Free Republic

The decision could touch off a scramble by Republicans to redraw majority-minority congressional districts, especially in the South, that could cost many Black Democrats their seats.The Supreme Court on Wednesday sharply weakened a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act, a ruling that limits the consideration of race in drawing voting maps and could usher in Republican gains in the House.The decision is expected to touch off a scramble by Republicans to redraw majority-minority districts, especially in the South. New districts could shift the balance of power in Congress by imperiling the reelection prospects of some Black Democrats, possibly...

In a speech to Congress, the monarch avoided naming the president but highlighted democratic norms, Ukraine and Western unity.King Charles III urged Americans and Britons to draw on their shared heritage to defend democratic values, including checks on executive power, as he exhorted U.S. lawmakers to address global problems collectively in an era of unusually sharp divisions. In the course of his first state visit to the United States as monarch, Charles stayed scrupulously nonpartisan over the course of a 28-minute address to a joint meeting of Congress. But he promoted what he described as centuries of common interests, including...

As stocks soared this week and oil prices dropped amid an apparent cooling of tensions between the United States and Iran, it may have left the impression that the energy shock that rattled the world would quickly fade, along with the risk of sending the global economy into recession.The optimism may have been short-lived. On Saturday, Iran’s military announced it would reimpose restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz, throwing the critical waterway’s status into doubt.The uncertainty highlights that beneath that surface, a starkly different reality is unfolding. It is defined by disrupted supply lines and damaged infrastructure, sparking increased concern...

LONDON — Nigel Farage, who led the charge on Brexit, Britain’s push to quit the European Union, and more recently founded the anti-immigration Reform UK party, was euphoric when Donald Trump swept back into the White House. Farage had campaigned for Trump, visited him at his Mar-a-Lago estate and compared him, favorably, to Winston Churchill. ... Farage was an early supporter of Trump’s strikes on Iran, but as anger at the war — and at the president — grows among Britons, who will vote in local elections May 7, he is backtracking. Reform UK’s standing has dipped in recent weeks,...

Apr 8, 2026 @shadihamid · Follow My new @washingtonpost column: Why do Muslims need to be like everyone else? A case against assimilation. DataRepublican (small r)@DataRepublican · Follow Hello Mr. Hasim,You've already reached levels of institutional validation that remain inaccessible to nearly all Americans: a professorship at Georgetown, a position on the Washington Post's editorial board.At that point, saying you still need to prove yourself is like Taylor Swift insisting no one listens to her music. If assimilation feels out of reach, it isn’t because the system has excluded you. By any reasonable measure, it has already brought you into...

The assassinations of Iran’s senior leaders by Israel and the United States have triggered unprecedented churn within Tehran’s political and military establishment, eliminating the supreme leader and some of the most powerful men in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but have left in place a hard-line government and little hope of a diplomatic breakthrough, according to regional and Western officials. Rather than usher in what President Donald Trump has called “more reasonable” leadership, the surviving Iranian regime is newly emboldened to inflict economic pain, pushing Tehran and Washington further apart in negotiations, according to the officials who spoke on the...

Washington Post cartoonist Darrin Bell, who frequently portrayed Donald Trump as a sexual predator has just been charged with possessing child pornography. These are the degenerates who preach to us from on high. Authorities reported finding 134 videos (and later references to more images) with some images involving children under 12. Bell was arrested around January 15, 2025, after a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led to a search of his home. Authorities reported finding 134 videos (and later references to more images) linked to an account he controlled. He faces two felony counts under...

Vice President JD Vance is projecting loyalty to Donald Trump as the president leads the United States into the type of war the Iraq veteran didn’t want — and as the new conflict complicates Vance’s political future. Vance allies have played down the impact the operation in Iran could have on his presidential ambitions, insisting that a mission involving the U.S. military only for a matter of weeks won’t stay in voters’ memories. People close to the vice president have also conceded to The Washington Post, however, that a months-long conflict will pose a problem for whoever is the next...

For around 15 years, many American leaders — including all three presidents in that period — believed that the country was too deeply entangled in trying to reorder the societies of the Middle East. They felt the more pressing challenges included rebuilding America’s industrial base and confronting the rise of China. Yet here America is, once again, fighting a war to reorder a society in the greater Middle East. And like in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, this war seems unlikely to turn out quite as its proponents may hope. Why does this keep happening? To understand the present, look at...

A classified report by the US National Intelligence Council concluded that the Iranian regime was unlikely to be toppled even by a large-scale assault, the Washington Post reports. Three people familiar with the report tell the newspaper that the assessment, completed around a week before Israel and the US launched their assault on the Islamic Republic, outlined small- and large-scale assaults as scenarios for potential succession. The report concluded that protocols would be followed if supreme leader Ali Khamenei were to be killed to ensure the regime’s survival, with it “unlikely” that Iran’s opposition would take control. The Post says...

President Donald Trump has spent months touting his planned White House ballroom, but this week the public gets its first chance to formally offer him their thoughts. The verdict: They don’t like it. Members of the public sent more than 35,000 comments about the project to the National Capital Planning Commission ahead of its Thursday hearing to review the ballroom, according to a Washington Post analysis of comments posted on the commission’s website. The “vast majority” of comments came from those who oppose the plan, commission staff said. The Post found that more than 97 percent of comments were critical...

In the wake of Iranian Supreme Leader Aylatollah Khamenei coming down with a killer headache after getting a U.S. warhead on his forehead, on Saturday, The Washington Post published one of their infamous glowing remembrances of Islamic terrorists. The paper fondly remembered the brutal Islamic dictator as a “avuncular figure” with an “easy smile” and love for “Persian poetry.” Readers might remember when The Post fluffed up the former leader of ISIS as an “austere religious scholar”; well, they're back at it again with Khamenei in their obituary titled: “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is dead at 86.” The...

It is not momentous events that are the most meme-worthy. Rather, it is moments when liberals show their true colors and embarrass themselves, often in relatively trivial ways, that set meme-creators to work. This week, along with the ongoing fiasco in Minnesota, we had severel such events. The Washington Post, hemorrhaging losses, laid off a large portion of its staff, causing its newly-unemployed reporters to demonstrate outside the building. They marched in defense of the moral principle that Jeff Bezos is obliged to support them forever, no matter how much money they lose. I wonder whether some of the newly-laid-off...

The Washington Post Publisher and Chief Executive Will Lewis announced Saturday evening he would depart after just two years at the paper, a tenure marked by controversy and crisis.Lewis called his time "two years of transformation" in his resignation note, but it was defined by turbulence rather than a clear path, and it ended with brutal job cuts. The paper's chief financial officer, Jeff D'Onofrio, will serve as acting CEO. More than a third of the newsroom was laid off Wednesday after Lewis' promises of radical innovations failed to staunch several years of annual losses in the tens of millions...

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos didn’t really buy the Washington Post to keep democracy out of darkness or whatever, he bought it to build influence and decided that the Resistance branding was poison in the post-woke era of the second Trump administration. His staff doubled down. So he tried bringing in editors and people from conservative British papers and Washington Post staffers worked to sabotage them. The ongoing battle over the Washington Post between its actual owner, Jeff Bezos, the 2nd wealthiest man in the world, who paid $250 million for it, and the staff, show that, at least when it...

The Washington Post announced widely expected, significant layoffs on Wednesday, with entire departments being shuttered in what the company is calling a "significant restructuring." On a webinar with Post employees who were asked to stay home, executive editor Matt Murray announced a significant headcount reduction. The Post is shuttering the sports desk in its current form, dialing back its international footprint, making Metro more "nimble and focused" and eliminating Books. A third of the company has been affected, Fox News Digital has learned. "The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in...

Today, I am rejoicing about the Washington Post existential spasms. Here is what I said on Free Republic ("Post Mortem" was the title, over 20 years ago!) about the Washington Post and its relentless imbedded leftist bias. "The millstones of the gods grind late, but they grind fine . . ." ========= "POST MORTEM" (transcript of letter to the WAPO editor; posted 10/29/04) On October 27, 2004 Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. penned an op-ed entitled, “A Strict Separation”. Therein Mr. Downie, the self-described “ultimate gatekeeper” (Post, “Live Online” 10/6/04) for everything printed in the newspaper, reassures readers...

Struggling paper expected to announce sweeping job cuts

Bill Murray has sparked backlash against journalist Bob Woodward after confronting him over alleged lies he told about the late John Belushi in his 1984 biography, Groundhog Day star Murray, 74, clashed with Woodward, 81, at a Washington event Sunday - one day after trashing the writer for his book Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi in a candid chat on the Joe Rogan Experience. Murray had said of Woodward - who alongside fellow Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, uncovered President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal: 'When I read Wired, the book written by what's-his-name, Bob Woodward,...

A growing number of journalists and supporters of the Washington Post are imploring Jeff Bezos, the outlet’s billionaire owner, to stop massive layoffs that are expected to hit the news organization next month. The Post, according to multiple reports, is planning to dramatically reduce the size of its staff in the coming weeks and is reportedly considering making the steepest cutbacks to its foreign desk and sports department. News of the outlet’s plans have roiled staffers and sparked many of them to take to social media to criticize the newspaper’s publisher and CEO Will Lewis, who was hired by Bezos...