Free Republic

(The Hill) — President Joe Biden is leading former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in two hypothetical, head-to-head match-ups for the 2024 presidential election, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by Marquette Law School, found that 43 percent of adults nationwide would support Biden if the 2024 presidential election were held today, while 33 percent would vote for Trump in a one-on-one match-up. Sixteen percent said they would choose a different candidate, while 6 percent said they would not vote. In a hypothetical race against DeSantis, 41 percent of adults nationwide said they would...

Those who are unvaccinated were nearly six times more likely to be hospitalized with severe COVID illness in August than those who have received the vaccine, according to a New Jersey Hospital Association analysis of COVID hospitalizations. Nearly three in every four patients hospitalized with COVID, or 73.3 percent, had not received a single dose of the vaccine, according to data reported by N.J. hospitals through the NJHA COVID-19 Data Portal. A new bulletin from NJHA's Center for Health Analytics, Research and Transformation provides a snapshot view of data from Aug. 31, as reported by hospitals through the NJHA COVID-19...

Trump supporters who back his claim that the 2020 vote was rigged are running to become the top election officials in key states. -- Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Joe Biden’s election win are launching campaigns to become their states’ top election officials next year, alarming local officeholders and opponents who are warning about pro-Trump, “ends justify the means” candidates taking big roles in running the vote. The candidates include Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, a leader of the congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results; Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, one of...

A number of prominent Republicans have spoken out in opposition to the plan, spearheaded by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), to object to Joe Biden electors from the 2020 battleground states being contested by President Donald Trump. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) was first to announce he would object to Biden electors in Pennsylvania. Cruz and 11 other Republican senators followed suit, announcing they would object to electors in every battleground. The senators are not claiming, like Trump, that the election was rigged, but simply that there are enough allegations of fraud from the losing candidate to justify objecting to the results....

The economy has gone from President Donald Trump's greatest political asset to perhaps his biggest weakness. Unemployment is spiking at an unprecedented rate. Consumer spending is vanishing. And GDP is collapsing. History shows that dreadful economic trends like these spell doom for sitting presidents seeking reelection. The coronavirus recession will cause Trump to suffer a "historic defeat" in November, a national election model released Wednesday by Oxford Economics predicted. The model, which uses unemployment, disposable income and inflation to forecast election results, predicts that Trump will lose in a landslide, capturing just 35% of the popular vote. That's a sharp...

North Korea appears to be preparing to test a new ballistic missile submarine capable of launching nuclear missiles, significantly bolstering the regime’s ability to conduct long-distance attacks. Satellite photographs taken Monday of the Sinpo South Shipyard in North Korea show the new submarine with nearby cranes and support craft, suggesting the submarine may be in preparation for a launch test. Last month, North Korea claimed that Kim Jong Un had inspected a “newly built submarine” at the shipyard. The new photographs appear to confirm the claim, say Joseph Bermudez and Victor Cha of Beyond Parallel, a research project backed by...

longest government shutdown in history over nothing. Democrats have agreed to fund $1.375 billion for 55 miles of physical barrier along the border, which is only a little different than what Trump would have gotten under a continuing resolution that funded the government at current levels — and far less than the $5.7 billion Trump demanded to build 230 miles of barriers that experts and the Department of Homeland Security said they need to secure the border. But Trump can still get the rest of the money — without a government shutdown or declaring a national emergency... To win, Trump...

Karen Pence, the wife of America's vice president, Mike Pence will be teaching art at a Christian school in Virginia that bans LGBTQ children and requires employees to declare their religious beliefs. Like a real-life setting for "The Handmaid's Tale," Immanuel Christian School insists applicants initial a pledge to "live a personal life of moral purity." Listen to what else the pledge says: "I understand that the term 'marriage' has only one meaning; the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive covenant union as delineated in Scripture." It asserts that God intended sexual acts only between...

DENVER – Once a swing state in presidential elections, Colorado has teetered on becoming solidly Democratic. Donald Trump may have pushed it over the edge. Trump’s disparaging words about Mexicans, negative comments about women and weak campaign organization have punctuated the state’s shift from a nip-and-tuck battleground to one that’s Democrat-friendly. ... And it’s not just Colorado. Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and weak campaign structure could ensure that perennially competitive Nevada and New Mexico are out of reach as well.

Donald Trump latest's close-up is coming from the unlikeliest of magazines: Rolling Stone. The magazine, well known for its progressive bent, interviewed and photographed Trump for its September 24 cover. The article's most-talked-about passage on Wednesday was a Trump comment about rival Republican 2016 candidate Carly Fiorina. Writer Paul Solotaroff was sitting with Trump watching a newscast when a video clip zoomed in on Fiorina. "Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?" Trump said to Solotaroff. "Can you imagine that, the face of our next president. Trump added, "I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not s'posedta say...

Saturday, May 28, 2016 09:00 PM +0900 This is an American tragedy: Republicans must step up and defeat Donald Trump It's time for honest Republicans to speak out against this dangerous, unprincipled vulgarian. Who has the courage? Seán Patrick Donlan As a Democrat, part of me delights in the opportunities provided by the coming elections. With Trump at the top of the Republican ticket, Democrats might – just might – find themselves not only with the presidency, but in control of the Senate. But the state of our politics is so grave that it’s difficult to derive much joy out...

Officially, the top world leaders who gather Thursday at the Group of 7 summit meeting will talk about shared concerns, like global trade or the Islamic State. But their private discussions are likely to cover a topic that is not on the agenda: Donald J. Trump. President Obama now hears questions in his meetings with world leaders about whether Mr. Trump has a realistic shot at becoming president. For months, Mr. Obama has answered those questions with an emphatic “no.” But this week’s summit meeting in Japan is the first among major allies since Mr. Trump moved decisively toward securing...

This is really happening, people. Either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. Just saying it still feels strange, but then again, pretty much everything about this most shocking and chaotic of election seasons has been deeply surreal.

Donald Trump is the catalyst who could force a decisive break between Miami-Dade County’s influential Cuban-American voters and the Republican Party, a new poll has found. Local Cuban Americans dislike Trump so much — and are increasingly so accepting of renewed U.S.-Cuba ties pushed by Democratic President Barack Obama — that Trump’s likely presidential nomination might accentuate the voters’ political shift away from the GOP, according to the survey shared with the Miami Herald and conducted by Dario Moreno, a Coral Gables pollster and a Florida International University associate politics professor...

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said the Republican Party was “absolutely” concerned about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s effect down ballot in swing states with close elections for incumbent senators,

Whenever Donald Trump and his followers are confronted with his evidence of his abysmally terrible polling numbers on personal favorability and versus Hillary Clinton, they typically respond with a pair of deflections. First, they say that Trump "hasn't even started" attacking Hillary yet. Setting aside the fact that Trump has taken many hard jabs at Mrs. Clinton over a span of months, this line of thinking requires a logical leap: That once he does train virtually all of his fire on her, it will both hurt her and help him. American voters have been subjected to endlessTrump coverage since last spring, over...

When is a news story not a news story? That question hung in the air much of the day on Friday, as the major cable news networks laboriously steered around any direct reference to the political bombshell that had set social media aflame since the small hours. Once again the mainstream media had been Trumped, made to look floundering and foolish by the Republican clown-prince even as it wrestled with one of the biggest news days of the year. Belgian authorities had apparently captured a leading suspect in the Brussels attacks, and the United States military had apparently killed an...

In light of Friday night's fracas in Chicago, Joe Scarborough writes, "America faces a deepening divide that is tearing away at the fabric of this great land." Joe continues in The Washington Post: Friday's freak show was as prepackaged as a rerun of "Celebrity Apprentice." The only difference was that Donald Trump delivered his lines on the phone from a hotel room in the Windy City instead of on the set of his made-for-TV boardroom. It was all a scam. Has anyone noticed that Trump's campaign now regularly stages media events designed to eclipse any negative coverage that predictably follows...

NumbersUSA has announced to the media that we have downgraded Donald Trump on our Worker-Protection Immigration Grade Cards based on his statements in the last two debates that suggest the country has a labor shortage in a couple of categories that he indicates need foreign workers.Since we began issuing the grades last spring, we have encouraged all of you to use them to push your favorite candidate(s) to improve their immigration positions.For those of you who are Trump supporters, I urge you to use the information provided in this newsletter to push Trump to improve and to stop slipping on...

It would appear Trump fever has broken. It would seem the down, dirty, and ugly attacks by Rubio particularly, but also Romney, Cruz and others have kicked in. I sense that Trump has become a figure of ridicule, and no politician survives that. Plus his latest flip flops, like on torture, have weakened him as a serious person, although that may not have been obvious at the time. I think the teflon has worn off. If true, Chris Christy gets the bad timing of the year award