Free Republic

Unable to convince his deputies to clamp down on disorder while in power, Donald Trump now leaves a city occupied to cheers in honor of his successor (and his successor's army).WASHINGTON — For six months, President Donald Trump pushed for a harsher crackdown on the riots raging across the United States, facing constant pushback from officials worried that would further inflame the chaos and lead to needless death. As Joe Biden takes the oath of office and Trump exits Washington, the outgoing president’s dream is finally realized — ironically, too late to change a thing.Over the past week, somewhere between...

President Biden said he wanted to “end this uncivil war.” Telling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to send the article of impeachment to the Senate would be a way to start. It was clear by Wednesday afternoon that the nation was moving on to a Biden presidency, with all the hopes and challenges that entails. Ex-President Donald Trump was in Mar-a-Lago. He’ll likely remain a political force, but he’s also not the focus of all of the country’s attention — nor should he be. The question is: Can the Democrats let go of their favorite foe? Relitigating the recent past...

The mainstream media may be celebrating Joe Biden’s victory now, but they won’t be when they realize the cottage industry focused on trashing President Donald Trump is about to disappear. Love him or hate him, President Trump kept America and the world on the edge of their seats. For some, he was charming, funny, and entertaining. For others, he was a cartoon villain, a monster, and a ‘threat to democracy’ — but for all, he was someone they couldn’t take their eyes off. His presidency was magnetic. Every day there was something new and exciting for people to bicker and...

As Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States of America today, while the U.S. Senate takes up the second impeachment attempt against Donald J. Trump by the House of Representatives, we are left with some thorny issues that deserve answers sooner than later.Looking Beyond WordsAs Nathaniel Fischer reminds us, “When judging a statesman, we must look beyond his words and values to assess his true impact. While good values can play an important role, impact also depends on prudence to navigate contemporary challenges, the work ethic to push for results, and the...

Source: Official White House Photo by Tia DufourThe media can smell blood in the water around President Trump. Finally, they feel like they can vanquish their most hated foe even if it is virtually his last day in office. With a second impeachment of President Donald J. Trump, the media refuses to give him any credit for Making America Great Again. President Trump accomplished so many things during his term as president, yet nobody in the media wants to give him any credit for a pre-coronavirus booming economy and numerous renegotiated trade deals. On foreign policy, President Trump balanced tough...

On Sunday, Jan. 17, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris sat down with Jane Pauley of CBS News "Sunday Morning." Pauley treated Harris to a full-on journalistic massage. At no point was Harris asked a tough question; at no point was Harris treated as anything other than an idol worthy of worship. Perhaps the most awkward manifestation of this sycophancy came when Harris -- an extraordinarily and transparently manipulative and mechanical politician -- spouted a canned speech about relentlessness. "I was raised to not hear no -- let me be clear about it," said Harris. "I eat no for breakfast!" This prompted...

"If I'm your president," Joe Biden promised at the Democratic National Convention last summer, "on day one we'll have a national mask mandate." Now that Biden is the president, his policy has changed from a general requirement to an executive order that applies only on federal property and interstate transportation. While supporters of a nationwide face mask mandate to combat COVID-19 may be disappointed, constitutionalists should be pleased. The switch is a hopeful sign that Biden acknowledges limits to presidential power, even during a public health emergency. Until he backtracked in September, Biden had been promising that he would "do...

As COVID-19 mutates, it's becoming more contagious than the virus that invaded the U.S. about a year ago. A trip to the grocery with a mask on, which used to be low risk, is becoming riskier. As cases and deaths increase rapidly, people are scared and upset. They're spending hours on websites and hotlines struggling unsuccessfully to get vaccine appointments. President-elect Joe Biden's vaccine distribution plan, which he announced Friday, doesn't offer them much hope. Biden said he'll open 100 federal vaccine sites in school gyms, community centers and stadiums the first month. That's for the entire nation. We're in...

As the new Biden-Harris administration assumes power, the most basic American freedom of speech and expression is under unprecedented threat. For the first time ever, I am concerned about my freedom to do my work, to run a policy institute addressing issues of culture, race and poverty from a conservative perspective. Technology -- the internet -- which was largely nonexistent just 25 years ago, now plays a huge role in our lives as a tool of communication. In a survey just published by the Pew Research Center, 86% say they "often" or "sometimes" get their news from a digital device...

It is still unclear what the Biden Administration will do about the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Biden has at times expressed a willingness to rejoin the JCPOA, without any change to the agreement, and at other times, he has suggested that he would join the deal only if it were modified to include limits on Iran’s development of ballistic missiles and its regional aggression, through a network of proxies and allies — from the Houthis in Yemen, to Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq, to the Alawite-led army In Syria, to Hezbollah in Lebanon – to create a “Shi’a crescent”...

Last week Big Tech and social media plutocrats colluded to silence Donald Trump and conservatives by driving them from the virtual town square, and by silencing rival sites like Parler. Even some leaders in Europe, which restricts speech and has nothing like our First Amendment, criticized this assault on freedom of speech. We are living in a time that as Orwell put it, requires us to restate the obvious about the critical role free speech has played in political freedom for 2500 years. As miraculous as the creation of consensual, law-based rule by citizens was in ancient Greece during the...

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...

Joe Biden says he'll "advance racial equity" by making "bold investments" in "Affordable Housing," aiding "businesses owned by Black and Brown people," establishing an "Equity Commission," etc. Gosh, that'll do it. Others demand reparations for slavery, more social programs and defunding the police. Yet, economist Thomas Sowell says, "I haven't been able to find a single country in the world where policies advocated for Blacks in the United States lifted any people out of poverty." Sowell's a Black man who grew up in poverty. His father died before he was born, and his mother died soon after. "We were much...

RUSH: So we are one day away from the strangest inauguration of a president in our lifetimes. That would be the inauguration of Joe “Plugs” Biden. There’s an interesting story here today from The Federalist: “Trump Set To Leave Office With A Higher Approval Rating Than George W. Bush.”There was also a survey last week that told the story that Donald Trump’s the most admired man in the country, most admired man in the world, maybe. And everybody looks at that, how in the world can that be? Well, it can, and it was. And now he’s got a higher...

RUSH: We have a little sound bite here I want to play for you. Today on CNN, they had video of an unidentified “migrant from Honduras” talking about why he’s coming to the United States as part of “the caravan.” You know, the Biden campaign, the Biden team, the Biden whatever has told these guys, “No, no, no, no! “You don’t come now. You’re not gonna come here. You’re just gonna embarrass us. You can’t come now. You gotta say where you are. We’ll give you the go signal, but it’s not now! It’s not now. You can’t come now.”...

It’s been 10 years since mass murderer Kermit Gosnell’s 'House of Horrors' was exposed. Sadly, Pennsylvania still hasn’t learned its lesson.A grand jury report released ten years ago introduced the world to Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist from West Philadelphia who killed born-alive babies, employed teens with no medical experience as anesthesiologists, and crushed countless lives for more than 30 years. For years, government officials and others turned a blind eye to Gosnell’s “House of Horrors.”While some progress has been made in the last 10 years on reducing such atrocities, the conditions that allowed Gosnell to operate his house of horrors...

People To Have More Babies Republicans must become not just the party of workers but also the party of families. They should do it by upping Joe Biden’s proposed child tax credit into something bigger.As the Republican Party charts its path during a Joe Biden presidency, there will undoubtedly be calls from the corporate wing to return to the neoliberal orthodoxy that defined it under the Bushes, Mitt Romney, and Paul Ryan. This would be a profound mistake.President Donald Trump has repositioned Republicans as the party of workers with his focus on trade, industrial, and immigration issues. By crafting an...

President Donald Trump is leaving office with a higher approval rating and the Republican Party on better footing than after President George W. Bush exited the office in 2009, when the younger Bush saw historically low ratings.According to RealClearPolitics’ aggregate of polls, Trump is moving out of the White House with a nearly 40 percent approval rating overall. Bush enjoyed just under 30 percent of Americans on his side at this same point in his presidency.One recent poll by the Pew Research Center made headlines this month. It was conducted in the aftermath of the attacks on Capitol Hill and...

In my last column, I offered a handy, pocket definition of fascism as exhibiting three main traits: extreme nationalism, authoritarianism, and a state-run economy. Basically, I was laying a foundation for this essay, in which I argue that the Left’s response to COVID-19 is literally fascist. Several readers wrote to suggest additional markers of fascism, like disdain for individual rights, obsession with security, suppression of information, and glorification of the military. Most of those are either subsumed under my original list or else characteristic of all totalitarian regimes, or both. After all, fascists have no monopoly on nationalism or authoritarianism....

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.” Long before Joe Biden’s 2019 proclamation, American leftists engaged in a competition for best defender of genocidal Communist dictators. “One must not make a god of Stalin, he was too valuable for that” wrote Anna Louise Strong in her 1935 I Change Worlds. Stalin was then busy collectivizing agriculture, and the independent farmers known as kulaks stood in the way. Stalin decreed it was time to abolish the kulaks “as a class,”...