Free Republic

The city of Chicago is billions of dollars in debt, including $36 billion in pension debt. The Chicago Public School district also has a budget deficit of more than $700 million. Despite these very dire fiscal parameters, Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to spend more taxpayer money to give reparations to areas where ICE conducted immigration enforcement raids. "I believe the most relevant ballot referendum question around receiving reparations for communities that experienced that hardship, and whether that was on the west side of Chicago or the black man being placed in an illegal chokehold or long guns being stuck into...

The Los Angeles Times recently published a "News Analysis" headlined: "Trump, long a critic of 'forever wars,' may be stumbling into one with Iran." The analysis offers legitimate grounds for criticizing President Donald Trump. He has described the objectives of the war against Iran in different ways. He has made changing predictions about its duration. He has repeatedly suggested that an agreement was near, only for negotiations to collapse. He promised no more endless Middle East wars, yet the conflict has continued for months, American servicemembers have died, and the administration has not clearly defined what victory looks like. All...

The United Kingdom has fallen. It’s a country where people are jailed for flipping off traffic cameras, where social media posts can also land you in prison, and where smoking is now banned for anyone born after January 1, 2009. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, and it makes one proud to be American that they are not part of this chaos. And HBO’s Bill Maher was not shy about discussing it either.

Townhall.com - Leading conservative site covering news, politics, and culture with analysis and commentary. A Federal Court Just Handed Gov. Greg Abbott a Win in His Fight Against CAIR. A Federal Court Just Handed Gov. Greg Abbott a Win in His Fight Against CAIR. Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced late last year that he was designating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist groups. Such a move would ban them from "buying or acquiring land in Texas and authorizes the Attorney General to sue to shut them down," Abbott said at the time. Abbott...

Turning Point USA CEO and chair Erika Kirk helped organize the White House listening session this month that put disgruntled Make America Healthy Again advocates in the same room with President Donald Trump, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and their leading advisers, according to two people inside the Trump administration and two people familiar with the meeting, granted anonymity to discuss the details. It’s one of the first and most prominent examples of Kirk helping the Trump administration keep its coalition together ahead of what is expected to be a difficult midterm election cycle. Some of Kirk' supporters see...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is attributing her alleged inflated net worth to an accounting mistake. Earlier this year, reports showed that Ms. Omar had accumulated significant wealth, with a net worth in the millions, which raised questions about possible fraud. Subsequently, Nick Shirley’s investigation into a web of Somali-led scams brought new attention to her financial dealings. If that’s a true accounting error, then I’m Somali, too. Are you kidding me, lady? There was an error that inflated your assets to $30 million? Please, also, one of the ventures that The Washington Free Beacon investigated in January, a winery, is...

As we told you last week, almost all of the 4,500 refugees who have come to America in the last several months are Afrikaners, or whites from South Africa. They're fleeing a nation that routinely discriminates, harasses, and kills Afrikaners, and have — unlike so many others — a legitimate claim to asylum and refugee status. The Left is supremely unhappy about this, of course, because they really only like certain kinds of refugees. The Afrikaners include women and children, show up waving American flags, and will assimilate into our culture instead of attacking, raping, and murdering us.

There are two kinds of people: the kind of people who want to end the Iran War and people who want to win the Iran War. The Victory Option encompasses the goal of the first kind of people because it ends the war, but ending the war is not the proper objective. The proper objective in any war is to win it. Anyone glancing at social media sees people with an absolute commitment to America’s defeat. And defeat comes about only if Donald Trump chooses to quit the war – because the Iranians can’t make us do anything since they...

The Secret Service continues to make headlines, though not always for the right reasons. In 2024, the agency’s actions, particularly its failure to protect Donald Trump during the July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, fueled calls for its dissolution. Moreover, there were serious security breaches involving Biden officials. In 2023, a drunk individual entered the home of then-National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, managing to bypass his Secret Service detail. And now, an agent on Jill Biden’s detail shot himself in the butt while escorting the former first lady through Philadelphia International Airport on Friday. Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics had the backstory:...

War is never something the United States should engage in without very good cause. Too many of our past wars might have involved some bit of national interest, but they weren't really necessary. Kicking the crap out of Afghanistan following the Taliban's refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden? I got that completely. I was less thrilled with us going into Iraq. My take has always been that we should be slow to anger, but when we hit that point, we should descend upon our enemies like the fiery hand of God. It's what we did in the Gulf War,...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani decided to throw his cops under the bus in the non-fatal shooting of Jabez Chakraborty, a 22-year-old man, who charged officers while wielding a large knife.

mean, this is unsurprising, but sort of hilarious that the network tried to cast this as some ordinary citizen town hall event. CNN held one with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and others, during which they took audience questions about the city's situation regarding the Trump administration’s deportation agenda. Two people, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, have been killed as they recklessly interfered in police actions. Good rammed into an ICE agent and got shot on January 7. Pretti tussled with Border Patrol agents on January 24. Both were left-wing activists and agitators whose own actions got them killed. Did they...

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., held a town hall Tuesday evening in her home district amid recent shootings involving federal immigration agents and local agitators in Minneapolis. The event started out mostly uneventful until a man attacked the congresswoman with some sort of chemical spray that had a foul odor, according to those close by. Those nearby Omar wanted her to leave, but Omar refused and continued on. "Please don't let them have the show," Omar could be heard saying after she was hit with the foul-smelling spray. "We will continue! These f----ing a--holes are not going to get away with...

Tim Allen can’t be canceled, and he knows it. You can’t ostracize Tim from Tool Time, nor can you banish Santa Claus. Allen knows his range, he stays in his lane, and he’s great at it. The man will always find work, and he seems to have a knack for landing on hit shows, Last Man Standing being his latest, where he plays the father of three daughters, navigating family life with that of being the head of marketing for a Cabela ’s-like store in Colorado. Yes, it’s a conservative-ish show. While a guest on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast,...

President Trump and other top officials were caught watching the Venezuelan raid in real-time. Obama watching the bin Laden raid in the Situation Room was a similar moment and photo op. But someone was missing in the Trump photos: Vice President JD Vance. Where was he? Even Biden was sitting next to Obama when Seal Team Six finally greased bin Laden. Vance was kept away because the administration was becoming uneasy about having both men in the exact location, given the security conditions. It was a designated survivor scenario. Vance was involved with the raid: “Vice President Vance was deeply...

A federal grand jury in Miami indicted Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-FL, and several co-defendants with stealing federal disaster funds, laundering the proceeds, and using the money to support her 2021 congressional campaign. Court records say that Cherfilus-McCormick, 46, and her brother Edwin Cherfilus, 51, both of Miramar, worked through their family health-care company on a FEMA-funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract in 2021. In July 2021, the company received an overpayment of $5 million in FEMA funds. The indictment alleges that the defendants conspired to steal that $5 million and routed it through multiple accounts to disguise its source. Prosecutors allege...

This Saturday, mutants from coast to coast will assemble outside the basements and Pokémon clubs for the first time…since the last time this coalition of unlovable virgins and elderly, unliked parents gathered together to fool themselves into thinking they might not die alone and be eaten by a pet or a swarm of rats living under the hoarded mementos they haven’t been able to throw out since they peaked in high school. If that sounds cruel, good. These people have wasted more Saturdays this year than they’ve had visits from family or friends in the last ten. But they’re getting...

There’s a reason why Democrats wanted to keep Abigail Spanberger gagged and locked in a basement until the tail end of this election: she’s a total disaster. The Virginia congresswoman, who is running for governor against Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, has been elite at tossing word salads. Her incoherent mess of an answer about men in women’s bathrooms and locker rooms showcases how liberals are gutless in standing up for what’s sane. It’s almost as if there’s an allergy to joining the popular end of public policy issues that are no longer debated: men shouldn’t be in women’s locker...

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voiced his support for President Trump's proposed 20-point peace plan to end the war between Hamas and Israel, as the conflict approaches its two-year anniversary. On Sunday, the Senator posted on X, "Good morning to everyone except all the protesters who aren’t protesting for Hamas to accept the peace deal." On Friday, Senator Fetterman posted an image of a headline that read "Hamas says it agrees to release all Israeli hostages under Trump Gaza plan," writing, "Hamas must choose peace or its own destruction.Send the hostages home, now. As an unapologetic supporter of Israel, the...

Three Senate Democrats voted in favor of the Republican Continuing Resolution, bucking their party and hoping to avoid a Schumer Shutdown. Those Senators are Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), John Fetterman (PA), and Angus King (ME). In a post on X, Fetterman explained his vote, writing, "I voted AYE to extend ACA tax credits because I support them -- but I won't vote for the chaos of shuttering our government." He added, "My vote was our country over my party." Earlier, Sen. King had expressed concerns over the CR and played coy as to how he would vote. "You'll find out...