Free Republic

An organization that played a key role in the White House’s effort to mislead the public and Congress about last summer’s nuclear agreement with Iran requested $750,000 for this campaign from a foundation backed by liberal billionaire George Soros, according to funding documents leaked to the public. The Ploughshares Fund, a liberal organization cited by top White House officials as a chief architect of the Obama administration’s campaign to push the Iran deal, requested the cash from Soros’s Open Society Foundations so that it could pay off “experts and validators” of the administration’s diplomacy with Iran, according to a funding...

On Dec. 13, 2000, after perhaps the most hotly contested presidential election in American history (and a Supreme Court decision that divided Americans), Al Gore did one of the most important things that keeps American democracy working: he conceded. "Let there be no doubt: While I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it," he said in a seven-minute statement. He added, "And tonight for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession." YouTube No one expected a recount process that would drag out until December. But this year,...

On the final night of the Republican National Convention last month, as Donald Trump formally accepted his party's nomination for president, my Code Switch co-host Shereen Marisol Meraji fired off a tweet about how unnerved she was watching Trump's address, with its angry denunciations of Muslims and Mexican immigrants. "This speech is difficult to listen to as a Latina and an Iranian," she wrote. "So much fear-mongering." Another NPR colleague — a person of color, and a friend — quickly texted her and told her the tweet might be inappropriate, work-wise. Shereen considered it, and took her tweet down. But...

Trump urged Russian agents to "find" his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's emails and release them, an unprecedented move by a candidate for president encouraging such a foreign breach. "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," the GOP presidential nominee said at a news conference in Miami on Wednesday. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press." Trump was referring to the ongoing controversy surrounding the private server Clinton used while secretary of state. Separately, the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this week was upended by a release of...

This report refers to Shannon Watts as one in a group of “regular people” who began advocating for stricter gun control measures in recent years. After the December 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., she created the “One Million Moms for Gun Control” Facebook page. It later became “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.” We should have noted that Watts has a background in corporate communications. From 1998 to mid-2012, she was a corporate communications executive or consultant at such companies as Monsanto and FleishmanHillard. Before that, Watts had what she says was a...

On Thursday night, the votes poured in: After months of debate, the United Kingdom officially voted to leave the European Union in a referendum nicknamed "Brexit." Shortly after the results were made public, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he would leave office in October. Global stocks tanked, and the British pound crashed to a 31-year low. World leaders from the U.S. to Japan to Germany spoke out about the far-reaching effects the referendum would have. The scale of this reaction was predictable — after all, the U.K. joined the EU's predecessor, the EEC (European Economic Community), back in 1973...

Donald Trump has taken an unlikely path to winning the GOP nomination for president. And now he's taking an unusual approach to campaigning for the general election that could cost him dearly. The billionaire businessman effectively clinched his party's nomination a full month before Democrat Hillary Clinton did the same. But Trump spent much of the month of May campaigning in states that won't help him win the 270 votes he needs in November. Yes, the California primary and contests in other Western states still loomed. But he was unopposed in those GOP contests, and many Republicans wished he had...

What happens when a National Public Radio host interviews a New York Times reporter on the subject of Venezuela’s economic collapse? You get a perfect storm of cluelessness. The host is Terry Gross, the guest is New York Times reporter Nicholas Casey, and the program is Fresh Air. Gross asks Casey about the utter disaster that Venezuela has become. Casey understands the depth to which Venezuela has fallen–he lives in Caracas!–but he can’t bring himself to offer an honest diagnosis.

WAMU welcomes Murray Horwitz as new host for The Big Broadcast. For over 50 years, The Big Broadcast has kept old time radio alive for Washington audiences, airing shows like Gunsmoke, Dragnet, The Jack Benny Show, The Lone Ranger, Suspense, and Fibber McGee and Molly. Murray will take the mic as host of The Big Broadcast on Sunday, June 12. He will be joined by co-producer Jill Ahrold Bailey. While he has big shoes to fill, Murray has a great deal of experience in radio and theater. He helped to create several entertainment shows while at NPR, receiving three Peabody...

David Gilkey, a veteran news photographer and video editor for National Public Radio, and an Afghan translator, Zabihullah Tamanna, were killed while on assignment in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, a network spokeswoman said.

Bob Garfield, co-host of WNYC's "On the Media," says the annual mingling of reporters, celebrities and sources at the White House Correspondents Association dinner is "repulsive." Source: CNN

The first lesson from how the Iran deal was sold to the public is that it is important to follow the money. Eight hundred eleven op-eds. Three hundred fifty- two letters to the editor. Two hundred twenty-seven editorials. That’s the number of “pro-diplomacy” articles that Ploughshares Fund takes credit for helping support as part of its “proactive” media campaign to support the Iran deal last year. They “were published during critical moments of the Iran campaign,” the website of the fund boasts in its 2015 annual report. The revelations about the work that this one fund did to support the...

A group the White House recently identified as a key surrogate in selling the Iran nuclear deal gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to help it report on the pact and related issues, according to the group's annual report. It also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets.

When you first wrap your head around its plot, the new film Captain America: Civil War seems to have abandoned most of the pointed political content of Marvel's 2006 comics series Civil War, on which it's based. ("Loosely based"? Let's say "semi-loosely based.") In the books, the conflict between Captain America and Iron Man is fundamentally about the Registration Act that would require superheroes to abandon their secret identities, be registered and tracked, and become government employees subject to oversight. The Act follows a tragic series of events that are not actually the fault of The Avengers; in a way...

Third-grader Victor Reza was watching CNN in the living room in Houston with his family when Donald Trump was announced as the winner of the Florida Republican primary. Victor teared up, his older sister, Maria, said in a telephone interview. "I don't want him to win," he announced. "If he wins, I'm never going to see any of you again." Victor, 10, is a U.S. citizen, but members of his immediate family are undocumented. And, says 21-year-old Maria, "I'm pretty sure he's heard hateful rhetoric from his classmates at school. His friends at school were saying, 'Ha-ha, your family's going...

It took a tragedy the magnitude of the suicide bombings that injured hundreds and killed nearly three dozen in Brussels, Belgium to derail the media’s obsession with Donald Trump rallies and their inevitable descent into riots (with as little as a single punch thrown now considered a “riot”).NPR has realized that it has been sending its reporters right into the danger zone, inspiring the network to offer safety training to those on the front lines.

NPR is acting to clarify the role of longtime analyst and commentator Cokie Roberts after she co-wrote a syndicated newspaper column calling for "the rational wing" of the Republican Party to stop Donald Trump's march toward its presidential nomination. NPR has a policy forbidding its journalists from taking public stances on political affairs. She has not been a full-time employee for decades, and several years ago Roberts officially was named a commentator. (The timing was confirmed in separate interviews with Roberts, NPR officials and the former senior vice president for news who made the decision.) The role gives Roberts more...

NPR touts Muhammad’s example as means to counter “extremism” This article is more ridiculous than most. Muhammad loved dates, melons and cucumbers and that’s supposed to make Muslims less susceptible to “extremist propaganda”? His non-snoring blowing sound while sleeping is supposed to make Muslims “emphasize charity and respect for other faiths”? “Hassan argues that if Muslims had more knowledge of how the Prophet Muhammad actually lived and what he taught, they would be less vulnerable to extremist propaganda. Counterterrorism officials — who’ve focused largely on surveillance, sting operations and community policing — would have more success countering extremism, he says,...

National Public Radio collaborated with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to survey Americans’ recent experience with health care. As to the Affordable Care Act, the survey’s findings are damning. They suggest that Obamacare has been worse than a complete waste of money. This is the survey’s only question directly on Obamacare. Most respondents say that Obamacare hasn’t affected them; where it has affected them, most say the law’s impact has been harmful: The promises that President Obama made about the ACA–cheaper premiums! lower co-pays and deductibles! better coverage!–have completely failed to materialize....

Penny Starr at CNSNews.com found an appalling example of journalistic fawning over the Castro brothers of communist Cuba on Wednesday’s All Things Considered, the evening newscast of taxpayer-subsidized National Public Radio. Ramon Castro, the older brother of Fidel and Raul Castro, died last week at age 91. NPR reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro warmly recalled his sense of humor from going to a party in Havana for American business people (despite the ongoing trade embargo).