Free Republic

... At least 16 other states currently have pending legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s eligibility for office under the 14th Amendment, according to a database maintained by Lawfare, a nonpartisan site dedicated to national security issues. The lawsuits argue that he is barred because he engaged in an insurrection with his actions surrounding the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Four of these lawsuits — in Michigan, Oregon, New Jersey and Wisconsin — have been filed in state courts. Eleven lawsuits — in Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, New York, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming —...

For Republican supporters of Donald Trump in Michigan, it seemed like a crowning moment: The state party chose two candidates endorsed by the former president, both outspoken preachers of 2020 election falsehoods, as its contenders for the state’s top law enforcement officer and its chief of election administration. But instead, that move at a convention last weekend — where Republicans officially endorsed Matthew DePerno for attorney general and Kristina Karamo for secretary of state — has ruptured the Michigan Republican Party. After months of strain, it appears to finally be snapping as what remains of the old guard protests the...

More than 30 years ago, Robert Reives Sr. marched into a meeting of his county government in Sanford, North Carolina, with a demand: Create a predominantly Black district in the county, which was 23% Black at the time but had no Black representation, or face a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act. The county commission refused, and Reives prepared to sue. But after the county settled and redrew its districts, he was elected in 1990 as Lee County’s first Black commissioner, a post he has held comfortably ever since. Until this year. Republicans, newly in power and in control of...

WASHINGTON — A year before the polls open in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans are already poised to flip at least five seats in the closely divided House thanks to redrawn district maps that are more distorted, more disjointed and more gerrymandered than any since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. The rapidly forming congressional map, one-quarter of which has taken shape as districts are redrawn this year, represents an even more extreme warping of American political architecture, with state legislators in many places moving aggressively to cement their partisan dominance. The flood of gerrymandering, carried out by...

Pennsylvania Republicans moved on Wednesday to seek personal information on every voter in the state as part of a brewing partisan review of the 2020 election results, rubber-stamping more than a dozen subpoenas for driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. The expansive request for personal information, directed at Pennsylvania’s Department of State and approved in a vote by Republicans on a State Senate subcommittee, is the first major step of the election inquiry. The move adds Pennsylvania to a growing list of states that have embarked on partisan-led reviews of the 2020 election, including a widely criticized attempt...

It was a campaign video that reached seemingly every Democratic corner of the internet: former President Barack Obama’s 12-minute endorsement of his former vice president and indictment of the current president. On Obama’s Facebook page, one of the most popular destinations in politics with 55.3 million followers, his endorsement of Joe Biden was viewed more than 4 million times. But another Facebook page, run by twin brothers who immigrated from Mexico, reached substantially more eyes. Their reposting of Obama’s endorsement, with a simple “BREAKING” text over the video, clocked more than 23 million views. Meet Rafael and Omar Rivero, the...

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey on Tuesday proposed investing $100 billion in historically black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions, a broad proposal in a Democratic field that has offered varying plans to prop up this longstanding yet struggling arm of the educational system. Many H.B.C.U.s, as historically black colleges and universities are commonly known, have faced widespread financial woes recently, with some schools losing accreditation and facing plummeting enrollment. Mr. Booker’s proposal comes at a precarious time for his presidential campaign: Despite crossing the 200,000 individual-donor threshold last month, he is still short four qualifying polls for...

Legislative power brokers across the country have long designed district lines in back-room deals that entrenched their control for years, if not decades. But now, Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey are carrying out a power grab in an unusually public fashion: They are seeking to make Republicans a permanent minority by essentially writing gerrymandering into the State Constitution. The New Jersey plan comes amid a national reckoning over the consequences of gerrymandering and has been met by fierce opposition across the political landscape — and not just from Republicans and nonpartisan watchdog groups.

With the prospect of a contested convention looming over the Republican presidential primary, Donald J. Trump on Sunday complained about the party’s rules requiring a candidate to have a majority of delegates to clinch the nomination outright. Asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” why he should be “guaranteed the nomination” if he failed to amass the 1,237 delegates needed to win it on the first ballot, Mr. Trump said that he might be unable to clear that threshold. But he blamed the number of contenders in the Republican field. “If I’m a little bit short – and one...

He’s been known to drift into a drawl when quoting Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail and once jokingly auditioned for “The Simpsons.” But Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who once aspired to be an actor, saves his best impressions for his favorite movie, “The Princess Bride.” In an interview while taping a “Candidate Cafe” segment for radio station WMUR in New Hampshire, Mr. Cruz acted out an entire scene from the movie. GOP candidate Cruz acts out 'Princess Bride' scene (video)He did his impressions of both Billy Crystal and Carol Kane, as well as the often impersonated character Inigo...

WASHINGTON — A Twitter post recently caught the eye of Bill McKibben, the environmental advocate and godfather of the Keystone XL pipeline protests. It included an image from “The Simpsons” showing Homer and his family basking in mountains of cash in their living room, followed by a report on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s appearing at a fund-raiser with a lobbyist from the Keystone fight. Mr. McKibben’s environmental organization, 350.org, has been trying to raise awareness about the ties it sees between lobbyists for the oil pipeline and former aides to Mrs. Clinton. He promptly shared the post with his 150,000 Twitter...