Free Republic

Former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said Monday that “forces within the FBI” may have sought to elect Donald Trump as president. “There are at least forces within the FBI that wanted her to lose,” Podesta said during an interview with John Heilemann hosted by NewCo. Podesta offered no evidence to back-up his speculation. “I’m not sure they really understood the alternative, but they wanted her to lose. I think that’s one possibility.” These “forces” could have played a role in FBI Director James Comey’s controversial decision to alert Congress 11 days before the election that the FBI was...

In the beginning, they didn’t care for Donald Trump. “Trump’s a buffoon,” David Searles said before casting a vote for Marco Rubio in the New Hampshire primary. “He scares me,” Rebecca Meyer said before settling on Ben Carson in South Carolina’s primary. “He’s not presidential,” Gail Francioli said after backing Ohio Gov. John Kasich in that state’s primary. Yet like nearly nine out of 10 Republicans nationwide, Searles, Meyer and Francioli supported Trump in the general election. And like the vast majority of Republicans, they support him still. In fact, these one-time-skeptics are part of the bulwark that is bolstering...

MELBOURNE, Fla. — Many of President Trump’s most dedicated supporters — the sort who waited for hours in the Florida sun this weekend for his first post-inauguration campaign rally — say their lives changed on election night. Suddenly they felt like their views were actually respected and in the majority. But less than one month into Trump’s term, many of his supporters say they once again feel under attack — perhaps even more so than before. Those who journeyed to Trump’s Saturday evening event on Florida’s Space Coast said that since the election, they have unfriended some of their liberal...

This afternoon, across Britain, the most pro-establishment demo of modern times will take place. Sure, the Stop Trump protesters gathering outside Parliament and elsewhere will look and sound rad. They’ll chant and rage and blow whistles and hold up placards with Trump done up like a tangerine Hitler. But don’t be fooled. These people are the militant wing of the old establishment. They’re radicals for the old status quo, pining for the pre-Brexit, pre-Trump era when their kind ruled and ordinary people knew their place. The aim of the Stop Trump gatherings is to encourage MPs to deny Trump a...

Notebook: Victory is a potent tool as is delivering on stump promises It is more than 100 days since Donald Trump was elected president of the US. Would he win again, if the vote were held today? Many in the US, not to mention the world, are tempted to say: no way. They think all reasonable people must surely be fed up with him by now, after three months of tweets mostly unbecoming of the presidency, scandals over everything from Russia to the Nordstrom department store and an immigration crackdown that has left even legal migrants fearing granny may be...

What a difference a year — and an election — make. A year ago, Donald Trump canceled a planned appearance at CPAC, claiming a scheduling conflict with a campaign event in Wichita, Kansas. At the time, anti-Trump activists had been organizing a walkout of his speech, which left the impression that Trump didn’t want the drama. At the time, CPAC offered a sharp retort to the cancellation:(TWEET-AT-LINK) Clearly, all is now forgiven:(TWEET-AT-LINK) In this case, of course, it should be forgiven … or at least forgotten. Whether or not movement conservatives backed Trump a year ago is irrelevant now. Trump...

Will it be St. Albans, Sidwell Friends, or somewhere else entirely? We asked educational experts for their predictions. When President-elect Donald Trump and his family move to D.C.—Melania and Barron are planning to stay in New York City through the end of the school year—Barron Trump will be the first First Son since John F. Kennedy, Jr. to live there. And where he ends up in school is a big question. In 35 years, no First Kid has gone to a school other than Sidwell Friends, the private Quaker school where Sasha Obama is currently enrolled and from which both...

Head of the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development says Tesla has hired more than 1,000 workers at its Gigafactory plant outside of Reno, and on pace to increase hiring by another 150 to 200 workers each month. Executive Director Steve Hill told the Senate Finance Committee last week during a budget review meeting that the California-based electric carmaker and energy company is ramping up hiring and expects the factory to have 3,200 workers by March 2018. “They’re hiring 150 to 200 more every month,” says Hill. News of Tesla’s workforce expansion comes on the heels of an independent audit...

Looking for a new career? Valley employers are hiring and need quality workers. See if any of the positions fit your skill set. Endurance Tempe Endurance International Group in Tempe is hiring for 600 positions by Oct. 1. The company provides web hosting, domains and online solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. Positions include managers, technical support, sales and professional services. Apply here. Phoenix Career Fair Meet with dozens of employers in one day! The Phoenix Career Fair will be held Thursday, February 23 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Radisson Hotel Phoenix North. Come dressed to impress and...

In the movie “Thelma and Louise,” a bullied Arkansas housewife and a harried waitress ditch their mundane lives for a road trip in their 1966 Thunderbird convertible. It doesn’t end well. In fact, it doesn’t even start well. Thelma, played by Gina Davis, gets drunk and is sexually assaulted. Louise, played by Susan Sarandon, rescues her. But then the assaulter insults them, so Louise shoots and kills him. Their road trip turns into a getaway. They figure they’ll escape to Mexico, but Louise won’t travel through Texas because she’d once been raped there. They loop north to Arizona by way...

My Democratic Party believes there is man-made climate change. My Democratic Party believes in science. My Democratic Party believes in protecting the environment. On February 17, 2017 two Democratic United States Senators voted for a man who is a climate denier, a science denier and a destroyer of the environment to head The Environmental Protection Agency. For that alone, Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp must be “primaried” in 2018 and we should start finding qualified, principled, Progressive candidates in their states today who can take them on and represent true Democratic values in Congress. I don’t care that West Virginia...

Republican President Donald Trump’s first month in office is the sort of beginning that any other Republican president may have had, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday. “As I look at what we might have expected from a President Mitt Romney or a President Marco Rubio, or a President Jeb Bush at the beginning of their tenures in office, I can’t see much difference between what President Trump is doing and what they would have done,” McConnell, R-Ky. told a Capitol news conference. Trump’s chaotic first month has included an appeals court rejection of his travel ban on citizens...

From coast to coast, thousands of people across the U.S. are spending their President's Day weekend protesting Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies. Protesters wielding signs in Dallas, Los Angeles and New York poured into the streets on Saturday calling for the establishment of sanctuary cities in order to end ICE raids. Here's a look at other demonstrations scheduled for Sunday and Monday....

Over the past week, nearly 700 people have been rounded up in a wave of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps across the US. In response, people have blockaded roads and ICE vans and organized massive demonstrations. But what would it take to stop the raids altogether? The Assault In some parts of the US, the ICE assault involved brutal militarized raids in which officers smashed windows and set off flashbang grenades inside residential homes. In other places, everything happened so quietly as to go virtually unnoticed: here a bureaucratic change in the status of a prisoner, there the transfer...

Zac Petkanas thought he was done with politics after the 2016 election. He was ready to move into the private sector -- or maybe chase a dream job in the art world. Then his boss, Hillary Clinton, lost. Within 48 hours -- infuriated by the Cabinet prospects being floated by Donald Trump's transition team, like Wisconsin sheriff David Clarke for homeland security secretary -- Petkanas had decided he couldn't change careers yet. "Tuesday was the election. Wednesday I was sleepless and tired and very sad," he said. "And Thursday I got extremely angry." Petkanas quickly transitioned from Clinton's director of...

Killings across the Richmond region soared in 2016 to the highest level in more than a decade, with African-Americans suffering the greatest loss of life at 81 percent of all victims. Homicides in the region’s four cities, three towns and 16 counties with a collective population of 1.26 million jumped 24 percent, from 98 in 2015 to 124 last year — the highest tally since 2005, when 132 killings occurred, according to a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis of regional homicide data. The distressing loss of black lives continued at a disproportionately high pace in 2016, with 101 of the 124 victims,...

Consider this: What can we predict about the immediate political fallout if a substantial jihadist attack on American soil were to happen tomorrow? Answer: As we saw following 9/11, the visceral response is to rally around the flag; to see clearly the truth that despite our diverse spectrum of interests and opinions, there is much more connecting us than separating us. But the partisanship of the moment would profoundly affect the internal contours of that response. For starters, the response of President Donald Trump would mostly likely be predictable, somewhat juvenile, and entirely correct: “I told you so.” It is...

The fantasies abound, don’t they? Visions of that day in some not-so-far-off future, where President Donald J. Trump finally pulls some outrageous, undeniably unconstitutional Easy-D, and gets his executive comeuppance. In any number of imaginary, #NotMyPresident fan-fic plotlines, he’ll be charged, tried, and told “You’re fired!” by the required two-thirds majority of the Senate, then deported to Russia, living out his remaining years in a Twitter-less Siberian gulag. (TWEET-AT-LINK) Hey, your Trump impeachment fantasy may be different, of course (and the complicated process of how impeachment actually works can be found in far better detail here) but the outcome is...

The State Department Swamp was partially drained today. Secretary of State Tillerson fired Clinton’s rogue, self-described Shadow Government. trump-welcomes-tillersonMaking good on a Trump campaign promise, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson drained the Clinton swamp snakes, aka Obama administration holdovers. Thus the personnel responsible for the corrupt handling of Clinton’s emails and the Benghazi cover-up have left the building. Lurking in the Shadows In the Clinton State Department, a rogue shadow government existed in secret from the 7th floor. These policy makers publicly boasted about their secretive operations. And you can bet that some of them have been responsible for much...

In what may well be a harbinger of the future, Miami-Dade, Florida, despite its large immigrant population, has given up its status as a sanctuary city. This result, stemming from President Trump’s executive order stating that federal funds should be cut off to so-called sanctuary cities, was publicly predicted by public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who also noted that if a court is ever able to rule on the issue, it may be an unconstitutional violation of both states’ rights and Congress’ rights, but it is still likely to be quite effective in ending sanctuary status. In other evidence...