Free Republic

Senate forecast is out and right now Dems have a (somewhat) clear advantage to take control. Here goes: Arizona: McSally hasn’t led a single poll. Trump trails Biden in most polls too so she can’t count on coattails. Dem gain. Colorado: Gardner is down double digits and Trump will Lose CO by double digits. This one is off the board. Dem gain. Maine: Collins is struggling in polling but she knows how to win in Maine. We’ll see. Currently a toss up. Georgia: Internal GOP polling just released shows Biden in the LEAD, albeit within the margin of error. Perdue...

Dr. Anthony Fauci — who is being petitioned to be crowned the next “Sexiest Man Alive” — was reportedly the inspiration for a mysterious scientist who engages in a steamy love affair with the widowed first lady in Sally Quinn’s 1991 novel “Happy Endings.” Fauci, the beloved White House coronavirus task force member, is the motivation in the bestselling book for the fictitious Michael Lanzer, a dashing National Institute of Health scientist who discovered a therapy for AIDS at a time when the president is HIV-positive. Quinn met the real-life Fauci for the first time when the two were paired...

Facemasks made of leftover fabric from the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt are being donated to the homeless and those suffering from substance abuse, according to People Magazine. The quilt was the brainchild of activist Cleve Jones who saw it as a way to honor the lives of those taken too soon during the AIDS crisis. The National AIDS Memorial had planned on displaying the quilt in San Francisco this April after spending 20 years in Atlanta. The introduction of social restrictions in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic cancelled those plans, though. Immediately recognizing the dangers inherent in the...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House task force, said he’s “humble enough” to realize that other solutions to stem the spread of the coronavirus exist other than to shut down the economy, but said that was the “choice we made.” Fauci was asked during an appearance on Fox News’ “Watters World” about critics who said closing the economy led to Americans’ losing their jobs and their livelihoods. “We felt at the time and still do now that that was the right thing to do. Could there have been other approaches? I mean I’m humble enough to know...

The coronavirus pandemic has brought New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo into the national spotlight — and turned him into a heartthrob. Women say they are gushing over the way the 62-year-old Democratic leader is handling the crisis. “It’s nice to know that someone is governing, that someone is keeping track of the hospital beds and the ventilators and the masks, and keeping the pressure on the federal government,” one woman wrote for Vogue. She says the governor had an obnoxious tone and made an offhand #MeToo joke that didn’t sit well with her. But the pandemic brought out the governor’s...

The first time most of us learned that President Donald Trump was thinking about relaxing existing measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic was on Sunday night, just before midnight. That's when his tweet shouted in all caps, "WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF." He went on to say he would make a decision at the end of the current 15-day period of CDC guidelines recommending social distancing. The idea to change course may have come from his favorite network, Fox News, where a Sunday morning host suggested that when it comes to...

As a moderate, the late Arizona Senator John McCain was and is a political hero of mine. While I did not always agree with everything John McCain stood for, I respect the fact that he stood up for what he believed in, I respect his service to our country, I respect that he didn’t view compromise as a weakness, and I respect his campaign message of “Country First.” Many people nowadays when they hear America First, think of it as a nationalistic dog whistle thanks to President Trump. This however, was not what John McCain meant when he used the...

The White House can't get its broad immigration proposal moving, so officials are pursuing a narrow deal that would please the business community but might go against the president's campaign promise to reduce overall immigration. In recent months, the administration has been in talks with senators about legislation that would create new categories of temporary worker visas or lengthen the allotted stays for those workers, among other possible changes, according to four people familiar with the discussions. A White House official confirmed the ongoing negotiations on the guest worker proposal and said the effort is an attempt to generate action...

NEW YORK — As Republican President Donald Trump seeks a second term in November, Americans' interest in voting is growing faster in large cities dominated by Democrats than in conservative rural areas, according to an analysis of Reuters/Ipsos national opinion polls. If the trend lasts until Election Day on Nov. 3, it would be a reversal from the 2016 election when rural turnout outpaced voting in urban areas, helping Trump narrowly win the White House. The finding, based on responses from more than 88,000 U.S. adults who took the online poll from August to December 2015 or from August to...

Since Mitt Romney became the first senator in history to defy his party with a vote to convict in an impeachment trial, he's been called a "disgrace" by President Trump. He's been pilloried as a traitor each night on Fox News. And he's been formally censured by GOP organizations as far away as Louisiana.

Mitt Romney is a good friend and an excellent Senator. We have disagreed about a lot in this trial. But he has my respect for the thoughtfulness, integrity, and guts he has shown throughout this process. Utah and the Senate are lucky to have him.— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) January 31, 2020

Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is repurposing President Donald Trump’s attacks against her as she launched her re-election campaign for Minnesota’s 5th district. As reported by Minneapolis’s Star Tribune newspaper, Omar launched her 2020 run Thursday night with the slogan “Send her back to Congress,” a play on Trump’s racist, xenophobic tweets and his supporters’ chanting about her last summer. "I'm in Congress fighting for the people who feel oppressed in our country and abroad," Omar, a Somali refugee who fled civil war before coming to the United States as a teenager, said at the event, according to the Star Tribune....

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders just got a new endorsement, this time from one of Washington state’s own Congressional representatives, Pramila Jayapal. Jayapal — whose district encompasses most of Seattle, Burien, Edmonds, Shoreline, and more — teased at the endorsement in an interview with The Washington Post, pointing to her confidence in Sanders’ ability to take on incumbent President Donald Trump in November. “What I feel we need is a candidate who is entirely authentic about what’s wrong and steadfast about it and can rally people to believe he can trust them,” she stated. “Bernie has that. I can feel Bernie...

It’s San Francisco. Rightly, when it comes to love, anything goes. But one wedding this month garnered attention for breaking one of the last barriers in this country’s long fight for marriage equality. Rick Welts, president of the Golden State Warriors, married Todd Gage, a Southwest flight attendant, in Room 200. It is believed to be the first time an executive for a professional men’s sports team married his same-sex partner. According to the Advocate, there are no out players in professional male sports and just a smattering of out executives and coaches. Same-sex weddings in the macho world of...

The South Bend Mayor stopped by the KCCI studios Saturday afternoon to spend time with our panel of undecided Caucus-goers. Buttigieg answered their questions, including this one from Ivette Muhammad, a mother of eight. “I've heard you are wanting to start a family. Is that something you hope to do soon, perhaps in the White House?” Muhammad asked. “It is. This year the campaign is not conducive to it, but we are looking forward to it. Chasten will make an amazing dad. I'll try to hold my own and it is something we're looking forward to. I can't imagine raising...

Proud dad Reuben Sharpe today tells how HE gave birth to a miracle baby in Britain’s most modern family. The 39-year-old transitioned to a man 12 years ago. But he still had maternal instincts and six years ago stopped taking testosterone in the hope of one day having a child. And that dream came true when he and partner Jay had a bouncing baby. Jay is non-binary – so does not identify as male or female. The sperm donor was a trans woman... and even the DOCTOR was transgender. And while a handful of other UK men have fallen pregnant...

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci predicts Republican lawmakers will pressure President Trump to leave office by March 2020. “When you talk to elected Republicans privately they can’t stand the president. They know the president is a lawless person and basically a criminal,” Scaramucci told Yahoo Finance’s On the Move. The “Mooch” as he is called by friends, updated his earlier prediction that Republican leaders on Capitol Hill would ask the president to leave office by the end of the year. “Unfortunately I got that part of it wrong,” Scaramucci said. “I was counting on levels of valor and...

(full article title: 'Michelle Obama: Barack could build presidential library anywhere because 'so many people' feel 'like he is their president') Former first lady Michelle Obama suggested that former President Barack Obama could build his presidential library anywhere around the world because people in foreign countries feel like he is their president. Michelle Obama explained at Tuesday's Obama Foundation Summit at the Illinois Institute of Technology that Chicago's Jackson Park was selected as the location for the Obama Presidential Center because it is close to the couple's old home and near her childhood home. “There’s power in the selection of...

Book includes how Steele was commissioned to write dossier Robert Reich: Trump is an international mobster The former journalists Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch are to publish a book on Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia, including an account of how they commissioned the British ex-spy Christopher Steele to write his dossier on the future president. Crime in Progress: The Secret History of the Trump-Russia Investigation will be published in December by Penguin Random House in the US and UK. Simpson and Fritsch founded the Washington intelligence firm Fusion GPS. In summer 2015, it began investigating Trump and Moscow. It hired...

star Christina Anstead on how she found love again with her husband Ant and her new HGTV show 'Christina on the Coast.' Christina Anstead is letting fans join her on her postpartum journey. The HGTV star, who gave birth to son Hudson last week, revealed on social media that she's been consuming her placenta in pill form. “First time I’ve tried it — and I think these placenta encapsulation [pills] are working," the 36-year-old wrote on her Instagram Story.