Free Republic

Lena Dunham has shared an emotional message alongside naked pictures nine months after her hysterectomy. The 32-year-old, who had the operation in December after suffering for years with endometriosis, said the occasion felt bittersweet. She explained that the date was particularly poignant as nine months is the length of time a woman carries a baby before birth – and ‘I won’t ever do it the way I planned to.’

At seven years old, Abdul El-Sayed sat in the eye of Hurricane Andrew, the most destructive hurricane in US history until Katrina. Living near Miami, El-Sayed drank juice while swaddled under mattresses between his father and stepmother, who was holding El-Sayed’s newborn baby brother just home from the hospital. The 1992 storm had taken an unexpected turn southward, and the El-Sayeds could not be evacuated. The wind made an awful rattling sound on the screens. The front door blew in. The wind and the rain whipped into the house, “as if the ocean was coming at you”. El-Sayed’s father, Mohamed,...

It is truly a confounding time to be alive, to be an American. We are watching as a president of the United States openly lies, fabricates and exaggerates while two-fifths of the population cheers him for it. He spurns our allies and embraces our adversaries and people shrug. He, his congressional allies and his propaganda arm are waging open warfare on the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an effort to tarnish it before its inquiry into connections between the Trump campaign, family and associates and Russia can be made public. He is a racist who disparages black and brown people,...

Thursday on ABC’s “The View,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg discussed her concerns over President Donald Trump picking a Supreme Court nominee Advocating for abortion rights Goldberg said, “Get out of my vagina.” Goldberg said, “Here’s the piss-off for me. I’m the person that does believe that just because someone is appointed doesn’t mean —and I believe I have said that a lot about the Supreme Court — that you never know a person on the Supreme Court is going to vote because sometimes, you know, things change. They wake up. They see things. I don’t like hearing, again, that I’m trying...

Market Street transformed into a rainbow-colored celebration Sunday as 50,000 marchers — and about twice as many spectators — gathered for the 48th annual LGBT Pride Parade in San Francisco. Depending on where you were on the route, the gathering may have resembled a protest or a party. The dress code for the event: anything goes.

The idea that Donald Trump might fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller and in so doing spark some kind of constitutional crisis has been gaining traction for months now. Political junkies, especially on the liberal side of the spectrum, have breathlessly discussed the scenario in neighborhood bars and on approximately 1,000 different podcasts. Protests against the firing have been preemptively organized by progressive advocacy groups. Even though Trump's 2016 campaign was marked by a contempt for the rule of law and bursts of actual violence, and even though he abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey last year (prompting Mueller's appointment), sacking...

The raw emotions generated by immigration policy—provoked by heartrending stories of families torn apart by deportation, or citizens murdered by illegal immigrants—have scrambled political allegiances and confused public debate. Republicans, usually the champions of family values and small government, now want to restrict family reunification and give bureaucrats the power to screen people who want to enter the country. Democrats, traditionally the allies of the working class, want big business to select immigrants and have given scant attention to the legitimate interests of working-class natives. The only way to end this politically charged debate is to think carefully about benefits...

The mood on the international conference call at the beginning of this month was somber as Ian Bremmer, president of the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group, prepared to list off top global dangers in the coming year. Bremmer began with a show-stopping line: "If we had to pick one year for a big unexpected crisis — the geopolitical equivalent of the 2008 financial meltdown — it feels like 2018." The reasons are many, Bremmer cited, but the most prominent causes for global insecurity stem from U.S. President Donald Trump's move away from global leadership, and China's eagerness to fill...

Singer Ginuwine has sparked a heated debate on Twitter after a recent episode of Celebrity Big Brother UK. In the latest episode, Ginuwine seemingly rejected fellow housemate India Willoughby. The controversy stems from a conversation between Willoughby and the “Pony” singer, in which she asked whether he would date a trans woman. “You would date me, yeah,” Willoughby, who is a trans woman herself, asked. “Not if you were trans,” Ginuwine replied. After Ginuwine replied that he would not date a trans woman, Willoughby attempted to plant a kiss on the singer. When her advance was rejected, Willoughby stormed off....

For Lulu Flores, it still hurts. “I really feel for her,” Flores said as her eyes welled. “She did not let anybody down. I felt like we let her down.” On Nov. 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. His opponent, Hillary Clinton, had been considered the favorite in the race. Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump bested her in the Electoral College. Clinton — who met with hundreds of supporters and readers at BookPeople on Friday to sign copies of her book, “What Happened,” about the 2016 campaign — seems to have moved on....

Former CIA chief John Brennan thinks Donald Trump is being easily fooled by Vladimir Putin. Brennan and James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, were responding to Trump’s remarks in Asia where he said he believed Putin when the Russian leader stated he had not tried to interfere in the 2016 election in the US. […] Brennan utterly dismissed Trump’s assessment. “I don’t know why the ambiguity about this,” Brennan said. “Putin is committed to undermining our system, our democracy and our whole process. And to try paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding, and, in fact,...

Being a woman is just being a woman." Meet November 2017 Playmate Ines Rau, the first transgender Playmate.

FULL TITLE: ‘Frankly disgusting’: Trump lashes out at press, threatens NBC over news report he calls ‘pure fiction’ President Trump on Wednesday threatened NBC over a news report he called "pure fiction," and he lashed out at the news media, declaring that it is "frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write." “People should look into it.... The press should speak more honestly," Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "I’ve seen tremendously dishonest press. It’s not even a question of distortion.” The president was reacting to a report...

YouTube videos of police beatings on American streets. A widely circulated internet hoax about Muslim men in Michigan collecting welfare for multiple wives. A local news story about two veterans brutally mugged on a freezing winter night. All of these were recorded, posted or written by Americans. Yet all ended up becoming grist for a network of Facebook pages linked to a shadowy Russian company that has carried out propaganda campaigns for the Kremlin, and which is now believed to be at the center of a far-reaching Russian program to influence the 2016 presidential election. A New York Times examination...

The Trump administration formally proposed on Tuesday to roll back yet another of President Barack Obama’s efforts to position the United States as a global leader in the fight against climate change. The move, though widely anticipated, was deeply disheartening. All this is infuriating on several levels. It repeated the same false narrative that congressional Republicans have been peddling for years and that Mr. Trump’s minions are peddling now — that environmental regulations are job killers, that restraining greenhouse gas emissions will damage the economy, that the way forward lies in digging more coal and punching more holes in the...

It’s no secret that Hollywood has not been inclusive to anyone outside of the cisgendered, straight, white description. Thankfully, many consumer have made strides to change this, giving exposure to people of color and LGBT directors, producers, writers, artists and musicians. Yet nonbinary and transgender people are still being left out. ... Hollywood has a history of white-washing and cis-washing movies and media.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Hillary Clinton, she is one of the most prominent and polarizing figures in modern American history. This week, she is back in the spotlight promoting a new book. She opens up tonight to Judy Woodruff, revealing where she gives President Trump credit, but also her fears that he is dangerous for the world. Judy sat down with the former presidential candidate, secretary of state and first lady at the CORE: club in New York City, and began by asking about the premise of the book: What happened in the 2016 election? HILLARY CLINTON, Author, “What Happened”: I really...

Contrary to the furious spin from Hillary Clinton’s adversaries in the media and Republican Party, FBI Director James Comey did not undercut Hillary’s truthfulness on her State Department emails. In fact, his statement and testimony affirm that Hillary has been honest about the email issue from day one. Here are the facts, not the spin. “We have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI.” — James Comey On various occasions over the past fifteen months, Hillary has said that she did not send or receive emails containing classified information or any material marked as classified. This, to the...

Michelle Obama looked ever the A-lister as she stepped out for a workout and a yacht trip in Mallorca, Spain.

There’s no denying the first half of 2017 would have been very different had Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. In her current St. Louis gallery exhibition, artist Bunny Burson remembers the future that very nearly was, creating an artwork using the iridescent confetti that was primed to go off on election night this past November 8, had the country elected its first woman president. A longtime Clinton devotee, Burson was the executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities under President Bill Clinton’s administration. In the aftermath of the 2016 election,...