Free Republic

Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party shows itself in the platform priorities approved here at the convention and the people who are now influencing the Illinois Republican Party. With all the hoopla from inside the convention hall at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, it’s easy to miss the people left outside of the arena and the party. Among them: Adam Kinzinger, who was once viewed as the future of the GOP. He was a fresh-faced military vet who, as a congressman, voted with Trump more than 90 percent of the time. But then he committed the Cardinal Sin of today’s GOP:...

I am a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) expert. Will Trump seize the apparent assassination attempt against him as an opportunity to meaningfully address the epidemic of gun violence in America? Will he deem unacceptable the dangers to which citizens are exposed as they go to schools, places of religious worship, concerts, movie theaters, supermarkets, shopping malls, sporting events, and now, presidential campaign rallies? It’s possible, but unlikely. Butler is less than an hour north of Pittsburgh. It isn’t an urban center. But many big cities in which large numbers of Black Americans reside have long been plagued with inexcusably...

Forbes has deleted an article musing about whether or not former President Donald Trump will use surviving an assassination attempt to help him win over more black voters. The article was titled “Will Surviving Gunfire Be Donald Trump’s Next Appeal To Black Voters?” and was written by contributor Shaun Harper, a tenured professor described by Forbes as a “DEI expert.” The link to the article now reads, “We can’t find the page that you are looking for,” across the top. Unfortunately for Forbes, the internet is forever, and the article was archived many times before it was removed. The article...

South African artist Tracey Rose accused the Kunstmuseum Bern of having a censored an artwork mentioning a “Muslim Holocaust” from her current retrospective there, claiming that the Swiss institution had objected to such phrasing. On social media over the weekend, Rose also denounced the Kunstmuseum for hosting a talk on artistic freedom connected to her show. She claimed that she had not been invited to the panel, which included one of the exhibition’s curators and the museum’s director. “This is prejudicial to the global audience to whom my Artwork speaks, as well as elitist and exclusionary – distasteful to say...

In the wake of newly released video of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) acknowledging she should have asked for a National Guard presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the former House Speaker declared Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that former “Republicans have always tried to wrap themselves in the flag while they denigrate it.” Host Nicolle Wallace said, “If this campaign is waged around big things like the flag, which Trump supporters denigrated on the day of the insurrection when they held it upside down, an upside down flag, also on the property, the Virginia property of Supreme Court...

President Biden waxed poetic about race in America during a commencement address Sunday at Morehouse College, an HBCU in Georgia: PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Many of you have gone through similar or worse things. But you lean on others. They lean on you. And together, you keep the faith and a better day tomorrow. But it is not easy. I know a number of years ago, it felt like one of those Saturdays. The pandemic robbed you of so much. Some have lost loved ones, mothers, fathers, brothers, or sisters, and they are not able to be here to celebrate today....

Former Minnesota Reform Party Gov. Jesse Ventura said Thursday on CNN’s “OutFront” that he could beat bothident Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical match-up. Ventura said, “I’ll tell you this Erin, I think right now I have no, I’m an individual, I don’t have a big bunch of people behind me or none of that. But I’ll tell you this, if I had ballot access in all 50 states and I were allowed to debate, I could beat these two major party candidates. They would be easier to beat then Attorney General Humphrey was and Mayor...

I’ll bet you’ve never personally performed open heart surgery. You haven’t? Really? In that case, I don’t want your stinkin’ opinion on how the government should best distort the health insurance markets with artificial incentives. You probably also haven’t dropped acid in the last ten years. Given that painful deficiency on your CV, I don’t want to hear any of your sanctimonious blithering about The War on Drugs. I assume, furthermore, that you’ve never been behind enemy lines, staggering home through the bad guys’ wire with your small intestine in one your canteen cups.* If such is the case; then...

Comedian Bill Maher said over the weekend that if Americans wanted to see what would happen to the United States if it continued down the path to “extreme wokeness,” they should look no further than their neighbors to the north. Maher argued — during Friday’s broadcast of “Real Time” on HBO — that Canada should serve as a “cautionary tale” for Americans who wanted the progressive utopian ideal and thought that they could see it just across the border. Maher began by saying that he agreed with those who said American liberals should learn from progressive countries that were getting...

In a prophecy written by Zechariah about 3,000 years ago, we learn, “Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples all around. Now the one in siege against Jerusalem will also be against Judah. But it will be in that day, that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who heave it up will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it” (Zechariah 12:2-3.) It is very unfortunate, but it is part of the word of God and it is...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) challenged his Republican colleague, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), to a debate regarding his “Ukraine first policy.”In an opinion article in the Courier-Journal, Paul slammed McConnell for vowing to go after the “isolationist movement” in the Republican Party, specifically in terms of monetary support for Ukraine. While McConnell had announced in February that he plans to step down as Senate minority leader at the end of the current term, he has said that he has plans to remain in the U.S. Senate.“Mitch McConnell has pledged to fight ‘GOP isolationism’ in the remainder of his career,” Paul wrote....

… What is the value in the coming spectacle, beyond oohs and aahs? Perhaps it is in the dramatic demonstration that we are all, regardless of our divisive politics and cultural strife today, riding the same floating sphere, one among countless of them, some of which line up in random but beautiful ways from time to time. Democrats and Republicans alike will look up together in fascination on Monday. It will be a bipartisan moment of galactic proportions. The eclipse's path will take it far north of Washington, D.C. That's too bad. If there's any crowd that needs reminding of...

Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) had choice words for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Saturday comments, calling him a “maniac” who “needs” to be removed from office. The progressive Democrat initially discussed the Biden administration transferring 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs, 500 MK82 500-pound bombs and 25 F-35A fighter jets to Israel without notifying lawmakers, an arms package reported exclusively by the Washington Post on Friday.

During his closing monologue on Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher argued that America is better off than it was four years ago because we’re not in the middle of the time “when COVID hit and America wet itself, emptied its pockets, and curled up in a ball” by overreacting to the coronavirus pandemic.

During an interview released on Tuesday’s edition of “Pod Save America,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said that while Hamas is a terrorist organization that wants to destroy Israel, “if the legacy of the attack on October 7 becomes continuing escalating violence in turn, then Hamas will have already won” and “Increasing death and devastation will not end death and devastation.” And we have to “somehow” “disrupt” the Hamas mindset and he hopes that “somehow, people on both sides of that conflict, that all of us can tap into the best of our faith and moral traditions” while also arguing that...

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Israel had “crossed the threshold of intent” and was causing genocide in Gaza. On the House floor, Ocasio-Cortez said, “If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes. It looks like the force famine of 1.1 million in a sense. We must write our story in this moment of what it means and who we are as Americans and our story must be not that we were good men who did nothing now.”

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher urged students not to go to elite colleges because doing so “just makes you stupid” and that these elite schools are “a North Korean re-education camp” that are racist towards Asian applicants that don’t teach history and “if ignorance is a disease, Harvard Yard is the Wuhan wet market.”

HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher acknowledged there is a deep state he characterized as “the bureaucratic class that justifies its existence by making up new rules” made up of “petty tyrants” who ignore the will of the American people. Near the end of his Friday show, Maher used a straw man fallacy to diminish conservative’s concerns of the weaponized intelligence agencies, instead saying the real deep state is comprised of legions of bureaucrats within the federal government. “It’s time to admit that here in America, there really is such a thing as the deep state, but it’s not the...

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that while food prices have gone up significantly under President Joe Biden, 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Trump is doing better among younger voters because he lies and “when you don’t know anything, you can’t compare it to what’s said.” And “we were just kind of lucky for 20 years, and there wasn’t much inflation. So, maybe you’ve never lived in a time when there was inflation. So, you think, oh, Trump, no inflation, Biden, inflation, me vote Trump.”

If you don't follow far-left Massachusetts Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren on X, you should — if only for 24 hours. Hilarity reigns, as Warren never misses a concocted opportunity to rail against "profiteering" corporations, "the rich" not paying their "fair share," and "free" this and "free" that.Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have long pushed for a wealth tax that would begin with billionaires. Unlike Sanders, who believes billionaires shouldn't even be allowed to exist, Warren "only" thinks they should be taxed to smithereens (See: wealth redistribution).Now Warren, along with leftist Democrat Reps. Pramila Jayapal (WA) and Brendan F. Boyle...