Free Republic

...LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: California Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday, September 19, signed a package of 13 election-related bills aimed at strengthening protections for the state’s voting process ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The legislative package includes measures restricting the seizure of ballots and election records, imposing penalties for interference with mail ballots and limiting deceptive political advertising. Newsom and other California Democrats have said that the measures are intended to address concerns about potential federal involvement in the state’s elections, particularly over mail-in voting. ...

The House Judiciary Committee, along with the House Administration Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released an interim staff report on ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform. In that report, the Committees found that ActBlue failed to prevent illegal foreign political contributions, and it's being called an "explosive" insight into the organization's practices. Two years ago, the Committees began investigating ActBlue's fraud-prevention practices. In 2024, ActBlue changed its fraud policy twice during the presidential campaign, reportedly implementing "more lenient" standards that let foreign donors and other suspicious donor money flow into U.S. campaigns. Earlier this year, The New...

Former CIA Director John Brennan has been subpoenaed to testify next month before a Florida grand jury as part of a Justice Department investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired against President Donald Trump.Ken Wainstein, an attorney for Brennan, disclosed in a court filing Monday that prosecutors last Thursday presented him with a subpoena for Brennan to appear Oct. 15 before a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Prosecutors alleged the former three-star general lied about his contacts with a Russian diplomat. Retired General Michael Flynn, whose life was turned upside down by the Russia collusion investigation, told Just the News he would never have accepted his 2018 plea deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller had he known the full FBI evidence in his case. “Had I seen that evidence that you have broken, no way in the world,” Flynn told the Just the News, No Noise television show on Wednesday night hours after President Donald Trump’s administration declassified the fully unredacted versions of the FBI’s 2017 handwritten...

Elected officials in Washington state are sounding the alarm about an increase in uncounted ballots, especially in rural areas. Their warnings come as President Donald Trump ramps up his fight against vote-by-mail states.Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, both Democrats, teamed up Wednesday to announce that significantly more mail-in ballots were disqualified as “late” in the August primary election than in prior elections. That uptick, they said, was a result of changes to U.S. Postal Service postmarking protocols the agency implemented last December.Across the state, the rate of ballots that were rejected for late postmarks...

Frames federal election integrity push as ‘federal overreach’ California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Wednesday launched another lawsuit against the Trump administration, this time targeting a U.S. Postal Service final rule on mail ballots. and invited the public to watch him sell it as a defense of “election integrity.” The post quoted his earlier announcement that California and allied states were “suing to block USPS’ rule restricting mail-in voting.” Join me at 9:30 AM for an important update on California’s efforts to fight back against unlawful federal overreach and protect election integrity. Tune in at: https://t.co/biszIi59EV https://t.co/vcKeUPXZWL — Rob Bonta...

Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is facing scrutiny after an online ad revealed that campaign contributions from supporters of her re-election bid would be matched by taxpayer dollars. "Your donation to our campaign right now is more critical than ever before," said Bass, speaking into a lapel microphone with upbeat music playing in the background of the ad, which was posted to her campaign's X account. "Let me explain," she continued. "Thanks to LA's super match program, every qualified donation from Los Angeles residents is matched 6-to-1 by the city. But after the primary, we had to start over...

Britons would rather see Count Binface win the Clacton by-election in a blow to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, a new poll has revealed. The coastal constituency, which will elect their new MP on August 13, is still likely to return Mr Farage to the House of Commons. However, a survey of 1,000 British adults conducted by Ipsos found 33 per cent of voters would rather see Count Binface win. Meanwhile, just 21 per cent hope to see Mr Farage emerge victorious, with 32 per cent not backing either candidate and a further 13 per cent unsure. Ipsos also found...

REUTERS—A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the U.S. Postal Service’s proposed restrictions on mail-in voting, finding that they violated a settlement with a leading civil rights group that required expedited mail-in ballot handling. The decision by Washington-based U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan marked the second defeat in the courts in as many weeks for U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to severely restrict mail-in voting ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, with his Republican Party locked in a tight battle to maintain control of both houses of Congress. The Postal Service in May proposed a rule requiring states to provide...

Socialist Nithya Raman might be familiar with a phrase widely misattributed to Joseph Stalin: “It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.” Not much voting went on in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, so Stalin probably didn’t say that. But the point about counting the vote stands. On Sunday evening, Raman overtook challenger Spencer Pratt for second place in the race for LA mayor. The trend seems likely to continue. We would like to report the ballots counted thus far as a percentage of the total cast, but unfortunately, we cannot: ballots...

Actor and comedian Jamie Kennedy expressed astonishment at the dramatic shift in odds away from Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayoral election. The “Scream” star, who supports Pratt, shared a post on Friday showing that socialist city Councilmember Nithya Raman had a 95% chance of advancing to November’s general election despite Pratt still maintaining a lead with votes still being counted. “This is a literal crime scene,” he wrote. “There is no way this is an honest election.” Oddsmakers had recently given Pratt more than a 75% chance to advance out of the primary.aintaining a lead with votes still...

Polymarkets are now projecting Pratt will NOT make the runoff. Sudden change. Hmmmmm......

UPDATE: Georgia State Senator Greg Dolezal has filed an emergency lawsuit to allow poll watchers and State Election Board observers into “the bunker,” where Georgia’s statewide vote totals are received and published. “Denying members of the State Election Board access to the Election Night Reporting Room is outrageous,” Georgia Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon said, reacting to news of how the election results of this week’s primary election will be aggregated. “BREAKING: Georgia’s 2026 election results will be aggregated on Election Night by the secretary of state from a ‘secret emergency bunker’ which is off-limits to candidates, the public and...

Democrats send swat teams when evidence of illegal behavior surfaces. Republicans, well, they issue reports. The summary is: the Democrats ActBlue fundraising apparatus is a scheme to launder foreign funds and hide large donor activity through a process of straw (fake) small amount donors. The House Judiciary Committee investigated as media reports of the fraud began to surface. The House sent subpoenas to five key ActBlue witnesses. The witnesses showed up and plead the fifth WASHINGTON — ActBlue employees invoked their Fifth Amendment right at least 146 times in depositions with congressional committees investigating alleged donor fraud on the fundraising...

Former President Barack Obama is urging Virginians to vote in favor of a congressional redistricting ballot measure that if passed, could give Democrats a big boost in this year's midterm elections. "By voting yes, you have the chance to do something important — not just for the Commonwealth, but for our entire country," Obama said in the video. "By voting yes, you can push back against the Republicans trying to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterms." The video by the former president, who remains one of the most popular former presidents and whose favorable ratings among Democrats remain...

The Department of Justice has been sent a criminal referral for two individuals who helped instigate the 2019 impeachment process against President Donald Trump. The two include a whistleblower whose name is not mentioned and former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, according to Fox News. A criminal referral is a means of asking the Justice Department to file charges. . . . "I want to refer information that may constitute possible criminal activity in violation of federal criminal law committed by one or more former employees of the intelligence community," the general counsel for the Office of the Director...

President Donald Trump and his supporters were targeted by four consecutive FBI code-named counterintelligence investigations over the last decade that secretly subjected hundreds of innocent Americans to privacy-invading tactics and essentially treated the man twice elected president as a national security threat for most of the first nine years of his political career, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Just the News. FBI Director Kash Patel has personally led the effort to review the operations code-named Crossfire Hurricane, Round River, Plasmic Echo and Arctic Frost that stretched from summer 2016 to January 2025, uncovering evidence of a far-reaching dragnet...

Virginia's legislature has passed a bill prohibiting schools from teaching what it considers to be falsehoods about the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including portraying it "as peaceful protest." The General Assembly approved the measure Thursday, as a first-of-its-kind legislation to combat false statements by supporters of President Trump. The bill says that school instruction must "Not describe, portray, or present as credible a description or portrayal of the actions precipitating or involved in the events of the January 6, 2021, insurrection as peaceful protest." Schools may also not "state, suggest, or present as credible a statement or suggestion...

California election officials are preparing for scenarios where Trump administration officials demand ballots or place agents at voting sites. State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta vows to seek restraining orders within hours if the administration interferes. In recent weeks, Marin County Registrar Natalie Adona has been largely focused on the many mundane tasks of local elections administrators in the months before a midterm: finalizing voting locations, ordering supplies, facilitating candidate filings. But in the wake of unprecedented efforts by the Trump administration to intervene in state-run elections, Adona said she has also been preparing her staff for far less ordinary scenarios...

The House of Representatives passed a $1.2 trillion funding deal to end the four-day partial government shutdown Tuesday, sending it to President Trump’s desk for his expected signature. Lawmakers voted 217-214 to pass the compromise funding package, which cleared the Senate late Friday and keeps about 97% of the government operating through Sept. 30. Now Congress faces a 10-day scramble to negotiate a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security before its key agencies run out of cash Feb. 13, a timeline Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) described as “an impossibility.” *** The GOP holdouts were mainly miffed...