Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump has spent months laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the 2024 election if he loses — just as he did four years ago. At rally after rally, he urges his supporters to deliver a victory “too big to rig,” telling them the only way he can lose is if Democrats cheat. He has refused to say, repeatedly, whether he will accept the results regardless of the outcome. And he’s claimed cheating is already underway, citing debunked claims or outrageous theories with no basis in reality. “The only thing that can stop us...

Russian actors made a widely circulated video falsely depicting mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed in Pennsylvania, U.S. officials said Friday. A video that showed mail-in ballots for Trump apparently being destroyed in a suburban Philadelphia county took off quickly on social media Thursday afternoon. U.S. officials said in a statement sent by the FBI that they believe the video was “manufactured and amplified” by Russian actors. The officials say it’s part of “Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.” The information was released in a joint...

CHICAGO (AP) — Donald Trump falsely suggested Kamala Harris had misled voters about her race as the former president appeared before the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago Wednesday in an interview that quickly turned hostile. The Republican former president wrongly claimed that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian...

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said Sunday, as the United States was on track to approve billions of dollars of additional military aid to Israel, its close ally. Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive against the Hamas militant group to the city on the border with Egypt despite international calls for restraint, including from...

An international charity suspended delivery of food to starving Palestinians on Tuesday, a day after an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen who were trying to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.Ships still laden with some 240 tons of aid from the charity that arrived Monday turned back from Gaza, according to Cyprus, which has played a key role in trying to establish a sea route to bring food to the territory.*** Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that the country’s forces had carried out the “unintended strike ... on innocent people.” He said officials were...

NEW YORK (AP) — As some of the world’s biggest economies stumble into recession, the United States keeps chugging along. Both Japan and the United Kingdom said Thursday their economies likely weakened during the final three months of 2023. For each, it would be the second straight quarter that’s happened, which fits one lay definition for a recession. Yet in the United States, the economy motored ahead in last year’s fourth quarter for a sixth straight quarter of growth. It’s blown past many predictions coming into last year that a recession seemed inevitable because of high interest rates meant to...

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces bombarded cities, towns and refugee camps across Gaza on Thursday, killing dozens of people in a widening air and ground offensive against Hamas that has forced thousands more to flee from homes and shelters in recent days. The war has already killed over 20,000 Palestinians and driven around 85% of the population of 2.3 million from their homes. Much of northern Gaza has been leveled, and it has been largely depopulated and isolated from the rest of the territory for weeks. Many fear a similar fate awaits the south as Israel expands...

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than half a million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving, according to a report Thursday by the U.N. and other agencies that highlights the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s bombardment and siege on the territory in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The extent of the population’s hunger eclipsed even the near-famines in Afghanistan and Yemen of recent years, according to figures in the report. The report warned that the risk of famine is “increasing each day,” blaming the hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza. “It doesn’t get...

On Sept. 19, Azerbaijan launched an assault to recapture separatist region Nagorno-Karabakh. The reintegration of Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan has prompted tens of thousands of Armenians to flee. Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh has been quietly fueled by Israel’s powerful weapons. Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the ethnic Armenian enclave back under its control, officials and experts say.

A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll out Wednesday found that former President Donald Trump is increasing his grip on the Republican Party but still distancing a majority of the American electorate. The poll found that 63% of Republican voters “now say they want the former president to run again,” noted an AP summary. The strong support from inside the GOP marked an increase from the same poll last April, which showed 55% of Republican voters wanted to see Trump on the party’s ticket again. “Seven in 10 Republicans now have a favorable opinion of Trump, an...

The U.S. military is considering putting armed personnel on commercial ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, in what would be an unheard of action aimed at stopping Iran from seizing and harassing civilian vessels, four American officials told The Associated Press on Thursday. Since 2019, Iran has seized a series of ships in the strait, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, as part of its efforts to pressure the West over negotiations regarding its collapsed nuclear deal with world powers. Putting U.S. troops on commercial ships could further deter Iran from seizing vessels — or escalate tensions further....

Computer engineers and tech-inclined political scientists have warned for years that cheap, powerful artificial intelligence tools would soon allow anyone to create fake images, video and audio that was realistic enough to fool voters and perhaps sway an election. […] Sophisticated generative AI tools can now create cloned human voices and hyper-realistic images, videos and audio in seconds, at minimal cost. When strapped to powerful social media algorithms, this fake and digitally created content can spread far and fast and target highly specific audiences, potentially taking campaign dirty tricks to a new low. The implications for the 2024 campaigns and...

A failed Republican state legislative candidate who authorities say was angry over losing the election last November and made baseless claims that the election was “rigged” against him was arrested Monday in connection with a series of drive-by shootings targeting the homes of Democratic lawmakers in New Mexico’s largest city.

Many Americans remain pessimistic about the state of U.S. democracy and the way elected officials are chosen — nearly two years after a divisive presidential election spurred false claims of widespread fraud and a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Only about half of Americans have high confidence that votes in the upcoming midterm elections will be counted accurately, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, though that’s an improvement from about 4 in 10 saying that just before the 2020 presidential election. Just 9% of U.S. adults think democracy is working “extremely”...

ATLANTA (AP) — Rhonda Briggins spent much of Election Day in 2020 at an Atlanta polling place handing out water and snacks to encourage voters to stay in an hourslong line to cast their ballots, something her historic Black sorority has done for decades in Georgia. This election, Briggins and some of her thousands of sorority sisters are trading that role for a potentially more contentious one: ensuring voters aren’t disenfranchised by a slew of new voting restrictions passed by the Republican-led Legislature. They include a ban on giving food and drinks to waiting voters. The law, which a federal...

When then-Maine Gov. Paul LePage endorsed Donald Trump in 2016, he credited himself as a prototype for the insurgent presidential candidate. “I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular, so I think I should support him since we are one of the same cloth,” said LePage, whose two terms in office were punctuated by brash behavior and frequently offensive comments. Now, as LePage is running for a third term after a brief retirement to Florida, he rarely talks about Trump in public, and his advisers say LePage’s hiatus from politics changed him. He’s eager to show he’s smoothed over...

New York is poised to strengthen its oversight of private and religious schools following years of complaints that thousands of children are graduating from ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools lacking basic academic skills, including the ability to read English. A Board of Regents committee unanimously approved guidelines Monday to make sure instruction at the state’s private and religious schools is equivalent to that of its public schools. The rules would apply to all of New York’s 1,800 nonpublic schools but would have the greatest impact on the ultra-Orthodox schools, called yeshivas, some of which provide rigorous religious instruction but little or no...

After winking at QAnon for years, Donald Trump is overtly embracing the baseless conspiracy theory, even as the number of frightening real-world events linked to it grows. On Tuesday, using his Truth Social platform, the Republican former president reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming.” In QAnon lore, the “storm” refers to Trump’s final victory, when supposedly he will regain power and his opponents will be tried, and potentially executed, on live television. As Trump contemplates another run for the presidency and has become increasingly assertive in the Republican...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Wednesday it’s optimistic about a decline in monkeypox cases and an uptick in vaccinations against the infectious virus, despite worsening racial disparities in reported cases. Promising to ramp up vaccination offerings at LGBTQ Pride festivals around the country in the coming weeks, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the deputy coordinator of the White House national monkeypox response, said more than 460,000 doses have been given. The U.S. leads the world with infections — as of Tuesday 20,733 cases had been reported — with men accounting for about 98% of cases and men who said they...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A man armed with an AR-15 dies in a shootout after trying to breach FBI offices in Cincinnati. A Pennsylvania man is arrested after he posts death threats against agents on social media. In cyberspace, calls for armed uprisings and civil war grow stronger. This could be just the beginning, federal authorities and private extremism monitors warn. A growing number of ardent Donald Trump supporters seem ready to strike back against the FBI or others who they believe go too far in investigating the former president. Law enforcement officials across the country are warning and being warned...