Free Republic

President Donald Trump’s recent focus on urban crime presents a classic dilemma for Democrats. If they point out that his lurid portrait of a violent epidemic is inaccurate, they risk turning off voters who agree with him on an emotional level. But if they go along with it, they risk legitimizing his power grab. Trump and his Republican allies clearly hope to ride this issue all the way into next year’s midterms, so Democrats need to come up with a counteroffensive soon. Fortunately for them, there is a group of Democrats who know exactly how to run — and win...

Thousands of people took to San Francisco’s streets on Saturday as part of the “No Kings” protests taking place across the country. The crowd in San Francisco swelled to many thousands as it stretched from Dolores Park to Civic Center, possibly even 100,000, according to an estimate by SFGATE photographer and online photo editor Douglas Zimmerman, though an official tally was not immediately available. The nationwide “No Kings” mobilizations are protesting the Trump administration and coincide with both the president’s birthday and his $45 million military parade taking place in Washington, D.C. The demonstrations come on the heels of weeks...

Donald Trump has frequently poured scorn on those who served in the US military. Even though he avoided serving after obtaining a note from a friendly doctor who said he had bone spurs, he famously mocked late Republican John McCain, the 2008 presidential candidate and a prisoner-of-war, saying he preferred people who did not get captured. He would later stun his chief of staff, former Marine General John Kelly, during a visit to France for the centennial anniversary of the end of the First World War, when he allegedly claimed those who gave their lives were “suckers” and “losers”. Now,...

Seattle's police union has hit out at city officials after mass arrests took place in a park when counter-protesters gathered to demonstrate against a rally being held there. The Seattle Police Officers Guild said it welcomed a mayoral review of the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department's decision to allow the rally to be held in Cal Anderson Park on Saturday. "What we are struggling to understand is, why was this park chosen and authorized, especially when this park is commonly known as the heart of ANTIFA land," the police union said in a statement on Sunday. The park and surrounding...

NEW YORK (AP) — Facing a deadline from an immigration judge to turn over evidence for its attempted deportation of Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, the federal government has instead submitted a brief memo, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, citing the Trump administration’s authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country damages U.S. foreign policy interests. The two-page memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press, does not allege any criminal conduct by Khalil, a legal permanent U.S. resident and graduate student who served as spokesperson for campus activists last year during large demonstrations against Israel’s treatment...

It’s hard to say who is the worst attorney general in American history. The candidates are many and comprise a veritable rogue’s gallery of sadists, reactionaries and incompetents. They range from A. Mitchell Palmer, mastermind of the original Red Scare that decimated the left in the wake of the First World War, to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and William Pelham Barr, who sacrificed the rule of law in service to Donald Trump. Merrick Garland may not share the malignancies of his fellow train wrecks, but he deserves to be in the discussion. Decades from now, historians will memorialize Garland not...

Penny Nance slid a form across the table to Donald Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Her Christian nonprofit, Concerned Women for America, wanted Trump to pledge in writing that a person’s “gender identity” doesn’t “overrule their sex,” and that if he becomes president again, “all federal agencies will be directed to uphold this fact in every policy and program at home and abroad.” Such a promise would have wide-ranging implications, the form emphasized, affecting schools, prisons, shelters, health care providers, the military and more. But it was an easy sell, Nance recalled of her June 2023 conversation,...