Free Republic

We witnessed an egregious case of irresponsibility by the media this week when the AFP, a global news agency with a Washington, D.C. bureau sent out a tweet and published an article containing a bombshell headline: “BREAKING More than 100,000 children in migration-related US detention: UN.” It was a damning article. “Nearly a third of the children being held in migration-related detention across the world are in the US, the UN said Monday,” it began. “More than 100,000 children are currently being held in migration-related detention in the United States, often in violation of international law, the UN said Monday.”...

So the United States has “the world’s highest rate of children in detention.” Is this worth reporting? Maybe, maybe not. Nevertheless, Agence France-Presse, or AFP, and Reuters did report it, attributing the information to a “United Nations study” on migrant children detained at the US-Mexico border. Then the two agencies retracted the story. Deleted, withdrew, demolished. If they could have used one of those Men in Black memory-zappers on us, they would have. Sheepishly, the two news organizations explained that, you see, the UN data was from 2015 — part of a border crackdown that had begun years earlier. We...

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu skillfully “played” US President Donald Trump by plying him with inaccurate information, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson said. Netanyahu, who is fighting for his political life after close elections, was “a bit Machiavellian” and would share “misinformation” with the United States, according to Trump’s former top diplomat. […] “They did that with the president on a couple of occasions, to persuade him that ‘We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys.’ We later exposed it to the president so he understood, ‘You’ve been played,’” Tillerson said, according to the newspaper. […] Tillerson said he...

The pro-mass immigration Koch brothers’ network of billionaire, donor-class organizations is readying to financially back Democrats, so long as they promise to support amnesty for illegal aliens and vote to advance free trade at all costs. In a memo to its staff, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP) organization announced that the economic libertarian group is set to back any elected official in Washington, DC, — including Democrats — who support their agenda of amnesty for illegal aliens and endless free trade, and oppose the GOP voter-preferred economic nationalist agenda of less immigration and tariffs to protect American jobs. The...

Americans For Prosperity, a free-market advocacy group funded in part by the Koch network, has offered to help House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., pass legislation that would limit President Trump's ability to unilaterally impose new tariffs. "[W]e hope to work with your office to advance legislation to require congressional approval of any proposed tariffs," said AFP chief government affairs officer Brent Gardner and Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce executive vice president Nathan Nascimento told Pelosi in a letter sent Friday and made public Wednesday. The group called on Pelosi to support the Bicameral Congressional Trade Authority Act, legislation jointly introduced...

With the embers still raining from blackened skies choked by California’s massive wildfires, the effort turns to rebuilding Paradise — a town of almost 30,000 that was wiped off the map. But experts warn that with megafires the new normal in a warming global climate, housing in the western United States is going to need a revolutionary rethink along the lines of villages dotting Europe’s wooded slopes. “I think people are thinking about if there is a way we can design the new Paradise that can look like more of a European village or a ski town, and not have...

Millions of Americans will be barred from casting ballots in Tuesday’s crucial midterm elections due to electoral rules at the state level, which effectively exclude many minority voters to the detriment of Democrats. […] Nearly six million Americans are excluded from voting because they are imprisoned, on parole or awaiting sentencing. African Americans, who are overrepresented in the US penal system, are four times more likely to be unable to vote than the rest of the population, according to The Sentencing Project, a non-profit organization. […] There is no national identity card in the United States. Instead, each state defines...

President Trump ripped the Koch brothers one day after the political network formed by the billionaire conservative businessmen said it would not support a Republican Senate candidate in North Dakota “The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade,” Trump said in a series of tweets early Tuesday. “I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas. They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more. I made them richer. Their network is highly overrated, I have beaten them at every...

Billionaire activist Charles Koch said Sunday that his network of big-spending political groups would be more aggressive in going after Republicans who have failed to adhere to fiscally conservative principles. Speaking to a small group of reporters in a rare interview at a five-star resort in the Rocky Mountains, Koch vowed to hold GOP lawmakers accountable for their votes when they break with the network’s free-market views on issues like spending and tariffs. “I regret some of the [lawmakers] we have supported … we’re gonna more directly deal with that and hold people accountable,” Koch said. The Koch network will...

Europe “must take its fate into its own hands” faced with a western alliance divided by Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday. “The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days,” Merkel told a crowd at an election rally in Munich, southern Germany. “We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands,” she added. While Germany and Europe would strive to remain on good terms with America and Britain, “we have to fight for our own destiny,” Merkel...

Google and Facebook will be working with the mainstream media to tell voters “what and who to trust”, including “memes, comment threads and news sites”, in the lead up to the French elections. The two Tech giants, who have been accused of a “liberal bias”, will set up the “coalition news verification project” with 37 French and international media outlets including the BBC, AFP (Agence France-Presse), and BuzzFeed News. On an official blog post, Google claimed “CrowdTangle” had been set up “with a goal of helping the French electorate make sense of what and who to trust in their social...

The Donald Trump campaign began courting top staffers with the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity late last year, in order to bolster its ground game ahead of big primary nights in March, according to BuzzFeed News. The billionaire businessman's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is a former AFP state director whose intricate knowledge of New Hampshire paid dividends in that primary. One top AFP staffer in a March primary state said he was approached by Lewandowski, who told him Trump "was for real. He's going all the way." "Anecdotally, I'd say a lot of people have been approached," another source close...

The Texas senator and Republican presidential campaigner Ted Cruz on Saturday told a Koch brothers-sponsored gathering he would have a busy agenda on his first day in the White House. Speaking to activists at the annual summit of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) in Columbus, Ohio, Cruz said if elected he would rescind “every single illegal and unconstitutional executive order” signed by President Barack Obama, begin investigating the women’s health organisation Planned Parenthood, “rip to shreds” the Iranian nuclear deal and order all federal agencies to end the religious persecution of Christians. Cruz – who on Friday night in Iowa was...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was the hands-down favorite of the Americans for Prosperity annual summit in Columbus, Ohio, this weekend, if the number and volume of ovations during the speeches of five presidential candidates who addressed the annual convention of tea party activists was the measure. At the other end of the spectrum was former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a newcomer to events financed by conservative industrialists Charles and David Koch. Bush was attending his first national conference of Americans for Prosperity and was greeted with respectful but restrained applause by a group that rose essentially out of Republican dissatisfaction...

Ted Cruz, the firebrand GOP presidential candidate who’s campaigning on promises to cut government spending, pitched himself as a Washington outsider and promised to reform federal taxes during a speech at Red Rock Resort today.Cruz, 44, channeled the conservative outrage with the federal government by telling tales of his battles against politicians while vowing to implement a flat tax, eliminate agricultural subsidies for corn and sugar, reform health care and end a system of federally backed business loans for purchasing overseas goods.Cruz, known for his filibusters to protest hikes in government borrowing caps, brought his brand of chutzpah to Las...

Americans for Prosperity is hosting a discussion with special guest, Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz will discuss AFP's Reform America 2015 agenda, which is critical for putting our country back on track. Watch the live stream!

Conservative think tank Americans for Prosperity (AFP), co-founded by principals of Koch Industries, sued in federal court to prevent ultra-liberal California Attorney General Kamala Harris from using her office to disclose the names and addresses of their 90,000 donors. Harris may have a problem with AFP being a major force behind the Tea Party movement and its support of free markets, entrepreneurship, lower taxes, and limited government spending and regulation. As a federally registered 501(c)(4), not-for-profit educational organization, Americans for Prosperity is allowed under federal law to raise and spend money educating the public regarding issues associated with political campaigns...

The mild-mannered head of AFP relishes the president’s attacks. Dallas — Tim Phillips loves peanut butter. The president of Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a free-market advocacy group, is in the midst of his annual “Defending the Dream Summit,” which this year brought more than 3,000 grassroots activists to the Lone Star State. We’re sitting at a table in Dallas’s Omni hotel, sharing a piece of peanut-butter pie, and it’s hard to compute that the mild-mannered guy in front of me is the force behind AFP, the bête noire of Senate majority leader Harry Reid and the Democratic party writ large....

Last week’s standoff at Bundy Ranch is still reverberating in Washington today. According to Kate Sheppard at Huffington Post, Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) has sent a letter to Mary Kendall, acting Inspector General for the Department of the Interior, asking her to investigate whether legislation pushed by the Koch brothers-linked American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been aimed at undermining the agency’s work.Two member affiliates of the Koch-supported Americans For Prosperity (AFP) organization gave their blessing as armed ‘Patriot’ militias showed up to confront agents of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) doing the dangerous, difficult job of removing Bundy’s trespass...

Americans for Prospertiy, a conservative tax-exempt organization, has a new 60-second television ad running in Michigan that criticizes Democratic congressman Gary Peters for his vote and continued support of Obamacare. The ad features Michigan citizen Julie Boonstra, who describes how she was diagnosed with leukemia but lost her health insurance coverage this year because of Obamacare's regulations. "I was doing fairly well fighting the cancer, fighting the leukemia, and then I received a letter. My insurance was canceled because of Obamacare," says Boonstra. "Now, the out-of-pocket costs are so high, it's unaffordable. If I do not receive my medication, I...