Free Republic

My statement on Michigan’s Democrat Nominee for U.S. Senate:

Wednesday's Morning Joe gave Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed a friendly platform, and failed to press him on the radical implications of two of his signature positions: Medicare for All, and his condemnation of Israel as an "illegal apartheid state" that is "bloodthirsty" and commits "genocide." [snip] El-Sayed also accused Israel of "genocide” and described its conduct under Netanyahu as “bloodthirsty,” the latter accusation having ugly echoes of antisemitic blood libels. Politicians who oppose support for Israel often claim they’re not anti-Israel—just anti-Netanyahu. Not El-Sayed. By branding Israel an “illegal apartheid regime” that predates and outlasts Netanyahu, he made explicitly...

Trump is so unpopular that El-Sayed might win in November. But the Michigan candidate carries a lot of baggage. Democratic primary voters in Michigan just made it harder for their party to flip the Senate. Abdul El-Sayed struggled mightily with the working-class voters he claims his policies would help. The Bernie Sanders acolyte badly underperformed pre-primary polls to eke out a victory in Tuesday’s Senate primary with less than 50 percent. A win is a win, but he carries heavy baggage into the general election. El-Sayed benefited from the strongly anti-establishment mood in the Democratic ranks to defeat Rep. Haley...

(KRON) — A new competition will award up to $150 million to people with ideas to help improve San Francisco. The initiative, called Boundless San Francisco, will award grants of up to $50 million to as many as three organizations with winning proposals. Eligible nonprofits, businesses, academic institutions, and other organizations from anywhere in the world can apply, as long as their idea is designed to benefit San Francisco. Projects can focus on a variety of issues, including housing, education, public spaces, transportation, homelessness, crime prevention, or other ideas that could make the city a better place to live. Organizers...

A former neo-Nazi selected by the Conservatives to fight a council election next year has pulled out after a backlash against his candidacy. Joshua Bonehill-Paine was convicted of racially harassing Jewish former Labour MP Luciana Berger in 2016, while already serving a separate jail sentence for sharing antisemitic posts. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch had defended the decision to select him as a candidate for the new Somerset Council seat of Crewkerne South, saying he had been rehabilitated and her party "believes in second chances". But Bonehill-Paine said he had now withdrawn his candidacy, and had been offered a position as...

Left-wing commentator Hasan Piker blasted critics of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul el Sayed, accusing them of Islamophobia and urging the party to unite behind the victorious Michigan candidate. “Like everyone being like ‘Abdul has a f*** ton of work to do mending bridges.’ Here’s the f***ing take nuke for you, okay? You are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of s***, okay? You literally called the dude a f***ing terrorist for months on end, and, like, called him a sexist, misogynist, terrorist, bad candidate, fake doctor, when he has, like, two f***ing degrees,” Piker said during his live stream on Twitch...

The governments of Japan and the United States agreed in 2012 to move more than 9,000 of the nearly 19,000 Marines stationed in Okinawa more than 2,200 miles east to Guam, a U.S. territory.2 This process—finally begun in 2024—amounts to a withdrawal of forces from territory the United States has pledged to defend, and a de facto retreat from the most pernicious threat: the People’s Republic of China.National defense strategies from multiple administrations and both major U.S. political parties agree: China is the greatest threat to the United States and its interests.3 Few issues generate as much robust bipartisan support...

Trump’s campaign of repression echoes the red scare. But now the government has bigger ambitions and more powerful tools There are many parallels between the first McCarthy era, roughly 1946 to 1956, and Trump’s campaign of political repression, his own updated McCarthyism. Both regimes crafted a monster of quasi-facts and innuendo and fed it with fear: an enemy within, well-organized and financed, secretive and violent, allied with evil foreigners and bent on overthrowing capitalism, democracy and Christian morality. Both used flagrantly unconstitutional means to cleanse the nation of the spectral menace. Each time, federal employees were targeted first. President Harry...

President Donald Trump appears to have a strategy: threaten irreparable damage to Iran's civilian infrastructure then hit pause and hope the other side decides to come to the table and revive negotiations. By ABC News' count, he's tried it no less than seven times. So far it hasn't worked. In what's becoming a familiar pattern, Trump wrote on his social media platform late Saturday night that at the request of Iran and other Middle Eastern countries he'd decided not to carry out his what White House officials said would be a devastating strike targeting Iran's energy infrastructure. But, he warned,...

McRae spoke to ‘Variety’ about her political beliefs after her collaboration with Morgan Wallen and rumored romance with Jack Hughes fueled speculationJack Irvin has worked at PEOPLE since 2022. He covers and edits daily music news, and he's interviewed both up-and-coming and established artists including Dolly Parton, Michelle Branch, Ashanti, Cyndi Lauper, Normani, Carly Rae Jepsen and Coco Jones. Tate McRae is addressing questions about her political beliefs. In a new Variety cover story interview, the Canadian pop star, 23, responded to claims she’s a MAGA supporter after her “What I Want” collaboration with Morgan Wallen and rumored romance with...

Federal and state officials are racing to address an assault on the nation’s water supply that they believe is the work of Iranian hackers.In 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration proposed creating stronger cybersecurity guidelines to better safeguard the nation’s water supply from hackers.The steps were modest, but necessary, officials said at the time: Many municipalities lacked even basic protections, and the computers that monitor and adjust water quality, including chemical-treatment levels, were easy-to-find targets for a would-be intruder.The E.P.A. rescinded the order, however, after Republican-led states and industry groups sued to block its enforcement. They argued...

Flock cameras are in thousands of communities across the country and often hide in plain sight. A Flock camera is an automated license plate reader, or ALPR, made by the public-safety technology company Flock Safety. The cameras are commonly installed along roads, at intersections, near neighborhood entrances, and around businesses or other private properties.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told President Trump that his interior secretary, Doug Burgum, had misled him with a self-serving cover story for his own mistakes. ================================================================= Jeanine Pirro had had it up to here with Doug Burgum. The famously voluble U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia strode into the Oval Office late Monday with her future on the line and the interior secretary, whom she privately called an incompetent liar, in her cross hairs. A few hours earlier — in front of the cameras, from the Resolute Desk — President Trump had accused...

The White House on Wednesday released declassified information saying the FBI opened an investigation into whether President Trump was acting as an asset for Russia when he fired FBI Director James Comey, a theory an administration official said was not backed up by evidence. The official said the investigation, known as Oxferd Comma, was a subcomponent of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI probe into potential collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government — an investigation that has long drawn Mr. Trump's ire. The predicate of Oxferd Comma was the newly elected president's decision to fire Comey in 2017....

The endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, likely assisted far-left Democratic candidate William Lawrence in his Tuesday night primary win in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. The progressive will now face Republican incumbent Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, in November’s general election. The activist community organizer from Lansing’s leftist credentials were burnished by campaign appearances last month with fellow progressives Abdul El-Sayed, who was in a tight race for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat against Rep. Haley Stevens, and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Lawrence, a member of the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, defeated Democratic opponents Matt Maasdam, a...

Explanation: Don’t get spooked by Saturn’s ghostly spokes! Today we feature a nearly two-hour timelapse of Saturn and its rings looping forwards and backwards. A day on Saturn is only 10 hours long, so two hours of observation covers quite a bit of its rotation. If you look closely, a ghoulish shadow appears and disappears as Saturn’s B ring rotates. Decades of observation with Voyager 2, Cassini, and Hubble show the appearance of Saturn’s spokes varies with the planet’s seasons. Like Earth, Saturn’s spin axis is tilted compared to the plane of its orbit around the Sun. During Saturn’s equinox,...

MIKE ROGERS FOR U.S. SENATE ROGERS ON MICHIGAN DEMOCRAT NOMINEE FOR U.S. SENATE "The choice this November is simple: common sense or complete insanity. For more than 25 years, one party has controlled Michigan's two Senate seats — and they've run our state into the ground. They've driven 200,000 manufacturing jobs out of Michigan. They've dropped our schools to 45th in the nation. They've saddled families with the highest utility rates in the Midwest. Working people are paying more, earning less, and getting left behind. And now the same failed politicians are asking us to send Abdul El-Sayed to Washington....

"The conservatives on here denying the affordability crisis are engaged in what I can only describe as an act of political suicide. They're also lying, which is the worst part. Grocery prices are up. Housing. Energy. Insurance. Health care. Basic living expenses. It's real. It's happening. Denying it just makes you look out of touch, deceitful, and untrustworthy. It's also a completely unnecessary and unforced error. No credible person is claiming that Trump caused these price surges. You don't have to disgrace yourself by denying the reality in front of your face just to prove your loyalty to Trump. The...

A Florida man was arrested after authorities say he stalked a woman he met on a dating app and stole a teddy bear containing the woman’s son’s ashes. According to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were dispatched on Aug. 1 to help Flagler Beach Police Department officers with an investigation into a suspect, identified as Justin Fountain, after a woman went to Flagler Beach police and said Fountain had “become increasingly controlling and aggressive.” “According to the victim, Fountain tracked her location, following her around Flagler County, and stole her child’s ashes from her despite her asking to stop...

Alyza Lewin, president of U.S. affairs at the Combat Antisemitism Movement, stated that El-Sayed’s victory “should raise alarm bells for Jewish Americans across the country and everyone who believes in civil rights for all.” Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, stated on Wednesday that Democrats had nominated El-Sayed. “Abdul El-Sayed is a direct threat to Michigan’s Jewish community,” Brooks said. “El-Sayed has called the government of the Jewish state as ‘evil’ as Hamas, ‘struggled’ to say that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state and empathized with a terrorist who tried to murder Jewish schoolchildren...