Free Republic

The record-breaking rain that fell over the United Arab Emirates and Oman this month, triggering deadly floods and chaos, was driven partly by the climate crisis, according to a scientific analysis published Thursday, which pointed directly at humans burning fossil fuels.A team of 21 scientists and researchers, under the World Weather Attribution initiative, found that climate change was making extreme rainfall events in the two countries — which typically fall during El Niño years — between 10 and 40% more intense than they would have been without global warming.Over a period of less than 24 hours between April 14 and...

India has reported surprisingly robust economic growth, ending 2023 on a high note and providing a boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi just weeks before an election that could give him a third term in office. Gross domestic product (GDP) in the world’s fastest growing major economy surged 8.4% in the final three months of 2023 compared with a year prior, up from growth of 7.6% in the June-to-September period, the country’s statistics office said Thursday. The latest increase was much stronger than analysts expected and means India’s economy “ended last year with a bang,” Thamashi De Silva, assistant India...

As US allies reel from Donald Trump’s weekend comments encouraging Russia to attack European allies if they don’t meet NATO budget contribution goals, multiple former Trump advisers warn in my upcoming book that the former president will seek to formally withdraw the US from the NATO alliance if he wins a second term. In “The Return of Great Powers”, which will be published March 12, a former senior US official, who served in both the Trump and Biden administrations at a high level, told me that if Trump defeats President Joe Biden in November “the US will be out of...

CNN — With presidential primaries underway and a 2020 general election rematch seemingly the most likely outcome, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS shows former President Donald Trump narrowly ahead of President Joe Biden in what’s shaping up to be a close contest nationally. The poll highlights voters’ conflicted feelings about the leading candidates. Broad majorities of Democrats and Republicans say they’d be satisfied if their party’s candidate won such a rematch. Still, a sizable minority of voters express a desire for another option if Biden and Trump are the nominees. Overall, 49% of registered voters say they would...

Anne Gorsuch, a former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, cut a flamboyant, defiant figure in early 1980s Washington as she slashed air and water quality regulations. She fought with environmentalists, was held in contempt by Congress and eventually resigned under pressure from the Ronald Reagan White House that had championed her. Her memoir was, appropriately, entitled: “Are You Tough Enough?” Her son Neil Gorsuch, a Supreme Court justice since 2017, has shown his own brand of defiance and anti-regulatory fervor. In recent years, Justice Gorsuch has voted against regulations that protect the environment, student-debt forgiveness and Covid-19 precautions. During...

Former President Donald Trump’s huge win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday enshrines one of the most astonishing comebacks in American political history. Losing one-term presidents almost never mount subsequent successful primary campaigns, much less pull off landslides that demonstrate utter dominance of their party. Trump transformed the GOP in his populist, nationalist, nihilistic image in 2016. By claiming 50% of the vote in the biggest win in caucus history, putting him on course to his third consecutive nomination, he showed that eight years after his outsider presidential victory, the current GOP is entirely his party. “The big night is...

CNN — It was only a matter of time before former President Donald Trump went birther on Nikki Haley. After all, the former South Carolina governor and UN Ambassador is a pioneering candidate, the daughter of immigrants from India, and she’s rising in the polls. It’s not only concern about his electoral prospects that’s driving him; Trump’s massive yet fragile ego also feels threatened. So he reached for the most reflexive slur he could find via the far-right news site Gateway Pundit, reposting on Truth Social the false claim that Haley is not constitutionally eligible to be president because her...

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has trimmed former President Donald Trump’s lead in the Republican primary race in New Hampshire to single digits, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire. Trump still holds a meaningful lead in the poll, with the backing of 39% of likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire compared to Haley’s 32%. The rest of the field lags far behind in the poll, with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 12%, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy at 8%, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 5% and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson...

CNN political commentator Paul Begala said Friday on CNN’s “The Lead” that he hoped the Supreme Court would let former President Donald Trump on all the state ballots. The Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments on whether Trump’s name can appear on primary-election ballots in Maine and Colorado, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem said Tuesday on “News Central” that former President Donald Trump is using the “threat of violence” to rally the support of his people. Kayyem said, “It’s about to be 2024. We are running into an election period in which violence and the threat of violence are sort of viewed as an extension of our normal democratic differences. This is one of the successes of what Donald Trump has been able to do, is to sort of be kind of casual about violence.” She continued, “There’s two things. I don’t know how to say it...

CNN's Abby Phillip pushed back on GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy when he doubled down on his conspiracy theory claims about the January 6 Capitol riot during a CNN town hall.

Donald Trump’s rhetoric dropped to a spine-tingling new low this weekend with less than a month before the Iowa caucuses.The GOP primary front-runner said migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the US and quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin about the “rottenness” of American democracy.Whipping up thousands of supporters at a New Hampshire hockey rink on Saturday, the former president again drew comparisons to the language of Nazi Germany with the comments about migrants from mostly Africa, Asia and South America “poisoning the blood of our country.”The language “parrots Adolf Hitler,” President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign alleged. Experts pointed to passages...

First lady Dr. Jill Biden has tested negative for Covid-19, the White House announced Thursday. The first lady, 72, has been isolating in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, since Monday evening, when she first tested positive for Covid-19. According to the White House, President Joe Biden has tested negative for Covid-19 daily since the first lady’s diagnosis. The diagnosis arrived at the beginning of a high-stakes week for Biden, 80, who departed for India Thursday for the G20 Summit. “The President tested negative for COVID,” the White House said in a statement to pool ahead of his departure Thursday. CNN previously reported...

CNN — Mar-a-Lago IT worker Yuscil Taveras has struck a cooperation agreement with the special counsel’s office in the federal case over former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, Taveras’ former defense attorney said in a new court filing. Taveras struck the deal with prosecutors after he was threatened with prosecution, defense attorney Stanley Woodward wrote in the filing dated Tuesday. Taveras is referred to in the filing and in the superseding indictment as “Trump Employee 4,” and CNN has identified him as that employee. According to the terms of the deal explained in the filing, Taveras agreed to...

Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County*** Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen individuals when her team presents its case before a grand jury next week. Several individuals involved in the voting systems breach in Coffee County are among those who may face charges in the sprawling criminal probe. Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected...

Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead,” anchor Jake Tapper told House Oversight and Accountability Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) that he has not seen evidence President Joe Biden did anything illegal related to his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Tapper said, “So let’s pause it for the sake of argument that Hunter Biden is sleazy, and the president’s relatives tried to profit off the Biden family brand, something CNN has reported on. What’s new in this memo?”

Mass shootings in major metropolitan areas in the United States disproportionately affect Black people, and structural racism may play a role, according to a study published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Surgery. Researchers at Tulane University analyzed data relating to the 51 largest metropolitan areas, including demographic and income data as well as reports of mass shootings from 2015 to 2019 compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit organization that tracks gun violence in the US. CNN and the Gun Violence Archive define a mass shooting as a shooting that injured or killed four or more people, not...

Pam Hemphill, who received a two-month sentence in federal prison for her involvement in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, tells CNN's Gary Tuchman she was "brainwashed."

Florida Republicans are requiring 2024 presidential candidates to sign a loyalty pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee in order to qualify for the primary ballot next year. The new pledge in Florida is similar to a Republican National Committee requirement to qualify for next month’s first presidential debate, under which participants have to sign a pledge “agreeing to support the eventual party nominee.” Several other candidates have also bristled at signing the RNC’s pledge, and Trump and DeSantis have both sidestepped questions about whether they would commit to backing the other if that person wins the party’s nomination.

After a full media cycle of apoplexy and pearl-clutching, which included Andrew Weissmann appearing on MSNBC to declare “It’s the end of Trump,” CBS is now reporting there is no Defense Department memo about attacking Iran – the foundation of the media claims surrounding the leaked audio tapes from Special Counsel Jack Smith. Worse still, and exactly as CTH previously outlined, despite the claims by CNN about how this audio would be used as the “central element” by the prosecution of Trump, the audio and mysterious memo are not part of the Special Counsel case. ..... Snip..... (Via CBS) –...