Free Republic

Something in the Democratic Party’s subconscious knows that in times of change it should go to Chicago.It’s the city where, in 1896, a 36-year-old William Jennings Bryan sent convention delegates into raptures by railing against Gilded Age plutocrats and urging Democrats to reconnect with their populist roots. It’s where Franklin Roosevelt announced the coming of a New Deal in 1932, starting a political revolution that pushed the Republican Party to the verge of extinction. It’s where the Roosevelt coalition ripped itself apart in 1968, with protesters and students brawling in the streets and delegates at one another’s throats. It’s where...

Donald Trump could be blindsided by an 'October surprise' that would obliterate his chances at retaking the White House, a former Bush administration official has said. Legal scholar John Yoo sounded the alarm that the former president could wind up in prison - as soon as next month. Trump has been desperately seeking to hold off his sentencing hearing until after the election, following his conviction by a Manhattan jury of 34 counts of falsifying business records. But the controversial Judge Juan Merchan has consistently denied his appeals. While speaking to Fox News host Bill Hemmer on Thursday, Yoo said...

President Biden claims that he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, but this isn’t close to true. The economy in January 2021 was fast recovering from the pandemic as vaccines rolled out and state lockdowns eased. GDP grew 34.8% in the third quarter of 2020, 4.2% in the fourth, and 5.2% in the first quarter of 2021. By the end of that first quarter, real GDP had returned to its pre-pandemic high. All Mr. Biden had to do was let the recovery unfold. Instead, Democrats in March 2021 used Covid relief as a pretext to pass $1.9 trillion...

It’s hard to exaggerate how bad Kamala Harris’s price-gouging proposal is. “Price gouging” is the focus of Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic agenda, her presidential campaign says. She’ll crack down on “excessive prices” and “excessive corporate profits,” particularly for groceries. So what level counts as “excessive,” you might ask? TBD, but Harris will ban it. That’s the thing about price gouging: As has been said of hardcore pornography, you know it when you see it. It’s not hard to figure out where this proposal came from. Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have...

Early in the pandemic, a local merchant I know in New York, an immigrant who owns a small stationary store, worked tirelessly to obtain the goods his customers all then believed were needed—masks, hand sanitizer, and so on. He paid a markup for these goods, not to mention the time it cost him to secure them, and naturally passed the higher prices on to his customers. But given the emergency, he faced a price limit on what he could sell the masks for, with steep fines if he didn't comply. He fought these mandates in court and nearly lost his...

Former President Trump is narrowly leading Vice President Kamala Harris in the critical swing state of Michigan, according to an AARP survey released Thursday. Trump leads Harris with 45 percent support to her 43 percent among likely voters in the battleground state, while 8 percent said they would support a third-party candidate. However, in a head-to-head match-up, the findings show Trump and Harris tied at 48 percent. The poll was commissioned by the AARP and was jointly conducted by the Republican polling firm Fabrizio Ward and the Democratic polling firm Impact Research.

This warped election violates every prior precedent and is not just creepy but dangerous—even before the campaign was supposed to formally begin. The already-long 2024 presidential campaign has become the strangest in modern history. Here are ten unanswered questions that illustrate how and why we’ve entered this bizarro world: 1. How can Kamala Harris merely promise us fixes to come in 2025 for inflation and an open border when she is still vice president for another six months? Why can’t she enact her proposed solutions to these problems (which she helped create) right now? 2. Would the media prefer to...

A recent study confirms that universal basic income—no-strings-attached benefit checks offered to recipients regardless of need or contribution to the program—discourages work. That’s relevant to the presidential race. Kamala Harris has called more than once for paying UBI-like benefits. Participants in the UBI program worked nearly 1½ hours less a week on average, and unemployment rose. Other adults in recipient households reduced their work effort, too. Overall, the study found for every dollar in benefits, “total household income excluding the transfers fell by at least 21 cents.” As vice president, Ms. Harris cast the deciding vote to create a temporary...

CNN — Kamala Harris is officially the Democratic presidential nominee, but Donald Trump is continuing to describe the vice president’s elevation to the top of her party’s ticket as “unconstitutional” and accusing her of taking part in a “coup.” No serious effort to challenge Harris’ status as the Democratic nominee is underway. But some of Trump’s critics warn that the former president could be laying the groundwork to question the outcome of the 2024 election if he loses a second time. Democrats are set to gather next week in Chicago for a national convention at which they’ll rally around Harris...

The Biden-Harris team has signaled that it’s gearing up for an “October Surprise” on student loan cancellation — although it might come even sooner, sneaking in before early voting starts. Once again, they are trying to shift hundreds of billions of dollars in loans onto the 90% of Americans who don’t owe student debt, to gain favor with voters who do. And this time they’ve added a brazen direct-marketing campaign to appeal to those indebted voters, just ahead of the presidential election. Their new loan-forgiveness effort is particularly devious because it is designed with the administration’s previous court losses in...

A fight by Joe Biden allies to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr. off the ballot could backfire on the Democratic presidential campaign by delivering more votes for Republican Donald Trump than Kamala Harris, according to some poll indications. On Monday, a New York judge removed Kennedy from the New York ballot, saying this New York address is "a scam." The lawsuit was organized by Clear Choice, a Democrat-aligned political action committee formed by supporters of President Biden's bid for a second term in the White House. Similar rulings to oust RFK could be won in 18 states including multiple battleground...

The imam has shared official Hamas press releases and a link to a pro-Hitler film on social media A Muslim cleric who praised Adolf Hitler and commended Hamas after the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel spoke at the inauguration of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in 2019. Imam Asad Zaman, executive director of the Muslim American Society in Minnesota, shared the stage with the Democratic governor on Jan. 7, 2019. "Thank God this team is finally going to be in charge," Zaman said of Walz's incoming administration. "I congratulate you for stepping forward to serve the people of Minnesota,...

Weaponizing an historically false hierarchy of oppression. After Donald Trump was interviewed by Rachel Scott at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, the rewriter of American history, Nikole Hannah-Jones, took time out from her five-year-long promotional tour of her 1619 Project to actually write something for the New York Times, where, according to her byline, she is still employed as a “domestic correspondent . . . covering racial injustice and civil rights.” In the manner typical of her original project published as a special issue of the New York Times Magazine and expanded into a book, Hannah-Jones...

Tim Walz’s "Church" is about what you’d expect. Tim Walz’s "Church" is about what you’d expect.August 13, 2024 by Robert Spencer 15 CommentsHey, Tim Walz isn’t so bad. In an age when leftists compete with one another in how much they can repudiate and mock traditional values, it is surprising and refreshing to discover that the Democrats’ shiny new vice-presidential candidate, America’s dad, is a regular churchgoer. Walz’s Christian piety, however, is not exactly the sort of thing that would put you in mind of Augustine, Aquinas, Martin Luther, Mother Theresa, or any other prominent Christian you’d care to name....

And he might be the next attorney general. When the new administration was looking for an attorney general, Ben Crump, the ultimate BLM lawyer who represented the families of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and nearly every BLM case, recommended Tony West. Al Sharpton also mentioned West.West, Crump argued, had been the third-highest ranking official in the Obama DOJ, “led various efforts to reduce racial bias, improve procedural fairness, strengthen the relationship between communities of color and law enforcement, and hold police departments accountable.”Or as the New York Times put it, West “launched an investigation into the 2014 shooting...

"America’s dad" and would-be vice president has no problem associating with terror-linked groups. Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is being skillfully marketed as an all-American average guy. That’s one thing he isn’t, and in reality, he is just about the diametric opposite of that. Most Americans are not even aware, and never will be, of how sinister he really is.To hear the Democrat party’s propaganda machine, that is, the establishment media, tell it, Walz is your neighbor across the fence who has surprisingly sensible solutions to the nation’s problems, a homespun small-town high school teacher, a football coach, someone...

But it's obvious which way Kamala leans. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat Party’s nominee for president, is trying to walk a political tightrope on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. On the one hand, to court as many moderate Jewish voters as possible, she repeats her canned statement of support for Israel’s right to defend itself, even going so far just recently to brand Hamas as “terrorists.” But at the same time, she is also currently entertaining the idea of an arms embargo against the Jewish state, according to pro-Palestinian advocates who spoke with her just before...

SNIP I’ve never been a macho kind of man. To me, our biggest responsibility as humans is to look after each other. Men have been given places of privilege in society, so when people talk about being a man, to me that means: what do you use your privilege for? I worked at a pirate radio station in Houston, and we helped with emergency efforts during Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. For me, manhood is all about using your energy to make life better for the person next to you. But I think that Trump appeals to a perceived loss...

The president, the Democratic presidential candidate, and the vice presidential nominee all either cannot or will not speak casually and publicly to elected representatives, reporters, or the people. BidenPresident Biden was forced, unceremoniously and unwillingly, to abdicate from his impending reelection nomination. Since then, we have neither seen nor heard much from our sitting President. He has vanished, poof, gone. This is quite unusual if not alarming. Unlike prior to the June 27 debate, the left now makes no effort to hide Biden’s debility. Indeed, it accepts the reality that an infirm Biden might not be able to finish out...

Former President Donald Trump has claimed his opponent Kamala Harris is faking the size of her rally, as he posted what he called an 'AI doctored photo' - even though there is no evidence that the photo was manipulated. At issue is an image that emerged from a Harris-Walz rally at the Detroit Metro Airport on Wednesday that shows a large crowd standing in front of Air Force Two - the official airplane of the vicepresident. Right-wingers have wrongfully alleged that inconsistencies in the news photo reveal that it was digitally manipulated - pointing to a lack of a reflection...