Free Republic

"I'm Senator Elissa Slotkin."

Today’s Republican Party is big on manliness and masculine virtues. The MAGA right in particular is forever obsessing over who is the biggest, the strongest, the most fearless among them.This is why, watching President Trump’s fight to keep a lid on the Epstein files, I have been struck, delighted even, that among the vanishingly few Republican lawmakers with the courage to defy him have been three fire-breathing congresswomen: Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina.Love ’em or hate ’em, these House troublemakers bucked their party leadership, stared down their president and made...

Belem, Brazil) — Crowned by global media outlets as the most important American at the United Nations “climate” summit in Belem, far-left California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) slammed U.S. President Donald Trump as an “invasive species” while signing deals with hostile foreign governments. The American president, Newsom suggested, must be stopped in order to save the world from alleged man-made climate change. Among other major announcements, Newsom inked a number of unconstitutional quasi-treaties with foreign governments — several of which are dominated by self-proclaimed communist and socialist leaders hostile to the United States. These “partnerships,” signed on the third day...

The USDA used the shutdown crisis to shine a light on flagrant food-stamp fraud.It’s amazing, and somewhat depressing, that this year marks two full decades since Hurricane Katrina blew through the central Gulf Coast and inundated the city of New Orleans once its defective levees broke from the strain of the storm surge. Just acknowledging that time span has a way of making one feel quite old. But a memory from just before Katrina’s arrival — a couple of weeks earlier — remains relatively fresh. It’s of a newspaper article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune about efforts by the...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Adam Gray was one of only six House Democrats — and the only one from California — who voted with Republicans in favor of a deal to end the government shutdown, and there was a calculated reason behind that decision.Gray, a first-term Democrat from the Central Valley, is running for reelection in a majority Latino district that national Republicans are expected to heavily target as they defend their narrow House majority in next fall’s midterm elections. Last year, Gray won his seat by 187 votes, and although redistricting has since made the 13th District more favorable to...

Ten Democratic officials who oversee elections in their states sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding answers on how private voter data was being used.A coalition of 10 top state election officials sent a letter on Tuesday pressing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over whether their agencies had been forthcoming about their use of private voter data.“We write to express our immense concern with recent reporting that the Department of Justice (D.O.J.) has shared voter data with the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.), and to seek clarity...

Summary Leading opposition figures in jail, exile or under charge Lawsuit would ban three opposition parties Ruling party says it is shielding Georgia from figures who would foment war TBILISI, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Just over a year ago, a diverse array of opposition coalitions jockeyed for votes in Georgia’s parliament, with four of them winning seats. Today, of their eight main leaders, all but one are in jail, in exile or facing criminal charges. The ruling party aims to ban the three main opposition groups outright.The slide into one-party rule has shocked many in the tiny South Caucasus country...

Trump is also frustrated because he thinks Democrats outmaneuvered the GOP on the debate. The fast-track movement comes after months of stalling by Republican leaders and immense pressure from the White House to keep a vote from happening.But Trump, over the last week, realized his vice-like grip over the GOP was not enough to forestall the vote and relented to the “inevitable reality,” the official said. The president changed course Sunday after speaking with many Republicans and concluding dozens of House members planned to cross him.“The strategy now is give Republicans a perceived win,” the official said. “So they can...

A panel of federal judges blocked Texas from using a newly drawn map for the state's congressional districts on Tuesday. "The public perception of this case is that it's about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map," the ruling states. This is a developing story. Check back soon for updates.

Conservatives are targeting a member of the House Democratic Caucus over her alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., told reporters Tuesday that a member of his group would introduce a resolution to censure Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-V.I., the Virgin Islands' nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. Newly released documents show that Plaskett exchanged texts with Epstein during a congressional hearing with Michael Cohen, a former associate of President Donald Trump, in February 2019. "I think she needs to be censured by the House and removed from the [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]...

A cautionary tale from the New York governor's office.A big part of the Biden ‘autopen’ scandal is that we don’t really know who’s making decisions in parts of the government. A signature doesn’t really mean much these days and government has gotten so big and chaotic that there are really complicated chains of authority, yet a lot of the actual work, including even the signing, is down by junior personnelAs you read this story about events in the New York State governor’s office, consider it in line of the Biden administration, and how easy it would be for a foreign...

CNN's Fareed Zakaria used his program to deliver a monologue on the nation's affordability crisis, outlining the forces driving it and debating where the blame belongs. FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: But first, here's "My Take." It's hard to see how the government shutdown and reopening is anything other than a defeat for the Democrats. A high stakes confrontation that ended with their own goals unmet and their message muddled. If they didn't have the leverage or were not willing to use it to prolong the shutdown, then why did they stage it at all? The shutdown reinforced the image of...

Democrats have generally been unable to agree on much over the past year. But they now seemingly agree on one thing: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) must go. Indeed, it appears that Schumer’s leadership position is increasingly untenable as he comes under fire from both moderates and his left flank. Democrats’ commentary on the five-term senator and nine-term representative underscores how precarious Schumer’s position is. After eight Democrats broke with their party to reopen the government, critiques of Schumer’s leadership were many. They included the simple demand, “He must resign.” He was also accused of trying to “screw over”...

What to know about the Epstein files House vote: The House will vote Tuesday on a bill to require the Justice Department to release its files related to the investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The vote is expected around 2 p.m. The bill, known as the Epstein Files Transparency Act, is likely to pass by a wide bipartisan margin. President Trump dropped his opposition to the legislation on Sunday. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that he would vote to approve it and that the final tally could be close to unanimous.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the once steadfast ally of Donald Trump who has since fallen out with the president, said the saga around convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has “ripped MAGA apart.” Greene made her comments while flanked by some of Epstein’s victims outside the Capitol on Tuesday, just hours before the House is set to vote on a bill that would force the Justice Department to release Epstein case files.

Keir Starmer has insisted he will be Prime Minister at the next general election - despite nearly half of Labour voters saying he should stand down. A YouGov survey of 2,100 people found 23 per cent think the party leader should quit now and elect someone else, while a further 22 per cent believe he should give up his role at some point before the next election. Only a third, 34 per cent, said he should continue to lead the Labour Party into the contest. Asked if he would stay on, Sir Keir told The Mirror: 'Yes, I will. Let...

On Friday's episode of HBO's "Real Time," host Bill Maher called out Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders, pointing to "collapsed" Democratic Socialist policies as evidence that socialism doesn't work. "Democrats should recognize the party moved too far left on social issues after Obama left office. Gosh, if only someone had been saying that all along. But, you know, welcome home," Maher said in his monologue at the end of the program. "Radical economic policy is always ineluctably married to radical social policy," Maher said. "Their platform, for example, calls for completely open borders. They're for what Biden was doing,...

Who would have thunk it? We now have two democratic socialists who have won their mayoral races in major American cities – Zohran Mamdani in New York City, of course, and inexperienced Katie Wilson in Seattle. Both cities have already suffered greatly at the hands of “progressive” politicians, and the only question here is how much lower they can sink. Could Los Angeles be the next to throw their city into the hands of radical leftists? You could argue that they already have with Mayor Karen Bass and their radical city council and county Board of Supervisors, but what if...

Britons' anxiety about climate change plays a big role in many mental health struggles among the country's youth and can trigger guilt about having children, a new report has claimed. The report by the United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) also suggests that yoga and visiting "climate cafés" could help stave off this "eco-anxiety" and build emotional resilience in times of change. "An awareness of climate and environmental change can also lead to emotional or psychological responses, such as eco-anxiety," it reads, defining the term as distress caused by the threat of climate change. The authors also reference "solastalgia," which...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged countries at United Nations climate talks to take “concrete actions” to stop climate change that is threatening the planet, telling them humans are failing in their response to global warming and that God’s creation “is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat.” In a video message played for religious leaders gathered in Belem, Leo said nations had made progress, “but not enough.” “One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes,” Leo said. “To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to...