Free Republic

As we approach the first anniversary of Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, two ominous trends are emerging at once. First, Russia is doubling down. It’s pouring fresh troops into Ukraine and launching new offensive operations. Second, poll after poll after poll demonstrate that American support for Ukraine is slipping away. While Americans have sympathy for Ukraine, declining percentages are willing to spend American resources to keep Ukraine in the fight. Yet the outcome of the war is simply too important — to America as well as Ukraine — to allow our support to falter. On the war’s anniversary...

The Trump administration has finalized a roll back of Obama-era regulations for oil trains. The rules, which date back to 2015, required railroads carrying crude oil or other flammable liquids to outfit their trains with more responsive electronic braking systems. The rules came in response to concerns about explosions and spills from mile-long trains of crude and ethanol. In the Northwest, those trains move along the Columbia River and through cities to coastal refineries. The U.S. Department of Transportation, which has been working on rescinding the rules since last December, said in statement this week that its analysis showed the...

It’s always good to start the week off with a little zing, and what better way to do that than by writing a column that contains some heartfelt and valid criticism of former President Donald Trump? At least my hate mail will be buzzing for a few days. As I am going to have to do every time I write one of these things in the coming months, I will remind everyone that people are allowed to be supportive of Trump AND critique him from time to time. This is a political movement, not a cult.

The Iraqi supreme court has issued an arrest warrant for former U.S. President Donald Trump for the assassination on Iraqi soil of Iran’s Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, IraqiNews reports, citing a Baghdad news agency. The warrant was issued on Thursday in connection both with the killing of Soleimani and of another Iraqi militia leader, chief of staff of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq–both of whom were killed in a drone strike in January 2020 near the Baghdad airport. That assassination operation led to Iranian strikes on the Aia Al-Assad U.S. base in Iraq. The arrest warrant charges...

Tens of thousands of drones have been employed across Ukraine to kill the enemy, spy on its formations and guide bombs to their targets. But this month the Ukrainian military began a program to use drones in a more unusual role: to guide Russian soldiers who want to surrender. The program had its genesis in late November, when the Ukrainian military released footage of a Russian soldier throwing his weapon to the ground, raising his hands and nervously following a path set out by a drone overhead, leading him to soldiers from the Ukrainian army’s 54th Mechanized Brigade. A few...

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge tossed a lawsuit on Friday filed by former GOP candidates Mark Finchem and Jeff Zink that challenges the results of November’s general election. Judge Melissa Iyer Julian dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, which means it cannot be filed again. The judge also confirmed Adrian Fontes won the election and is the secretary of state-elect for Arizona. Finchem, who ran for secretary of state, and Zink, a former candidate in Congressional District 3, filed a lawsuit on Dec. 9 to overturn the results of the election. The lawsuit claimed that current Secretary of State Katie...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) leads former President Trump by 14 points in a hypothetical 2024 GOP primary match-up, according to a new poll. The Wall Street Journal survey released on Wednesday found that DeSantis leads Trump among likely Republican voters, 52 percent to 38 percent. DeSantis also has an advantage in his approval rating, with 84 percent of Republicans surveyed having a favorable view of him. By comparison, 71 percent said they have a favorable view of Trump. DeSantis’s name recognition also appears strong, as only about 10 percent of likely GOP primary voters said they did not know...

Florida governor Ron DeSantis led former president Donald Trump by eleven points in a new poll of likely Republican primary voters by the Republican Party of Texas. The survey, conducted by CWS Research on November 12 and 13 among likely GOP voters statewide, asked respondents, “If the upcoming 2024 Republican Primary for president were held today, and the candidates were Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, for whom would you vote?” Forty-three percent of respondents said they would support DeSantis, while Trump followed in second with 32 percent of the vote. Thirteen percent...

In attempting to describe Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the last four years, the press has reached for a whole host of inapt comparisons: He’s Donald Trump! He’s Scott Walker! He’s Satan! But none of these seem right. Instead — and hear me out! — he may well be Bill Clinton. No, not morally. Despite Donald Trump’s grotesque insinuation that there is something “unflattering” about DeSantis that only he knows about, there’s no indication that Florida’s governor is anything other than an upstanding husband and father.

Sasse won reelection in 2020, and his term was not set to expire until 2026. But Sasse has been at odds with Trump and his own party for years. After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Sasse was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump for his role in inciting the deadly riot. Senate Republican leadership has been alerted of the news, a leadership aide told NBC News. According to Fox News, Sasse is headed to the University of Florida for a lucrative gig.

Ukrainian troops have taken four villages back from Russian occupation in the south near the city of Kherson, a Ukrainian military source tells CNN. Their main “target” is Kherson, the source added. “The operation began at night with massive shelling of Russian positions and the rear,” the source, who CNN is not naming for security reasons, said. “The main direction of the attack was on Pravdyne. We hit their infantry from the DNR (Donetsk People's Republic) and LNR (Luhansk People's Republic), and they fled. The Russian landing force fled after them," the source told CNN. “We have now liberated four...

Ukraine could push Russian forces back to its pre-war borders by 2023 — wiping out its territorial gains — because President Vladimir Putin's troops are "exhausted," a retired US general said on Thursday. Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of the US Army in Europe, told Insider that Ukraine's ability to push Russian troops back to the existing borders depends on continued Western support through sanctions and weapons deliveries. "The Russians are exhausted," Hodges said. "They don't have much else they can do right now." He added that much of Putin's military is already committed to the war,...

It’s understandable that Democrats would want to constantly revisit Jan. 6 — to invoke it, investigate it and sacralize it even. It’s a mystery, at least from a certain level of abstraction, why Republicans would want to have anything to do with that day or want to fixate on the 2020 election. The party is on the cusp of a midterm triumph, has enormous openings on the economy and education thanks to Biden administration stumbles and left-wing overreach, is making inroads among Hispanic voters and has a well-stocked political bench that Democrats should envy. Yet the GOP is stuck litigating...

How despairing you feel about these results depends on how charitable you want to be to Republican voters.But the fact that insurrectionist Doug Mastriano is closer to becoming governor than milquetoast centrist Mehmet Oz is to becoming senator should not fill you with warm and fuzzy feelings about the state of the GOP.The charitable explanation for Oz trailing John Fetterman by nine points while Mastriano trails Josh Shapiro by just four is that Fetterman is an unusually strong candidate and Oz an unusually weak one. The 46/37 margin between them doesn’t mean Republican voters prefer election truthers like Mastriano to...

I don’t mean to minimize a big win for sane Republicans by sharing credit for it with Democrats. Brian Kemp and especially Brad Raffensperger prevailing without runoffs is the most encouraging thing to happen in GOP elections since… I can’t even think of the last encouraging thing. Sometime in the Before Times. Anyone inclined to cite last night as proof that Trump is losing his grip on the party, though, should bear in the mind that we have yet to see a truly anti-Trump Republican win anywhere this year. Raffensperger himself is the closest thing, but even Raffensperger won’t rule...

There are different constellations in the Never Trump firmament and it’s unclear if they can unite As Joe Biden lurched from crisis to crisis with plummeting approval ratings, the Republican party seemed largely content to bury its internal differences and enjoy the show. But not for long. Earlier this month Alyssa Farah Griffin, once communications director for President Donald Trump, made clear that her loyalties have shifted to former vice-president Mike Pence and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. “Put me squarely in the Pence/ McConnell camp,” Farah Griffin wrote on Twitter. “Certain denunciations must be unequivocal.” This drew a...

Fireworks erupted on Fox News Tuesday night after Geraldo Rivera directly implicated former President Donald Trump of inciting riots at the United States Capitol building.Host Sean Hannity began by asking Rivera why Congress was only investigating the Capitol riot and not the assorted riots that took place in response to the murder of George Floyd last year.Rivera replied that those riots were not an attack on the American republic and system of government the way that this one was.“This was a riot that was unleashed, incited, and inspired by the president of the United States, which targeted the heart of...

Donald Trump, an ongoing eruption of self-refuting statements (“I’m a very stable genius” with “a very good brain”), is adding self-impeachment to his repertoire. Spiraling downward in a tightening gyre, his increasingly unhinged public performances (Google the one with Finland’s dumbfounded president looking on) are as alarming as they are embarrassing. His decision regarding Syria and the Kurds was made so flippantly that it has stirred faint flickers of thinking among Congress’ vegetative Republicans.

After he won what he erroneously described as an Electoral College "landslide," Donald Trump explained away his failure to attract the support of most voters by conjuring "millions of people who voted illegally" -- a massive fraud that somehow went completely undetected by election officials throughout the country. A few days after taking office, Trump revived that fantastical claim, setting a pattern for the excuse making and blame shifting that would mark the first year of his presidency. Here are some of the highlights. Smooth talk. A hasty, half-baked executive order that Trump issued on January 27 immediately blocked entry...