Free Republic

Minnesota has been in the news a lot in recent years, and not in a good way. This essay is a wistful look back at the decline of a once great state. I moved to Minnesota in 1975, partially inspired by the famous Time Magazine cover featuring Governor Wendall Anderson holding up a caught walleye, touting the “Good Life in Minnesota.” I came for the good life and the in-state college summer school rates offered by the University of Minnesota. I ended up getting a job in Minneapolis, putting down roots, getting married, having three kids, eventually owning three businesses...

Elite universities push for federal funding while ignoring legal and ethical obligations, fueling public distrust as they prioritize ideology over academic rigor and free speech. Harvard has refused to accept the orders of a Trump administration commission concerning its chronic problems with anti-Semitism, campus violence, and racial tribalism, bias, and segregation. Yet, unlike some conservative campuses that distrust an overbearing Washington, Harvard and most elite schools like it want it both ways. They do as they please on their own turf and yet still demand that the taxpayers send them multibillion-dollar checks in addition to their multibillion-dollar private incomes. Aside...

In Astronauts carefully tell the truth, I noted astronaut Butch Wilmore confirmed Elon Musk’s assertion that he and Suni Williams really were stranded on the ISS, and that Musk offered to bring them home during Biden’s Handler’s Administration but was refused because they didn’t want Biden to look bad before the election. The Biden Administration and the Democrat media went to great lengths to deny they were stranded. Arizona Democrat Senator Mark Kelly’s brother Scott claimed there was always a capsule docked there so they could come home at will. While there was a capsule docked, it was there as...

Move highlights how legal threats from the Trump administration are discouraging DEI.. Illinois has suspended a minority-only scholarship after the Department of Justice threatened to sue the state, the department said Friday. The department’s move, which came in the wake of a Washington Free Beacon report on the program, is the latest example of how the Trump administration’s legal saber-rattling has deterred the use of racial preferences. The program, which gave minorities financial aid to complete a master's or doctoral degree, was run by the Illinois Board of Higher Education and included some of the top universities in the state,...

Damon Joshua, an employee of Severn Trent Water Supply in the U.K., has been fired from his job due to a social media post he put up in observance of the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on innocent Israelis. On Oct. 7, 2024, the sewage worker took to an employee website and characterized those who raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered 1,200 Israelis as a “group of violent and disgusting terrorists.” For mildly — one might say, timidly — stating an obvious truth, he was let go within hours. Raping, torturing, mutilating, and murdering people is, to say the least,...

Katherine Maher is preparing for the hot seat. The embattled NPR CEO is scheduled to testify before Congress later today and will face intense scrutiny from Republicans who have already introduced legislation to defund the left-wing radio station. Last year, I published exclusive reports on Maher’s background as a US-backed regime change agent in the Middle East and North Africa, her role in censoring information as CEO of Wikipedia, and her troubling social media history, which revealed significant left-wing ideological bias and support for removing the political opposition from digital platforms. I have prepared briefing notes for members of the...

In February, SecDef Hegseth fired the Army’s and Air Force’s top uniformed lawyers (the judge advocates general, or “JAGs” for short). Two retired Air Force JAG major generals, Charles J. Dunlap and Steven J. Lepper, responded with online outrage. Both former JAG generals essentially claimed that SecDef Hegseth had overstepped his legal and moral authority and imperiled the nation, the military, and the rule of law. Their well timed writings stoked the political left’s furor occasioned by President Trump’s firing of Joint Chiefs Chairman Brown and CNO Franchetti. Both retired generals’ comments should be rejected because they ignore the most...

The Secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has rejected Asheville, North Carolina’s $225 million draft action plan intended for victims of Hurricane Helene due to a Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) clause in the proposal. HUD Sec. Scott Turner, in an official press release, stated, “Once again, let me be clear DEI is dead at HUD. We will not provide funding to any program or grantee that does not comply with President Trump’s executive orders.” In an interview on Fox Business, Turner explained that President Trump’s goal is to help the people of Asheville recover,...

The op-ed was entitled “Can White Men Finally Stop Complaining?” and it appeared the other day in the Wall Street Journal. White men, it charged, have a “victim mentality” – even though they’re back on top. Not only has Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, but for white dudes, everything’s coming up roses: The manosphere won. Bro podcasters top the charts. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg declares his company needs more “masculine energy.” Elon Musk shares a post saying only “high-status males” should run the country. The White House kills diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, and so do multiple companies,...

Move over, Socrates. Step aside, Descartes. The University of Alabama has ushered in a new era of philosophical enlightenment that doesn’t merely ponder the meaning of life but demands we finally confront the great, unspoken tyranny of our time: sizism. (Which, by the way, can also be spelled “sizeism.” Because one can’t have too many isms, it seems.) Yes, dear reader, in a world beset by trivial concerns like war, economic collapse, and the creeping erosion of civil liberties, the real struggle is taking place in the narrow confines of an airplane seat. Finally, academia has found the courage to...

A few days ago, Google announced that it had abandoned its targets for “diversity, equity and inclusion” for its workforce. Here is the February 5 New York Times article covering the announcement. According to the Times, Google attributed the change of policy to its need “as a federal contractor . . . to comply with President Trump’s executive orders opposing diversity, equity and inclusion policies.” Google’s announcement came about a month after Facebook parent Meta had (formally) made the same change of policy. (See CNBC’s January 10 piece here covering the Meta announcement.). Google and Facebook are now two leaders...

Search authors, topiLego is anti-LGBT and promotes only two genders, says Science Museum The plastic bricks may reinforce heterosexuality as the ‘norm’ because the blocks are seen as ‘male and female’, according to a tour at the London attraction Pile of colorful Lego bricks on a green baseplate. The self-guided tours have been put together by members of the museum’s Gender and Sexuality Network GETTY Laurence Sleator Friday February 07 2025, 10.00am GMT, The Times Lego is anti-LGBT and promotes the idea that there are only two genders, an exhibition at the Science Museum has claimed. A self-guided tour at...

It’s only two weeks into the new Trump administration, and we’re seeing an incredible sea change start in the federal government. In his first campaign, Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” and then when he took office he barely got started on the project during a full four year term. Maybe he was too distracted by constant investigations, lawfare, “Russia! Russia! Russia!” and the like. But this time it’s much different. The big news of the past day or two is the beginning of purges at DOJ, the FBI, and USAID. Those thoroughly corrupt institutions are very good places to...

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was once a paragon of precision, demanding the highest levels of skill and competence from those responsible for guiding thousands of aircraft daily through America’s airspace. Air traffic controllers (ATCs) were selected through rigorous training programs, ensuring that only the best and brightest sat at the helm of our nation’s skies. However, beginning in the Obama era and accelerating under Biden, a seismic shift occurred: meritocracy was abandoned in favor of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mandates. The consequences of this shift are now coming home to roost. A decade of race-conscious hiring practices, prioritizing...

"Sustainability" investments became popular a few years back. So-called experts said companies shouldn't just focus on profit. They should put more effort into being "nice." Funds pushing ESG (environmental, social and governance) were all the rage. Giant investment firms like BlackRock pressured companies to hire more women and minorities. CEO Larry Fink announced, "All investments are going to be looked through sustainability." But "sustainability" is a mostly meaningless word. Parnassus claimed it helped meet UN sustainability goals of "nutrition" and "sanitation" by investing in U.S. Foods and Clorox. Starbucks phased out plastic straws while adding lids that used more plastic....

Like many Americans, I became so angry at the things Joe Biden did — or did not do — that I would have to psychologically manage it through a variety of stress-reducing techniques. For example, immigration: It seemed to me as if I was being driven from my own country, and I am supposed to just take this because Joe Biden supposedly won the election? Can feckless, gutless, and weak Joe Biden do anything to me and then justify it through the press, and then the press uses its massive media might to demonize me? It seemed to me as...

“The purpose of a pardon is to correct a miscarriage of justice, not to prevent future judicial action.” — Dr. Joseph Sansone. This, as they say, is one of those weeks when decades happen. You realize that under the fiends fronted by “Joe Biden,” the US government became a demon-driven machine for wrecking lives, perverting the law, and demolishing all scaffolds of decent behavior. And now, it all has to be fixed, cleaned up, fumigated, rectified, rehabilitated. Scores of executive orders flew out of the Oval Office, rescinding four years of “Biden” regime lunacy in every direction: Censorship, dead. ....

It’s not going to be fast or easy to eliminate a cancer that has not only been allowed, but encouraged, to spread in the federal government. I’ll not take any credit for predicting federal agencies would do anything to retain their DEI bureaucracies. And why wouldn’t they? Even if their administrators weren’t DEI true believers, and most probably were, DEI gave them unprecedented and totalitarian control over the lives of their employees--more power than they imagined--and unrestrained virtue signaling opportunities. By claiming DEI was essential to their missions, they would be invited to DC cocktail parties and praised by equally...

As we've covered here in the last couple days, Trump's executive order on DEI ordered the suspension of DEI employees and the closing of their offices. He also included a plan to keep these offices from simply rebranding under a different name and carrying on as usual. That was smart because rebranding is how many academic DEI offices have tried to get by laws aimed at them in the recent past. While Trump's executive order is aimed at government employees, it is also a warning to their corporate counterparts. "These actions freeze DEI operations in the federal government with the...

Years of leftist hysterics and hollow attacks on Trump had desensitized voters, leaving the public weary, dismissive, and ultimately handing Trump a resounding 2024 victory. Donald Trump won the 2024 election in part because the left’s hysterical style of attacking Trump no longer worked. After a decade of this unhinged furor, it proved worthless in winning public support—and for two simple reasons. One, after years of Russian collusion hoaxes, the laptop disinformation farce, and the warped lies about the “suckers” and “fine people on both sides”—the shrill left became predictable. So, the bored public began tuning them out, switching channels,...