Free Republic

Trump Is Not To Blame For Democrats Electing Violent ExtremistsDemocrats have a long history of defending and electing party leaders engaged in the worst behavior imaginable, while Republican voters are still rejecting extremists.While liberal America is justifiably triumphant about Tuesday night’s election results, a lot of professionals are quietly worried about extremism infecting the party. Certainly, electing a mayor of New York who’s an unfortunate hellbroth of communism, Islamism, and “defund the police,” is not someone you want defining your party nationally.And then there’s the problem of Jay Jones, the Attorney General-elect of Virginia, who won handily despite being caught...

A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered a lower court to reconsider a decision to keep President Donald Trump's ongoing case to erase his hush money conviction in state court. The three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal judge failed to consider "important issues relevant" to Trump's request to move the New York case to federal court, where he can seek to have it thrown out on presidential immunity grounds. Judges Susan L. Carney, Raymond J. Lohier Jr. and Myrna Pérez made their ruling after hearing arguments about the case in June. Trump's legal...

Republicans insist Gov. Gavin Newsom of California isn’t a threat to the Trump presidency. White House allies argue privately that he’s too liberal, too manicured and just too California to win a national election. And yet: They also acknowledge this week that Newsom looks more politically formidable than at any other point in his career. One Republican strategist said Newsom’s winning redistricting campaign in California transformed him into a top rival of Donald Trump,” while another conceded it had cemented him as a “Tier 1 Democrat.”

Donald Trump has accused Zohran Mamdani of delivering a “very dangerous” speech after he was elected as the next mayor of New York City. The 34-year-old, who stormed to victory in the election on Tuesday, directly addressed Mr Trump in his acceptance speech, telling the president to “turn the volume up” and that “to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us”.

A Republican senator wants to stop members of Congress from receiving paychecks as federal workers go without pay during the ongoing government shutdown. As the shutdown enters its 35th day, federal employees, air traffic controllers and other employees have either missed paychecks or received only partial pay. Members of Congress, however, are constitutionally required to get a paycheck, even if the government is closed. Some lawmakers have said that they would forego a paycheck, while others have introduced legislation to prevent their colleagues from getting paid. *snip* Kennedy’s desire to see that lawmakers don’t get paid runs into the Constitution,...

Hundreds of tourism and travel industry groups are warning those planning to fly this Thanksgiving holiday that if the government shutdown doesn't end before the holiday arrives, passengers could face higher costs and increased wait times, delays and cancellations that could derail family travel plans across the country. Meanwhile, the groups, collectively under the banner of the U.S. Travel Association, a trade group representing the U.S. travel industry, also warned in a letter to leaders in Congress of long-term economic impacts that could hurt American workers, businesses and the economy amid the Thanksgiving holiday if the current government shutdown does...

FIRST ON FOX: An Empire State Republican is criticizing New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for his attendance at a conference in Puerto Rico, days after winning his race and during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. "If Zohran Mamdani is truly serious about helping working families, he wouldn’t be jetting off to a luxury resort the moment he wins an election," Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., first told Fox News Digital. Fox News Digital confirmed that Mamdani is expected to travel to the 2025 SOMOS Conference in Puerto Rico on Thursday. Mamdani is attending a cocktail reception on Thursday...

NEW YORK (AP) — TV shows like “Abbott Elementary,” “Hacks,” “Heartstopper,” “The Last of Us” and “Yellowjackets” helped increase the ranks of LGBTQ+ characters on prime time by 4% over the previous season, according to a new study by the advocacy group GLAAD. This year’s “Where We Are on TV” study, released Thursday, counted 489 LGBTQ characters across scripted prime-time broadcast, cable and streaming shows — up 21 additional characters. It marks a boost after two years of decline, but remains far below the 2021-2022 record high of 637 characters. GLAAD added that the number of transgender characters on TV...

Nassau County Republican romped at the polls Tuesday partly because a strategy to tie local Democrats to Zohran Mamdani “clearly worked” because his socialist agenda has “no allure in the suburbs,” insiders claimed. Mamdani’s progressive policies fueled his victory in the city Tuesday as Democratic candidates won in high-profile races in New Jersey and elsewhere — but those policies were ballot poison just over the border on Long Island, insiders said. “We sent the message that there is a big red line between New York City and [Nassau County],” John Ferretti, who was elected as Hempstead’s town supervisor, said on...

A federal appeals court on Thursday let President Trump revive his bid to overturn his criminal conviction in the hush money case.The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals is allowing Trump to argue before a lower court to move his case to federal court, The Hill news outlet reported.Last year, Trump was convicted on 34 counts in New York state court of falsifying business records for a hush money scheme to keep quiet his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.A three-judge panel on the appeals court ruled that it “cannot be confident” a...

The election results were hardly a surprise. The polls have indicated what the results would be for many weeks. Conservatives hoped they were wrong, that reason, history, and morality would prevail, but sadly, the voters in N.Y., California, Virginia, and New Jersey gave themselves over to the dark side.How can we explain those voters who have elected a communist, a Marxist jihadist, in NYC? A wannabe murderer in Virginia (Jay Jones), a man who fantasized via texts about murdering his opponent and seeing his children murdered in their mother’s arms? They elected him along with a woman (Abigail Spanberger) who...

NEW YORK (AP) — Zohran Mamdani wasted little time as mayor-elect of New York City before making clear that he sees part of his new role as standing up to the president of the United States, who had threatened not only to defund the city if he won but also to arrest and deport him. Mamdani, a Democrat, addressed the Republican president directly and at length from the stage at his victory party in Brooklyn on Tuesday night.

Calley Means, a health adviser to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has left his role at the White House, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Means worked in the Trump administration as a special government employee and was a close aide to Kennedy, particularly active in the "Make America Healthy Again" movement. For much of the past six months, he played a key role in shaping health policy and supporting Kennedy's efforts to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system, the report said.

The new mayor's buddy, Hasan Piker, wishes the Soviet Union had won the Cold War.New York City's next mayor will be Zohran Mamdani, who is not merely an extreme left progressive but an actual democratic socialist. It would be a mistake to underemphasize the radical nature of this ideology. And yet, that's precisely what some in the media are doing. The BBC, for instance, featured an infographic that described Mamdani's democratic socialism as an ideology "which has no clear definition but essentially means giving a voice to workers, not corporations." That's an extremely evasive way of describing a radical political...

WASHINGTON (TNND) — A mayor of a small town in Kansas was charged earlier this week for allegedly voting in multiple elections, despite not being a U.S. citizen. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab filed six charges against Mayor Joe Ceballos in Comanche County. Ceballos is the mayor of Coldwater and is described as a lawful permanent resident from Mexico who allegedly voted in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 elections, according to Fox News. Prior to being mayor of Coldwater, he used to be a city councilman.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is set to hold a vote Friday with an eye toward ending the government shutdown. The GOP leader told lawmakers over a conference lunch that he will hold another vote on the House-passed continuing resolution (CR) that has failed to advance 14 times so far. This time, however, Thune is putting it on the floor with an eye toward amending it to attach a three-bill spending package — known as a minibus — that has been part of negotiations with Democrats, one Senate GOP aide said

Lefty MSNBC news anchor Joe Scarborough revealed he’s brokering a meeting between Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt after the anti-Israel socialist was accused of refusing to work with the organization. Scarborough made the announcement during a breakfast with reporters following a heated on-air exchange with Greenblatt on Wednesday, during which the ADL chief claimed Mamdani vowed not to work with the group to fight antisemitism, Mediaite reported. The “Morning Joe” host pushed back during the interview, alleging Greenblatt was “blurring and bending” his criticisms of Mamdani, even though the incoming mayor has been a vocal critic...

To understand this week's election, look to economic and political lessons from Argentina.To understand why Democrats overperformed in this week's elections, look to Argentina. Last month, Argentinian president Javier Milei won an unexpectedly large electoral affirmation, as his party significantly outperformed expectations by more than doubling its congressional representation in what was widely seen as a referendum on his agenda. Over the past two years, Milei, the world's most libertarian national leader, has slashed spending, cut red tape, and made his top priority restoring economic order and prosperity to a country that has long been a socialist basket case. Critics...

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., avoided answering whether he would support eliminating the filibuster, as he did under President Joe Biden on Wednesday. Raskin was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash about President Donald Trump’s recent comments regarding several Republican losses nationwide Tuesday night and the ongoing government shutdown. “One of the things that he has been talking about for the last couple of days more intensely is getting rid of the filibuster. That’s actually something that you wanted to do when Joe Biden was president. Things weren’t getting through the Senate. So is that an area where you agree with him?”...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to enforce a policy aimed at limiting transgender rights that would restrict sex designations on passports to “male” and “female” based on sex assigned at birth. The justices granted an emergency request filed by the administration, which is seeking to reverse a policy introduced during the Biden administration that allowed people to put “X” as a gender marker or self-select male or female. "Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to...