Free Republic

The Biden administration is seizing on huge earnings calls from oil companies as it seeks to give voters a response to relatively high gasoline prices ahead of next week’s midterms. President Biden has repeatedly sought to place blame on the industry for the high prices, but has ramped up its rhetoric in the wake of massive earnings. And while analysts say that large parts of the price are set by the global oil market, not by individual companies, the optics of massive profits while Americans struggle with inflation gives the administration something to cling to. In total, seven of the...

So many ex-government workers are now employed by Facebook that it’s difficult to view Meta as a private company instead of a government partner, intent on silencing anyone who speaks out against the official narrative. Story at a glance: * Many of the people in charge of moderating content at Facebook have been recruited from the government, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), FBI and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). * So many ex-government workers are now employed by Facebook that it’s difficult to view Meta as a private company instead of a government partner, intent on silencing anyone...

Liberal talk show host Jon Stewart has accused Democrat Joe Biden’s family of “straight up” “corruption.” Stewart admitted that Hunter Biden’s board position with the notoriously-corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma is “corruption, straight up.” In the latest episode of his Apple TV+ podcast “The Problem with Jon Stewart,” the former Daily Show host spoke with British journalist Gabriel Gatehouse. Stewart said, “Let’s say it was real and people just thought, well, the one thing in it maybe is 10% to the big guy, which is circumstantial at best. “But as far as like, look, Hunter Biden being on the board...

Even the meanest of intellects can see that something like a Narrative™ exists. Sometimes we call it “the current thing.” Some call it the “hive mind.” The edgier on the internet refer to the “non-player characters” (NPCs), comparing the people apparently mindlessly parroting the accepted Narrative™ as if they are pre-programmed characters in a video game. As if they have no will of their own. It’s impossible not to notice, though. When certain issues come up, anybody deviating from a certain position is viciously attacked and “cancelled.” The enforcers come from a certain economic or social class (“The Elite™), and...

In an announcement on Tuesday, U.S. Capitol Police said that a new regional field office would be opening up in California due to the high number of threats located in California and the Western U.S. in general. The California field office will be located in San Francisco, with another new field office to be located in Tampa, Florida to help investigate threats in the Southeast. Announced on the six-month anniversary of the Capitol Building being stormed by rioters, U.S. Capitol police noted that threats have been doubled from only a year ago, with most coming outside of the District of...

A few moments ago, less than 24 hours after Elon Musk took over as Chief Twit of Twitter, a fact-check has been placed on one of Joe Biden’s @POTUS tweets because… he’s lying. Biden tweeted, “Let me give you the facts. In 2020, 55 corporations made $40 billion. And they paid zero in federal taxes. My Inflation Reduction Act puts an end to this.” Not so fast, homie. Twitter took the opportunity to add context that said, “Out of the 55 corporations the tweet referenced only 14 had earnings greater than $1 billion and would be eligible under Biden’s tax...

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has been hosting meetings with internet platforms and allowing those platforms to flag for deletion any material to which they object. This until now secret program resulted in the federal bureaucracy meddling in the 2020 elections.You can read the whole 48 pages of minutes at this link.The documents were obtained by Missouri Attorney General and Republican Senate candidate Eric Schmitt as part of an investigation he is conducting. The left-wing site The Intercept did the initial reporting.The Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation Subcommittee meetings began during the 2020...

Want to understand why our nation faces a $31 trillion national debt and few politicians willing to do something about it? A recent Politico story provides a helpful guide.While the press and the left (but I repeat myself) view catastrophic climate change as a certainty — a prism that makes leftists’ big-government solutions to the “climate crisis” plausible — it takes a far more skeptical tone toward conservative proposals for entitlement reform. In this vein, Natalie Allison’s story about conservatives supporting the “privatization” of Social Security and Medicare uses several tactics to marginalize lawmakers courageous enough to propose reforms that...

The Republican National Committee has filed a lawsuit against the city of Flint, Michigan, for failing to hire an equal number of poll workers from each of the two major political parties in preparation for the midterm elections.Michigan law requires election officials appoint an equal number “of election inspectors in each election precinct from each major political party.” Despite a demand letter from the RNC, Flint has failed to comply with state statutes. Roughly only 120 of the 680 election inspectors hired in Flint for the 2022 midterms are Republican, the newly filed lawsuit alleges. While Flint recently told the...

Hillary Clinton’s lawyers on Monday filed a motion demanding Donald Trump pay Clinton’s legal fees after a Bill Clinton judge tossed the RICO lawsuit over the Russian collusion canard. President Trump filed a federal RICO suit in Miami, Florida in March against Hillary Clinton and others over the Russia collusion hoax orchestrated by the Clinton campaign in 2016 to undermine Trump’s candidacy and derail his presidency. Trump asked for treble damages of expenses and losses of more than $24 million. In April President Trump requested the Clinton-appointed judge overseeing his Russiagate case against Hillary Clinton and others be removed from...

After FBI agents raided the home of ABC News producer James Gordon Meek’s home last spring, a report in Rolling Stone floated the possibility that the sweep could have been related to his work as a journalist. However, new information reported by The Daily Beast suggests the raid was unrelated to his journalistic pursuits. Mr Meek’s home was raided by the FBI, but the agency’s reasons for the search were unknown to the public. According to Rolling Stone, "independent observers believe the raid is among the first - and quite posible, the first - to be carried out on a...

Merrick Garland and the DOJ are serious about shutting down all opposition.

Link to PDF via local SF News outlet KRON4 News.

In 2021, the two largest teachers’ unions in the country collected over half a billion dollars from their members, and almost all of their political spending went to leftist causes. While 57 percent of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) membership is either Republican or independent, nearly 100 percent of political spending of the $575 million in dues was funneled into far-left politics.

Former President Donald Trump filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court Monday asking the nine justices to prevent the House Ways and Means Committee from seeing his tax returns. In the 38-page filing, Trump attorney Cameron Norris asked the high court to stay a DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from August which found the committee’s request for the 45th president’s returns between 2013 and 2018 to be justified. “Left unreviewed, the D.C. Circuit’s decision will have far-reaching implications,” Norris wrote. “It will establish important (but incorrect) precedent for the political branches moving forward, binding in the circuit in...

As Twitchy reported, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin went on a Twitter bender earlier Wednesday when news broke that New York State Attorney General Letitia James was filing a lawsuit against Donald Trump for “engaging in years of financial fraud.” Of note: It’s not a criminal lawsuit, but a civil lawsuit. As long as James has been investigating Trump, she doesn’t have the goods on him to file a criminal lawsuit.Lawyer and Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter has laid out in a short thread just how the lawsuit is going to go. In short, Rubin might want to calm down.Kurt Schlichter...

The Trump Organization cheated tax authorities for 15 years by bankrolling big perks for top executives — including apartments and luxury cars, Manhattan prosecutors said as the real estate company’s criminal trial got underway Monday. Former President Donald Trump’s firm used the perks to pay its executives — without reporting those benefits — as part of an alleged scheme to avoid paying taxes between at least 2005 and 2021, Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger said in her opening statements in Manhattan Supreme Court. “This case is about greed and cheating, cheating on taxes,” Hoffinger told jurors. “The scheme was conducted,...

The Department of Homeland Security has been working to influence big tech platforms. This became originally evident when the Biden administration launched the ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board early in 2022, but has been a focus of their efforts even beyond that now-defunct unit, and before. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit that revealed via appended meeting minutes that former Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, who was formerly an official with DHS, told a DHS director in February 2022 that "Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov't. It's really interesteding how hesitant they remain." This according to The Intercept....

THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms. The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual...

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) says he “certainly would have voted” for President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act set to squeeze $20 billion from working and middle class households with new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits. Fetterman, running against Republican Mehmet Oz for the state’s open United States Senate race, made the remark during a panel discussion with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) while on the campaign trail last week. “I certainly would have voted for the Inflation Reduction Act,” Fetterman said. Despite Biden’s claims, the Inflation Reduction Act does not include any provisions requiring the IRS to avoid targeting...