Free Republic

Most of the action in Tuesday’s South Dakota primary election is in Republican legislative races, where a fight for control of the party has drawn in players ranging from upstart challengers to fundraising groups affiliated with members of Congress. There are 44 Republican legislative primary races across the state, and only one Democratic legislative primary. Winners will go on to represent the party in the Nov. 5 general election, when all 105 seats in the Legislature will be up for grabs. Republicans currently hold all but 11 of those seats, and their grip on the majority is not in doubt....

Acting out of ideological and financial "anti-competitive animus," federal agencies, Big Tech and purported anti-disinformation groups collaborated to squelch publishers that promote narratives at odds with COVID-19 treatment orthodoxy, a new First Amendment lawsuit alleges. The federal complaint by Natural News publisher Webseed and its companion Brighteon Media, whose holdings include websites for original and aggregated video and artificial intelligence large language models, joins other anti-censorship lawsuits against the State Department and its Global Engagement Center, NewsGuard and social media. It makes similar allegations as suits against State by the conservative Daily Wire and The Federalist, whose presiding judge greenlit...

Former Commissioner of the Federal Elections Commission, Brad Smith, a preeminent expert on campaign finance law has taken to social media to lash out against the Manhattan trial that led to the conviction of former President Donald Trump. Judge Juan Merchan had prevented Trump’s defense team from seating Smith as a witness or even submitting his testimony to the jury. Smith had planned on testifying that Donald Trump’s filing of a “hush money” payment as a “legal expense” was not a crime against federal elections law. Indeed, federal prosecutors had passed up on the case prior to Alvin Bragg, 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

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...

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...

A white teacher in Sacramento County is suing his union for reserving one seat on its governing board for a non-white member — an issue of diversity versus discrimination that is percolating in courts across California. Isaac Newman, a high school social science teacher, said he wanted to run for a newly created position on the Elk Grove Education Association last December, but was barred from applying because the union created it last year as a “BIPOC seat,” available only to members who are Black, Indigenous or other people of color. “Union officials apparently believe that the best solution to...

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...

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher argued that even with prices being higher than they were, people are economically better off than they were four years ago, but President Joe Biden is “too feeble to be the explainer-in-chief, to get out there” and make a case for himself. Maher said, “The Washington Post says, ‘Nearly Everything Americans Believe About the Economy Is Wrong‘. So interesting, 55% think the economy is shrinking or is in a recession, could not be more the reverse, half think unemployment is at a 50-year high, it’s 4%. Roughly half think the...

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...

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.”…

This summer the Supreme Court will rule on a case involving what a district court called perhaps "the most massive attack against free speech" ever inflicted on the American people. In Murthy v. Missouri, plaintiffs ranging from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to epidemiologists from Harvard and Stanford allege that the federal government violated the First Amendment by working with outside groups and social media platforms to surveil, flag, and quash dissenting speech – characterizing it as mis-, dis- and mal-information – on issues ranging from COVID-19 to election integrity. The case has helped shine a light on...

After years of trying — in the words of the judge — “to get the damned rascal in this court,” it was a conviction that many welcomed. But those words were not from Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, and the conviction was not that of former President Donald Trump. Rather they were from US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, at the end of the 18th century, when America embraced political prosecutions to target critics and opponents. The man on trial then was James T. Callender, a muckraking writer critical of President John Adams. For accusing politicians of corruption, Callender...

The judge donated money — a tiny amount, $35, but in plain violation of a rule prohibiting New York judges from making political donations of any kind — to a pro-Biden, anti-Trump political operation, including funds that the judge earmarked for “resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s radical right-wing legacy.” -snip Most importantly, the DA’s charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process. That’s not on the jury. That’s on the prosecutors who chose to bring the case and the judge who let it play out as it did. -snip But when you impose...

On Friday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Biden Campaign Co-Chair Mitch Landrieu stated that in order for 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump “to be President of the United States, he has to destroy democracy.” Landrieu said, “Yesterday a very sacrosanct principle that is necessary to sustain democracies was upheld, which is very simple, in America, that everybody is subject to the rule of law and nobody is exempt from it, not even somebody who was President in the United States. And yesterday was a very sober and somber day for our country. It’s not good for anybody...

Democratic pollster and former Clinton adviser Mark Penn said Friday during an appearance on Fox News Channel that he believes Judge Juan Merchan will sentence former President Donald Trump to serve some jail time because he's "trying to take him out of the presidential race." "So far, this judge has wanted to take, obviously, wants to take Donald Trump out of the presidency," Penn said during an appearance on "Your World with Neil Cavuto" on Friday. "So, for all this talk that, of course, he's a first time offender and not eligible ... he's convicted of things that could send...

ALL ABOARD THE TRUMP FAMILY TRAIN, EST. 2017 BY DOLLYCALI! Survived everything thrown at it over the years, just like President Trump....including trolls, moles and saboteurs. Welcome to the TRUMP FAMILY TRAIN THREAD, where all things Trump are welcome! Feel free to share news, your comments and opinions, memes, recipes, travel photos... the list is endless. Posting on behalf of the TFT founder and thread mama, Dolly Cali. Am I The Only One – Aaron Lewis

Ohio’s Republican-controlled state legislature has approved a bill to secure President Joe Biden’s spot on the state’s November ballot, ending weeks of political gamesmanship over a deadline that in past years was relaxed without drama. The measure, which passed Friday in a special session of the state Senate, now heads to Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican. DeWine, who called the special session to resolve the Biden issue and tackle unrelated campaign finance legislation, is expected to sign the bill. "I don’t think anybody on this side of the aisle really feels like they’re going to be voting for President Biden,...

A group of 46 Republican House members and nominees pledged Friday to only back a speaker next session who commits to ending the tradition of appointing Democratic committee chairs — a move that narrows the path to the gavel for House Speaker Dade Phelan, who has vowed to continue the longstanding practice. To be elected speaker, a House member must secure 76 votes, a majority of the 150-seat chamber. Democrats control 64 seats, meaning a speaker hopeful could theoretically win with full Democratic support and around a dozen of the 86 Republicans. To prevent this scenario, Phelan’s rivals have called...