Free Republic

On Sunday, our thoughtful and reserved president reposted on his Truth Social site a video generated by artificial intelligence that falsely showed former President Obama being arrested and imprisoned. There are those among you who think this is high humor; those among you who who find it as tiresome as it is offensive; and those among you blissfully unaware of the mental morass that is Truth Social. Whatever camp you fall into, the video crosses all demographics by being expected — just another crazy Trump stunt in a repetitive cycle of division and diversion so frequent it makes Groundhog Day...

Hello and happy Tuesday. There are 62 days until President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in, and today we’re talking about keeping things normal. Normal, of course, is subjective. As anyone who’s getting ready to attend a Thanksgiving dinner knows, often families can’t even agree on what normal looks like. My own Ohio grandmother used to make lobster in aspic for our special meal. Her Depression-era upbringing made her believe it was the height of fancy-pantsy, but it still gives me nightmares. When it comes to Trump’s Cabinet picks, most of them so far are anything but ordinary. “Normally, you let...

Hello and happy Thursday. There are 81 days until the election, and today we are talking about stayin’ alive — for the Harris campaign, the Trump whatever-it-is and for us voters who have 11-plus weeks to go.And for democracy. Don’t forget democracy!First, I know you’ve seen the AI-generated video of Donald Trump and Elon Musk dancing to the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.” Trump also posted it on his Truth Social, where truth goes to die. This bromance is hard to watch. Musk’s power and privilege seem to be veering him into Howard Hughes-weird territory, where his crazy theories are matched...

… That naysaying has gained much greater currency in recent years as California’s population has contracted for the first time in more than a century. The “exodus” has become an industry, stoking real estate markets from Nevada to Tennessee, fanning the red-versus-blue political flames and launching a thousand what-went-wrong analyses. The latest insult — or bracing reality check? — came last week in a Los Angeles Times poll that found 50% of adults nationwide believe California is in decline. (Bummer, man.) Nearly half the Republicans surveyed said the state is “not really American.” Whatever that means. L.A. Times columnists Mark...

GREENVILLE, Calif. — Looking back, Bradley Bentz doesn’t know what took him so long to move out of Los Angeles County. For decades, he’d lived a short walk from the Santa Anita Park racetrack and a few minutes drive to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. It was the typical city life. “The cars and the smog. The noise. The lights that you can’t even tell when it’s dark,” Bentz said, shaking his head as if waking up from a nightmare. “I just couldn’t do it.” So he headed to the sparsely populated mountains of Plumas County. He joined the U.S....

When conservatives fight one another over God and country, my general reaction is — have at it, and where’s the popcorn? But the recent recall election in Shasta County that pitted a Republican ex-police chief against a far-right faction backed by a local militia is different. It’s a wake-up call ahead of the 2022 midterms that elections can go very wrong, even in liberal California. What happened in Redding should be a big, blinking warning light to what’s left of the mainstream Republican Party, and to us all that we have an obligation as Californians to protect elections across the...