mocked by the crowd at her rally at the University of Wisconsin-La Cross last week insist they were “there for the right reasons.” Grant Beth and Luke Polaske, both juniors at the school, told “Fox & Friends Weekend” that they felt persecuted akin to Jesus and his early followers after they shouted such things as, “Christ is king!” when the Democratic vice president-turned-presidential candidate started talking about abortion rights. One of them said Harris even sarcastically waved to him and gave him “an evil smirk” as he held up...

Jorgenys Robertson Cova is an illegal alien from Venezuela who entered the U.S. two years ago.. Authorities have arrested a confirmed Tren de Aragua gang member, after he allegedly recruited students from two Houston middle schools to join the Venezuelan gang. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jorgenys Robertson Cova—an illegal alien from Venezuela—entered the United States two years ago. Cova is suspected to have recruited students from Jane Long Academy and Las Americas—both of which are located in the Houston Independent School District. He was arrested last week after being wanted in Pearland for theft and was accused...

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign refuses to explain how it obtained sensitive student data in Arizona—later exploiting it for a massive get-out-the-vote effort. On Sunday, the Harris campaign sent unsolicited text messages to students, parents and others affiliated with Arizona’s three major universities about voter registration deadlines. The three affected institutions were Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University. While universities claimed that data could be released under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Republicans in the Arizona Senate have launched an investigation, arguing the law prohibits campaigns from...

Since 2022, nearly 50,000 migrants have been bused to Chicago from the Texas border. While not all of these new arrivals have opted to stay in Chicago, many who have chosen to make the city their new home have been resettled in predominantly Black neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. Now, WGN News can exclusively report that several Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teachers who work in these communities say they were told by school administrators to give migrant students passing grades last school year. The teachers we spoke with work in CPS elementary schools and say they spoke no...

We're told that we need to forgive every dollar of the $1.74 trillion in student loan debt because young people are being crushed under a mountain of bad loans. How were they supposed to know that majoring in Environmental Activism wouldn't allow them to earn enough money to pay back their loan? That said, young people are so overburdened in college loan debt that they can't buy a house, or start a family, or even move out of their parent's home. That's been the narrative advanced by Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and every other advocate to make student...

As Israel-Hamas demonstrations continue in the new school year, the misunderstanding of free speech is fueling disruption and hypocrisy on campuses.With the start of the academic year, campuses across the nation are preparing for more protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict. As students return to campus, the underlying issues that ignited these demonstrations—misunderstandings and misapplications of free speech—remain unaddressed. These protests have revealed a pressing challenge for universities: upholding the principles of free speech amid modern political activism. While many protests last semester were peaceful, others have disrupted campus operations, led to altercations and vandalism, and made some students feel unsafe...

24 hours after a deadly school shooting in Georgia, local parents are speaking out, worried about strict cell phone policies. Many Apalachee High School students said that they used phones to tell their parents about the shooting. This comes as school districts in Ohio and many other states, including Georgia, are adopting stricter policies on mobile devices. … In the Cincinnati Public School District (CPS), seventh through twelfth grade students are required to lock their phones in a pouch during the school day. It's supposed to limit distractions in the classroom, but not all parents are on board, especially after...

An upstate imam urged student activists to “take out” an outspoken, pro-Israel Columbia University professor who’s returning to the embattled Ivy this fall after a year of antisemitic hate. Vassar-educated, Utica-based imam Tom Facchine made the plea about business school professor Shai Davidai during an Aug. 20 webinar called “Islamic Political Activism” with various Columbia student groups which promoted and broadcast it. “That Shai Davidai guy: How do we get him in trouble? How do we create a situation in which he’s in jeopardy?” Facchine, 35, asked. “If you’re able to take out somebody like that and make an example,...

Former President Donald Trump again drew outrage from pro-life organizations this week after he said he would not ban the distribution of abortion pills by mail if elected, drawing outrage from pro-life organizations. In an interview with CBS News on Monday, Trump answered whether he would enforce the Comstock Act if he won the 2024 presidential election. As explained by reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns, the 1873 law could "prohibit the … distribution of medication abortion by mail." "No," Trump responded. "We will be discussing specifics of it but generally speaking, no." When asked again if he would enforce the Comstock Act,...

Governor Kathy Hochul today met with State Commissioner of Education Betty A. Rosa and leaders from the State Education Department to discuss the ongoing development of a ‘Media Literacy’ toolkit for educators to help teach students HOW TO SPOT MIS/DIS/MAL-INFORMATION online. Following a surge in online hate speech in November 2023, Governor Hochul directed the State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services to work with experts to develop and distribute an ideologically neutral product which gives teachers resources to develop students’ ability to analyze, evaluate, and assess all forms of media, including information delivered through social media. “The rising...

The pro-Palestinian activists who disrupted campuses across the nation are plotting their return for the new academic year. Demonstrators say all forms of protest are still on the table, despite the more than 2,000 arrests so far, as students try to figure out a new strategy to demand their schools divest from Israel, among other goals. “What we will see [is] the students will continue their activism, will continue doing what they’ve done in conventional and unconventional ways. So not only protests, not only encampments, kind of any — any available means necessary to push Columbia to divest from from...

A California judge has ruled that teachers were right to punish a seven-year-old girl over a Black Lives Matter drawing because 'she's too young to have First Amendment rights.' The first grader was banned from recess and drawing pictures at Viejo Elementary in Orange County after she added the words 'any life' below Black Lives Matter on a picture she drew and and gave to a black friend. The picture showed the words 'Black Lives Matter' with four round shapes in various different tones of brown, beige and yellow, which was intended to 'represent her friends' who were 'racially-mixed'.

Alaska’s Supreme Court justices on Friday reversed a Superior Court ruling that struck down key components of the state’s correspondence school program. Nearly 23,000 homeschool students may continue to use their allotments of state education money to pay for private school tuition until the Anchorage Superior Court reconsiders the case. The Supreme Court made its decision a day after oral arguments in an appeal of the ruling in State of Alaska, Department of Education and Early Development v. Alexander, in which plaintiffs argued that it is unconstitutional for public education money to be spent on private school tuition. The justices...

In Minnesota, 50% of students cannot read at grade level. If we were to apply the traditional academic grading scale to that outcome, the public education system in the state would get a solid F.. That abysmal performance was the topic of much debate during this term of the Minnesota legislature, prompting the Democrat trifecta to pass “the READ Act,” an effort to replace the failed “whole language” method of literacy training with traditional phonics education. “Whole language” is an absolute joke, recognized even by many on the Left as a toxic methodology that fails students. In essence, “whole language”...

Foreign workers protesting the P.E.I. government's recent immigration policy changes say they've agreed to pause their no-liquid hunger strike after meeting with the province's top immigration official. One of the protest's organizers, Rupinder Pal Singh, said he met on Friday with Jeff Young, the director of the provincial Office of Immigration. Singh said Young encouraged the group to put a hold on its hunger strike while the government considers their demands. "They have all the information that they require; now we are just waiting for answers. As the government is cooperating with us, definitely we will be doing the same...

Hundreds of New York City kids walked out of school Friday and staged a pro-Palestinian protest that was promoted by several radical teacher groups. Some 350 students had descended on the Department of Education headquarters at the Tweed Courthouse in Lower Manhattan starting by 4 p.m.. They were seen waving signs on the front steps of the building calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and describing Israel’s military offensive on the region following the Oct. 7 terror attack as “genocide.” The walkout was organized by Teachers Unite and a handful of other groups, including NYC Educators for Palestine, the Palestine...

Considering that the flood of illegal immigration into the US is not popular with voters, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre "why doesn't the President take executive action to enforce the existing laws against illegal entry into the country?" Her response was "why should he? He wants to bring in as many new immigrants as we can. Existing laws don't allow the kind of unrestricted entry that he wants to see. Until those laws are changed he's going to stick with what has worked since he reversed Trump's executive orders meant to enforce existing...

JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. (WATE) — A scheme designed to let foreigners do information technology work as if they were actually in the United States has been unraveled by federal investigators. The investigation claimed that Jefferson City was home to one of several “laptop farms” that helped make the scheme possible.According to court documents, the schemes involved defrauding over 300 U.S. companies using U.S. payment platforms, online job site accounts and proxy computers located in the United States. The Justice Department shared that two people have been arrested and search warrants were executed in Jefferson City, Washington, D.C. and other jurisdictions.Federal...

The president of Evergreen State College has announced he will comply with the demands of students who protested professor Bret Weinstein, who refused to participate in a campus event where white students and staff were asked to leave school grounds. Although Evergreen President George Bridges announced that progressive professor Bret Weinstein wouldn’t be suspended, Bridges announced that he would comply with the long list of demands that the students brought before him. “I’m George Bridges, I use he/him pronouns,” he began, before stating that he would comply with most of the student protester’s demands. Bridges went as far to say that...