Free Republic

ARepublican lawmaker announced he is retiring from politics due to a candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump's victory in a Congressional primary election. Trump-backed candidate Austin Theriault, a former NASCAR driver and state representative, defeated State Representative Michael Soboleski in the primary for Maine's 2nd Congressional District on Tuesday. He will face off against Democratic Congressman Jared Golden, a top GOP target in the November elections in what could be one of the most competitive House races of the election cycle. State Representative John Andrews, who was a supporter and campaign manager for Soboleski, wrote in a Facebook post...

Rob Smith, a gay and Black conservative who was heckled and called racist and homophobic slurs while attending a MAGA event last year, said he is leaving the Republican Party. Smith, a longtime conservative commentator, announced he now identifies as "politically homeless" during an episode of his podcast Can't Cancel Rob Smith titled "I Was Betrayed—Rob Smith Speaks Out" on Monday. Smith shared a video on social media in December that he said showed him at an event in Phoenix being "confronted and surrounded by some White Supremacists that don't like gays or blacks in the Republican Party." He said...

An interview with Donald Trump's ex-wife, Ivana Trump, in which she said he received a Nazi salute, resurfaced as the former president faces backlash over his latest immigration remarks. The former president, who remains the front-runner to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and whose anti-immigration policies have been a cornerstone of his political career, has come under fire after claiming immigrants are "poisoning the blood" of the United States during a campaign event in Durham, New Hampshire, on Saturday. "They're poisoning the blood of our country," he said. "They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not...

Senator Rand Paul has faced criticism for previously trying to block funding for Israel's Iron Dome defense system following Hamas' attack against Israel over the weekend.

Republicans expressed outrage at President Joe Biden on Saturday following a report that the federal government is allegedly selling millions of dollars of unused parts of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. GovPlanet, an online marketplace for surplus government materials, recently oversaw the sale of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of square structural tubes produced by Nucor Tubular that were apparently intended for former President Donald Trump's border wall, a key promise of his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has touted the completion of more than 450 miles of the wall during his tenure as president, though most of that was replacing...

President Joe Biden poured cold water on Ukraine's hopes of expedited membership into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) amid Russia's invasion on Saturday. On Saturday, the president addressed the possibility of speeding up the process to allow Ukraine to join the alliance ahead of his 2024 campaign rally in Philadelphia. A reporter asked Biden about previous reports claiming that he supported waiving the requirement for Ukraine to obtain a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to join NATO. According to the MAP, candidates must make military and democratic reforms before being considered to join. However, this could be a lengthy process...

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the paramilitary Wagner Group that has fought alongside the Russian military in the war in Ukraine, admitted that the "meat grinder" battle for Bakhmut is far from over. -snip- Prigozhin, a Russian businessman, told The Moscow Times, an independent newspaper based in Amsterdam, that his troops "will not be celebrating in the near future" as the battle pushes on. He said Ukraine's military has become more active in the city, pulling in "more and more new reserves" to fight to prevent a Russian breakthrough. Up to 500 new fighters have become engaged in Bakhmut each...

Russian President Vladimir Putin could "disappear at any moment," sending Moscow into a civil conflict amid its floundering invasion of Ukraine, warned former commander Igor Girkin. Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, rose to prominence for his role in the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. He has become increasingly critical of Kremlin leadership as its military struggles to achieve substantial military gains in Ukraine nearly a year after Putin launched the "special military operation." Although he supports the goals of the Russian military, he has recently offered grim assessments of the war for Putin. During a recent discussion, Girkin...

Wagner Group mercenaries saw a spike in infectious diseases due to their poor hygiene, Ukraine said on Tuesday. Ukraine's latest statement about the dire condition of Russian troops comes more than 11 months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the Ukraine "special military operation" in February 2022. Putin initially hoped his troops would carry him to a quick victory, but Ukrainian successes have translated to losses for Putin's troops, compelling Moscow's military leaders to turn to the Wagner Group, a paramilitary unit founded by Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin. Wagner mercenaries in January delivered a key victory to Russia in Soledar....

Alexander Khodakovsky, the commander of Russia's Donetsk militia, pointed to nuclear weapons as one way Russia could win the war during an appearance on state TV..."We don't have the ability—we're a country which is now fighting the entire Western world, and we don't have the resources to defeat the NATO bloc with conventional means," he said. "But we have nuclear weapons for that. We built them specially for such situations. That is why there is only one option."

Ukraine has touted large numbers of Russian losses throughout the eight-month conflict, though Russia has not publicly confirmed the claims. "This morning, the [Ukrainian] Air Force successfully shot down 44 Russian cruise missiles," the ministry tweeted. "All this before their first cup of coffee." Russia allegedly launched 50 missiles toward "critical infrastructure facilities" in Ukraine at about 7 a.m. local time, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine wrote in a Facebook post. The attack included Kh-101 and Kh-555 missiles, which were launched from aircraft north of the Caspian Sea from the Rostov region. Only six of the...

Former President Donald Trump blamed the United States for "almost forcing" Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.During an interview on Real America's Voice, a right-wing network favorable to Trump, the former president criticized the Biden administration. He argued that their "rhetoric" in the months leading up to the Ukraine invasion contributed to Putin's decision.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, harangued school shooting survivor David Hogg about his stance on guns on Twitter Sunday morning.

ALincoln Project video calling on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases involving the January 6 Capitol riot has been viewed more than half a million times as of Saturday afternoon, following its release on Friday. Justice Thomas has faced pressure to recuse himself from such cases since reports outlining the role that his wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, played in attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Text messages she allegedly sent to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows showed her expressing support for overturning the election, based on unproven claims of voter fraud.

Former Trump admin aide Alyssa Farah Griffin predicted on Sunday the GOP would use the ex-president to help win the midterms before dropping him for the 2024 presidential elections. Griffin, who served in various White House rolls including the director of strategic communications during former President Donald Trump's time in office, said she believes Republicans will keep him around for fundraising during the midterms. "Republicans are going to keep him around through 2022 because he will be helpful in winning back House seats, getting back the House majority," she said on CNN's State of the Union. "He is monster fundraiser....

U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger criticized Democrats for encouraging Republicans to tell the truth but then targeting him in redistricting. Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, explained his decision to not seek re-election while appearing on ABC News' This Week Sunday morning. He said one reason he opted to retire is that he has not seen other Republicans "move away from lies," amid baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and his GOP allies..... He also called out Democrats for drawing him into a district with another GOP incumbent. His district is currently largely based in...

According to a thread on his Twitter account Saturday, West is experiencing "a low grade fever and light body aches." He has canceled in-person events out of concern for public safety "until receiving an all-clear indication." In addition to Ivermectin, which has been widely dismissed by health experts as a COVID-19 treatment, West is also taking hydroxychloroquine. Although his wife, Angela West, has been vaccinated against the virus, he has not, according to the tweets. "Dr. Angela West received the vaccine. LTC West did not. LTC West has publicly stated he supports individual choice and this is reflected in his...

Filmmaker Andrew Stanton says his latest film isn't about the environment or obesity. It's about relationships...[said Stanton] what really interested me was the idea of the most human thing in the universe being a machine because it has more interest in finding out what the point of living is than actual people. The greatest commandment Christ gives us is to love, but that's not always our priority. So I came up with this premise that could demonstrate what I was trying to say—that irrational love defeats the world's programming. You've got these two robots that are trying to go above...

-snip- “John Carter,” a big-budget science fiction epic from Walt Disney Studios that opened Friday and flopped over the weekend. Disney spent lavishly (some say foolishly) on the movie in large part to keep one of its most important creative talents happy: Andrew Stanton, the Pixar-based director of “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E.” “John Carter,” which cost an estimated $350 million to make and market, and was directed by Mr. Stanton, took in about $30.6 million at the North American box office, according to Rentrak, which compiles box-office data. That result is so poor, even when factoring in about $71 million...