Free Republic

Andrea Gibson, a celebrated poet and performance artist who through their verse explored gender identity, politics and their 4-year battle with terminal ovarian cancer, died Monday at age 49. Gibson’s death was announced on social media by their wife, Megan Falley. Gibson and Falley are the main subjects of the documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light,” winner of the Festival Favorite Award this year at the Sundance Film Festival and scheduled to air this fall on Apple TV+.

In two congressional districts and vastly different political environments, two Republicans in the U.S. House were met with far different reactions at public meetings they held late last week. Against the suggestion of their leader, House Speaker Mike Johnson, to refrain from holding public meetings with constituents, second-term Reps. Chuck Edwards and Harriet Hageman went ahead with their evening sessions. In Asheville, North Carolina, chants of opposition greeted Edwards on Thursday as opponents hooted at almost every answer he gave and chanted outside. In Evanston, Wyoming, at the southwestern corner of a sparsely populated and heavily Republican state, it was...

GOLDSBORO, N.C. (AP) — The situation with the poll watcher had gotten so bad that Anne Risku, the election director in North Carolina's Wayne County, had to intervene via speakerphone. “You need to back off!” Risku recalled hollering after the woman wedged herself between a voter and the machine where the voter was trying to cast his ballot at a precinct about 60 miles southeast of Raleigh. Poll watchers have traditionally been an essential element of electoral transparency, the eyes and ears for the two major political parties who help ensure that the actual mechanics of voting are administered fairly...

Democratic candidates have decried North Carolina’s newly reinstated abortion restrictions after a federal judge allowed a state law banning nearly all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy to go into effect. But some North Carolina Democrats say the ruling earlier this month — the latest fallout of the June U.S. Supreme Court decision eliminating federal abortion protections — might be the catalyst their party needed to reinvigorate its political prospects in what was shaping up to be a losing year.