Free Republic

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations. In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his...

If you've read RedState for any length of time, you know one of the things we are most known for is our hard-hitting commentary on press bias. Whether you come for the facts or the snark, we do our best to deliver insight into how the far-left twists narratives to push their political desires. That's what makes this next story so surprising. According to Politico, Donald Trump's campaign team wined and dined with top left-wing reporters on Tuesday night in preparation for the GOP primary debate (the former president will not be attending). SPOTTED IN MILWAUKEE — Team Trump wining...

South Carolinians have been bombarded in recent weeks with massive door hangers from a political action committee affiliated with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. These missives encourage them to consider the second-term Sunshine State governor as an alternative to Donald Trump. A paid employee leaving these “door hangs” for the Never Back Down PAC wants a particular voter in Charleston, S.C. to consider something else that dangles, though. Specifically … his balls. “#### you, get off my ####### lawn,” the door-knocker is heard saying on a Ring door camera, mimicking a property owner in the area who apparently confronted him for...

Former president Trump’s campaign quietly commissioned a second firm to study election fraud claims in the weeks after the 2020 election, and the founder of the firm was recently questioned by the Justice Department about his work disproving the claims.Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were “all false,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.“No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside...

Former president Donald Trump, fighting criminal charges in New York and multiple other ongoing investigations by federal and local prosecutors, is pitching Republican elected officials to get behind him as the inevitable nominee — and many of them are buying it. Trump is finally seeing the response he was hoping for when he announced his candidacy almost six months ago, in a moment of political weakness, as many Republicans were openly blaming him for the party’s disappointing showing in the midterms. Now, Trump is reasserting his primacy in the GOP, capitalizing on his early polling lead and using his indictment...

....America First Legal is headed by Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants. While AFL lacks the name recognition and financial heft of many conservative counterparts, it has racked up notable court victories over the Biden administration. Casting itself as “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU,” AFL has weaponized the grievance politics embodied by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement through dozens of federal lawsuits... ...The group’s success is alarming civil rights advocates, who fear Miller has figured out how to harness the courts to protect America’s declining White majority ...

Former president Donald Trump set off a scramble Monday in the Republican Party after he threatened to upend the midterm elections by announcing his 2024 presidential bid on the eve of voting. Trump told people close to him Monday that he might announce his candidacy at a rally scheduled for Monday night in Ohio, according to three people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential conversations, prompting a chain of phone calls from party leaders who have tried for months to keep him from announcing until after the midterms. Some of his advisers...

Four days after the raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, The Washington Post ran interference for the Biden Administration’s politicized FBI and DOJ by disseminating a whopper in an obvious attempt to tamp down the outrage. Not that they probably care, but the four reporters bylined on the story were punked. And Americans were deceived. On August 12, the Post breathlessly reported that, even though it had never been done before, the tossing of Melania’s under-lovelies at Mar-a-Lago by 30 FBI agents must have been totally legit because according to “people familiar with the investigation,” “experts in classified information,”...

Donald Trump is securing his grip on the Republican Party less than three months before the midterms, with GOP primary voters surging to the polls in Wyoming to oust his most vocal GOP critic, scores of nominees for state and federal offices amplifying his false claims and bellicose rhetoric, and many prominent party figures echoing his evidence-free attacks about the FBI search of his home. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Trump’s staunchest Republican opponent in Congress, lost her primary Tuesday in a landslide to Harriet Hageman, whom the former president endorsed with the sole mission of dislodging Cheney. The race attracted...

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation. Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into to the wrong hands.

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation. Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands.

The Washington Post bumbled through a Saturday article attacking Christopher Rufo, an investigative journalist and prominent opponent of “critical race theory” in our schools. Rufo took to Twitter to accuse the Post of five lies in the article by reporters Laura Meckler and Josh Dawsey. At least three versions of the story exist at online archive sites like this. Even the Post altered the story from its original errors. But you'd never know how wrong it was by looking at the current version, which only carries this note in small text at the bottom:

COLUMBIA, S.C. —When former vice president Mike Pence reemerged for his first post-White House appearance at a convention center chicken dinner here Thursday night, he did not mention how then-President Donald Trump's supporters marauded through the Capitol on Jan. 6, threatening to hang him. Or that the president attacked him on Twitter for lacking "courage" as the Secret Service rushed him to safety that day. Or the criticism Trump has leveled toward his former No. 2 in recent weeks. In fact, as Pence met privately with about 400 pastors in the cavernous First Baptist Church downtown and traveled across South...

Secret Service agents and medical professionals were aghast Sunday night at President Donald Trump's Sunday evening trip outside the hospital where he is being treated for the coronavirus, saying the president endangered those inside his SUV for a publicity stunt.

An Army officer’s promotion is in jeopardy over what some officials fear could be White House retaliation for his role in last year’s impeachment inquiry, raising the possibility that President Trump might again intervene in military affairs, according to officials familiar with the matter. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who received a Purple Heart for his actions in Iraq and later served as a White House aide on European affairs, is among hundreds of officers selected to be promoted to full colonel this year. Such promotions are typically signed off on by Army and then Pentagon leaders before moving to the...

WASHINGTON - By the time Donald Trump proclaimed himself a wartime president - and the coronavirus the enemy - the United States was already on course to see more of its people die than in the wars of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined. The United States will likely go down as the country that was supposedly best prepared to fight a pandemic but ended up catastrophically overmatched by the novel coronavirus, sustaining heavier casualties than any other nation. It did not have to happen this way. Though not perfectly prepared, the United States had more expertise, resources, plans and...

Minutes before President Trump was preparing Wednesday to reassure a skittish nation about the coronavirus threat, he received a piece of crucial information: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had identified in California the first U.S. case of the illness not tied to foreign travel, a sign that the virus’s spread in the United States was likely to explode. But when Trump took to the lectern for a news conference intended to bring transparency to the spiraling global crisis, he made no explicit mention of the California case and its implications — and falsely suggested the virus might soon...

President Trump’s order to kill an Iranian commander responsible for hundreds of American deaths has scrambled the politics of impeachment, putting Democrats on the defensive in their bid to remove Trump during a possible escalation into war. Multiple senior congressional Democratic officials predicted that the House in the coming days will transmit to the Senate a pair of charges accusing Trump of abusing his power and obstructing Congress, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office says no decision has been made. But some privately worry that the timing will trigger GOP accusations that they’re undercutting the commander in chief during a national...

President Trump has made his son-in-law Jared Kushner the de facto project manager for constructing his border wall... The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser is pressing U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the process of taking over private land needed for the project as the government seeks to meet Trump’s goal of erecting 450 miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of 2020. More than 800 filings to seize private property will need to be made in the coming months if the government is going to succeed... Kushner insists...

National Park Service acting director P. Daniel Smith faces plenty of looming priorities this summer, from an $11 billion backlog in maintenance needs to natural disasters like the recent wildfire damage to Big Bend Park. But in recent days, another issue has competed for Smith’s attention: how to satisfy President Trump’s request to station tanks or other armored military vehicles on the Mall for his planned Fourth of July address to the nation. The ongoing negotiations over whether to use massive military hardware, such as Abrams tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles , as a prop for Trump’s “Salute to America”...