Free Republic

The row between the BBC and Donald Trump has escalated further after it was revealed the broadcaster commissioned a fierce critic of the US President to deliver its flagship annual lectures.Dutch author Rutger Bregman used the high-profile events to draw parallels between Trump's America and the rise of fascism in the 1930s. In one talk, entitled A Time Of Monsters and due to air next week, he likened Mr Trump, Nigel Farage and tech billionaires such as Elon Musk to fascists, according to one audience member. He is said to have used the term 'a bit fashy' to describe them.The...

Inside Democrats’ effort to attack RFK Jr.’s vaccine moves without angering his base.Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, a former nurse and CDC epidemic intelligence service officer running for governor, has called on Kennedy to resign and told POLITICO she’s encountered a lot of voters who are worried about losing access to vaccines due to his policies. Amy Acton, the former head of the Ohio Health Department now running for governor, also cited conversations with voters “very, very scared of the reckless, chaotic health decisions being made” by Kennedy. And several Democrats said that even when they don’t proactively bring up...

For years, Democrats and pundits have rolled their eyes at Gavin Newsom. But he’s positioned better than anyone else for the future of politics.California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally with Harris County Democrats at the IBEW local 716 union hall on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, in Houston. | Karen Warren/APJonathan Martin is POLITICO’s senior political columnist and politics bureau chief. He’s covered elections in every corner of America and co-authored a best-selling book about Donald Trump and Joe Biden. His reported column chronicles the inside conversations and major trends shaping U.S. politics.SAN FRANCISCO — No Democrat has had...

Democrats do not just need to win more people. They also need to win more places.Inside the Democratic Party — in its backrooms and its group chats, its conferences and its online flame wars — an increasingly bitter debate has taken hold over what the party needs to become to beat back Trumpism. Does it need to be more populist? More moderate? More socialist? Embrace the abundance agenda? Produce more vertical video?The answer is yes, yes to all of it — but to none of it in particular. The Democratic Party does not need to choose to be one thing....

New York flirts with a familiar disaster as Zohran Mamdani rides Rousseauvian rhetoric toward the same ruinous script that doomed revolutions past.As the world waits for New York’s first Islamo-Communist mayor—hailed alike by the overtly malicious and the terminally stupefied—it may be worth stepping back to ask what the advent of Zohran Mamdani, the pampered 34-year-old rich kid who was born in Uganda, tells us about the decay of liberalism. In many ways, Mamdani—who, as I write this, is a comfortable 10-15 points ahead in the polls—is just the latest avatar of the AOC-Ilhan Omar wing of the Democratic party....

There was a time when conservative kids weren’t cool. A time when they were fogey-ish, bow-tied, out of step and out of touch. With their own generation at least. But that has changed. And nothing demonstrates that change more than something that happened at the University of Mississippi on Wednesday.From early morning the queues started to form. They grew throughout the day, in spite of the rain, as thousands of people waited to get into the Turning Point USA event.According to Turning Point Spokeman Andrew Kolvet more than half of the entire student body of the University packed into the...

It seems like every time I look at the news these last couple of weeks, there is another piece predicting doom and gloom for the Democratic Party. The latest came from Harry Enten at CNN, who said the data shows the shutdown standoff in Washington is backfiring for the left.“You might think,” he said, “given that the Republicans are in charge of both the House and the Senate, that a government shutdown might actually hurt the Republican brand. But in fact, it hasn’t. If anything, it’s been helped a little bit.”Enten went on to evaluate the Democrats’ chances in the...

Finances are becoming dire for the more than 750,000 government workers who have been going without pay for a full month.The government has been closed for a full month — and federal workers who have missed two paychecks are now using credit cards to pay their bills, visiting food pantries to stock their kitchens and reviewing their bank accounts, plotting exactly how long they can manage without a salary. The answer is not much longer for Cynthia Brown, a Government Publishing Office staffer who has been working without pay. The 53-year-old said she is barely eating, subsisting on coffee and...

As with many things Trump, the administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” provoked accusations of authoritarian takeover of vital American institutions. And, as with many things Trump, the administration’s compact overreached in pursuit of a worthy goal, giving critics ammunition to oppose urgently needed reform. On Oct. 1, the Trump administration sent the compact to nine universities – the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas Austin, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Virginia. (Subsequently the administration opened the deal to...

The senseless murder in Uxbridge demands a reckoning on illegal migration.A man is dead, and a nation is seething. The blood-curdling murder on Monday night of Wayne Broadhurst, who stepped out at 5pm to walk his dog and never returned home, has left his neighbours along with millions of his countrymen wondering ‘what if?’. What if they had turned a corner as Broadhurst did, only to have a knifeman rain blow after blow down upon them. The killing in Uxbridge, a suburban town in the western reaches of Greater London, speaks to fears that run wide and deep.Broadhurst was 49....

Will “Palestinian liberation” become New York City’s political future?Zohran Kwame Mamdani wants to be the next mayor of New York City. But before voters even consider handing him the keys to City Hall, one question demands an answer: How can someone who proudly backs the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel – a movement that violates New York State policy – be trusted to lead the nation’s largest city?New York’s BDS BanNearly a decade ago, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo took a clear stand against anti-Israel boycotts. In 2016, he signed Executive Order 157, which prohibits New York State agencies...

Illinois has now joined California and Connecticut in barring federal immigration agents from conducting "civil arrests" of illegal aliens in or around state courthouses. The sanctuary law appears largely performative since it also appears unconstitutional. It is difficult to see how a state can bar the exercise of federal jurisdiction, at least after the Civil War.Gov. JB Pritzker has been ratcheting up the rhetoric against ICE and the Trump administration for months, including analogies to the Nazis and claims that democracy is dying. The new law, however, crosses the constitutional Rubicon by not only limiting the operation of Immigration and...

It reminds New Yorkers of Colin Ferguson’s 1993 massacre on the Long Island Rail Road.For those of us who ride the commuter rails and subways daily, Saturday night’s mass stabbing on a London-bound train is a nightmare brought to life. In such confined and well-lit spaces, there isn’t any way to do what the experts say you should: run, hide and, as a last resort, fight. A train car moving at high speed with the doors and windows closed is a violent psychopath’s dream—a veritable barrel full of unarmed, unsuspecting fish. Most of us have our heads buried in our...

Every few years, Democrats rediscover something shocking: Americans don’t like them. Not just die-hard Republicans. Not just Fox News viewers. Normal, everyday people who work, pay taxes, believe that men can’t become women, and think “Latinx” is a typo.The latest wake-up call comes from a new report by a left-wing group hilariously named “Welcome” – as in, “Welcome back to reality.” After consulting hundreds of thousands of voters, the group found that 70 percent of Americans think the Democrat Party is out of touch.Apparently, it took Democrats six months and a 60-page report to learn what anyone outside of D.C....

Trump shares footage of Rep. Ilhan Omar saying “Somalia is our home” during a Minnesota rally, urging her to “go back” to Somalia.US President Donald Trump on Saturday criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a member of “The Squad” of anti-Israel Democrats, in a post on Truth Social. “She should go back!” Trump wrote, sharing a video of Omar addressing a crowd in Minnesota and saying “Somalia is our home” and referring to the President of Somalia as “our President”. The President has repeatedly suggested Omar should be removed from the country. In September, he told reporters in the Oval Office,...

NEW YORK, NY — As the New York City mayoral race entered its final stretch before Tuesday's election, leading candidate Zohran Mamdani sought to broaden his appeal with undecided voters by promising to establish rent-free gulags throughout the city in which he would graciously imprison his political opponents and also everyone else. Mamdani made the announcement at a rally on Saturday while putting the finishing touches on his campaign to be elected mayor, assuring New York citizens that they would have equal opportunity to be placed in state-run gulags at no cost. "Every New Yorker has a right to...

Hundreds of illegal migrants are secretly sneaking back to the UK just weeks after being given £3,000 in British taxpayers' cash as a bribe to return home, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.Our investigation has discovered the migrants are cynically gaming the Home Office's 'Assisted Voluntary Return Scheme' where they are each given a one-off payment and a plane ticket home.Fixers brazenly offer step-by-step advice on social media detailing how to pocket the money, cheat the system and get back to Britain, openly scorning the UK Government as 'too trusting'.The MoS investigation shows Brazilians to the forefront of the scam....

Mamdani's Network of InfluenceABOUT THE HOSTILE TAKEOVERAcross the political spectrum, Americans value democracy, fairness and freedom of thought. Yet a movement has emerged that directly challenges those ideals — the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).As its leaders repeatedly state, the DSA are NOT Democrats. They are an external force that has infiltrated the Democratic Party to reshape it in their own image. Like the cuckoo that lays its eggs in another bird’s nest and then throws out the original bird’s eggs, the DSA is using the party’s structure and reputation while working to replace it with its own extremist agenda.If...

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani releases a campaign ad in Arabic. Mamdani, who is a Muslim and recently gave a landmark speech about Islamophobia, is the frontrunner to win Tuesday’s election. “I know what you’re thinking — I might look like your brother-in-law from Damascus, but my Arabic needs some work,” Mamdani, who is of Indian descent, says in the video. “Still, I would love to ask for your support on November 4th.” In the ad, Mamdani pitches his promises to make New York more affordable, pets a bodega cat, and jokes about knafeh — an Arabic dessert...

Democrats are so corrupt “I’m not kidding you, it's literally 4:28AM. Democrats raised your power bills. The Democrats put illegals over the safety of the citizens of the state of Illinois. The Democrats stole your down state transportation funds. Motor fuel sales tax you pay on motor fuel tax, they stole it and sent it to the CTA in Chicago.”