Free Republic

It's fashionable in the media to declare the conservative movement doomed following the presidential election. And with razor-thin margins making Wisconsin and other Midwestern states key battlegrounds, it’s equally fashionable to credit a rebuilt “Blue Wall” for the outcome.What is fashionable is often flawed.When a party is out of power nationally, the states are where it can (and undoubtedly will) rebuild. And Wisconsin – home of the famed “Cheesehead Revolution” that ushered in sweeping conservative reforms and unrivaled national leadership 10 years ago – is America’s strongest model for a durable conservative movement. The Badger State’s enduring impact of state...

Ruben A. Verastigui was arrested last night for allegedly soliciting, possessing, and distributing extremely violent child pornography depicting infants being raped by adult men, police say. Prior to his arrest, Verastigui worked for a Republican policy group, and prior to this, worked for establishment Republicans in the Senate. The last tweet he sent before being arrested lauded the 11 Republican Congressmen who joined with Democrats to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee posts. “Between March 2020 and February 2021, an investigation revealed the suspect distributed, received, and possessed images of child pornography,” the D.C. Metropolitan Police said in...

RAWLINS, Wyo. (AP) — The Wyoming Republican Party voted overwhelmingly Saturday to censure U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney for voting to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Only eight of the 74-member state GOP’s central committee stood to oppose censure in a vote that didn’t proceed to a formal count. The censure document accused Cheney of voting to impeach even though the U.S. House didn’t offer Trump “formal hearing or due process.” “We need to honor President Trump. All President Trump did was call for a peaceful assembly and protest for...

Jaco Booyens, the founder of SHAREtogether, said former President Donald Trump’s efforts to create an office dedicated to fighting sex trafficking made an “incredible impact” over the last four years. SHAREtogether is a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating child sex trafficking.Booyens was interviewed by NTD on Friday and asked to expound on the big sex trafficking bust that occurred in California this week.Sixty-four people were arrested and two women were rescued in an anti-human trafficking sting in California’s Riverside County.The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said the arrests were part of Operation Reclaim and Rebuild, an annual statewide operation. The sting...

PEORIA, Ill. – U.S. District Judge James E. Shadid today sentenced a Central Illinois man, Franshon Stapleton, 48, to multiple life prison terms for trafficking young women for sex. Stapleton, of Springfield, ran his prostitution enterprise from a motel in Champaign where he lived, and used women he recruited from Champaign, Sangamon, and Peoria counties.Prosecutors described the degradation and manipulation Stapleton used in 2017 and 2018, to exploit desperate young women, who were fighting drug addiction and homelessness, to force them to perform sex acts for money. Stapleton arranged the encounters, set the price, and collected the money. Stapleton used...

Former President Donald Trump’s lead impeachment defense attorney Bruce Castor said he will use video clips of top Democrats inciting violence during the coming impeachment trial. Castor said the defense team will adhere to the strategy outlined in the brief they submitted to the Senate on Tuesday.The Trump defense team argued in the brief that the Constitution “requires that a person actually hold office to be impeached” and that Trump was exercising his First Amendment right of free speech to question the results of the November election.The impeachment against Trump goes against the Constitution because Trump doesn’t hold any office...

URBANA, Ill.– A Champaign, Ill., man, Shamar N. Betts, 20, today pleaded guilty to inciting a riot in Champaign, Ill., that began on May 31 and continued overnight to June 1, 2020. Sentencing has been scheduled on June 14, 2021.In court today, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Eric I. Long, Betts admitted to his role in inciting the riot that began at Market Place Mall and spread to area businesses and moved to the commercial area of North Prospect Ave.:On May 31, 2020, at 10:31 a.m., Betts posted a statement to Facebook and attached a flyer of a stock image of...

Explanation: Snow blankets the ground in this serene forest and sky view. Assembled in a 360 degree panoramic projection, the mosaicked frames were captured at January's end along a quiet country road near Siemiony, northeastern Poland, planet Earth. The night was cold and between trees reaching toward the sky shine the stars and nebulae of the northern winter Milky Way. Near zenith is bright star Capella, a mere 43 light-years above the tree tops. Alpha star of the constellation Auriga the Charioteer and part of the winter hexagon asterism, Capella is a well-studied double star system. Follow the Milky Way...

Dozens of angry voters have accused freshman Michigan Republican Peter Meijers of 'betraying' them during a heated, virtual town hall on Zoom in which the first-time legislator repeatedly defended his decision to impeach former President Trump. The 33-year-old congressman, who represents the third district in western Michigan, was one of just ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the deadly attack on the Capitol and the only first time legislator to do so. On Wednesday the Iraq war veteran, who is also an heir to the multibillion-dollar Midwestern supermarket chain that bears his family name, held an hour-long public...

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order Thursday that denies state and local governments any authority to reject the drop-off of refugees into their towns and communities. In essence, former President Donald Trump’s policy (Executive Order 13888 of September 2019) gave state and local governments a say in whether they have the capacity to provide refugees a pathway to become self-sufficient and successfully integrate into American society. Biden’s new executive order (EO) indicated that the federal government would consult with American communities across the country about refugees’ resettlement. The president’s “Executive Order on Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle...

CNN saw their ratings crater by 44 percent in the first week of the Biden administration, something Variety says “may offer a portent of what the post-Trump era will be like for the network.” Primetime numbers for the pro-Biden network steadily declined throughout January from record highs but dropped significantly more than other networks during the final week. They also struggled with some very important demographics. “Viewership data across two key metrics—the target news demographic for people ages 25-54, and the total audience watching—shows that CNN ended the final week of January with ratings dropping roughly 44% for total audience...

Rep. (D-NY) on Friday defended President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief measure, which the Senate passed Friday morning, contending the nearly $2 trillion price tag should “be a floor, not a ceiling.” “Imagine being a policymaker in Washington, having witnessed the massive economic, social, and health destruction over the last year, and think that the greatest policy risk we face is providing *too much* relief,” she said. “Sounds silly, right? $1.9T should be a floor, not a ceiling”

A man was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Nashville business Friday night after a robbery "prank" for a YouTube channel went wrong, according to police. When officers got to Urban Air in the city's Hermitage neighborhood about 9:20 p.m., they learned Timothy Wilks, 20, and a friend approached a group of people, including David Starnes Jr., with butcher knives as part of the prank. Starnes, 23, told detectives he was unaware of the prank and shot Wilks in self-defense, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said Saturday in a statement. The status of the friend who was...

A 95-year-old German woman has been charged with being an accessory to the murder of more than 10,000 people at the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland during World War II. The unidentified woman, who reportedly worked as a secretary and commandant’s aide in the camp for two years, will be tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time, according to the public prosecutor’s office in the small town of Itzehoe, northwest of Hamburg.

Now that Joe Biden has been safely installed as president, the Left feels that it is safe to brag about how they rigged the election for his benefit. On February 4, Time magazine published a shocking exposé on the Left’s conspiracy to rig the 2020 Presidential election with the Orwellian title of The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election. In the article’s own words, it was “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the...

In each case defendants allegedly communicated with undercover agents about their interest in sexually molesting children or young teensSeattle – A federal grand jury has indicted four Seattle-area men who were arrested and charged following an FBI sting operation focused on adults seeking to sexually assault children, announced U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran. The investigation revealed that some of the defendants had molested other children or collected images of child sexual abuse before they were identified by law enforcement.“Law enforcement reports increasing concern about online sexual exploitation of children during the pandemic,” said U.S. Attorney Moran. “Tragically, we saw this...

The Biden Administration’s shift away from fossil fuels and toward so-called clean energy will boost China’s economy at the expense of the US economy. China currently controls 60% of the solar industry’s supply chain. Killing the Keystone Pipeline and canceling drilling permits on federal land will increase America’s dependence on Chinese sources for the much-heralded “renewable” energy sources. Michael Regan, President Biden’s nominee to head the EPA, acknowledged this shift, but insisted that “it will be good for both countries. First, as customers for their clean-energy products we will build bonds that discourage China from taking hostile actions against us....

Over at the White House, the press secretary appeared to make fun of the Space Force—a new, legitimate branch of the U.S. military. Which makes this a great time to ask the question: what exactly is its purpose?

The White House press secretary appeared to confirm that President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden still holds a stake in a Chinese private equity firm. “He has been working to unwind his investment,” press secretary Jen Psaki said during a Friday press conference when asked about Hunter Biden’s stake in Bohai Harvest RST Shanghai Equity Investment Fund Management, commonly known as BHR Partners.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday scheduled several high-profile contest-of-election lawsuits, including ones brought by attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, and the Trump campaign, for consideration at its Feb. 19 conference. According to a case listing, the lawsuits include Sidney Powell’s Michigan case (20-815), the Trump campaign’s Pennsylvania lawsuit (20-845) and Wisconsin lawsuit (20-882), the Pennsylvania lawsuit brought by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) (20-810), and Lin Wood’s Georgia case (20-799).