Free Republic

Three years after a presidential election that came down to 77,000 votes in three Midwestern battlegrounds, Democrats and Republicans are eyeing a much larger battlefield ahead of the 2020 contests, one that stretches from the picturesque coastline of rural Maine to the high desert of Arizona. Both President Trump’s campaign and the Democrats vying to replace him are scrutinizing a political map in flux, one in which attitudes and alignments are shifting and new regions are coming into play.As many as a dozen states could be up for grabs next year as economic and international uncertainty pairs with a cauldron...

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WTVM) - Hundreds of new jobs and an investment into an old grocery store is expected to bring a huge economic impact to Columbus, according to the Columbus Chamber of Commerce. Global CallCenter Solutions, a customer service company new to Columbus, is expected to revitalize the area near it’s location off Buena Vista Road. The company is on it’s way to hiring 600 employees. “I think we will be looking at hiring almost every week," said Executive Vice President Megha Heightman. "So, it’s going to be an ongoing process so let’s see about two ,three ,four years to...

THIS is the horrifying moment a woman randomly stabbed a three-year-old boy in the street. Distressing footage captured the assault on Pekini Street in Tbilisi, Georgia, while the boy was walking with his parents and little brother. CCTV from a nearby pharmacy shows the family calmly walking along the street when an unknown woman approaches them and runs her knife across the child’s face. After that, she goes for the kid again but his parents stop her from striking him for a second time, Jam News reports. The boy’s parents say they’ve never seen the attacker before. She managed to...

The largest solar panel production facility of its kind in the Western Hemisphere is continuing to add staff at its $157 million factory in Dalton, Georgia, which began production six months ago. The Korean solar panel maker Hanwha Q CELLS is conducting a hiring fair Thursday in Dalton, Georgia, as it adds another 50 jobs at its 200,000-square-foot plant in the Carbondale Business Park in Dalton. The plant already employs 600 workers and is expects to reach full production — and to conduct a ceremonial ribbon cutting — in the next month. "Our first products shipped from the factory this...

WASHINGTON—Federal Election Commission (FEC) Chairman Ellen Weintraub’s renewed feud with President Donald Trump over voter fraud allegations from the 2016 election has the ranking House Committee on Administration Republican asking some pointed questions about excessive partisanship within the regulatory panel. “Recently, I believe this tone of partisanship has been amplified by some at the Commission,” Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) said in a letter to the FEC’s leadership made public Tuesday. “Partisan attacks only serve to undermine your work and the work of the entire Commission staff,” Davis said. He was writing on behalf of the three Republicans on the Administration...

Georgia Republican Senator Johnny Isakson announced Wednesday that he will resign from his seat at the end of 2019 due to Parkinson's disease and other medical problems. "I am leaving a job I love because my health challenges are taking their toll on me, my family and my staff,” Sen. Isakson said in a statement. "My Parkinson’s has been progressing, and I am continuing physical therapy to recover from a fall in July. In addition, this week I had surgery to remove a growth on my kidney." "After much prayer and consultation with my family and my doctors, I have...

Stacey Abrams defended her refusal to concede last year’s Georgia gubernatorial election on Monday, arguing that adhering to the democratic norm of conceding to a victorious opponent would make her “complicit” in a “rigged” system. Abrams has consistently refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Republican Brian Kemp’s November gubernatorial victory and cites the dynamics of her loss as the motivating factor behind the launch of her national voting-rights-advocacy group Fair Fight 2020. During a Monday appearance on CBS This Morning, Abrams pushed back on the suggestion that her denial of the election result’s legitimacy resembles President Trump’s 2016 flirtation with...

Furniture distributor Factory Direct Wholesale LLC has announced plans to both expand its operations and relocate its corporate headquarters to Savannah. The move will create 250 new jobs with 95 of those being jobs in the corporate headquarters and $17 million in investment. Previously headquartered in Duluth, the Savannah facility, which is currently being built out, will be located at the Morgan Lakes Center at 503 Morgan Lakes Industrial Blvd. Information about possible hiring dates was not available Thursday. “We are excited to expand our footprint in Savannah with the move of our headquarters and the creation of 250 new...

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told a group of people Saturday that if elected president in 2020, he will “go to war” with white nationalism and racism. Sanders said he would use every tool at his disposal, including executive orders. Speaking to a crowd of mostly African Americans at the Young Leaders Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Sanders described his family background as being Jewish and from Poland. “My father’s whole family was wiped out by Hitler and his white nationalism,” said Sanders, who is one of many Democratic presidential hopefuls in 2020. “Too many people have fought over the years, too...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Saturday invoked the Holocaust while vowing to go to war against white nationalism and racism if he wins the 2020 presidential election. "I'm Jewish, my family came from Poland. My father's whole family was wiped out by Hitler and his white nationalism," Sanders said while speaking at the Young Leader's Conference in Atlanta. "Too many people have fought over the years, too many people have died against racism to let it resurface and flourish in America." "We will go to war with nationalism and racism in every aspect of our lives," Sanders added, before arguing...

Over the past two months, the world has seen the people of Hong Kong bravely stand up to the growing threat of totalitarianism. What began as a protest against a bill that would allow prisoners to be extradited to mainland China has evolved into a movement to demand that the Hong Kong government (largely now controlled by China’s Communist Party) adhere to the promises of freedom and autonomy it made when Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. Protesters have flooded the streets since June – despite the threat of being arrested, smothered with tear gas, pelted with rubber...

President Trump, per usual, uttered quite a few astonishing soundbites during his 90-minute rally Thursday night in Manchester, N.H. But he was stirring controversy before he even reached New Hampshire. Speaking to reporters earlier that day as he left his New Jersey golf club, Trump revived an unfounded conspiracy theory that he would have won New Hampshire in 2016 but for buses full of out-of-state voters who illegally cast ballots.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered Georgia to stop using its outdated voting machines after this year and to be ready with hand-marked paper ballots if its new system isn’t in place for the presidential primaries. US District Judge Amy Totenberg’s 153-page ruling Thursday is not a complete victory for either side. A federal lawsuit filed by election integrity advocates and individual Georgia voters argues that the paperless touchscreen voting machines Georgia has used since 2002 are unsecure, vulnerable to hacking and can’t be audited. They have been seeking statewide use of hand-marked paper ballots. A law passed this year...

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams will not run for president, according to media reports, and will instead focus on combating voter suppression, an issue that took center stage during her unsuccessful run last year. On Tuesday, Abrams announced her new initiative, called Fair Fight 2020, at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Convention in Las Vegas. The name is an offshoot of a group she started after her loss. A close aide familiar with the decision told The New York Times that Abrams will focus on the new program rather than run for office. Messages from Fox...

Former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili opens up over the disappointments, betrayals and deals made in the run-up to the 2008 war. This is a full transcript of the exclusive interview the former president of Georgia gave IWPR. IWPR: Looking back at things from a decade-long perspective, do you think the West has learned any lessons from the 2008 war? Saakashvili: The thing is, the West is motivated by several instincts and one of the main instincts is appeasement. They always want to delay the problem, they always want to refer to the past, to the future, anything but the...

One day after CW president Mark Pedowitz addressed whether his network would cease filming of signature series like Black Lightning in Georgia, ABC’s president of entertainment Karey Burke found herself in the hot seat. “It’s an open issue,” said Burke of whether ABC would film in the state after controversial legislation passed in May that would restrict a woman’s access to abortion about six weeks into pregnancy. “This law is being challenged right now in the courts. We will just wait to see what’s decided and make a decision.” Burke fielded questions at the Television Critics’ Association press tour about...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Building on a 2016 ban on city-funded travel to states with anti-LGBT laws, San Francisco officials Tuesday voted unanimously to extend that ban to states with restrictive abortion laws. “It will expand the existing ordinance to states that have waged war on our constitutionally protected right to an abortion,” San Francisco Supervisor Vallie Brown, who introduced the proposal, said at a board meeting Tuesday. Five states — Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi — passed laws this year that ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Missouri also enacted a law banning abortions after eight weeks,...

JACKSONVILLE — Across from a Popeyes on the crowded, flat University Boulevard, a half-dozen protesters in suspenders and straw hats cluster by a bus stop. They clutch rosaries and tilt posters toward drivers headed for the powder blue building with tinted windows. We are praying for you. Pregnant? Let us help you. The parking lot at A Woman’s Choice of Jacksonville is private, set back, removed from the whoosh of passing cars and the evangelism of strangers. Still, sometimes women walk up the steps crying about the pictures of fetuses. Six days a week, they enter the quiet cool of...

As I watched the Democratic presidential candidate debates this week, something struck me that I believe will prove important in 2020: The candidates have nothing they can defend and nothing tangible to attack. The American economy is in great shape. Unemployment remains incredibly low – historically low for African-Americans and Latinos, in fact. And despite clear hurdles, Republicans have been taking proactive steps to fix the biggest problems in health care – consistently the No. 1 issue on the minds of Americans. So the Democrats have been aggressively on offense and pulling from the radical left’s playbook. What they seem...

No new or specific details about the I-285 toll lanes project were revealed at a May 15 Georgia Department of Transportation meeting held in Dunwoody, but the state agency did fulfill a requirement to officially close out the “Revive285” project that began in 2006. A future round of public meetings that will include detailed maps of what properties could be taken are expected to occur in early 2020. Dubbed by GDOT as a “conversation” meeting about the planned toll lanes along the top end of I-285, the one held Tuesday afternoon at St. Luke’s Presbyterian Church attracted about 60 people....