Free Republic

Hakeem Jeffries says quiet part out loud. Hugo Chavez is his hero.

WASHINGTON — When President Joe Biden steps up to a lectern in the East Room of the White House in front of a roomful of reporters Wednesday, he will be playing a presidential game of catch-up that many say he has no desire to win. A year into his presidency, Biden's 4 p.m. news conference will be just his second on U.S. soil and his sixth overall, according to historians who track interactions between presidents and the press. When solo, joint and foreign news conferences are factored in, Biden has held fewer than Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W....

What happened to the FBI? ... The FBI’s Dallas division’s special agent in charge, Matthew DeSarno, described the gunman to the press as “singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community.” I don’t blame SAC DeSarno — a former colleague — for this disbelieve-your-lying-eyes assessment. He takes his orders from FBI headquarters. And we exist in woke times. Yes, sometimes investigations take time, and we don’t want to release inaccurate information. Yet this was a ground ball. The White House asserted the FBI’s course correction a day later, allowing that, of course, the...

There now are at least 19 federal departments or agencies that have – or are trying to get – procedures so they can keep lists of people who seek or are granted "religious" exemptions to various COVID-19 mandates. The details come in a Daily Signal column by Sarah Parshall Parry and GianCarlo Canaparo. Earlier, they explained when they first found an agency trying to spy on Americans, the Pretrial Services Agency for the District of Columbia. Its policy, that first report said, "will likely serve as a model for a whole-of-government push to assemble lists of Americans who object on...

Liberals love to insist they're on the "right side of history," and their confidence crests in the liberal dominance among historians. Just as the liberal media dominate our evaluation of day-to-day developments, liberals count on their historians to dominate our evaluation of the decades behind us. It's not just historians but our taxpayer-funded storytellers, like the insufferable PBS documentarian Ken Burns. On the day before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, NPR's "Morning Edition" presented him as an American treasure with no partisan bias. So, skip over the propaganda film on Ted Kennedy he made for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, which...

During today’s IRS hearing before the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) took a detour that she may regret. Holmes Norton lauded the IRS officials who were testifying before the committee, which at that point were Carter Hull and Elizabeth Hofacre. Hull and Hofacre are among the IRS agents who were involved in scrutinizing Tea Party and conservative groups. Both testified that they were acting on orders from their superiors in Washington. Hofacre worked in the Cincinnati office that IRS Washington official Lois Lerner blamed for the abuse. Lerner broke the story in a conference...

A congresswoman has come under-fire after her bad parking was caught on camera. Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton, 77, who represents by the District of Columbia, was secretly filmed on Wednesday morning as she drove into a spot on Capitol Hill at the wrong angle.

The 49th annual March for Life will take place later this week on Friday, January 21. The days before and after surrounding the event are often a time of fellowship for pro-lifers, from all circles. For Democrats for Life of America (DFLA), this was supposed to mean holding an event for their supporters at Busboys and Poets. The establishment, however, canceled their event when learning that their would-be paying customers hold pro-life views. Kristen Day, the executive director of DFLA, emailed supporters on January 11 to let them know of the cancellation and request donations to help them find another...

DETROIT -- The federal government is moving forward with a plan to let teenagers drive big rigs from state to state in a test program. Currently, truckers who cross state lines must be at least 21 years old, but an apprenticeship program required by Congress to help ease supply chain backlogs would let 18-to-20-year-old truckers drive outside their home states. The pilot program, detailed Thursday in a proposed regulation from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, would screen the teens, barring any with driving-while-impaired violations or traffic tickets for causing a crash. But safety advocates say the program runs counter...

So it’s refreshing when a pro athlete like Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers unabashedly states, “I’m an athlete. I’m not an activist.” Rodgers, a Super Bowl winner, three-time Most Valuable Player in the National Football League, and nine-time Pro Bowl selectee, is generally considered one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. He has also become a polarizing, controversial figure and a target of the totalitarian left precisely because he doesn’t conform to the woke expectations of our heavily-politicized culture. Last November, Rodgers triggered the left-dominated media after making statements that did not align with the acceptable narrative about...

CNN political analyst Joe Lockhart blamed the press on Sunday for treating President Biden "unfairly," arguing that the Biden administration does not deserve to be covered with the same "snarky attitude" that was afforded to former President Trump.

Just two weeks into the new year, the U.S. has already seen more than a million new COVID cases on multiple days. The Omicron variant has created a dangerous surge, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimating that this version of the virus currently accounts for more than 98 percent of cases in the country. Omicron is spreading even faster than the previously dominant Delta variant, and pushing case counts higher than ever before. Health officials across the country have started to update existing policies in response to the surge, with some places introducing vaccine mandates for...

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, "POTUS has been briefed about the developing hostage situation in the Dallas area. He will continue to receive updates from his senior team as the situation develops. Senior members of the national security team are also in touch with federal law enforcement...

Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, announced on Thursday that his office would not adhere to the Washington, D.C., vaccination mandate that goes into effect on Saturday. "The DC vaccine mandate kicks in this weekend. My office will not comply," Massie tweeted. "We will not show papers. We will not order takeout from restaurants that require papers for dine in. We will get our food from Virginia or we will bring it to work," he added.

The fact that Joe Biden lies whenever he feels up to telling one of his noted stories is common knowledge. Like that one about the Amtrak conductor he had a conversation with, long after the conductor was gone from Amtrak. Or his house erupting in flames. Or his meeting with Nelson Mandela. But now even the Washington Post has taken note of his falsehoods, with a "Four Pinocchios" for Biden's wild claim that he was "arrested" during a civil rights event. According to Fox News, the "honor" went to Biden "over his false claim this week that he was 'arrested'...

The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol sought to dismiss a right-wing conspiracy theory by announcing Tuesday that Ray Epps, who was seen trying to egg on protesters ahead of the Jan. 6 riot, told committee members in an interview that he was not a federal agent. The panel also subpoenaed a trio of Trump allies as it continues its months long investigation into the origins of the attack.

Sen. Tom Cotton on Wednesday delivered a brilliant speech defending the filibuster as Democrats plot to change Senate rules to pass voting legislation. What made his remarks so powerful? He used the top Senate Democrat’s own words. “Right now, we are on the precipice of a constitutional crisis. We are about to step into the abyss. I want to talk for a few minutes why we are on that precipice and why we are looking into that abyss,” Cotton said Wednesday, quoting Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. In fact, the rest of the Arkansas Republican’s speech was a reading of...

Eleven people including Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the right-wing militia group the Oath Keepers, have been indicted on charges of seditious conspiracy, marking an escalation of the Justice Department’s investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 last year. An indictment unsealed Thursday accused Mr. Rhodes, 56 years old, of organizing an armed plot to storm the Capitol and stop the certification of President Biden’s election victory. The case marks the first time the Justice Department has filed charges of sedition in connection with the attack and comes days after Attorney General Merrick Garland...

Of the four restaurants Rick McQuaide owns across several counties in Western Pennsylvania, one is barely making a profit, two are losing money and the fourth has been “temporarily” closed for far longer than he ever anticipated. ... White House and much of the national media .. are wildly out of touch with the struggles of the average American and small business person,” McQuaide adds. “That isn’t political, that is ­reality.” ... there isn’t an aspect of his business that has not been upended by inflation. Fewer people are applying for jobs, driving up wages. Then there is the price...