Free Republic

In a recent Washington Post opinion piece, Robert Kagan presented a chilling, but disturbingly accurate, portrayal of American politics today and its dire portents given the deep political divisions and dysfunctional state of our institutions. A premise of his thesis is that “party loyalty has superseded [executive-legislative-judicial] branch loyalty … in the Trump era.” A more descriptive statement of the Republican side of the ominous national problem — Democratic extremists deserve at least equal blame — would be that loyalty to Donald Trump has superseded party loyalty. Trump has proved himself to be the ultimate embodiment of a “Republican in...

German trust in the EU seems to have collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemicAs Germany prepares for its federal elections in September, many are wondering what will come next. Under outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany has become an “indispensable nation” in Europe and within the broader rules-based international order. The consensus is that she will be succeeded by someone offering more of the same. Her own anointed successor as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, Armin Laschet, is indeed running on a continuity platform. And yet, as Merkel prepares to retire, there are signs that Germans are growing tired of their...

For years, Democrats and their cable news echo chamber conjured up and broadly disseminated the most lurid and patently ludicrous rumors about former President Donald Trump being a corrupted and (literally) compromised agent of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. Democratic talking heads ultimately tried in vain to distance themselves from this sordid oeuvre's most far-fetched talking points, such as the infamous "pee video kompromat" from the discredited Steele dossier. But for four years, Democrats' unquenchable obsession with the "Russiagate" hoax pervaded, distorted and sullied our politics. The irony is that Trump, on actual substantive merits, toed a very hawkish line...

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump this year, recently told the Atlantic why he remains committed to the party: “I’m a Republican because I’ve been a Republican far longer than Donald Trump has. He’s a Republican usurper.… I’m not going to let him take the party. So I will fight. I will fight like hell.” It is a decision I have not for a moment regretted, because the GOP has become even more of a horror show than I anticipated. As former House speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) notes in...

As of this recording, there have been 4.2 million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US, and 147,000 deaths, for a case-fatality rate of 3.5%. If you were to rank the countries of the world with respect to case fatality rate you’d find the US doing ok – about on par with Germany, and Brazil. Way better than Italy, and worse than New Zealand and Australia, for instance. This is not to say we are containing the virus well, just that among those who get it, the chance of survival is about as good here as those other countries. But...

“Trust in Trump’s America is gone.” The coronavirus crisis has caused a dramatic deterioration in the European public perception of the US and left many believing the EU had become “irrelevant”, new polling finds. The new survey by the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR) says the pandemic has traumatized Europeans and left them “feeling alone and vulnerable”. The survey studied the views of Europeans towards the EU and notably its response to the coronavirus crisis and the results did not make for positive reading. “There is a powerful sense among citizens of almost all surveyed member states that their...

China placed 50 million people under quarantine in Wuhan Province in January. Since then, many liberal democracies have taken aggressive authoritarian measures of their own to fight the novel coronavirus. By mid-March, almost all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries had implemented some combination of school, university, workplace, and public transportation closures; restrictions on public events; and limits on domestic and international travel. One country, however, stands out as an exception in the West. Rather than declare a lockdown or a state of emergency, Sweden asked its citizens to practice social distancing on a mostly voluntary basis. Swedish...

As Donald Trump abdicates U.S. leadership and dismantles the democratic international order, prospects for global cooperation look bleak. Fortunately, America is more than Washington and the United States is more than the federal government. Around the nation, governors are going global. In states both red and blue, they are engaging governments abroad, partnering with foreign provinces, and promoting cross-border trade and action on climate change. The White House may be in retreat, but statehouses are not about to turn their back on globalization. At the forefront of this activism is the National Governors Association (NGA), which begins its annual summer...

Under the guise of keeping America “competitive” in the looming high-tech future, the globalist Council on Foreign Relations is urging policymakers at all levels to dramatically expand the size and scope of government. The bloated welfare states in Sweden and Denmark are cited as examples of the “advantages” of massive government programs to take care for people. Without the sort of fundamental transformation of America envisioned by the CFR, the nation will supposedly be left behind in the emerging new paradigm, the organization claimed. Critics, though, blasted that idea. In its new report, dubbed “The Work Ahead: Machines, Skills, and...

There are many issues Democrats and Republicans disagree on, but elevating women in peace negotiations should certainly not be one of them. Just a few weeks ago, the United States under the Trump administration became the first country in the world with a Women, Peace and Security (WPS) comprehensive law (2017) and strategy (2019) bringing women to the negotiating table in global peace efforts. This is something to be widely celebrated. I have proudly worked with women across the aisle to train, support and empower women around the world — because ending poverty and violence against women, and increasing their...

A former Ukrainian prosecutor general is speaking out after Vice President Joe Biden forced him out of his job. Speaking to ABC News, former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin said he has “no doubt” Biden wanted him gone to help protect Hunter Biden’s employer. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings while Biden’s son Hunter was on the board earning as much as $50,000 a month. “Biden was acting not like a U.S. vice president, but as an individual,” he said to ABC News, “like the individual interested in having me removed — having me gone so that I did...

RUSH: Here is Steve in Jefferson, Wisconsin. Great to have you. Hi. CALLER: In the history of the U.S., there’s been a handful of great men — and, Rush, you are in that handful. RUSH: Whew! CALLER: With Hillary losing, I believe that they’re gonna put a woman on the Democratic ticket, and I think that’s why some of them are still hanging in there. You know, you talked yesterday of a lot of them only having a zero likability, and I just believe that they’re gonna put a woman on the ticket. I just wondered what your thoughts were...

Stacey Abrams has really arrived. The former Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and the Democrat Party candidate in the 2018, hotly-contested Georgia gubernatorial election, Abrams scored a double anointing by major globalist groups during the month of May. First, on May 10, she was chosen to deliver the keynote address at the Council on Foreign Relations’ Seventh Annual Conference on Diversity in International Affairs. She received the royal rock star treatment during that conference, as the great and the good packed into “A Conversation With Stacey Abrams,” a Q&A session emceed by New York Times reporter and...

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Friday that he expects Russia to target the 2020 US presidential election with social media campaigns, fake news and propaganda in a bid to divide Americans and “pit us against each other.” Wray, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington, said that as in the 2016 election, Russia also sought to influence the 2018 US mid-terms and he expects more of the same next year. “What has continued pretty much unabated is the use of social media, fake news, propaganda, false personas etc. to spin us up,” he said. Russia’s intelligence agencies...

The Case for Trump by the political and military scholar Victor Davis Hanson is a book dedicated to the "Deplorables." It is a fact-based analysis of why Donald Trump was able to win the presidency in 2016. Beyond that, Hanson sat down with American Thinker and discussed the presidential election in 2020. Donald Trump ran against both political parties and the East Coast establishment in the 2016 presidential election. He was the first man ever elected to the nation's highest office without prior experience in government, politics, or the military. In a nutshell, Trump appealed to a forgotten but sizable...

WASHINGTON (CBSDFW.COM) – While he has expressed support for President Donald Trump’s plans for a border wall, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a statement he is against closing the border to slow the flow of South American migrants and asylum seekers. “Closing the border to legal commerce would be devastating to Texas. Millions of jobs, in Texas and across the country, depend upon trade with Mexico, and the federal government shouldn’t do anything to jeopardize those jobs,” Sen. Cruz said.

Dr. Qanta Ahmed, a columnist and a Muslim member of the Council of Foreign Relations, had host Fredericka Winfield immobilized during an interview on CNN. Winfield didn’t know exactly what to do with Ahmed as she told her this President and President Bush are beloved. Dr. Ahmed said it’s a mistake to blame the President for the New Zealand attack when he is beloved. She rebuked those who would attack the President over Islamophobia and blame him for the xenophobic crime in New Zealand. Dr. Ahmed also reminded Fred that there are Muslim Brotherhood front groups making victims of Muslims....

Obama VP Joseph Biden brags about how he rigged the judicial system of another country

On the morning of November 17th, 1962, FBI headquarters in Washington D.C. took on “all the trappings of a military command post,” according to historian William Breuer. The previous night an intelligence puzzle had finally come together. The resulting picture staggered the FBI men. And these had served at their posts during WWII and the height of the Cold War. They’d seen plenty. Now they had mere days to foil a crime against their nation to rival Hideki Tojo’s.At the time (pre-Mueller! And pre-Comey!), the FBI relied heavily on “HUMINT” (Human Intelligence.) So they’d expertly penetrated the plot, identified the ringleaders...

Since the dawn of civilisation, kings, emperors and other men and women of wealth have wanted to rule the world, but none has succeeded. Every empire that arose on the blood of the people it subjected and enslaved – the ancient kingdoms of Egypt and Assyria, the successive Persian and Chinese empires, the Roman empire, the Islamic caliphates, the Ottoman empire, the various European colonial empires and even the communist regime of the Soviet Union – all eventually fell. Even the United States’ global primacy, a logic result of the end of the Cold War, is now being tested by...