Free Republic

Tennessee and Kentucky can continue to ban gender-affirming care for young transgender people while legal challenges against those state laws proceed, federal appeals judges ruled. In a 2-1 decision by a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel late Thursday, the majority wrote that elected lawmakers made “precise cost-benefit decisions” in instituting the bans and “did not trigger any reason for judges to second-guess them.” The laws were passed by Republican majorities in both states. “Prohibiting citizens and legislatures from offering their perspectives on high-stakes medical policies, in which compassion for the child points in both directions, is not something...

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...

CLAIM: New York City is giving credit cards to migrants living in the U.S. illegally. AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. The city is launching a pilot program that will provide migrants with prepaid debit cards to buy only food and baby supplies, according to a spokesperson for the mayor. Participants will be allowed to shop with the cards at bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets and convenience stores. The goal is to cut costs, officials said. THE FACTS: Amid a massive influx of migrants to New York City, social media users are misrepresenting the new program with false claims about the type of...

As Twitchy reported, Ray Epps' sentencing Tuesday was a clown show. Epps, who is on video inciting people to enter the Capitol, was sentenced to a year's probation and a $500 fine. President Joe Biden gave his January 6 anniversary speech a day early and bragged last week that the "insurrectionists" had been sentenced to a collective total of 840 years in prison. That total stands, as Epps won't spend a single day in jail. Grandmothers who simply walked into the Capitol Building a stood there have been sentenced to a year's probation and a $500 fine after being found...

A man targeted by right-wing conspiracy theories about the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced on Tuesday to a year of probation for joining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of fellow Donald Trump supporters. Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who was driven into hiding by death threats, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge. He received no jail time, and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation, but he will have to serve 100 hours of community service. He appeared remotely by video conference and wasn't in the Washington, D.C., courtroom when...

What do we know ? AP fact checks it as false. https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-pelosi-insurrection-foia-epps-961838772892 Snopes fact checks as false: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nancy-pelosi-ray-epps-phone-jan-6/ Neither are to trusted. Both claim FOIA does not apply to congress persons.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley released an unclassified document Thursday that Republicans claim is significant in their investigation of Hunter Biden as they delve into the financial affairs of the president and his son, and revive previously debunked claims of wrongdoing. While lawmakers on the Oversight Committee have already been able to partly review the information, this is the first time the full document — which contains raw, unverified information — is being made public. Called an FD-1023 form, it involves claims a confidential informant made in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s alleged business dealings when he served on...

NEW YORK (AP) — Legally, the most important words former President Donald Trump said after he was charged with 34 felonies by the Manhattan District Attorney last week were “not guilty.” But, politically, the most significant may be “election interference.” Trump’s repetition of those words, which have been taken up by other top Republicans, show how he is trying to turn his historic position as the first former president charged with crimes to his advantage. It’s another example of what’s been a consistent refrain throughout his political career — claiming without evidence that an election is being rigged against him....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Handed some 41,000 hours of Jan. 6 security footage, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has launched an impassioned new effort to explain away the deadly Capitol attack, linking the Republican Party ever more closely to pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the 2021 riot. The conservative commentator aired a first installment to millions of viewers on his prime-time show, working to bend perceptions of the violent, grueling siege that played out for the world to see into a narrative favorable to Donald Trump. He promised more Tuesday night. The undertaking by Fox News comes as Trump is again running for...

Washington D.C., Feb 6, 2023 / 13:21 pm The Associated Press (AP) issued new guidelines advising reporters not to use the terms “crisis pregnancy center” or “pregnancy resource center” but to instead refer to centers that offer pro-life counseling and support as “anti-abortion centers.” Reporters should “avoid potentially misleading terms such as pregnancy resource centers or pregnancy counseling centers,” because “these terms don’t convey that the centers’ general aim is to prevent abortions,” according to the AP’s Abortion Topical Guide. The AP publishes the most widely used style guide, which journalists and editors across the country look to determine proper...

An attorney for Derek Chauvin is planning to ask an appeals court Wednesday to throw out the former Minneapolis police officer’s convictions in the murder of George Floyd, arguing that numerous legal and procedural errors deprived him of a fair trial. Floyd died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pinned the (b)lack man to the ground with his knee on his neck for 9½ minutes. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s death touched off protests around the world and forced a painful national reckoning with police brutality and racism. Hennepin County...

PHOENIX (AP) — Refusing to concede, Kari Lake, the defeated Republican candidate for Arizona governor, said Thursday she is assembling lawyers and collecting evidence of voters having trouble casting ballots on Election Day as she considers her next move. Lake, in a 2 1/2-minute video, made no mention of giving up in her most extensive public comments since losing the election. Before the election, she had refused to say that she would concede if she lost the race to Democrat Katie Hobbs. “Rest assured I have assembled the best and brightest legal team, and we are exploring every avenue to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — There was no violence. Many candidates who denied the legitimacy of previous elections lost and quietly conceded. And few listened when former President Donald Trump tried to stoke baseless allegations of electoral fraud. For a moment, at least, there’s a sense of normalcy in the U.S. The extremism that has consumed political discourse for much of the last two years has been replaced by something resembling traditional democratic order. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, said midterm voters were concerned about Biden’s leadership but that they had a more urgent message: “Fix policy later, fix crazy...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Fighting back tears and finally given the chance to confront conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the parents of a 6-year-old killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting described being put through a “living hell” of death threats, harassment and ongoing trauma over the last decade caused by Jones using his media platforms to push claims that it was all a hoax. The parents led a day of charged testimony that included the judge scolding the bombastic Jones for not being truthful with some of what he said under oath. Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol played out for the world to see, but the House committee investigating the attack believes a more chilling story has yet to be told -- about the president and the people whose actions put American democracy at risk. With personal accounts and gruesome videos the 1/6 committee expects Thursday’s prime-time hearing to begin to show that America’s tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power came close to slipping away. It will reconstruct how the president, Donald Trump, refused to concede the 2020 election, spread false claims of...

On Thursday, according to U.S. News & World Report, far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest that liberals are threatening Western civilization and the right must unite to defeat them, in a speech loaded with anti-democratic and anti-Semitic dog whistles."Progressive liberals, neo-Marxists dazed by the woke dream, people financed by George Soros and promoters of open societies ... want to annihilate the Western way of life that you and us love so much," said Orban in his speech. "We must coordinate the movement of our troops as we face a big test, 2024...

RINGGOLD, Ga. (AP) — As he met with voters recently in a part of northwest Georgia where Donald Trump is still very popular, David Perdue invoked his belief in the lie that elections in 2020 and 2021 were stolen from the former president and himself. “First of all, it was stolen,” Perdue said. “The facts are coming out.” When the rally was over, Perdue visited the storefront office of a group that similarly espouses election falsehoods. Perdue posted a photo on his Facebook page of himself beaming as the group’s cofounder talks under a banner proclaiming “a legal vote requires...

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — A majority of Americans continue to support a mask requirement for people traveling on airplanes and other shared transportation, a new poll finds. A ruling by a federal judge has put the government’s transportation mask mandate on hold. The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that despite opposition to that requirement that included verbal abuse and physical violence against flight attendants, 56% of Americans favor requiring people on planes, trains and public transportation to wear masks, compared with 24% opposed and 20% who say they’re neither in favor nor opposed. Interviews...

Far-right activist Ammon Bundy, who’s running for governor in Idaho, has been arrested after refusing to leave a hospital in connection with a child-welfare case, police said Saturday. Bundy was arrested at about 1:15 a.m. on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing at St. Luke’s Meridian Medical Center in Meridian, west of Boise, the Idaho Statesman reported. Bundy is well-known for participating in armed standoffs with law enforcement, notably at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016, which left one man dead, and on federal land near his family’s ranch in Nevada in 2014.

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Mike Pence urged Republicans to move on from the 2020 election and declared that "there is no room in this party for apologists for Putin" as he further cemented his break from former President Donald Trump.