Free Republic

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address and said, “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” Kennedy faced bleak prospects with world-wide communism on the march, championed by the great Russian bear with Khrushchev lashing the whip (the great butcher Stalin had barely been dead eight years), the coiling red dragon of Maoist China, and Warsaw Pact thralls. The great proxy war of the time was Vietnam. America’s youth were pressed into service and often fed into a meat...

Editor’s note: Since the barbaric Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7th, American universities have become an undeniable locus of Jew hatred within our nation. Much attention has deservedly been paid to the radical campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine who call for the genocide of the Jews and cheer the terrorists of Hamas. What has received less attention—but should in fact rank as the universities’ worst offense—is the Jew hatred promoted by official departments and institutes of the universities themselves. In the case of our campuses, Jew hatred is “the call coming from inside the house.”The Freedom...

It’s all out in the open now. The House voted 366-58 on Saturday to send $9.1 billion to Gaza, and that means $9.1 billion to Hamas. This isn’t the first time that the Biden regime has made clear which side it’s on, and it likely won’t be the last. But this time, Old Joe and his henchmen are getting some pushback.The $9.1 billion is earmarked, of course, as “humanitarian assistance,” but that ruse is fooling fewer and fewer people. Just The News reported Friday that the bill is “under scrutiny” in the first place because the amount that Gaza will...

The sorry spectacles being staged at our most prestigious universities bespeak the accelerating degeneration of our future cognitive elites. How else do we describe the aggressive ignorance and moral idiocy of protestors who identify with sadistic, savage terrorists, and adopt the rhetoric and tropes of Nazi Germany? Who shamelessly smear Jews––the intended victims of Hamas’ widely publicized and celebrated genocidal aims­––the perpetrators of genocide? Who clearly know nothing of the region’s history, or that of Islam’s “settler colonialism” and millennium of imperialist depredations and slaving, or the Koranic foundations of that sanctified aggression?The letter of these chants and slogans is...

Former President Donald Trump and President Biden are virtually dead even in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, a new batch of polls found.Trump, 77, narrowly edged out Biden, 81, in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by a single percentage point, but lagged behind him slightly in Michigan by the same margin, CBS News/YouGov surveys found. All figures were within the margin of error.*** Overall, only 40% of voters believe that Biden “understands people like you” compared to 42% who said the same about Trump and 16% who said neither. Voters also generally gave the economy under Trump higher...

We are rapidly approaching the most important primaries of our lifetime. Sure, the presidential primary — the one we all slept through — might be behind us, but most states still have not held their primaries for down-the-ballot state and federal offices. Will the unprecedented betrayals of the past few months finally catalyze change among Republican voters and activists? Or will we continue to reflexively nominate every incumbent and the most well-known politician with an “R” next to his name, ensuring we perpetuate dystopian uni-party governance? The reality is, despite the shocking betrayals, not a single House or Senate Republican...

If you are having trouble keeping track of all the major regulations President Joe Biden has issued recently, you’re not alone. In just the past two weeks, the Biden administration has functionally banned all coal power plants, forced college women to accept men in their locker rooms and dorm rooms, and empowered government regulators to set price controls on internet services. That is all on top of previous Biden regulations banning the sale of cars with internal combustion engines, banning the sale of new gas stoves, and making refrigerators far more expensive than they currently are. Biden is radically transforming...

Headline: “Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich aims to legalize 68 outposts in Judea and Samaria and has instructed various ministries to prepare to provide them with public services.”Although Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir are portrayed as extremist fringe politicians within Israel and by the world for claiming all the land “from the river to the sea,” truth is that this has become the national, centrist consensus in Israel.After October 7, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been adamant that in the future Israel will exercise 100% security control from the river...

As the world’s attention is drawn to the mobs of anti-Israel and anti-American protesters setting up encampments on major universities around the country, remember that the actors in these performative campus intifadas are in full-throated support of what they call the justifiable “resistance” against Israel committed by Hamas terrorists last October 7. A new documentary takes us back to the scenes of those atrocities for an unflinching look at what the “anti-colonialist” resistance they support looks like.Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta and founder of LeanIn.org, hosts Screams Before Silence, available to watch for free on YouTube, which shines...

The pro-Hamas demonstrations that have become the latest social contagion to afflict the nation, with “encampments” springing up on college campuses across the country to demand “freedom” for “Palestine,” show clear signs of being orchestrated. One telling indication of this is that a massive number of these allegedly grass-roots protesters have identical tents, as if some well-heeled leftist bought them in bulk with the intention of helping this allegedly spontaneous movement get going. The groundwork for what is happening these days, however, has been laid for years. These demonstrations are in large part the handiwork of the Middle East Studies...

Editor’s note:Since the barbaric Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7th, American universities have become an undeniable locus of Jew hatred within our nation. Much attention has deservedly been paid to the radical campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine who call for the genocide of the Jews and cheer the terrorists of Hamas. What has received less attention—but should in fact rank as the universities’ worst offense—is the Jew hatred promoted by official departments and institutes of the universities themselves. In the case of our campuses, Jew hatred is “the call coming from inside the house.”The Freedom Center...

With seven months to go until November's presidential election and the majority of polls showing the presumptive presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden are basically neck-and-neck, the pair both need every vote they can to secure the keys to the White House. But Trump, the Republican former president, may be hampering his chances at success because of his standing with one key demographic in the adult voting population: women. Polls show that the proportion of women who plan to vote for Trump in November is less than the proportion who voted for him in the 2020 election. Meanwhile, experts...

<p>To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to Balaji Srinivasan. Before you do, steel yourself for what’s to come: A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius.</p>

Tragically for the country, to stop this left-wing madness, the Trump travesties may not be the end, but the beginning of precisely what the Founders feared. Do not believe the White House/mainstream media-concocted narrative that the four criminal court cases—prosecuted by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis—were not in part coordinated, synchronized, and timed to reach their courtroom psychodramatic finales right during the 2024 campaign season. These local, state, and federal Lilliputian agendas were designed to tie down, gag, confine, bankrupt, and destroy Trump psychologically and physically. They are the final lawfare denouement to years of extra-legal...

First, let me apologize to my Jewish readers. I realize that hearing those three words must be painful. Many of you have parents or grandparents whose friends or family were gruesomely murdered in that very manner. The reason I use those words is that today in the year 2024 we are closer to such horror than we’ve been for 80 years, and we must not pretend otherwise. The Jewish nation that promised “never again” is being explicitly threatened with “again.” This moment comes in the wake of the atrocious murdering, raping, beheading, burning alive and hostage-taking committed by Palestinians against...

The Biden Administration’s regulations are coming so fast and furious that it’s hard even to keep track, but we’re trying. On Thursday the Environmental Protection Agency proposed its latest doozy—rules that will effectively force coal plants to shut down while banning new natural-gas plants. “With the announcement today, the power sector can make planning decisions with a full array of information,” EPA’s press release declares. Translation: Get moving with the green-energy transition because we’re determined to eliminate fossil-fuel power. Barack Obama’s regulation spurred a wave of coal plant closures. Now President Biden is trying to finish the job by tightening...

Irena’s Vow is a 2023 film dramatizing the World War II heroism of a young Polish nursing student, Irena Gut. Irena’s Vow is a two-hour, color film. It was shot in Poland. The film is in English. It received a limited US release in April, 2024. Irena’s Vow has an 86% professional reviewer rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 93% fan reviewer rating. Veteran reviewer Rex Reed calls Irena’s Vow “One of the most astounding holocaust stories.” He says, “It’s true, if fantastic.” The film is “anchored by the powerful, heartfelt performance of Sophie Nelisse as an innocent girl whose...

As far as the student protesters at Columbia University and other universities are concerned, they’re making a strong and principled stand for justice. Yet events at Columbia and elsewhere have taken an ugly turn, with the protesters sounding more like the National Socialists (remember, that’s what “Nazi” means) of 1930s Germany than any actual crusader for human rights.When this latest social contagion has run its course and the hysteria has died down, these students would do well to consider carefully what they’re actually supporting. It’s clear that they haven’t done so as of yet.The New York Post on Thursday published...

The Nazi cheers of Sieg Heil didn’t start out in Munich, but in Massachusetts.The Nazi chant was borrowed from Harvard football cheers and imported to Germany by Ernst “Putzy” Hanfstaengl, a Harvard man in good standing who befriended Hitler and helped build a more respectable brand for the National Socialists.“Putzy” was one of a number of Ivy League elites who were enchanted by the Third Reich.Socialism forcefully implemented by great men, whether it was FDR, Mussolini, Stalin or Hitler, was the great obsession of America elites of the era who were convinced that it was the only answer to the...

The response of the U.S. and EU leadership to Hamas’ genocidal savagery against Israel, a Western liberal democracy, has been despicable and dangerous. Blustering protestations of support and solidarity by politicians have been undercut by schoolmarmish hectoring about Israel’s “disproportionate” tactics and alleged callous disregard for Palestinian Arab lives and well-being.This geopolitical virtue-signaling has been correctly interpreted by Hamas and Iran as a green-light to double-down on its aggression, which won’t stop with Israel.Last week Iran showed the way by launching an unprecedent, indiscriminate attack on Israel with a 300-strong barrage of drones and missiles. Aided by the U.S., Great...