Free Republic

Readers of the New York Times know the news may change, but the message is always the same in their paper of record. It will play up every Republican kerfuffle and downplay Democratic scandals while presenting the choice between the two parties as a Manichean struggle between good and evil. Now clad in rainbow colors, the Gray Lady will, in the name of inclusion, celebrate a wide range of heretofore marginal behaviors – homosexuality, polyamory and transgenderism – while sowing divisions by separating Americans into warring camps based on race, gender, and ethnicity.The transformation of the Times, and much of...

Without a functioning independent media, we’re headed to totalitarianism, but it’s not Trump’s creation. In February, 2017, the Washington Post adopted its now infamous mission statement: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Was it a coincidence that one of the nation’s most influential newspapers — the paper that broke the Watergate scandal and brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency — decided that its role was to save democracy just one month after President Trump was inaugurated? According to then-editor of the WaPo, Martin Barron, writing in his book Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post, this was not an attack on...

CHICAGO (AP) — The Democratic National Convention’s second night showcased a double dose of Obama firepower to validate Vice President Kamala Harris and deliver an unsparing indictment of Republican Donald Trump. The convention also served up a raucous roll call of states that was essentially one big dance party. If the Republican convention was all about Trump, the Democrats on Tuesday wanted to put Harris in a pantheon with past presidents. The biggest validators of the night were former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle. The latter linked Harris with her husband by telling the rapt crowd, “America, hope...

This is not the Democratic convention that President Joe Biden envisioned just a month ago. Stepping onto the stage in Chicago was supposed to be the capstone of a half-century electoral career, a triumphant recognition of his prolific first term and hard-earned validation of the belief that he alone could once again defeat former President Donald Trump. The deafening roars Biden receives at the United Center Monday night will communicate just as much relief as reverence from a party grateful he’s stepped away, further signaling that Biden’s exit from the race is the only reason Democrats are confident they have...

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday repeatedly swerved from a message focused on the economy into non-sequiturs and personal attacks, including declaring several times that he was better looking than Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump wound back and forth between hitting his points on economic policy and delivering a smattering of insults and impressions of President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron as he held a rally in northeastern Pennsylvania. The former president has seemed to struggle to adjust to his new opponent after Democrats replaced their nominee. Over the past week, he has diverged during campaign appearances away from...

A quote from Wyoming's governor and a local prosecutor were the first things that seemed slightly off to Powell Tribune reporter CJ Baker. Then, it was some of the phrases in the stories that struck him as nearly robotic. The dead giveaway, though, that a reporter from a competing news outlet was using generative artificial intelligence to help write his stories came in a June 26 article about the comedian Larry the Cable Guy being chosen as the grand marshal of the Cody Stampede Parade. "The 2024 Cody Stampede Parade promises to be an unforgettable celebration of American independence, led...

At least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Donald Trump campaign, including its report vetting JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received. Instead, Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about a potential hack of the campaign and described what they had in broad terms. Their decisions stand in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. The website Wikileaks published a trove of these...

LAS VEGAS — For weeks, Republicans have pummeled Vice President Kamala Harris on immigration, blaming her for President Joe Biden’s policies at the border. Now, Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, is seeking to neutralize that line of attack, one of her biggest weaknesses with voters, running a playbook that Democrats say has worked for them in recent elections and staking out her clearest position yet as a tough-on-crime prosecutor focused on securing the border. This week, she has hit back by promising to heighten border security if elected and slamming her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, for helping kill...

WASHINGTON (AP) — At the top of his first speech as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz turned to Vice President Kamala Harris and declared, “Thank you for bringing back the joy.” The next day, Harris took the theme a step further, branding the Democratic ticket “joyful warriors.” Contrast that with former President Donald Trump, who opened a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida a few days later by saying, “We have a lot of bad things coming up,” and predicting the U.S. could fall into an economic depression unseen since the dark days of 1929 or...

The blistering rash on 7-month-old Sobhia’s skin is the result of bacteria from polluted water, doctors told her mother. The infant, who was born a few months after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, is one of many young children in Gaza coming down with ailments associated with drinking or bathing in contaminated water, according to families, doctors and humanitarian groups in the area. Common issues include hepatitis and skin infections. Humanitarian groups have tried to help repair infrastructure, install septic tanks and distribute clean water and chlorine tablets, but their access to the enclave is extremely limited. So inhabitants...

The press has questions for Vice President Kamala Harris. She isn’t giving a whole lot of answers. In the nearly three weeks since President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy, catapulting Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket, the vice president has shown little eagerness to meet journalists in unscripted settings. She has not granted an interview or held a news conference. On Thursday, after a rally in Michigan, she held her first “gaggle” with reporters covering her campaign. It lasted 70 seconds. Harris’ lack of engagement with the media has become a constant rallying cry on the political right,...

CHICAGO (AP) — Donald Trump falsely suggested Kamala Harris had misled voters about her race as the former president appeared before the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago Wednesday in an interview that quickly turned hostile. The Republican former president wrongly claimed that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian...

An insult uttered in schools and boardrooms about many marginalized people has a new high-profile target: Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “I think she’s one of the weakest candidates I’ve ever seen in the history of our country. I mean intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel. ... I think that she was a DEI hire,” Rep. Harriett Hageman, a Wyoming Republican, said of Harris. For Black diversity, equity and inclusion professionals, the attacks on Harris as a “DEI hire” or a “DEI candidate” show the ways racial tropes can be used against Black people...

Fred Trump III, the nephew of former President Donald Trump, said his uncle is "atomic crazy," that he witnessed him using racial slurs decades ago -- and that he plans to vote for Kamala Harris.The Trump way was to be "complex and sometimes cruel," Fred Trump said in an interview with ABC News' Aaron Katersky."And within every family -- people know this -- families are complicated. Every family has their crazy uncle. My Uncle Donald is atomic crazy. And … he has put his mark on the family history," he said, as he promoted his new book, "All in the...

CHICAGO (AP) — “ Brats for Harris.” “ We need a Kamalanomenon. ” “ Gen Z feels the Kamalove.” In the days since President Joe Biden exited the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, Gen Z voters jumped to social media to share coconut tree and “brat summer” memes — reflecting a stark shift in tone for a generation that’s voiced feeling left behind by the Democratic party. Youth-led progressive organizations have warned for months that Biden had a problem with young voters, pleading with the president to work more closely with them to refocus on the issues...

There was 6 January 2021, and a violent coup attempt by a president desperately trying to cling to power. Then there was 24 July 2024, and a president explaining why he was giving up the most powerful job in the world. Joe Biden’s address on Wednesday night was a moving piece of political theatre, the start of a farewell tour by “a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings” who entered politics in 1972 and made it all the way to the Oval Office. For diehard Democrats it was a case of: if you have tears, prepare to shed them...

For the first time since Donald Trump was indicted in the spring of 2023, he has lost his grip on the news cycle and — temporarily at least — his message. Instead of commanding morning-to-night media attention, the former president and his allies suddenly find themselves reacting to their opponents. It’s an unfamiliar experience for Trump, who has monopolized America’s televisions, newspapers and smartphones for more than 12 months through indictments, primary victories, 34 felony convictions, an assassination attempt and a Republican National Convention at which he was celebrated as a quasi-religious figure. In the three days since President Joe...

WASHINGTON — In his first memoir, President Joe Biden reflected on what at the time was the most searing moment of his political career. He had withdrawn from his first presidential campaign in disgrace, driven out by charges of plagiarism. Now, some 37 years after that flameout, Biden’s epitaph weighed heavily as he made surely the hardest political decision of his long career in Washington to give up the presidency after just one term and end his bid for reelection. As he sat in isolation with COVID at his Delaware beach house these past few days, hacking and hacked off,...

WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris had one great day in her ill-fated 2020 presidential campaign: her first. Then came a rapid collapse. The freshman senator who announced her candidacy in January 2019 before 20,000 cheering supporters in Oakland, Calif. dropped out in December before a single vote had been cast. Now, Harris may get another shot. As the sitting vice president, she would be a leading candidate to succeed Biden if he succumbs to party pressure and exits the race. Other elected officials might step forward to challenge Harris, dividing Democrats and clouding the general election picture ahead of a November...

In short:The Wall Street Journal faces criticism for sacking a journalist who was elected head of the Hong Kong Journalists Association. - Chinese state media celebrated Selina Cheng's sacking, calling the Hong Kong media union "a malignant tumour". -What's next?Cheng told the ABC she intended to take legal action against the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong. The Wall Street Journal faces widespread criticism over its decision to sack a Hong Kong journalist who refused to withdraw from the election for a leadership post in the city's largest media union. Selina Cheng, who worked in the Journal's Hong Kong bureau...