Free Republic

“Today, more than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, America is again divided, by geography, party, ideology, economics and race.” —From “Is America Heading For Another Civil War?” Austin Sarat on July 30, 2019. The debate over the merits of Donald John Trump’s presidency continue with no sign of closure in sight. The constituency that elected him has remained steadfast in its support, as the marginalized and ethnically diverse who oppose him, stay at odds with his policies and (in their view) offensive rhetoric. Vast segments of the psychiatric community, including the editorial staff of Psychology Today,...

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) defended his oft-used analogies comparing President Donald Trump and his administration to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany amid widespread criticism. “It is the comparison of last resort and that is where we are,” O’Rourke replied when CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer questioned if he understood the backlash coming from Democrats and Republicans alike. “I don’t mean the last resort politically or last resort in terms of defeating the president in November,” he explained. “[I mean] the last resort for this country that is descending into open racism and intolerance and violence led by the president.” “Now, whether...

London (CNN) — Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, will take a break from royal duties towards the end of the year, dividing their time between the US and the UK, a royal source has told CNN. Confirmation of a break comes hours before an ITV documentary filmed during the couple's recent South Africa tour is broadcast in the UK.

Watergate is the ur-text for how Americans imagine the defeat of a sitting president, but it shouldn’t be how to think about the impeachment of Donald Trump. Watergate was a formative political experience for many of the older Democrats who run the House of Representatives these days. And the semi-fictionalized version of the scandal portrayed on film in All the President’s Men is an emotional and intellectual touchstone for many journalists. To this day, it’s conventional to denote the existence of a political scandal by appending “-gate” to a noun, as if “Watergate” had to with water rather than originating...

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, gave a rare glimpse into her personal life when she admitted that she has struggled to deal with the repercussions of being a new mother in the spotlight. A snippet of the her powerful interview with reporter Tom Bradby was released by ITV on Friday. The clip is a part of the British television channel's documentary, "Harry & Meghan: An African Journey," which will be released in the UK on Sunday. In the video, Meghan talks about the issues she's grappled with as a new wife, mother, and duchess whose life has been judged and dissected...

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) told CNN Friday that President Trump should be impeached after acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said the Trump administration had frozen military aid as leverage to get Ukraine to investigate a conspiracy theory about a DNC server. "To me, it's totally inappropriate. It's an abuse of power. Now I know that there are presidents that will withhold aid because they have policy differences, but this is not a policy difference. So my view is that — look, I fought with people on the air about 'Is there a quid pro quo?' and 'Does...

Trump has already “flipped” the Third Circuit. He’s made serious inroads on other circuits. Now, he’s posed to fully flip the Eleventh Circuit. At the outset of the Trump administration, it had an 8-3 Democratic majority (with one vacancy). So that’s an impressive swing. One administration, not even in power for three years, has flipped the federal circuit for Florida, Georgia, and Alabama from 8-3 Democrat to 7-5 Republican, with a majority of those Republicans being Trump judges.

Laurence Tribe explains why Congress should aim to work at three speeds. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke to Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard, about some of the legal questions the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s behavior has brought up. A portion of that conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity, is below. Dahlia Lithwick: We’ve had quite anxious listener mail this week saying, what does Congress do? What teeth can Congress put into a system where essentially the nihilist argument has been made—“I spit on your system, your system does not...

President Trump isn’t the first American leader to turn his back on foreign friends who were counting on U.S. assistance: President Dwight D. Eisenhower did it in Hungary in 1956; President John F. Kennedy in Cuba in 1961; and President Gerald Ford in South Vietnam in 1975. But no previous chief executive has ever sold out the United States’ allies as nonchalantly and unnecessarily as Trump has done with the Syrian Kurds. At least with Eisenhower, Kennedy and Ford, there was a good reason they failed to come to the aid of freedom fighters: Doing so would have embroiled the...

A Portland antifascist activist was killed in the early hours of Saturday in an apparent hit-and-run near Cider Riot, a cidery and taproom popular with the city’s anarchist left that has been the scene of conflict with rightwing groups. According to the Portland Police Bureau, the car involved was fired upon and crashed into a nearby building. Its occupants fled the scene. Police said in a statement that the 23-year-old victim, Sean D Kealiher, was taken to a local hospital by associates. The Multnomah county medical examiner determined the cause of death to be homicide, caused by blunt force trauma....

The moment may come when soldiers have to choose between the Constitution and Donald Trump. No doubt most will embrace the Constitution. But some will see that as a tough call. Earlier this week Donald Trump, commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces, tweeted that his impeachment “will cause a Civil War” from which the country might never recover. Picking up on remarks made by an evangelical pastor on Fox News, Trump did not just say his removal would lead to a huge electoral defeat for the Democrats, or even mass demonstrations. He said “civil war”. Americans taking up...

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci did not mince words about President Trump on Friday, calling him a "traitor to the United States." Appearing on CNN, Scaramucci accused Trump of "disavowing his oath to the Constitution" for asking Ukraine and China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden over their financial ties with the two countries during the Obama administration. Scaramucci, who served for only a very short time in the White House earlier in Trump's term of office, labeling his actions "disgusting" and referred to the controversy as "systemic criminality." "He's under a...

Of all the reasons to start a civil war, preserving slavery is the worst. But keeping President Trump in power is pretty high up on the list. On Sunday, Trump tweeted the following statement by evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress: "If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal." Jeffress isn't the only one predicting civil strife. Rudy Giuliani warned that impeaching Trump would risk "domestic tranquillity [sic]." Franklin Graham said that impeachment "could lead to...

I’ve seen what hate is capable of when it is empowered and undeterred. On June 12, 2016, I was washing my hands at a bathroom sink inside Pulse Nightclub when a man filled with hate charged in and murdered 49 mostly queer people of color, many of whom were my friends and community members. That night I lost my two best friends, and I have spent every day since confronting evil in its purest form, as emboldened by a president who has staked his political success on demonizing our most vulnerable. Our country is facing a democratic crisis over Donald...

We escaped King George-rule through the Revolutionary War. We adopted rule-by-law for the best justice. Surely 20 moral and farsighted Republican senators will understand the importance of being rid of the sorry mistake that is Donald J. Trump in our White House, else too much good U.S. progress suffers deep damage. They will join Democrats in impeachment. Our planet doesn’t have time for dithering on this. Our country doesn’t have time for careless economic decisions, those costly Trump tariffs. Our states suffer neglected infrastructure needs this late in Trump’s one term. Our families didn’t get any tax cut unless they...

Rep. Maxine Waters of California was one of the first congressional Democrats to call for an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, which the House formally launched last week. And in a Tuesday tweet, Waters took her criticisms a step further and said that Trump should be "imprisoned & placed in solitary confinement" over his frequent attacks against the intelligence community whistleblower who filed an explosive complaint against him. The whistleblower wrote that Trump used "the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election" in a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren reiterated that she wants Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to be impeached in addition to President Trump. "I still believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. And like the man who appointed him, Brett Kavanaugh should be impeached," the Massachusetts Democrat said Friday evening on Twitter. Sen. Elizabeth Warren reiterated that she wants Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to be impeached in addition to President Trump. "I still believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. And like the man who appointed him, Brett Kavanaugh should be impeached," the Massachusetts Democrat said Friday evening on Twitter.

Liberals have a tendency to wring their hands at the strong support President Donald Trump — he of the three wives and multiple affairs, and a tendency to engage in exceedingly un-Christian-like behavior at the slightest provocation — continues to receive from the white evangelical community. White evangelical support for Donald Trump is still at 73 percent, and more than 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for him in 2016. But focusing on the disconnect between Trump's personal actions and the moral aspects of their faith misses the issue that keeps their support firm: racism. Modern evangelicals' support for this...

Barry Blitt is a national treasure, at least in the eyes of the readers of The New Yorker magazine. The frequent illustrator of the trenchantly humorous (humorously trenchant) cover art was enlisted to put the past week of Trump-Giuliani political drama and did so in a starkly mob-themed way. To wit:(PICTURE-AT-LINK) The New Yorker described Blitt’s inspiration: On Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi announced that the House of Representatives would be pursuing a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump. The news came after a whistle-blower’s complaint, which was released to the public on Thursday and alleges that Trump—with the help of Rudy...

The U.S. House of Representatives, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is launching an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. As it should: In light of recent revelations about Mr. Trump’s interactions with the president of Ukraine — and Trump’s own inculpatory admissions — the House has a constitutional duty to begin impeachment proceedings, if not a moral and ethical one. But make no mistake — impeachment is extremely unlikely to remove Mr. Trump from office. Under the Constitution, impeachment follows a two-step process: the House impeaches, and the U.S. Senate convicts. Only after a conviction is a president removed from...