Free Republic

As a pulmonologist in Seattle, near where the first case of the new coronavirus was confirmed in the United States last week, I relied heavily on the city’s hospitals, clinics and departments of health to protect our community. And they did so admirably, immediately acting decisively and shrewdly despite the fear and uncertainty that always arises with an invisible biological threat. My colleagues and I working on the front lines of our health care system have come to expect this emergency response to be activated rapidly and effectively whenever a new health threat arises. Yet our Homeland Security agenda doesn’t...

Donald Trump has always been a man of absolutes. Something is the best or the worst, a person is a winner or a total loser, an event has never happened before, even when it has. Absolutism was the unwritten credo of his career in business and is the guiding light of his presidency as he makes an assertion rarely heard from an American president: that he can do as he pleases. Now that approach faces its ultimate test as a foundation of Trump’s defense in his impeachment trial, namely that he is cloaked with unrestrained authority. How that question is...

WASHINGTON — In his first formal response to impeachment charges, President Donald Trump misrepresented the testimony of a key witness who described an exchange of favors in the Ukraine matter. The claim marked a week of frequent exaggeration and distortion by the president heading into the opening statements of his impeachment trial. Just as his tax cuts are far from the biggest in history, the economy isn’t the best ever and his election victory in 2016 was no landslide of historic proportions, Trump’s two trade deals don’t stand atop the field of presidential endeavors. One is a partial settlement of...

Joe Biden’s papers from his 36 years in the Senate could have gone online on Dec. 31, but the university that Biden donated them to has changed its tune and plans to keep a lid on them until after the 2020 election. Biden donated his Senate papers from 1973 to 2009 to the University of Delaware in 2011, and more than 1,850 boxes of records were delivered to the school in June 2012. The university first said that the papers would go online no sooner than two years after Biden retired from “public office” or Dec. 31, 2019, or possibly...

We often hear that evangelical support for President Trump is hurting our witness here in America. Is it hurting our witness overseas as well? In a follow-up to Christianity Today’s editorial by Mark Galli calling for the removal of President Trump, CT president Timothy Dalrymple noted, “We are also a global ministry” and “partly on behalf of that global body, we can no longer stay silent.” Is it true, then, that American evangelical support for Trump is hurting our international witness? Dalrymple wrote...

-snip- The Rev. Franklin Graham, a staunch Trump supporter and the son of the magazine’s founder, the late Rev. Billy Graham, leaped to Trump’s defense, telling The Washington Post that “(my father) would’ve been very embarrassed that the magazine he started would call for something like this when there are no crimes committed.” Less than 48 hours later, Trump’s reelection campaign announced a new “Evangelicals for Trump” coalition, launching at a Miami rally in early January. But here in suburban Milwaukee, where Trump narrowly edged out Clinton in 2016 and where it is crucial he maintain or build support heading...

When it comes to Twitter, Chris Evans has no problem sharing his feelings on the state of the union. In fact, the Avengers alum has more 13 million followers and his tweets tend to incite as much engagement as the president of the United States, who just happens to be one of the erstwhile Captain America’s favorite targets. Evans, who played Cap in 11 films (including four cameos) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe dating back to 2012, is known for getting political on the platform — in addition to President Donald Trump, Evans has been outspoken about former Ku Klux...

First of all i cannot imagine the hate that must go into the thinking that you want to "shut down Trump supporters" ... at thanksgiving-really Thanksgiving?!. And I know these numbers don't make sense with record low unemployment but I need some help deconstruct job growth numbers: Here's article: Today hundreds of millions of Americans will sit down with close friends and family over heaping portions of turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. After the usual small talk about chilly weather and the day’s football matchups, discussions will inevitably shift to politics. In a country bitterly divided over the Trump presidency...

Billionaire "news" media mogul Michael Bloomberg is running for president. How will his Bloomberg News empire cover this? Bloomberg News posted an article touting how much trouble President Donald Trump is in. It lustily listed all his scandals: "Lawmakers and prosecutors are looking at whether he abused the powers of the presidency, obstructed an investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign, engaged in fraudulent business practices, violated the emoluments clauses of the Constitution and defamed women by saying they lied about alleged sexual assaults." That's how they cover Trump. How will they cover Bloomberg? Get ready. Bloomberg has a...

The day has finally arrived when our online media monopolies are blatantly censoring the news that Americans can see. Chrissy Clark writes at The Federalist: Facebook and YouTube are removing all content from their platforms that mentions the anti-Trump whistleblower's name, whom news outlets including RealClearInvestigations have publicly identified as CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella. No law bans media outlets or any person but the intelligence community inspector general from making the whistleblower's name public. A Facebook spokesperson said the platform will remove "any and all mention of the potential whistleblower's name.

...The New York Times foreshadowed on Monday in an ominous analysis of recent polling data, the 2020 election unfolds differently. Trump wins but without a mandate. On the contrary, he earns something like an anti-mandate... Trump remains quite competitive in the states that put him over the top in the Electoral College last time — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Those are states he would likely carry, as he did last time, by a relatively narrow margin. Meanwhile, Trump's extreme and intense unpopularity among Democrats points to a 2020 vote in which the margin of his loss in "blue" states could...

President Donald Trump confirmed Friday that he intends to send a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stating that, until the full House votes to authorize the chamber's ongoing impeachment inquiry, the administration will not comply with subpoenas and other demands for witness testimony and documents. Trump and Republicans—who've been daring Pelosi to vote on the matter—believe that such a move would put vulnerable swing state Democrats in a tough spot and force members to more officially go on the record, as all but a handful of House Democrats support an impeachment inquiry into Trump. The White House has...

There will be such an outpouring of sewage that no one stays clean. The 2020 election is going to be a real doozy. If you thought that the hacking, vicious memes, rumor-mongering, Russian interference and FBI blundering was bad last time, just wait. No matter who wins, the question of whether the outcome was fair or even accurate will arise, for partisans on the losing side and conspiracy theorists, but also for any reasonably objective person who’s watching. It’s likely, in other words, that the result of the 2020 election, particularly if it ends up close, will have little credibility....

When Donald Trump stepped to the dais at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, he had a speech full of sharp lines: swipes at socialism, assertions of nationalism versus globalism, harsh words for Iran. Though Trump doesn’t enjoy delivering scripted remarks, he sounded listless, tired, and bored even by his own standards, struggling through the speech. The president had a good reason to be distracted. The same morning, he had spoken on the phone with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, trying to stem a growing tide of Democratic demands for his impeachment. According to NBC’s Heidi Przybyla, Trump asked Pelosi whether there...

Rolling Stone magazine recently published an article titled "Trump 2020: Be Very Afraid," which carries the following subtitle: "America is the first country to ever elect a Mad King, and the way things are going, we may be dumb enough to do it twice." The author, Matt Taibbi, sat down with CNN's "New Day" on Tuesday morning. Among other things, Taibbi said the enthusiasm at Trump's campaign events this year is even greater than it was in 2016, and reporters who cover Trump are not explaining that. "What is the magic that he doles out?" CNN's Alisyn Camerota, not a...

Suburban women recoil as Trump dives into racial politics ROOKFIELD, Wis. (AP) — Carol Evans approves of Donald Trump’s immigration policy. She gives him credit for the strong economy. But the Republican from the affluent Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha County, a GOP bedrock in the state, just can’t commit to voting for the president next year like she did in 2016. “I just don’t like the way he talks about other people,” Evans, a 79-year-old retired data entry supervisor, said recently as she walked through a shopping mall in Brookfield, Wisconsin, days after Trump fired off a racist tweet at...

Students at Georgetown University deemed a quote from Barack Obama to be racist because they thought it was said by Donald Trump. Campus Reform reporter Cabot Phillips went to Georgetown University and asked students how they felt about the quote, which they near universally condemned. The quote was from Obama’s 2014 address about immigration. He had said, “we are a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable, especially those who may be dangerous. That’s why over the past six years deportations of criminals are up 80 percent, and that’s...

When President Trump tweeted on Sunday that "'Progressive' Democratic Congresswomen" — an apparent reference to Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, who are all women of color — should "go back" to their countries, the backlash was swift. It also sparked another conversation: What makes something racist? Ibram Kendi, a professor and director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, joined "CBS This Morning" to address that question from a historical perspective and discuss whether racist actions or words make someone a racist. Kendi explained the important historical context behind telling a person...

COLUMBIA, South Carolina — Aliyah Johnson stood petrified for several long seconds, mouth agape, eyes wide, as Mayor Pete Buttigieg walked in the door. When she finally shook off her paralysis, she barreled into his chest for an embrace before breaking into inconsolable sobs. The 19-year-old Columbia resident had been looking in vain for Buttigieg all over the South Carolina Democratic Party Convention. When he made a surprise appearance at a meet-and-greet with black millennials at a bar called Truth, she knew it would be her chance. She had never met him before, but Johnson needed to tell him her...