Free Republic

Surprising no one, the staunchly conservative Arkansas Supreme Court unanimously upheld four 2021 state laws that make voting in Arkansas less pleasant, less convenient and less likely to count. In an opinion issued Thursday, the seven-member court overturned former Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen’s 2022 ruling that the four laws at issue hindered the fundamental right to vote and were therefore unconstitutional. [snip] The 2021 laws the state Supreme Court upheld Thursday are: Act 973, which shortens the window to turn in absentee ballots, moving the deadline from the Monday before Election Day to the Friday before. Act 736,...

Every two years one hears the next election will be one of the most important ever. The truth is every election is important because it determines the laws we live under, how we are taxed, and the kind of society we live in. But it’s not an overstatement to say that Tuesday’s primary election may be the most important election in recent memory. I say that after following Idaho politics for the past five decades, first as a journalist and now as an advocate for education. With so much at stake, this election will decide whether we remain stuck in...

Illegal immigration and control over the nation's borders will be one of the major issues in this fall's elections, and a key aspect of that issue is the number of people who are present in the country today - and what should be done about them. Should he win reelection, former President Donald Trump is reportedly being advised to deport almost 20 million illegal aliens, in a project similar to the United Kingdom's Rwanda policy:

Donald Trump has demanded Joe Biden take a drug test before the pair face off against one another in next month's debate.Speaking at the GOP´s annual Lincoln Reagan dinner event on Friday night in St. Paul, Minnesota, Trump suggested the resident had been on drugs when he delivered the State of the Union address in March. Trump told his supporters he would insist Biden takes a drug test as a precondition for the debates. Donald Trump has called for President Joe Biden to take a drug test before their debates Donald Trump has called for President Joe Biden to take...

Donald Trump poses an existential threat to liberal democracy; therefore, a reasonable reaction to his possible return to power has been to throw everything but the kitchen sink at him. This ranged from supporting his impeachment and removal, to voting for his adversaries (including Nikki Haley), to charging him with 88 criminal offenses in four criminal cases......... During an interview on Wednesday with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, Romney said that President Joe Biden should have “immediately pardoned” Trump from federal charges, and that Biden also “made an enormous error” by not pushing New York prosecutors to drop their charges against Trump...

It happened in February. It’s a video where a teacher, Warren Smith, is seen engaging in a conversation with a student who alleged that J.K. Rowling was transphobic. It quickly went viral. In less than five minutes, Smith, uncondescending, forces the student to rethink his position. The student admits he feels like an idiot after the pair discussed the phrasing and logical trajectory of the debate about the Harry Potter creator who has become persona non grata for her views on gender despite being an ardent leftist. This is utterly brilliant. A student accuses @jk_rowling of being transphobic. This teacher...

democracy itself on the line, the 2024 election will almost certainly be the nation’s most consequential since 1860. It will also be the weirdest. two facts about this campaign that do not appear to be making much of an impact on what seems to be close to a majority of the electorate. The first more obvious one is few people in history have ever been less qualified to hold a position of any responsibility, ...than Donald Trump. If elected, he will certainly deploy that power to destroy virtually everything Americans have historically held dear about the nation’s democratic traditions. The...

ROME — Pope Francis told CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell that conservatives are willfully blind and manifest a “suicidal attitude” in their narrowmindedness. In an interview set to air Sunday on 60 Minutes, the pope asserts that a conservative “is someone who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that. It is a suicidal attitude.” “One thing is to take tradition into account and consider situations from the past but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box,” he adds. The Pope addresses his conservative critics in the church. “Conservative is one who clings to...

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and more than a dozen other House Republicans are pushing a measure that targets the Federal Reserve System. The measure includes text that declares, "The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and each Federal reserve bank are hereby abolished" and "the Federal Reserve Act is hereby repealed." Massie announced the introduction of the measure on Thursday, the same day that the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index surpassed 40,000 for the first time before ultimately giving up its gains and closing slightly down for the day. 'If we really want to reduce...

Sometimes we wonder if the Biden Democrats secretly admired some of Donald Trump’s stunts in the White House and decided that they could do them too when they were back in power. The latest example is President Biden’s dubious claim of executive privilege regarding his interview with special counsel Robert Hur. Mr. Biden sat for an interview over two days with the special counsel about his mishandling of classified documents. A pair of House committees sought the transcript and audio recordings of the interview, and the White House turned over the transcript. But on Thursday the President asserted executive privilege...

Special Counsel Jack Smith was supposed to be basking in glory right now. In his ideal world, Smith would be hot off a quick conviction of Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. for the former president’s alleged role in the events of January 6 and attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election. The special counsel then would have immediately moved his victorious prosecutors to Palm Beach for the summer to prepare for Trump’s second federal trial related to allegedly stealing national defense information and impeding the Department of Justice’s investigation. That, at least, was the plan. Instead, Smith is ingloriously hiding from...

Press Releases Rep. Massie Introduces Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act to "End the Fed" Washington, D.C.-, May 16, 2024 For Immediate Release Contact: massie.press@mail.house.gov Contact #: 202-225-3465 WASHINGTON, D.C.- Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) announces the introduction of H.R. 8421, the Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act. Rep. Massie's legislation abolishes the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve banks. It also repeals the Federal Reserve Act, the 1913 law that created the Federal Reserve System. "Americans are suffering under crippling inflation, and the Federal Reserve is to blame," said Rep. Massie. "During COVID, the Federal Reserve created...

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra admitted during a congressional hearing on Wednesday that hospitals with religious objections to transgender mutilation will lose federal funding. “Can you commit here today that your department will not withhold federal funding from hospitals or doctors who refuse to provide the gender-affirming care that you are, you know, mandating, if it violates their religious beliefs?” Republican Rep. Mary Miller, chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, asked Becerra. Becerra ignored the question and scolded Miller for asking it. “You’re going somewhere completely different. First, you started talking about how a doctor should...

Based on the latest available data and an enhanced version of a stress-tested methodology from a scholarly journal, a new study by Just Facts has found that about 10 percent to 27 percent of non-citizen adults in the U.S. are now illegally registered to vote. The U.S. Census recorded more than 19 million adult non-citizens living in the U.S. during 2022. Given their voter registration rates, this means that about two million to five million of them are illegally registered to vote. These figures are potentially high enough to overturn the will of the American people in major elections, including...

Legal experts believe Donald Trump could have flouted his court-imposed gag order by apparently manufacturing a scenario where his supporters communicated on his behalf. According to Newsweek, Trump has been penning notes for his political sympathizers to read outside the courthouse during his New York criminal trial, a move which could contravene the gag order. The purpose of the order is to prevent Trump from talking about the jury or any witnesses in the hush money case. "Those notes are not privileged documents, and if their contents mirrored some of what Trump's GOP cronies said to the press, the notes...

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of the structure used to fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency tasked with enforcing consumer finance laws. By a vote of 7-2, the justices reversed a decision by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, which had ruled that the agency’s funding violates the Constitution because it comes from the Federal Reserve rather than through the congressional appropriations process. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, in a decision that relied heavily on both the text of the Constitution and early English and U.S. history. Justice Samuel...

The Justice Department's Legal Counsel Office said the recording should be considered protected by executive privilege. Chairman Comer says the claim "changes nothing" and vows to continue contempt proceedings. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ President Joe Biden on Thursday claimed the recording of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur about his retention of classified documents should not be released due to executive privilege just hours before House Republicans were set to move toward holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for not releasing the recordings. The Justice Department's Legal Counsel Office said the recording should be considered protected by executive privilege,...

After more than three billion doses, the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is being withdrawn. However, its reputation was dented as unusual blood clots emerged as a rare side effect of the vaccine, and the UK turned to alternatives.

More than two-thirds of Americans think the Supreme Court was right to hold Harvard's race-based admissions policy unlawful. But the minority who disagree have no doubt about their own moral authority, and there's every reason to believe that they intend to undo the Court's decision at the earliest opportunity. Which could be as soon as this year. In fact, undoing the Harvard admissions decision is the least of it. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have embraced a precooked "privacy" bill that will impose race/gender quotas not just on academic admissions but on practically every private and public decision that matters...

A stalwart in the West Virginia Republican Party for decades lost his primary race on Tuesday night due in part to his support of a controversial bill that critics say would provide healthcare for illegal immigrants, according to a group that actively campaigned against him. West Virginia GOP State Sen. Craig Blair, the president of the state senate who has served as a state senator since 2013 and in the legislature for years before that, lost to his primary challenger Tom Willis on Tuesday night, WV Metro News reported. Stand For Us PAC, a group that put $1 million into...