Free Republic

As Democrats intone piously about saving the republic from a president who has "abused his power" and "committed high crimes," and the news media call it all "historic," somewhere, behind the scenes, the red-state Democrats are panicking. According to the Daily Caller: New internal polling by the Trump campaign suggests Democrats in pro-Trump districts should avoid supporting impeachment or risk losing re-election. The new poll, released Tuesday, surveyed 900 likely voters in the 30 congressional districts that President Donald Trump won in 2016 but are currently occupied by Democrats. Nice to see what everyone suspected.  Red-state Democrats in districts that voted for Trump...

Freshman Rep. Katie Hill resigned Thursday in the wake of multiple controversies, including engaging in at least one sexual relationship with a campaign staff member. Conservative website Red State published intimate photos of the California Democrat on Oct. 18 after they were leaked to the site, sparking a debate about inappropriate relationships and “revenge porn.” Hill should not have engaged in a relationship with a subordinate while holding public office, and thus should shoulder the blame for that choice. Nonetheless, there’s little the public can do about her personal choices other than to call for her resignation. There may be...

Millennial movers have hastened the growth of left-leaning metros in southern red states such as Texas, Arizona, and Georgia. It could be the biggest political story of the 2020s. Liberals in America have a density problem. Across the country, Democrats dominate in cities, racking up excessive margins in urban cores while narrowly losing in suburban districts and sparser states. Because of their uneven distribution of votes, the party consistently loses federal elections despite winning the popular vote. The most famous case was in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election despite her 2.4-million-vote margin. Clinton carried Manhattan and Brooklyn...

Democrat Senators from red states have expressed concern that the impeachment process started by Nancy Pelosi "may spin out of control and destroy any chance their party might have of winning back the majority next year," according to a report from The Hill. These Democrats believe that if their party doesn't act quickly, Trump could "turn the tables on them." “It’s really incumbent on the House to really be laser-focused. The president is a master of pivoting and deflecting and I think it’s really important to stay focused,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who narrowly won re-election in a...

A Zogby/Wall St. 24/7 poll released on Monday showed President Trump slightly ahead of the top 2020 Democratic hopefuls. The online poll, conducted August 9-12, surveyed 897 likely voters and has a margin of error of +/- 3.3%. In a head-to-head race, Trump topped former Vice President Joe Biden by a margin of 46% to 45%. 9% were not sure. Sanders topped Trump with suburban women (45% to 36%), Hispanics (52% to 43%), African Americans (77% to 17%), Generation Z voters, those people born from 1995 to 2010 (66% for Sanders, Trump’s support was not available), medium-city voters (53% to...

But something has happened that could change that: President Donald Trump may have just taken Ohio off the table for 2020.

Vermont and Florida, both states with GOP governors, increased the age to purchase all firearms, including long guns, to 21. The anti-gun movement has clinched some wins, but South Dakota could be the next state to adopt a constitutional carry. Republican Congresswoman Kristi Noem won the state’s gubernatorial race this year and said that concealed carry without permits could be on the table.

I’m honestly not sure why most people go to college these days. It doesn’t seem to be for occupational readiness, because many of these majors aren’t in the least bit employable (outside of academia). It’s not to grow children into adults, because they’re being treated as though they’re in kindergarten. Students might want a degree in confirmation bias, but is that what their parents are expecting when they write the checks? Case in point: University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has a course on rhetoric that is requiring students to read anti-Trump materials, Campus Reform reported. The best part? The...

Mueller’s team continues to flop around with no clear direction as the trial of former Trump associate Paul Manafort approaches the end of it’s first week. A few days ago, RedState Editor Joe Cunningham wrote about the Mueller team’s attempt to publicize Paul Manafort’s clothing choices. That was clearly an shot at coloring jury perceptions while having no factual basis to the charges at hand. You can read about that here. To be sure, anyone who wears a jacket made out of ostrich probably deserves to do hard time, but the relevance to which it played in proving Manafort a...

On December 22, 2017, President Trump signed a massive tax cut and reform bill crafted by Republicans without the help of one Democrat vote. One of the bill’s more controversial measures was the limitation of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction to $10,000 through 2026. According to the CPA Journal, taxpayers in California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the District of Columbia lose the most by the limitation of the SALT deduction. That said, most taxpayers will see their federal taxes reduced, even in high-tax states. Tax laws, as with the regulatory compliance burden and lawsuit...

The conservative blog RedState experienced “mass firings” Friday because of what its parent company, Salem Media, characterized as a decision influenced by finances. But one writer who was laid off said she is skeptical of that characterization, adding that she believes the website is effectively trying to silence voices that are not, in their view, sufficiently supportive of President Trump and his policies... “If this is a decision just strictly made for money purposes, they would want to keep the ones who were bringing in the most [page] views,” Wright said... Indeed, Mediaite obtained RedState’s traffic report for the month...

I wrote at RedState for 12 years, from shortly after its founding in 2004 to the end of the 2016 primaries, and I continue to value many of its current and former writers as friends, so it is with a lot of sadness that I learned of this morning’s summary firing of its Editor-in-Chief, Caleb Howe, and about half of the site’s writers. The site will go on, and has retained a number of talented people who will still be worth reading, but this clearly marks the end of an era and the end of the site’s distinctive grassroots anti-establishment...

Apparently the firings were done according to two criteria: Cost of contract and support for Trump. People whose contracts were expensive were almost all fired. People whose contracts were less expensive were either kept or fired depending on how pro- or anti-Trump they were.

Conservative outlet RedState fired most of its staff Friday while its owner, Salem Media, froze the site, citing an inability to "no longer support the entire roster of writers and editors." "The site name will linger, but RedState is all but dead now. I have invited the fired writers here," Erick Erickson, a RedState founder who left the site in 2015, wrote in a blog post. Fired staffers said the cuts focused on writers who have been critical of President Trump. RedState had often distinguished itself since 2016 as a home for Trump critics within the GOP. RedState staffers were...

Salem Media, owner of the influential conservative outlet RedState, froze the site on Friday and dismissed many of its writers. Bloggers were locked out of their accounts -- some just temporarily, while the cuts were made, and others permanently. Erick Erickson, the site's longtime editor who left in 2015, tweeted about what he called the "mass firing" on Friday morning. "Very sad to see, but not really surprising given Salem's direction," he wrote. "And, finally, after all these years, they've turned off my account." RedState writers work on contract and are paid based on the amount of traffic to their...

Salem Media, owner of the influential conservative outlet RedState, froze the site on Friday and dismissed many of its writers. Bloggers were locked out of their accounts -- some just temporarily, while the cuts were made, and others permanently. Erick Erickson, who founded the site 13 years ago, and left in 2015, tweeted about what he called the "mass firing" on Friday morning.

Minneapolis When Donald Trump stopped off in Minnesota the Sunday before the election, it raised eyebrows. No Republican had won the state since Richard Nixon in 1972. But two days later, the outcome was in doubt until late in the night. Hillary Clinton’s 1.5 point margin over Trump was the narrowest victory for her party there since Walter Mondale barely won his home state over Ronald Reagan in 1984.

It’s ironic to think with Republicans holding the presidency as well as control of the House and Senate the conservative movement would still be in need of a national leader. The election of Donald Trump effectively made him the head of the Republican Party. For conservatives who accept the reality of the Trump presidency but who reject him as a conservative leader, people like Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell haven’t exactly been inspiring. There is one person who balances the task of delivering to conservatives intellectual leadership, without making it all about himself and that is Nebraska...

Many in the progressive world, believe that our founding fathers were racist. As their evidence they point to Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution: “ Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” To the liberals, the 3/5th figure is an indication that our founding fathers...

I don't know much about these guys, their staff or their particular brand of politics. But I sense some sort of group-think mindset that comes off like they're some kind of political cult. Am I over-reacting? I was being critical of some of the neverTrump entries. I thought it was pretty mild. Apparently someone else did not. No explanation was offered.