Free Republic

Four years after the pandemic hit, officials are just starting to tell the truth about their panicked and destructive reaction to it. The lockdowns that were imposed worldwide (with the exception of Sweden and a few other countries) ran contrary to the longtime conventional wisdom that the main responsibility of the public-health system in a pandemic is to keep people calm and society functioning. Our public-health officials did the opposite. Intentionally. The hysteria they generated led to hundreds of thousands of non-Covid excess deaths, massive economic and social harms, and, worst of all, an unprecedented disaster in education. Francis Collins,...

“Almost all [European nations], with one or two exceptions, require voter ID at the polls. … Mexico, which is our southern neighbor, has a very extensive biometric ID card and a very extensive voter registration system that’s constantly updated.” How prevalent is election fraud in the United States? And what explains the aversion in America to voter ID laws, restrictions on mail-in voting, and other election integrity laws that are common in much of the developed world? In this episode, we sit down with John Fund, who co-authored “Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote” with...

Last week Mike Sandvick, head of the Milwaukee Police Department's five-man Special Investigative Unit, was told by superiors not to send anyone to polling places on Election Day. He was also told his unit -- which wrote the book on how fraud could subvert the vote in his hometown -- would be disbanded. "We know what to look for," he told me, "and that scares some people." In disgust, Mr. Sandvick plans to retire. (A police spokeswoman claims the unit isn't being disbanded and that any changes to the unit "aren't significant.") In February, Mr. Sandvick's unit released a 67-page...

As horrifying as the killings by the El Paso and Dayton shooters are, let’s not make free speech another casualty of these murders.

He should ditch the “military version of eminent domain” and order the Pentagon to start building... [M]any legal scholars say there is a way Trump could act legally. Current law allows the Defense Department to use “un-obligated” money to fund construction projects during war or emergencies. “The Department of Defense has funds in its account that are not specifically designated for anything,” Harvard Law School professor Mark Tushnet told NBC News. “My instinct is to say that if he declares a national emergency and uses this pot of unappropriated money for the wall, he’s on very solid legal ground.” ......

Republicans, independents, and even many Democrats approve of her, and the Constitution allows the House to select a non-member . . . Next month’s election could deliver a close enough result that it will be very difficult for the House of Representatives to organize itself and elect a speaker. If the House deadlocks, the Constitution allows the body to select a non-member to serve as speaker and run the place. It’s never happened before, but at the beginning of this century, few thought figures such as Barack Obama or Donald Trump could ever be elected president. On Capitol Hill, there...

ACORNÂ’s tactics live on in the senatorÂ’s elevator confrontation with activists from a Soros-backed group. On Friday morning, two women raced past reporters and security officers and blocked a senators-only elevator in the U.S. Capitol. They cornered Arizona senator Jeff Flake, who had just announced he was going to vote yes on moving Brett KavanaughÂ’s nomination out of the Judiciary Committee and onto the Senate floor for a full debate. The women wouldnÂ’t let Flake leave until they had yelled at him, face to face, for several minutes. Anyone who thinks the two left-wing activists acted without a well-thought-out plan...

The sugary praise, often from former critics, does his memory no favors. The past week has featured so much extravagant praise of John McCain that Jill Abramson, the former editor of the New York Times, had to admit “McCain would cringe over some of the glowing tributes pouring in.” Take this example from The New Yorker: In death, McCain had finally become one with the country that was the object of his deepest faith, and any praise lavished on him, during the funeral proceedings or at any point afterward, would redound to the greater glory of America. Yes, of course,...

One-party rule has wreaked havoc in the state, and voters might turn to a new crop of Republicans. A visit to the semiannual meetings of the national committees of the two major parties makes you realize that even in the polarizing Age of Trump, a midterm election isn’t one national election but 50 state ones. At last month’s Republican National Committee meeting in Austin, Texas, the mood ranged from optimistic to ready to ready for a funeral On the one hand there was Maryland, where despite the fact that Donald Trump won only 34 percent in 2016, GOP governor Larry...

Mounting problems may end high-speed-rail projects in California and Texas. A decade ago, high-speed rail was the new, new thing. In 2008, California voters narrowly approved initial bonds for a train that was supposed to go 220 miles an hour and deliver passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes. The next year, the Obama administration’s stimulus bill allocated money for it and several other high-speed lines. But soon the push for trains slowed to a crawl, and now it appears to be on life support. In 2011, the new GOP governors of Florida, Ohio,...

The more Americans focus on immigration policy, the worse the Democrats will look. No one knows when the government shutdown will be ended, but it’s increasingly likely that Democrats will rue the day they launched it. “I’m concerned that we don’t have an exit strategy,” one Democratic aide for a liberal senator told NBC News on Sunday. He went on to say: “This is a question of who’s going to flinch first.” One reason Democrats are nervous is that the longer the shutdown goes on, the longer voters will start to realize the Democrats are fighting not so much for...

<p>As president, he cut a grandiose figure. He was a braggart and a frequent liar. He was suspicious of other countries, frequently saying, “Foreigners are not like the folks I am used to.” He had a reckless disregard for limits. He belittled and browbeat others to intimidate them and give him what he wanted. Historian Robert Dallek said that he “viewed criticism of his policies as personal attacks” and opponents of his policies “as disloyal to him and the country.”</p>

They are angry, sad, scared, outraged. And they complain, march, holler and insist the nation is in “chaos.” And so it goes for Democrats and hefty populations of liberals and progressives who are still upset over President Trump’s victory. The phenomenon is billed as “Trump derangement syndrome” by Sen. Ted Cruz, political analyst Seton Motley and other observers. But the public may soon develop its own case of derangement fatigue as the appeal of such noisy fare wears thin. “Trump derangement syndrome could end up helping President Trump,” writes John Fund, national affairs correspondent for National Review. “Trump’s best asset...

The new president owes nothing to the ‘Bush Barnacles’ The media have paid much attention to how Donald Trump broke through to blue-collar voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and captured the presidency. Trump is certainly assembling what might prove to be a new GOP coalition. But one shouldn’t forget that Trump’s temperament cost him upscale Republican voters in key suburbs. To solidify his reelection chances, he will have to overcome their doubts with policy successes that assuage their concerns about his rough edges. Trump won an impressive victory, carrying 31 out of 50 states. But in several of them...

So why has Trump moved in such a conservative direction since his election? Interviews with several people around him turn up several answers. 1. During the campaign, Trump learned a lot about the country and how its economic vitality had been sapped and its foreign-policy standing eroded during the Obama years. “He now recognizes that the problems confronting the nation require bold reforms, and delaying the treatment will only sap his political capital,” former education secretary Bill Bennett says. 2. The refusal of previous GOP presidential nominees George H. W. Bush, John McCain, and George W. Bush to back Trump...

Donald Trump does know how to act in a serious, restrained way that impresses people. The fact that he isn’t displaying those qualities in his presidential race raises questions about just how much he cares about winning. There was a time when he really cared about the art of one deal. In 1990, Trump nearly went bankrupt and was forced to ask dozens of banks to whom he owed $4 billion to change the terms on their loans and forgive some of his debts. In describing this deal, Trump has said he focused on it with more intensity and purpose...

Three federal courts have thrown out voter-ID laws in North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin in recent days. Left-wing judges accepted spurious evidence that such laws were racially discriminatory, and they also insisted there is little voter fraud to worry about. Last April, United States District Judge Lynn Adelman of Wisconsin claimed that “virtually no voter impersonation occurs” in Wisconsin and that “no evidence suggests that voter-impersonation fraud will become a problem at any time in the foreseeable future.” Despite such sweeping statements, polls show that the general public is worried about fraud and bureaucratic incompetence in voting. According to a...

Ted Cruz will grab an upset win over Donald Trump in Arizona's presidential primary election on Tuesday, as he's the "only candidate with any kind of organization out here," a close confidant of Sen. John McCain predicts. "They have him positioned to spring the upset," Kurt Davis, a GOP operative in Arizona, told The Hill. "They just have to deliver." According to Real Clear Politics, Trump is ahead of Cruz by 13 points in the state's polls, but in Arizona, Republicans on the ground say the race's margin is narrower, and Cruz could pull off the upset.

Arizona’s primary on Tuesday is now a “yuuge” factor in the Republican nominating process. If Donald Trump were to win even a small plurality of votes, he would win all of the state’s 58 delegates and keep his momentum going. But the results in this important primary might be skewed. Arizona is an early-voting state, and people can cast ballots up to 26 days before the actual primary. As of last Thursday, 249,000 Republicans in Maricopa County alone (where Phoenix is located) had already cast ballots. That’s already more votes than the total cast in Maricopa in the 2012 GOP...

Donald Trump and his backers want to redefine mathematics, and have the GOP nomination handed to him with a plurality of delegates, rather than a majority, being sufficient... The Republican party has held 39 national conventions since its first in 1856. At each and every one, a majority of delegates was needed for someone to get the nomination...