Free Republic

Updated at 2:11 p.m. ET President Trump blamed "a political hack job" for reports that a whistleblower has charged he had an improper conversation with a foreign leader. The Washington Post on Friday reported that the conversation in question involves Ukraine. Trump dismissed the reporting as a "ridiculous story" and said he did not know the identity of the whistleblower, "but I hear it's a partisan person." Trump said it was a "totally appropriate conversation. It was actually a beautiful conversation," although he did not specify with whom. Asked if he mentioned former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Joe...

The IJF said that the Iran Judo Federation was suspended from “all competitions, administrative and social activities organized or authorized” by the IJF. The International Judo Federation (IJF) on Wednesday announced it had officially suspended Iran over its directive to its Judoka Saeid Mollaei to withdraw from a recent competition to avoid a contest against Israel’s Sagi Muki. The IJF said that the Iran Judo Federation was suspended from “all competitions, administrative and social activities organized or authorized” by the IJF. During the 2019 World Championships in Tokyo in August, Mollaei lost to Belgian judoka Matthias Casse on purpose to...

Multiple injuries were also reported in the crash on state Route 12, according to the Utah Highway Patrol, with between 12 to 15 of those considered “very critical injuries.” The tour bus was full of Chinese speaking tourists, according to the UHP. Pollock said the bus went off the road between Bryce Canyon Pines and the top of Red Canyon. What caused the crash was not immediately known. There were no reports of other vehicles involved. It was not known what the weather was like at the time of the crash. S.R. 12 is closed as multiple police and rescue...

After ousting other leaders over anti-Semitism, the Women’s March selected another individual who had to be quickly removed when her hateful anti-Israel tweets were exposed. By United With Israel Staff Lawyer Zhara Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was set to fill an empty seat on the board of the Women’s March group following the resignation of its previous leaders who faced persistent accusations of anti-Semitism. After her appointment, Billoo’s history of vehemently anti-Israel remarks, including several that many viewed as crossing the line into anti-Semitism, was revealed. She...

President Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden ’s son, urging Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, on a probe, according to people familiar with the matter. “He told him that he should work with [Mr. Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know” whether allegations were true or not, one of the people said. Mr. Trump didn’t mention a provision of foreign aid to Ukraine on the call, said this person, who didn’t believe Mr. Trump offered...

"When Sen. Bernie Sanders championed voting rights for prisoners during a CNN town hall, he spotlighted an intensifying national debate about why going to prison means losing the right to vote. In only two states, Maine and Vermont, all prisoners are eligible to vote. However, some prisoners in Mississippi, Alaska and Alabama can vote while incarcerated, depending on their convictions. Sanders is the sole presidential candidate to support the idea of prisoners voting, regardless of their crimes. His stance may reflect the reality that his home state of Vermont, and its neighbor Maine, have long-established procedures, and general public acceptance,...

Chinese agriculture officials who were due to visit U.S. farm states next week have canceled their trip to Montana as the officials will return to China sooner than originally scheduled, the Montana Farm Bureau told Reuters on Friday. The cancellation came as U.S.-Chinese trade talks were held in Washington and U.S. President Donald Trump said he wanted a complete trade deal with the Asian nation, not just an agreement for China to buy more U.S. agricultural goods.

[...] On Thursday, as Lee attempted to push through his and Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) S. 386 — legislation that would allow Indian nationals to effectively monopolize the U.S. green card system for at least ten years — Perdue blocked a vote because he is concerned about the impact the plan will have on rural healthcare industries. “I support this bill … we have some language that needs to be clarified,” Perdue said. “And I still have some concerns about the impact this legislation would have on some specific industries in my state and in the country.” Lee said he...

No one knows the mind of God, except for God himself. He is infinite; we are finite. We are not entirely clueless about his character, however, because God speaks to us through his Word. According to the Bible, one reason bad things happen is because the whole world is under the control of the evil one (1 John 5:19). That’s why Jesus taught us to ask God to deliver us from the evil one when we pray (Matthew 6:13). Even in the Garden of Eden — in paradise, before Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit — Satan was...

The latest media mass hysteria over a whistleblower’s complaint is based on precious little information. That has not stopped journalists from convicting President Trump in the court of public opinion and predicting his imminent demise. Who exactly is this unidentified “whistleblower”? What is the specific nature of his or her “urgent concern” complaint against the president? Does this complaint really qualify under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA)? These are just a few of the most fundamental questions that remain largely unknown. Despite the paucity of facts, some reasonable observations and conclusions can be drawn: 1. It appears that...

Two swing states narrowly won by President Trump over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 were the sites of the greatest losses in manufacturing jobs between 2018 and 2019, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department. The agency's state employment survey found that Wisconsin has lost about 5,200 manufacturing jobs since August of last year. In Pennsylvania, losses of manufacturing jobs topped 7,700, according to the survey.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Friday demanded the Trump Administration hand over the whistleblower complaint alleging the President and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani sought to manipulate the Ukrainian government into assisting Trump win the 2020 presidential election. Pelosi accused the Trump administration of violating federal law for withholding the whistleblower complaint from Congress. President Trump knows this is just a Deep State hit from a highly partisan snitch, so he asserted executive privilege over the document. Pelosi warned President Trump that “if he has done what has been alleged, then he is stepping into a dangerous minefield with...

It’s still early in the 2020 campaign cycle, so political predictions are risky. Nonetheless, it appears that the race for the Democratic presidential nomination has already become a two-person contest. Elizabeth Warren has replaced Bernie Sanders as the most formidable challenger to front-runner Joe Biden according to the most recent YouGov, SurveyUSA, and NBC/WSJ polls. All show Warren gaining on Biden and Sanders falling back to third place. Assuming these polls are accurate, the rest of the Democratic candidates are stuck in single digits. This is very good news for President Trump, who will have little difficulty beating Biden or...

Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib told D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser she wanted to hang a desecrated flag with 51 stars outside her congressional office, according to reports.Tlaib said Thursday she wants an altered American flag with 51 – instead of 50 – stars to demonstrate support for making the District of Columbia a state.Tlaib’s exchange with Bowser came about because of D.C. statehood advocating displaying American flags with 51 stars.

Nine people were shot, two fatally, during a 30-minute time frame in Washington, DC, despite the district’s gun licensing requirement, “assault weapons” ban, and ban on “high capacity” magazines. WUSA9 reported that the incident occurred Thursday night, and consisted of “two men armed with AK-47 style weapons [firing] dozens of shots in the apartment courtyard on Columbia Road.” Gabby Giffords’ gun group, the Giffords Law Center, reported that in addition to an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, and licensing requirements, the district also has a 10-day waiting period for gun purchases, a purchase limit of one handgun...

Cybersecurity expertise might be the key to a generous salary, according to a new ranking of company salaries.Palo Alto Networks tops a list of the 25 highest paying companies in America from career site Glassdoor, coming in with a median salary of $170,929. That puts it ahead of Nvidia, where the average employee takes home $170,068 per year.Here's how the rest of the Top 10 shakes out, with median total salaries listed. Palo Alto Networks: $170,929Nvidia: $170,068Twitter: $162,852Gilead Sciences: $162,210Google: $161,254VMware: $158,063LinkedIn: $157,402Facebook: $152,962Salesforce: $150,379Microsoft: $148,068 (See the complete list on Glassdoor.)Tech companies dominate the list and many are based...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, embroiled in a blackface picture scandal, on Friday pledged to ban military-style assault rifles in the country’s most ethnically diverse city in a bid to get his campaign back on issue. Trudeau is campaigning in Toronto with less than five weeks to go before the Oct. 21 national election and two days after bombshell images of him in blackface emerged.

Officials are warning students to keep a distance from a Michigan school's pond after a caiman was spotted swimming loose in the water. Photo by ricke76/Pixabay.com ============================================================== Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Students and community members are being warned to keep a safe distance from a Michigan school pond, where an "alligator-type reptile" -- a caiman -- was spotted swimming. Bedford Public Schools said a teacher spotted an "alligator-type reptile" swimming in the Biology Pond on the campus of Bedford Senior High School and Bedford Junior High School. The district said experts identified the creature as a 3-foot caiman, a relative...

The distinguished judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit have considered how much Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have paid the Treasury Department to compensate the taxpayers for the giant bailout which kept Fannie and Freddie in existence and business. The court observed in its September 6 judgment: “The net worth sweep transferred a fortune from Fannie and Freddie to Treasury.” Specifically, “Treasury had disbursed $187 billion and recouped $250 billion.” The “net worth sweep” is the dividend on the senior preferred stock in Fannie and Freddie acquired by the Treasury in the bailout. Originally set...

Ear infections likely killed off the Neanderthals, according to scientists who claim to have cracked the mystery surrounding the species' extinction. While antibiotics are taken for granted in the modern world, a lack of sophisticated medicine 40,000 years ago is believed to have seen the archaic species suffer from the common childhood illness and then perish. Moreover, Neanderthals were more prone to contracting an ear infection as they had smaller ears, providing a tighter space for bacteria to become clogged up. This is believed to have led to breathing and hearing problems and pneumonia.