Free Republic

Of all the questions that will be answered by the 2020 election, one matters above the others: Is Trumpism a temporary aberration or a long-term phenomenon? Put another way: Will the changes brought about by Donald Trump and today’s Republican Party fade away, or will they become entrenched? Trump’s reelection seems implausible to many people, as implausible as his election did before November 2016. But despite the scandals and chaos of his presidency, and despite his party’s midterm losses, he approaches 2020 with two factors in his favor. One is incumbency: Since 1980, voters have only once denied an incumbent...

The transformation of the GOP into the party of Patrick J. Buchanan and Donald J. Trump—defined by cultural resentments, crude populism, and ethnic nationalism—is among the most important political stories of this century. But the GOP is hardly the only party that is undergoing some alarming tectonic shifts. Liberals wondering why conservatives who worry about Trump don’t join the Democrats should consider what is happening on their own side of the aisle. If you want to understand just how radicalized the Democratic Party has become in recent years, look at the ascent of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. A self-proclaimed...

A few hours ago Bloomberg broke a story, The Bloomberg story says that just one day before the fatal Lion Air accident, the very same airplane had suffered a similar pitch-control anomaly. But in this preceding case, an additional pilot, riding in the jump seat of the cockpit, recognized the problem and overrode part of the errant control system. The plane flew on to its destination. The Bloomberg story says: As the Lion Air crew fought to control their diving Boeing Co. 737 Max 8, they got help from an unexpected source: an off-duty pilot who happened to be riding...

In the April print edition of The Atlantic, David Frum has an article about immigration. His basic take is simple: because progressives have gone crazy and stopped exercising responsible management of immigration, fascists (his word, not mine) have taken over.The solution, Frum suggests, is to cut immigration by even more than the Trump administration suggests. We can reasonably debate the correct amount of immigration. Americans are about evenly divided between people who want more, less, or about current levels of immigration, so I wonÂ’t try to solve that debate here. ItÂ’s far from clear how Frum thinks his argument...

Rahm is right. The Democrats are in a leftward lurch that could ruin their chances of retaking the White House. Rahm Emanuel, now stepping down after two terms as mayor of Chicago, knows something about winning elections. He was a key White House operative for Bill Clinton and chief of staff for Barack Obama. It was Rahm, as chairman of the Democratic campaign committee, who engineered the party's takeover of the House in 2006 — and is known for his hardball brand of politics, with all the subtlety of his frequent F-bombs. If Mayor Emanuel believes the Democrats are in...

A winning 2020 candidate needs three things: authenticity, credibility, and viability. Few could have predicted that President Donald Trump would be this good at surrendering the political advantage of a strong economy. Not only is he now underwater in the three states that pushed him to victory in 2016—he’s now unexpectedly vulnerable in places such as Texas, Florida, and Ohio as well. His popularity rises to 50 percent or higher in states that total a mere 102 electoral votes. Probably of more concern to his campaign: He’s fallen below 40 percent approval in states encompassing a 201-electoral-vote bloc. But Democrats...

Current Chicago Mayor and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel penned an opinion piece in The Atlantic on Thursday, condemning Rep. Ilhan Omar's anti-Semitic comments. Emanuel's position is far different than other Democrats who say Omar's comments weren't anti-Semitic but rather a criticism of Israel. The Chicago Mayor was blunt about his position, saying, "Her remarks are not anti-Israel; they are anti-Semitic." No one is questioning the right of members of Congress and others to criticize Israeli policies. But Omar is crossing a line that should not be crossed in political discourse. Her remarks are not anti-Israel; they are...

Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority. But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences. Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard. Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease...

Judge T.S. Ellis, a Reagan appointee to the Federal District Court for Eastern Virginia, is well-known for speaking his mind. Yesterday, in sentencing Paul Manafort, he rebuked Team Mueller’s harsh sentence recommendation of 19-24 years’ imprisonment as “excessive,” and instead set a lot of progressives’ hair on fire by imposing a sentence of 47 months, and recommended counting the nine months of time served (much of it in solitary confinement, imposed by Judge Amy Berman Jackson in a separate case in DC District Court) against that total, meaning just over three years of imprisonment. Paul Manafort's mug shot -...

It took man only 20 centuries or so to give up trying to transmute base metals into gold. How long will it take us to stop trying to turn our rubbish into gold? As John Tierney put it 23 years ago in the New York Times, “Recycling Is Garbage.” It may make sense to recycle a few items for the savings in carbon emissions — paper, cardboard, and metals such as aluminum from cans. Recycling a ton of these items saves about three tons of carbon dioxide. Glass, plastic, rubber, all the other stuff? Not really. We used to send...

I’m all for new voices in the U.S. Congress. But, lately, some of those new voices have been voicing some very old canards. I’m talking about Representative Ilhan Omar, one of the newly elected Democrats who populate the 116th Congress. Omar has attracted much news coverage, and the condemnation of most of her fellow-Democrats, for promoting some ugly tropes about Jews.

Research commissioned by The Atlantic Magazine shows that older white liberals may just be the most politically intolerant group in the country. The article by Amanda Ripley, Rekha Tenjarla and Angela Y. He, published Monday and titled “The Geography of Partisan Prejudice,” utilized polling and analytics firm PredictWise to “create a ranking of counties in the U.S. based on partisan prejudice.” While its findings showed “significant variations in Americans’ political ill will from place to place, regardless of party,” it also found that groups the authors expected to display partisan animosity, such as immigrants, paled in comparison to “the most...

Donald Trump Jr. was perfectly at home. It was day three of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, commonly known as CPAC, and hundreds of activists had piled into a ballroom to hear the president’s elder son speak via live-stream. He was slated to have a conversation at Liberty University with the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., though it was unclear, exactly, what that conversation would be about. While most other CPAC speakers were constrained by specific topics, such as “Protecting the Freedom of Jerusalem” and “Deficit Hawks: An Endangered Species?,” Don Jr.’s appearance was headlined on the agenda as...

For the college-educated elite, work has morphed into a religious identity—promising identity, transcendence, and community, but failing to deliver... In his 1930 essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted a 15-hour workweek in the 21st century, creating the equivalent of a five-day weekend... In a 1957 article in The New York Times, the writer Erik Barnouw predicted that, as work became easier, our identity would be defined by our hobbies, or our family life... These post-work predictions weren’t entirely wrong. By some counts, Americans work much less than they used to. The average work year...

After receiving a direct challenge from President Donald Trump to prove her Native American ancestry by submitting to a DNA test, Senator Elizabeth Warren released her results Monday morning. As an enrolled member of the Diné (Navajo) Nation, I obviously have some thoughts on this development. As a geneticist-bioethicist, I have even more. Whether or not Warren has genetic ties to indigenous peoples, she is not Native American, and her public gambit could dangerously obscure that distinction.

Establishment media journalists and pundits uncritically accepted and promoted Jussie Smollett’s elaborate “hate crime” story, just one week after the mainstream media fostered the false narrative surrounding the Covington Catholic students, resulting in a laundry list of impending defamation lawsuits. Here’s 12 establishment media commentators and journalists who fueled the Jussie Smollett flames with impassioned and uncritical reactions to the Empire actor’s imaginative account of his supposed run-in with Trump supporters in “MAGA country” Chicago. 1. Eugene Scott – Washington Post‘s The Fix reporter 2. Don Lemon – CNN journalist 3. Yamiche Alcindor – PBS NewsHour White House correspondent 4....

Jemelle Hill, staff writer at The Atlantic, wrote a mini fan fiction on Twitter during the State of the Union Tuesday night, about the assassination of President Trump with the help of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

by Brian Unger | 24News Former ESPN anchor and now The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill referenced a public assassination during President Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.Hill, a far-leftist who despises Trump and has falsely labeled the president a “white supremacist,” alluded to the assassination of Malcolm X, who was gunned down in front of his supporters and family while preparing to give a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in 1965.“[P]lease let @AOC yell out ‘whose mans is this,'” actor Desus Nice posted on Twitter.Hill responded, “Nah, she gotta yell: GETCHO HAND OUT MY POCKET.”The "GETCHO HAND OUT MY POCKET” quote refers...

The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill referenced a public assassination during President Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. Hill, a far-leftist who despises Trump and has falsely labeled the president a “white supremacist,” alluded to the assassination of Malcolm X, who was gunned down in front of his supporters and family while preparing to give a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in 1965. “[P]lease let @AOC yell out ‘whose mans is this,'” actor Desus Nice posted on Twitter. Hill responded, “Nah, she gotta yell: GETCHO HAND OUT MY POCKET.”

The Democratic race has been portrayed in national outlets as a Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders redux, with Northam playing the part of Clinton and Perriello as Sanders, but attempting to superimpose a 2016 primary frame on the Virginia race is an awkward and imperfect fit. There are some similarities to the presidential primary. Northam has the backing of the Democratic political establishment within the state.