Free Republic

Taking up a discourse of idealised whiteness in conjunction with star theory, Sean Redmond frames white female stardom as a privileged yet restrictive state. Locating Johansson within such a construction of stardom, Redmond looks to how her idealised white star image as resolved through her roles in Her, Under the Skin and Ghost in the Shell is simultaneously recognisable and alienating within these texts. As idealised white star, Johansson traverses the cinematic universe, moving with privileged access into roles, spaces and intimacies laid open for her. Yet as an unobtainable and non-reproductive idol, Johansson is also alienating, an embodiment of...

President Joe Biden, 81, “has no impairment,” Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed in the octogenarian’s defense on Tuesday. While testifying under oath before a House appropriations subcommittee, Garland said “the president has no impairment” because he “watched” Biden conduct meetings. About one-third of Democrats doubt Biden’s mental fitness, a Harvard/Harris survey recently found. Another poll revealed 82 percent of Americans harbor concerns about his physical and mental health. Only about one-quarter of voters say Biden is physically or mentally fit to serve a second term, Quinnipiac found. “I have watched him expertly guide meetings of staff and of cabinet members...

Actor John Leguizamo obliterated a small horse piñata while reciting a thorough catalogue of Spanish-language profanities on “The Daily Show” Tuesday in response to a New York Times/Siena poll that reported former President Trump leads President Biden among Latino voters. Of the poll’s Hispanic respondents, 46 percent they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, and 40 percent said they would vote for Biden. “You may be thinking, how is this possible? ‘Build the wall’ Donald Trump? ‘Mass deportations’ Donald Trump? ‘Guy who thinks Daddy Yankee is a baseball player’ Donald Trump?” asked Leguizamo, after pummeling the...

Judge Juan Merchan on Tuesday accused Trump of intimidating a juror who admitted she posted a pro-Biden video to her Facebook page. Jury selection was still underway on Tuesday in the Stormy Daniels ‘hush money’ trial after more than 50 prospective jurors were dismissed from the jury pool on Monday. One potential juror was brought in for questioning after Trump’s lawyers discovered she posted a pro-Biden celebratory video in 2020. “You had to get in the car to spread the honking cheer. it’s a full on dance party at 96th street,” the potential juror’s caption read according to Trump attorney...

First Lady Jill Biden said Wednesday on “CBS Mornings” that she believed it is “obvious” that President Joe Biden will win the November presidential election. Co-host Gayle King asked, “How is the campaign going?” Biden said, “My gosh, it’s going great. I have been traveling every day that I’m not in the classroom. People are excited. And I really feel like, you know, people know the choice this election, they can choose chaos or choose, you know, steady, wisdom, experience.” King said, “Is there not a part of you that’s a little worried?”

Long-time political commentator Chris Matthews said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that former President Donald Trump was being blasphemous by claiming he is God. Matthews said, “This presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is saying, I am the shepherd. I’m him. I’m God. It’s astounding to me. It’s astounding to me that he can talk like this. It’s blasphemy.”

Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Michael Steele criticized the New York appeals court’s decision to pause enforcement of the multimillion-dollar judgment against former President Trump and his company over deceitful business practices. In a terse order on Monday, a five-judge state appeals court panel said it would delay the enforcement of the $464 million judgment against Trump, the Trump Organization and top executives, plus interest, if they post bond within 10 days. The bond amount was also slashed by more than half. “Yet again, @realDonaldTrump gets special treatment with his own private system of justice,” Steele, a regular critic...

Cooking on a gas stove in a tiny home is 100 times more deadly than leaving the car running in the garage, according to a new study out of Purdue University. The findings indicate that cooking could lead to the deposition of 10 billion to 1 trillion nano-particles in a person's airways and the tracheobronchial region of the lungs.

The experimental Holocaust drama, The Zone of Interest, took home the Oscar for Best International Feature, and its director, Jonathan Glazer, used the moment to decry Israel’s attack in Gaza. Expounding upon the film’s themes, Glazer said that his film aimed to reflect the ongoing dehumanization in the present, including Israel and Gaza. “All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present, not to say look what they did then, but rather look what we do now,” he said. Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present.”...

…….. Every four years, as Americans gird themselves to choose a president, there's talk, mainly among Democrats, of leaving the country. I'm off for Canada if unacceptable candidate X wins! And every four years, the promised exodus fails to materialize. It's mostly just therapeutic venting. This time is different. The alarm over Trump's potential triumph in November is far starker than the fears stoked by past presidents. "A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable," a recent Washington Post headline warned. The Atlantic devoted an entire issue to the authoritarian horrors in store for America "If Trump Wins." Every four years or...

You've probably seen some of the same reports I have about a "massacre" that Gaza claims happened early this morning when the IDF opened fire on civilians waiting for food. At this moment, most of the US news outlets reporting on this say it's still not clear what happened because each side is telling a very different story. The basic outline is that sometime around 4 am local time a large number of trucks carrying food were moving north toward Gaza City along a road that runs along the ocean. What happened next is disputed but there doesn't seem to...

President Biden began his remarks during a Thursday visit to the southern border in Texas by addressing a devastating wildfire in the state’s panhandle and Oklahoma before calling climate change deniers “neanderthals.” Speaking in the border city of Brownsville, Biden first addressed the ongoing wildfire that has ravaged a portion of Texas and destroyed more than one million acres. “I’ve flown over a lot of these wildfires since I’ve been president,” Biden said. “Flown over more land burned to the ground. All the vegetation gone more than the entire state of Maryland in square footage.” “The idea there’s no such...

Piles of trash and miles of fencing will greet President Joe Biden when he arrives in Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday for the second border visit of his presidency. What will be missing are illegal migrants crossing the border. At Camp Monument, once a bustling center run by U.S. Custom and Border Patrol to process migrants who illegally entered the country in Brownsville, there were few signs of activity on Wednesday. Rows of fencing, entwined with concertina wire, shone in the hot Texas sun. The 12-foot-tall wire fence panels are laced with a 3-foot looping layer of concertina wire in order...

President Joe Biden is insisting that he made the right decisions on the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, despite the deaths of 13 service members during a suicide bombing outside the Kabul airport as the evacuations were taking place, according to a new book. "No one offered to resign, in large part because the president didn't believe anyone had made a mistake," Politico's Alexander Ward wrote in "The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore Foreign Policy After Trump," reported Axios. "Ending the war was always going to be messy." After the withdrawal, Biden told his top aides, including national security adviser...

How is it possible that Republicans cannot impeach this rotten, destructive man? DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas joined Kristen Welker on Meet the Press on Sunday to discuss the Biden open borders invasion at the US southern border. During the interview Secretary Mayorkas, a serial liar, told Welker “We don’t bear responsibility” for the open US border and the 11 million illegals who have invaded the US under their watch. Of course, this latest disgusting lie by Alejandro Mayorkas is part of The Democrat’s Nine Point Plan to blame Joe Biden’s border crisis on Republicans and Donald Trump.

Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that former President Donald Trump “tried to wreck the country” and was now “lighting democracy on fire.” Co-host Jon Karl said, “Michelle Obama, as I’m sure you saw, said that people should be terrified about what could possibly happen with the outcome of this election. Is she right to be terrified?” Newsom said, “Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we all should be. I mean, what more evidence do you need? I mean, here’s a guy who lost the election, Trump, and tried to wreck the country. He’s lighting democracy on fire....

The dress that E. Jean Carroll — the woman who has sued former President Donald Trump for defamation for denying her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the early 1990’s — claims she wore during the alleged attack did not exist at the time, Trump’s lawyer pointed out. Carroll’s second defamation trial against Trump is underway. Notably, Trump is not facing criminal charges in these cases. Carroll first went public with her story in 2019, posing for a cover of New York Magazine in the Donna Karan blazer dress that she claims she...

Among those being mentioned for Trump’s defense secretary are Christopher Miller, who served temporarily during his administration, Michael Flynn and Mike Pompeo. WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is sparking fears among those who understand the inner workings of the Pentagon that he would convert the nonpartisan U.S. military into the muscular arm of his political agenda as he makes comments about dictatorship and devalues the checks and balances that underpin the nation’s two-century-old democracy. A circle of appointees independent of Trump’s political operation steered him away from ideas that would have pushed the limits of presidential power in his last term,...

A Georgia district attorney accused of hiring her lover to prosecute former President Trump broke her silence on the controversy, saying she and the prosecutor were targeted because they are black. “They only attacked one,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis Sunday at Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta. “First thing they say, ‘Oh, she’s gonna play the race card now.’ “But no God, isn’t it them that’s playing the race card when they only question one?” The comments were Willis’ first time addressing the allegations publicly — but she neither confirmed nor denied the claims lobbed at her and...

The Biden team has been limiting his contact with media for a long time. As part of the new strategy that they're going to employ, they're going to have him out meeting the people more, and doing smaller podcast-type interviews. They think that's going to help sell him and get past the age problem. That didn't work out very well when they ran him around to various stores in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, area and he looked very bad, and contradicted himself on the Houthis, and other subjects. They also had him do a very short interview with historian Heather Cox...