Free Republic

Partisan targeting or legitimate antitrust inquiry?The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking documents from the left-leaning nonprofit Media Matters to determine whether the self-styled watchdog conspired with other organizations to orchestrate illegal advertiser boycotts of conservative news sites in violation of antitrust laws. In 2024, Elon Musk sued the company for allegedly costing his X platform billions of dollars in lost advertising revenue, leading some observers to criticize the current FTC inquiry as a Musk-inspired alliance.What FTC SeeksThe FTC seeks communications between Media Matters and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) — a cross-industry initiative of the World Federation...

Watchdog group to lend Hill Dems a hand on oversight A left-leaning watchdog group is working to gather materials that could feed Congressional investigations into the Trump administration. The nonprofit group American Oversight, which shared its plans first with POLITICO, is preparing for a scenario where Democrats reclaim the majority in either the House or Senate in the 2026 midterms, which will give the party the ability to issue subpoenas, schedule committee hearings and launch agency probes. Dubbed the “Parallel Investigations Initiative,” it will look similar to what American Oversight did during the first Trump administration, when Republicans also enjoyed...

Left-wing watchdog group American Oversight filed a lawsuit against John Ratcliffe, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and others, claiming their use of the double encrypted app Signal violates the Presidential Records Act. American Oversight boasts about its ‘activist litigation’ targeting Republican interests, especially the Trump Administration. Now they’re suing Trump officials for using Signal to communicate about ‘military actions.’ It was reported on Monday that Jeffrey Goldberg, the anti-Trump editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, claimed he was accidentally added to a secure Signal group chat where top Trump administration officials discussed sensitive military operations against Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen.

Rats jumping ship. ActBlue, major Democratic fundraising group, saw an exodus of senior officials and has “plunged into turmoil” as it faces an investigation from Republicans in Congress. At least seven senior officials left ActBlue in late February, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing a letter from the organization’s unions. That included customer service and partnerships directors who had worked at the organization for more than a decade. ActBlue has become a critical component of the Democratic Party’s fundraising/moneylaundering efforts. As of June 2024, ActBlue had raised $13.7 billion for Democratic candidates and causes. The organization dramatically increased the...

CREW is funded by a long list of left-wing organizations and foundations. They include liberal foundations, labor unions, and interest groups looking for support from CREW. Liberal Mega-Donors CREW’s principal source of funding is ideologically liberal/left-wing foundations. In 2013 (the most recent year for which complete tax records are available), these groups paid CREW grants equal to 55% of its total reported contribution/grant revenue. Among the foundations that have made significant contributions to CREW in recent years: The Foundation to Promote Open Society (controlled by liberal billionaire financier George Soros and his family): $740,000 since 2010 The Open Society Institute...

Many news outlets have published Robert F. Kennedy Jr. profiles in the past 18 months, but The Washington Post’s in June was the only one to warrant a 20-page response from the Trump HHS nominee (This story is the first in a four-part series this month by Just the News on self-described watchdogs who push for censorship.) “If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country,” President-elect Donald Trump said in a video posted to social media just day after winning reelection on Nov. 5. “Today, I’m announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship...

Democratic operatives launched an initiative in 2022 effectively aimed at dissuading lawyers from taking and aiding clients whose success could potentially diminish leftist political power. Citing the need to "protect democracy," the 65 Project has so far sought to make examples of those attorneys who helped Trump allies and supporters challenge the 2020 election results, despite recognizing that some attorneys may not actually have violated the legal profession's ethical rules. The 65 Project — which made clear in September that it intends to keep hounding conservative lawyers — has not only publicly smeared accomplished attorneys but filed over 85 bar...

Media Matters known for organizing pressure campaigns against conservative voices it opposes.. Ben Shapiro accused The New York Times of working with far-left advocacy group Media Matters for America in order to get anyone who opposed Kamala Harris silenced on YouTube, supplying screenshots of a reporter who noted he was working with the progressive organization. Media Matters, founded in 2004 by longtime Clinton ally David Brock, is often cited by legacy news organizations as a media watchdog. It has built a reputation for organizing pressure campaigns against conservative voices it opposes, including boycott movements. Shapiro took to social media to...

Amid last-minute rule changes, widely reported ballot irregularities, and an unprecedented movement away from secure, in-person voting, the 2020 election that installed Joe Biden became one of the most hotly contested in American history. Given this uncertainty, Donald Trump and his allies, including a number of highly qualified attorneys, raised their concerns in the avenue provided by the Constitution: our court system. For this, Trump’s lawyers have been smeared relentlessly in the media, dragged through costly and damaging professional reviews, and bullied into silence or retreat. That persecution did not happen organically. The intimidation campaign against Trump’s lawyers, and against...

A federal appeals court today said Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and a liberal super PAC crossed federal election lines when they flaunted their coordination in a multimillion-dollar effort to defend the Democrat in her losing bid against Donald Trump. In the landmark decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Clinton and the super PAC Correct the Record improperly used an “internet exemption” to sidestep other restrictions to set up a “Benghazi Hearing War Room” and conduct a witch hunt of critics without reporting it as a campaign expense. Neither Clinton nor Correct the Record...

Lawyers are being forced to defend their livelihoods before bar associations and ethics boards — not for obvious misconduct, but after opposing Democrats. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After the chaotic 2020 election, leftist organizations began filing ethics and even criminal complaints against lawyers who opposed Democrats in election litigation. Democrats have recently expanded these tactics to lawyers who cross Democrats on any policy area. “Their most sweeping goal is to discourage and chill lawyers from representing Republicans and conservatives, particularly in election law cases. They want to apply a much higher standard to them in order to punish them,” says attorney Jim Bopp...

Media Matters followed suit with several liberal outlets by laying off at least a dozen staffers following a federal probe and lawsuit by “X” chief executive officer Elon Musk.Staffers, some of whom have been with Media Matters for years, took to social media announcing their sudden departure from the outlet. The layoffs followed federal probes filed by Republican Attorneys General Ken Paxton of Texas and Andrew Bailey of Missouri into the outlet for possible fraudulent activity by allegedly manipulating data on “X,” formerly known as Twitter.

There's nothing at all funny about putting a former president of the United States of America on trial for misdemeanor record-keeping offenses and turning those into felonies through a badly done magic trick. The underlying reason why the George Soros-selected prosecutor put Donald Trump on trial starting Monday, however, is yet another reason why this case should be laughed out of court. The avowed Trump-hating prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, is part of the effort by the left to tie up the former president in court so he can't campaign for president. Additionally, they hope that by ringing up all manner of...

Anything like the Laura Sylsby story is a candidate for being scrubbed off the internet sooner or later and I want at least the one versionof the story I'm still finding to be around as close to forever as possible. The article notes: Laura Silsby convicted in Haiti, but free to go JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer May 17, 2010 Comments  ......U.S. missionary Laura Silsby, left, leaves a courthouse in Port-au-Prince, Monday, May 17, 2010. Silsby, the last of 10 Americans detained while trying to take 33 children out of Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake, was released...

The left’s insatiable — and arguably quixotic — quest to keep former President Donald Trump off the ballot is a team effort to be sure. But two well-funded leftist groups in particular are leading the charge in the campaign to take Trump down with a bogus reading of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause.” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the lawfare arm of political strategist David Brock’s network of Democrat-aligned organizations, has dominated national headlines with its Colorado lawsuit — the only “successful” challenge to Trump’s primary ballot status to date. The banal-sounding Free Speech for People laid...

The corrupt regime has violated every basic principle of decency, every premise of self-government, and every standard of justice for so long and so often that the public has become largely inured to the latest outrage. And yet the Colorado Supreme Court’s recent decision to exclude Trump—the front-runner in the 2024 presidential race, mind you—from the ballot stands out for its stupidity, shortsightedness, and maliciousness even in this environment. The 200+ page decision is a work of such slop that it makes Roe v. Wade look like a paragon of principled and coherent legal reasoning by comparison. The theory of...

It is a big mistake -- a really big mistake -- to dismiss what's being done to Rush Limbaugh as just some crazy guys at Media Matters. When we work our way through what Angelo Carusone and his Media Matters comrades and others are doing when they target Rush, or went after Glenn Beck, or plan to do in targeting Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin and who knows who after that (Levin? Laura?) remember: this is the way the Left -- the global left throughout history, not simply the American Left today -- has always behaved. A fanatical intolerance is...

To get a sense of why conspiracy theories centered on sex trafficking and pedophilia — and now the “Epstein list” — are so buzzy in MAGA circles, POLITICO Magazine called up Mike Rothschild, author of The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything and Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. Rothschild pointed to a toxic stew of age-old antisemitism; the worst incentives of today’s social media; and the right’s unending obsession with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump pops up in the documents, including some released on...

X CEO Elon Musk eviscerated the media watchdog Media Matters for America as an "evil propaganda machine" while discussing his upcoming lawsuit against them on Sunday. The Tesla and X CEO came on an X Townhall in the Spaces feature which also included guests such as presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz. At the 2:46:23 mark is when he made his comments about Media Matters and insisted the lawsuit will also target anyone funding the group. "Media Matters is an evil propaganda machine. I just generally am against evil propaganda machines. We are suing them in...

Elon Musk on Monday boosted the dangerous, years-old “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, just days after being roundly criticized and facing an advertiser exodus following his embrace of an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of Twitter, gestures as he attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. Elon Musk’s X sues media watchdog Media Matters over report on pro-Nazi content on the social media site In a...