Free Republic

House Speaker Mike Johnson stopped Tuesday in the Lehigh Valley to campaign for Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie’s congressional run against [the] Democratic incumbent …. Johnson and Mackenzie stopped at Cetronia Ambulance Corps in South Whitehall Township as part of National EMS Week. Johnson’s visit is the first of what likely will be many from high-profile Republicans on behalf of Mackenzie in what is expected to be a close race. The seat is considered one of the most competitive in the United States, and has been deemed a “toss-up” by election forecaster the Cook Political Report. Speaking with reporters at the...

Oregon state Rep. Janelle Bynum won the high-profile Democratic primary to take on Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), setting the stage for what is considered to be one of the most competitive elections of the 2024 cycle. *** McLeod-Skinner’s primary defeat comes after she lost to Chavez-DeRemer in the 2022 midterm elections by just 2 percentage points. Bynum used that to her advantage throughout the primary cycle, positioning herself as a candidate who has previously defeated Chavez-DeRemer and could do so again. Bynum twice defeated Chavez-DeRemer in 2016 and 2018 for a state House seat, once by 2 points and then...

Colorado Democrats are once again running bogus ads to promote the Republican candidate they believe is least likely to win in a general election against their progressive candidate. This time it’s the 3rd Congressional District race and the GOP candidate that Democrat candidates are supporting is Ron Hanks. The TV ad and mailers deliver backhanded insults that really aims to suggest Hanks has been endorsed by Donald Trump (he has not), and claims Hanks is just too gosh darn Republican to represent the conservative district. One of the problems Hanks is already contending with, he doesn’t actually live in the...

The Department of Justice pushed back on the releasing of the audio tapes of special counsel Robert Hur's interview with President Joe Biden, citing "deep fake" concerns. The DOJ stated that if the audio tapes were released, they could potentially be altered by artificial intelligence and passed off as authentic. “The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files,” a Friday filing obtained by Politico states. “To be sure, other raw material to create a deepfake of President Biden’s voice is already available, but release of...

The judge who presided over Donald Trump’s fraud case closed off many avenues of appeal, leaving him few ways to escape his felony conviction

A New York jury on Thursday found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records after a weeks-long trial. Former President Donald Trump on Friday announced a sizeable fundraising haul in the wake of his guilty verdict in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's hush money case.A New York jury on Thursday found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records after a weeks-long trial. The verdict appears to have energized his supporters, however, as the campaign's donation page crashed, evidently due to the volume of traffic.The campaign on Friday initially announced it had brought in $34.8 million in...

Joe Biden couldn’t even wait 24 hours before publicly gloating about the history-making criminal conviction of former president Donald Trump. Under the guise of announcing a proposed ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Gaza war, Biden took to a podium in the White House state dining room at 1:30 p.m. on Friday. He began his statement not with details of the peace plan but rather with a lecture about how the “rule of law” prevailed in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump. “Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself,” Biden said of his 2024 Republican presidential rival. “And...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) joined an anti-Israel commentator this week in blaming the Abraham Accords peace deal and the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem for Hamas’s massive terror attack on Israel on October 7. “AOC” also agreed that Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights — which are not claimed by Palestinians, but were taken from Syria in a defensive war — was also “directly” responsible for October 7.

George Washington University class-action settlement for COVID shutdown approved with more money for students, less for lawyers. Mere "overlap between a religious and political view" doesn't negate Title VII’s religious protections, 8th Circuit says.. If COVID-19 litigation were like the virus itself, George Washington University cleared its infection with a pricey therapeutic, the Mayo Clinic's infection rebounded, and Rutgers University faces an unusually virulent strain that could spread far and wide. A federal judge gave final approval to the $5.4 million class-action settlement submitted by GWU students and the private university blocks from the White House, in a tuition-refund lawsuit...

Donald Trump is wasting no time fighting to get back to the White House. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, 77, is expected to attend a UFC fight Saturday night at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ — two days after the shocking guilty verdict in his Manhattan “hush money” trial, according to the Wall Street Journal. It will be his first public appearance since he vowed that “we’re going to fight” during a fiery press conference in the atrium of Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan Friday. ... He’s expected to continue his fundraising blitz next week with a series of...

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is backed by Soros, is now under fire for allegedly leaking sensitive sentencing information about former President Donald Trump to the far-left media. She described them as ‘street fighters,’ who indicated that Bragg might push for a tough one-year imprisonment, primarily to ensure Trump faces the daunting conditions of Rikers Island. “I spent this morning speaking to someone from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. They’re called street fighters. He believes that they will recommend a one-year term in prison. And that is because when you spend a year in prison in...

A Democratic congressman has publicly called on Gov. Hochul to pardon former President Donald Trump after he was found guilty this week of falsifying business records — for the sake of the nation. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) said a Trump conviction only helps his campaign. “Donald Trump is a serial liar, cheater, and philanderer, a six-time declarer of corporate bankruptcy, an instigator of insurrection, and a convicted felon who thrives on portraying himself as a victim. @GovKathyHochul should pardon him for the good of the country,” Phillips declared in a X post Friday.

..... The Israeli proposal which was transmitted by Qatar to Hamas, Biden revealed, includes three phases, the first of which “would last for six weeks ... [and] would include a full and complete ceasefire, withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza, release of a number of hostages, including women, the elderly, the wounded, in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.” Phase two would see the release of all remaining living hostages, including male soldiers, Israeli forces, with withdrawal from Gaza. “As long as Hamas lives up to its commitments, a temporary ceasefire would become,...

Elon Musk’s social media platform X will stage a town hall with former President Donald Trump — three years after he was suspended from the site in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. The presumptive Republican nominee for president, who was convicted Thursday in connection with a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, will answer submitted questions during the livestream event, which will also be broadcast in a partnership deal with cable channel NewsNation. The social media company is also planning a similar town hall with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who is running for president as an...

Voters in New Jersey will see newly designed ballots in the upcoming June 4 primary elections with different layouts depending on a voter's party affiliation. The change comes after Democratic Rep. Andy Kim and others filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the state's so-called county line system of primary ballot design. A judge ruled in Kim's favor, saying the county line system favors Democrat party-backed candidates. Republican candidates -- as their ballots were not part of this lawsuit -- will still use the county line system. The county line system -- a one-of-a-kind ballot design unique to New Jersey --...

Estonia considers itself a front-line state, a Nato member where its border guards stare across the Narva River at the Russian fortress of Ivangorod. This tiny Baltic state, once a part of the Soviet Union, is convinced that once the fighting stops in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin will turn his attention to the Baltics, looking to bring countries like Estonia back under Moscow’s control. To help stave off that possibility, Estonia’s government has poured money and weapons into Ukraine’s war effort, donating more than 1% of its GDP to Kyiv. "If every Nato country did this," says Estonia’s steely Prime...

Mexico goes into Sunday’s election deeply divided: friends and relatives no longer talk politics for fear of worsening unbridgeable divides, while drug cartels have split the country into a patchwork quilt of warring fiefdoms. The atmosphere is literally heating up, amid a wave of unusual heat, drought, pollution and political violence. Opposition presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez has focused her ire on López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” policy of not confronting the drug cartels. She faces former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who is running for López Obrador's Morena party. Sheinbaum, who leads in the race, has promised to continue all...

The conviction of former President Donald Trump in Manhattan of 34 felonies produced citywide celebrations. ... The celebrants would be wise to think twice before mounting this trophy kill on the political wall. The Trump trial is a target-rich environment for an appeal, with multiple layers of reversible error, in my view. I am less convinced by suggestions that the case could be challenged on the inability of Trump receiving a fair trial in a district that voted roughly 90 percent against him. The problem was not the jury, but the prosecutors and the judge. Some of the most compelling...

The chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government announced Friday that he is calling on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and prosecutor Matthew Colangelo to testify next month about “the unprecedented political prosecution of President Trump.” “This hearing will examine actions by state and local prosecutors to engage politically motivated prosecutions of federal officials, in particular the political prosecution of President Donald Trump by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in letters to Bragg and Colangelo. The move comes one day after Bragg secured a conviction of Trump on 34 counts...

Licensed gun owner Donald Trump will have to turn over all of his firearms in the coming weeks now that he has been found guilty of felonies in the Manhattan “hush money” case. Under New York state and federal law, convicted felons are banned from possessing any type of firearm, and the former president must have his weapons legally passed off to another person or surrendered to authorities by his July 11 sentencing, criminal defense attorney Peter Tilem said. “There is no grace period,” Tilem told The Post. “You are federally prohibited once you are convicted.”…