Free Republic

False rumors of Haitian residents eating dogs and cats have thrown the Ohio city into turmoil.Daily life, says one resident, has been “turned upside down by such vitriol and ignorance.”Some Haitians have already decided to leave Springfield and Ohio altogether. A disturbing scenario has played out at public schools across Springfield, Ohio, in recent days, with children turned away as they arrive or, worse, rushed out of classrooms, all because of bomb threats.Parents have struggled to explain to 6- and 7-year-olds what is happening. Some aren’t quite sure about sending their kids back.“You don’t want to give in to the...

There are many damning anecdotes in Kate Conger and Ryan Mac’s new book, “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” but one from February of last year perfectly captures the astonishing pettiness of the world’s richest man. Attending the Super Bowl as a guest of Rupert Murdoch, Musk had one of the most luxurious seats in the house, but rather than watching the game, he was glued to his phone in dismay. Both he and President Biden had sent tweets cheering on the Philadelphia Eagles, but even though Biden had far fewer followers than Musk on the platform, the president’s...

I am a physician and a scientist. Over 12 years, I had the privilege of serving Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden as the director of the National Institutes of Health. Before that, I led the U.S. component of the Human Genome Project. I am amazed by the medical progress that has been possible in the past few decades, both in alleviating suffering and saving lives. But I am also deeply troubled by the growing distrust of science in our society, just at the time when its insights are most needed. No recent experience highlights that disconnect more...

The classic example of chutzpah is that of the child who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy as an orphan. With the 2024 presidential election, we have a new way to illustrate the point: the candidate who condones violence, dehumanizes his opponents and whips his supporters into a frenzy, then turns around to condemn the harsh rhetoric of his opponents and call for peaceful discourse. Following the second attempt on his life in as many months, Trump blamed Democrats for casting him as an existential threat to American democracy. “Look,” his running mate JD Vance said on Monday,...

On Saturday night in Hershey, Pa., JD Vance will participate in one of the more unusual political events of this presidential campaign. Several thousand people — almost all of whom have paid for the privilege, some as much as $1,600 — will pack into a hockey arena to watch the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interview Mr. Vance, the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee.The money made from the event will not go to the Trump campaign but to Mr. Carlson’s new media company, which made headlines earlier this month when Mr. Carlson aired — and praised — the views of...

When Kamala Harris sat down for just the second major television interview of her campaign last week with the Philadelphia ABC affiliate, the anchor asked her to outline “one or two specific things” she would do to fulfill her pledge of “bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people.” She responded by recalling how she was “a middle-class kid” who grew up in a community of construction workers, nurses and teachers who were “very proud of their lawn.” She recounted her mother’s saving to buy her family’s first house. She paid tribute to a neighbor who became a...

Last February, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sent his eight Supreme Court colleagues a confidential memo that radiated frustration and certainty. Former President Donald J. Trump, seeking to retake the White House, had made a bold, last-ditch appeal to the justices. He wanted them to block his fast-approaching criminal trial on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that he was protected by presidential immunity. Whatever move the court made could have lasting consequences for the next election, the scope of presidential power and the court’s own battered reputation. The chief justice’s Feb. 22 memo, jump-starting the...

When my family moved back to the United States from East Africa in the mid-1980s, one might have thought it was a peak time of compassion for people suffering in faraway places. A glittering group of music superstars had recorded “We Are the World,” a smash hit charity single to raise money and awareness for the victims of a brutal famine that had gripped my mother’s home country, Ethiopia.But when I told my new grade school classmates of my origins, I was met with cruel taunts. I was awfully fat for an Ethiopian, one said with a snigger. Must be...

Donald J. Trump has made his revisionist account of the Capitol attack the foundation of this campaign, even when there is little political advantage.When a moderator asked Donald J. Trump about Jan. 6, 2021, at the presidential debate, the former president slipped immediately into a now-familiar revisionist history of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He falsely claimed that he had nothing to do with the assault, blaming it on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the police officers who protected the building that day against a mob of his supporters. But then Mr. Trump made a brief but telling...

In Tuesday’s debate against Donald Trump, Kamala Harris emphasized her middle-class background, her admiration for small business owners and her plans for an “opportunity economy.” She promised tax credits for young families and support for first-time homeowners. Those attempts to put meat on the bones of her economic plan will not be enough to win the presidential election.In the latest Times/Siena poll, Ms. Harris trailed Mr. Trump by 13 points on the economy, the issue that matters most to voters. It’s why she’s merely tied with Mr. Trump in the race overall, not crushing him.Optimistic words and some admirable proposals...

A few months ago, anxious American liberals told themselves a cautionary tale about politics in Europe: A seemingly inevitable rightward surge in this summer’s elections there was a dark portent of the political future, for Europeans and for Americans.As it turned out, that surge didn’t really happen. In June voting for theEuropean Parliament, the far right gained only modestly, and the centrist governing coalition held pretty firm. In early July, Britain’s Labour won the second-largest parliamentary majority since World War II, humiliating the center-right Tories and sidelining the farther-right Reform. And a few days later in France, a combination of...

A former governor of New Jersey and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and 2024. Tens of millions of Americans will be watching the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on Tuesday night. Many of these folks will be Republicans and independents who, like me, have decided that they are unwilling to vote for Mr. Trump. I’ll be honest: I don’t have much of an opinion of Ms. Harris yet, because I don’t know her well. If she’s an unknown quantity to me, you can bet she’s also one to the countless everyday Americans she...

It seems a strange twist of American history that the only man to have run against two female nominees in two presidential elections is one with a long and explicit record of denigrating women. From the earliest days of his presidential candidacy in 2015 to a Trump Tower news conference on Friday, Donald J. Trump has repeatedly attempted to attack, embarrass and threaten the women standing in his way — especially on the debate stage.Mr. Trump has, of course, treated men with intense bellicosity, launching a blizzard of interruptions against President Biden during their first debate in 2020 and lobbing...

The last time the nation held a debate with the presidency on the line, a candidate with about eight decades of life behind him faced the challenge of proving that he was still up to the job of running the country. He failed. Two and a half months later, the cast of characters has shifted and another candidate heading toward the octogenarian club confronts his own test to demonstrate that he has not diminished with age. Whether he passes that test may influence who will be the next occupant of the Oval Office. At 78, former President Donald J. Trump...

The FBI raided his home. The corporate media crusaded in lies for years to frame him as a Russian spy and insurrectionist. Fascist Democrats seek to imprison him for life, bankrupt him with lawfare, and take away his business empire. He’s constantly smeared as a “felon,” a “racist,” a “rapist,” a “threat to democracy,” and the “next Hitler.” When his 2024 campaign began to pull away from Joe Biden towards a triumphant November victory,” they shot him in the face and then threw the game board on the floor demanding a do-over with Kamala’s scrutiny-free “joy” campaign–a campaign backed by...

The right-wing think tank has been pushing misinformation about voting into social media feeds. The Georgia secretary of state’s office called one video “a stunt.”In July, two men went door to door at a sprawling apartment complex in Norcross, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is a hub for the region’s fast-growing Latino population, asking residents if they were U.S. citizens and whether they were registered to vote. Speaking in Spanish, often peeking from behind half-closed doors, seven people told the men that they were not citizens but that they were registered to vote. Although the two men claimed to represent...

Vice President Kamala Harris is holed up for five days in a Pittsburgh hotel, doing highly choreographed debate practice sessions ahead of Tuesday night’s clash. There’s a stage and replica TV lighting and an adviser in full Lee Strasberg method-acting mode, not just playing Donald J. Trump but inhabiting him, wearing a boxy suit and a long tie.The former president’s preparations are more improv. They are pointedly called not “debate prep” but “policy time,” meant to refresh him on his record. Nobody is playing Ms. Harris; sometimes his aides sit at a long table opposite him and bat questions back...

Their fast-evolving political friendship has become a potential minefield, as Mr. Musk’s sprawling businesses may present conflicts of interest if Mr. Trump is elected in November.In a live-streamed conversation on X with former President Donald J. Trump last month, Elon Musk raised the idea of a “government efficiency commission.” Such a council could ensure that taxpayers’ money was “spent in a good way,” Mr. Musk said during their more-than-two-hour talk. “I’d love it,” Mr. Trump replied. On Thursday, Mr. Trump followed up on Mr. Musk’s suggestion. In a speech at the Economic Club of New York, Mr. Trump said he...

Donald Trump is stuck. He is a brutally transactional politician who represents a coalition of ideologues. His instinct is to promise the moon, and he’ll say anything to get a vote — or just to get out of a room. He also knows, however, that he has no choice but to dance with the date that brought him. He can’t abandon the groups, interested parties and constituencies that put him in the White House to execute their agenda — to exercise their will. The problem comes when most voters don’t want what your partners hope to do with the power...

Senator JD Vance, the running mate of former President Donald J. Trump, has declined to denounce the right-wing talk-show host Tucker Carlson for praising and airing the views of a Holocaust revisionist who falsely claimed that the Nazis’ destruction of European Jewry was not an intentional act of premeditated genocide. Mr. Vance is scheduled to appear onstage Sept. 21 with Mr. Carlson in Hershey, Pa. Mr. Carlson no stranger to controversy, but his recent interview with Darryl Cooper, whom he described as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” has faced particularly fierce blowback. The Nazis’...