Free Republic

Rep. Eric Swalwell of California might have left the presidential race, but his signature issue is still on the primary ballot. After the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton earlier this month, Swalwell’s proposal for a mandatory buyback of all assault-style weapons was embraced by the congressman who represented the Texas border city, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke — giving the idea its highest-profile platform yet. Swalwell has been actively advising presidential candidates to follow his lead, telling them in conversations that “the moms will have your back,” even as critics denounce the plan as gun confiscation that would turn...

From reparations to "baby bonds," Democratic candidates are proposing big ideas to confront inequality. If you’ve been to an event with a Democrat running for president this year, there's a good chance you’ve heard about it: the racial wealth gap. Candidates are regularly bringing up the fact that the typical black family has only one-tenth the assets of the typical white family — a divide that has grown larger than it was 35 years ago. Far from a niche concern, candidates have incorporated it into their signature proposals. They've addressed it in speeches not just to black churches in South...

WASHINGTON — The 2020 electorate will be the most diverse yet, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. One-third of all eligible voters will be nonwhite — a new high — driven by younger voters aging into the electorate for the first time and older voters aging out. Immigration is also a factor, with 10 percent of potential voters expected to have been born abroad, up from 6 percent in 2000. For the first time, Hispanic voters are expected to be the largest nonwhite portion of the electorate at 13.3 percent, overtaking black voters who are...

The original comments, given in a wide-ranging interview with Recode, were made in response to questions about what Facebook was doing to combat fake news and sites, such as InfoWars, that promoted conspiracy theories. In Myanmar, also known as Burma, Facebook has been accused by UN investigators of facilitating violence against Rohingya Muslims by allowing anti-Muslim hate speech and fake news. The social network has now said that it will begin removing misinformation that could lead to people being physically harmed. When asked about its policy on fake news, Mr Zuckerberg offered, without prompting, the example of Holocaust deniers. "I'm...

As Donald Trump reminded the world Tuesday morning, the Republican Party is on the verge of nominating a conspiracy theorist who regularly uses debunked Internet and tabloid rumors to smear his enemies. In the latest case, Trump seized on a ludicrously thin-sourced National Enquirer story to insinuate Sen. Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, was involved in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being, you know, shot,” Trump told Fox News over the phone. “I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right prior to his being...

Donald Trump earned a rare rebuke from a conservative audience on Friday after criticizing Sen. Marco Rubio, who as emerged as his prime sparring partner in recent days. Speaking to a social conservative crowd at the Values Voters Summit, where Rubio spoke earlier in the day, Trump was met with a wave of boos after calling his Republican rival a “clown” in his speech.

MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Republican presidential primary is up and running in New Hampshire, where conservative prospects lined up in Manchester Saturday for the first cattle call of the 2016 cycle. Speakers at the New Hampshire Freedom Summit, which was sponsored by Citizens United and Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity, included Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, all of whom would be top tier presidential contenders should they run. Donald Trump also spoke. Huckabee seemed especially determined to show he could compete for conservative votes against politicians like Paul and Cruz, who have each...

Florida Democratic congressional candidate Alex Sink said immigration reform was important at a Tuesday debate because, without it, it would be difficult for employers to find people to clean hotel rooms and do landscaping. “Immigration reform is important in our country,” she said. “We have a lot of employers over on the beaches that rely upon workers and especially in this high-growth environment, where are you going to get people to work to clean our hotel rooms or do our landscaping? We don’t need to put those employers in a position of hiring undocumented and illegal workers.”

Via the Free Beacon, a rare example of a politician articulating the subtext of the evergreen “jobs Americans won’t do” euphemism. She’s not the only prominent Democrat to do that lately. A couple of weeks ago, amnesty shill extraordinaire Luis Gutierrez told C-SPAN that America needs immigrants (i.e. illegal immigrants) because, without them, “who would be working in the fields?” Who, he wondered, would be doing the “dirty backbreaking filthy work of working in agriculture” that endless millions of unemployed Americans allegedly consider beneath them? And it’s not just Democrats: On Twitter, Benjy Sarlin points out that Haley Barbour is...