Free Republic

President Trump has embraced an array of far-right views and talking points in ways that have delighted many right-wing activists who have long supported those ideas.During President Trump’s first turn in the White House, right-wing extremists like the Proud Boys were on the streets, weekend after weekend, raising their voices — and oftentimes their fists — about issues such as immigration, the squelching of conservative speech and the removal of Confederate-era statues. But in the first seven months of Mr. Trump’s second term, there has been a conspicuous absence of far-right demonstrations. And that, some leaders of the movement say,...

Editorial Gerrymandering is an idea that should be terminated the independent redistricting movement here, has vowed to fight Newsom with the same vigor that his character as a Thank goodness for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not only did he utter one of the top lines in movie history—“I’ll be back”—but he’s also bringing muscle to the fight against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s scheme to take Ventura County and the rest of the state back to the days when shady politicians decided who spoke for us in Sacramento and Washington. Newsom’s “Election Rigging Response Act” is a constitutional amendment that, if passed by California...

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) on Friday pushed back on President Trump’s threat to target Chicago next in the Trump administration’s crackdown on crime following a sweeping takeover in the nation’s capital. “As Donald Trump attempts to create chaos that distracts from his problems, we’ll call it out for what it is,” Pritzker wrote in a lengthy thread on social platform X “Trump and Republicans are trying to distract from the pain they’re causing — from tariffs raising the prices of goods to stripping away healthcare and food from millions.”

President Trump promised voters during his campaign for a second term that he had bigger things on his mind than retribution against opponents. But it is increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part, maybe the largest part, of how he will define success in his second term. His revenge campaign took an ominous turn Friday as FBI agents raided the home and office of Mr. Trump’s first-term national security adviser John Bolton. They brought two broad warrants to search the “premises.” Agents showed up unannounced at his Bethesda, Md., home at 7 a.m. They confiscated his wife Gretchen’s phone...

The Pavlovian Left goes berserk at the mere prospect of each new Trump initiative. Its escalating reactive venom and hysteria are calibrated to the success of Trump's latest policy. Yet the new hard-left Democratic Party offers no counter-agenda to explain its furor. Still less do Democrats attempt bipartisan efforts to craft shared legislation. Take foreign policy. Democratic senators trashed the recent Trump-Putin Alaskan summit as a failure. Then they became depressed when, just days later, an entourage of European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suddenly flew to the White House. The Euros praised Trump for offering some sort of...

Beginning with the Obama administration, Muslims murdered over 125,000 Christians in Nigeria. This revelation in the latest report from the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law documents a Christian genocide that has been taking place in Africa, enabled by Barack Obama and the State Department, and carried out with the complicity of the media. Even as over 125,000 Christians were murdered, over 1,000 Christian communities shattered and 19,000 churches destroyed, the media has buried the regular massacres, including the latest massacre in which 160 Christian villagers, many of whom were burned alive, were killed, on the...

Covid vaccine mandates and a lack of transparency by public-health experts produced many unintended effects—or what scientists call “off target” responses. One is a political turn against mRNA technology that could damage U.S. innovation and pandemic preparedness. The Health and Human Services Department recently scrapped 22 mRNA-related vaccine investments. “These vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu,” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.” Let’s dissect these assertions. Start with his claim that mRNA vaccines fail to protect against...

It’s possible Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to “federalize” law enforcement in Washington, D.C., was just a one-off power grab, reflecting the federal government’s unique control of the capital city and Trump’s own obsession with Washington as a symbol of the American greatness he claims to be restoring. In other words, maybe he took over D.C. because he could. But the exotic and rather fascistic appearance of National Guard units on the streets of Washington absent a riot or some other historically relevant pretext makes you wonder if the 47th president has something far worse in store. Here are some possibilities...

The state’s new congressional lines have yet to be approved, but would-be candidates are jockeying behind the scenes. Supervisor Hilda Solis hasn’t publicly announced her candidacy, but she’s already lining up support for a potential new southeast L.A. County congressional seat. As Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to redraw California’s congressional maps plays out at the state Capitol and on the national stage, a quieter but no less bloody scramble is simultaneously underway. Newsom’s plan — a bid to counter President Trump’s drive for more GOP House seats with his own California show of force — still needs to be approved...

President Trump has taken extraordinary measures in the nation’s capital to fulfill an ordinary function of local government: keeping clean, orderly streets. His actions seem unusual because government officials in America’s cities long ago abandoned the basics. They have been led astray by academics and activists who promised them crimeless cities and an end to homelessness if only they established a right to housing and eradicated income inequality. These idealistic public-policy frameworks have failed to achieve the desired outcomes anywhere in the U.S. Instead, they’ve ushered in the worst homelessness crisis on record. President Trump’s strategy is straightforward: Everyone living...

Democrats rage at Trump’s every move but offer no real alternative—only fury, obstruction, and failed policies voters have already rejected. The Pavlovian Left goes berserk at the mere prospect of each new Trump initiative. Its escalating reactive venom and hysteria are calibrated to the success of Trump’s latest policy. Yet the new hard-left Democratic Party offers no counter-agenda to explain its furor. Still less do Democrats attempt bipartisan efforts to craft shared legislation. Take foreign policy. Democrat senators trashed the recent Trump-Putin Alaskan summit as a failure. Then they became depressed when, just days later, an entourage of European leaders...

Summary Republican legislators undertake rare mid-decade redistricting New map would shift conservative voters into Democrat-held districts One Democrat calls redistricting plan "illegal and racially discriminatory" Aug 20 (Reuters) - Texas legislators on Wednesday took up a new state congressional map intended to flip five Democratic-held U.S. House seats in next year's midterm elections, after dozens of Democratic lawmakers ended a two-week walkout that had temporarily blocked passage. Republican legislators, who have dominated Texas politics for over two decades, have undertaken a rare mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump, who is seeking to improve his party's odds...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s social media account mimicking Donald Trump’s all-caps online posts is getting under the skin of prominent conservatives on the right. The reaction to Newsom’s pitch-perfect parody of Trump — including his wild rants, name-calling, and use of AI-generated images — is shining a light on the absurd behavior of the president of the United States, who has largely gotten a pass from his party for doing the same thing. “You have to stop it with the Twitter thing,” Fox News host Dana Perino said Monday of the potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender. “If I were his...

For quite some time, the leftist political establishment has been accusing President Donald Trump of abandoning the US Constitution. Now they have me wondering why that’s supposed to be a criticism. Just last week The New York Times, the establishment’s chief house organ, boosted the arguments of writer Osita Nwanevu in a column headlined: “Abolish the Senate. End the Electoral College. Pack the Court.” Why? Because “The left can’t win without a new Constitution.” He’s hardly the first Democrat to say so. I’ve noticed that whenever the Constitution stands in the way of something the left wants at the moment,...

Earlier on Monday, Georgian media reported that the United Kingdom was training young activists in Lithuania to confront police forcesTBILISI, August 18. /TASS/. Foreign elements represented by the so-called deep state continue their attempts to stir unrest and revolution in Georgia, Kakhaber Kaladze, Secretary General of the ruling Georgian Dream — Democratic Georgia party and Mayor of Tbilisi, said during a press briefing. Earlier on Monday, Georgian media reported that the United Kingdom was training young activists in Lithuania to confront police forces. The recruitment process allegedly involves the "British-Georgian Society" and the "International Institute for Strategic Studies." "These countries,...

Trump’s Alaska summit with Putin yielded no ceasefire, but it revealed the contours of a possible peace—where diplomacy, exhaustion, and hard limits define the battlefield’s end. At the August 15 Alaska summit, Vladimir Putin performed as expected. He desperately wants an end to Western sanctions, détente with the U.S., and assurances that the U.S. will not impose a disastrous anti-Russian secondary boycott—and, apparently, some additional Ukrainian territory. Consequently, Putin, in his media synopsis, talked more about restored friendship with a “neighborly” United States under Trump. He scarcely mentioned Ukraine directly—other than to imply to Westerners that he seeks not merely...

The Supreme Court’s landmark opinion on same-sex marriage isn’t the only high-profile precedent the justices will have an opportunity to tinker with – or entirely scrap – when the court reconvenes this fall. ... Even before Trump was reelected, the Supreme Court’s conservatives had put a target on a Roosevelt-era precedent that protects the leaders of independent agencies from being fired by the president for political reasons. The first few months of Trump’s second term have only expedited its demise. ... A recent Supreme Court appeal from Kim Davis, a former county clerk from Kentucky who refused to issue marriage...

Citizens of a democratic state have the ability to part the clouds of lies and propaganda that cloud a lazy, compromised media.Winston Churchill is famed for his adamant and courageous opposition to appeasement. What is not as well known is that Churchill also praised appeasement in strong terms: “Appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble, and might be the surest and perhaps the only way to world peace.”One must, however, discern the difference between that and appeasement from weakness and fear, which, he declared, “is alike futile and fatal.”The pride of tyrannies is legendary. They regularly require human sacrifice...

The Trump administration has launched their own 'Manhattan Project' as reports have suggested one of America's largest chipmakers could be partly nationalized. Intel, the largest chip fabricator in the US, has been in talks with Donald Trump over a potential government stake in the company. While the percentage stake the government is asking for has not been made public, nationalizing a company is typically reserved for national emergencies. The government nationalized a number of banks after the 2008 financial crisis and key logistics companies during World War II. It comes amid concerns that America relies too heavily on TSCM, a...

For all the tedium of American political debates, at least we don’t have to defend air-conditioning. Not so in France, where “air-conditioning has become part of the political tug of war” amid a summer heat wave, writes The New York Times (NYT). On the side of air-conditioning, and reason, is Marine Le Pen. Le Pen is variously described as “far-right” (as by the NYT), “right-wing,” or “conservative,” depending on the author’s politics. She’s promised to deploy a “major air-conditioning equipment plan” if her party gains national control, according to the NYT. Le Pen is a former leader of the National...