Free Republic

In 1985, Harold Washington issued an executive order that relaxed federal immigration laws under then-President Ronald Reagan, whose administration “aggressively used [the] detention of Central Americans as a device to deter migration from that region, where violent civil wars had caused tens of thousands to flee,” according to University of California Davis law professor Kevin Davis. Since Aug. 31, 2022, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has bussed or flown to Chicago nearly 40,000 individuals seeking asylum in an effort to use the welcoming aspects of Washington’s executive order as a political cudgel. On April 14, Mayor Johnson called out the...

[I begin] with the story of a series of Socialist scholars conferences that Barack Obama attended when he lived in New York City between the years 1983 and 1985. And when I finally reconstructed what had gone on at these Socialist conferences that Barack Obama attended, I truly was amazed because what I saw was a kind of map of Barack Obama’s entire subsequent political career. It was at this Socialist conferences in New York in the mid-’80s that Barack Obama encountered the groups, the strategies, and the mentors who would guide him throughout his entire political career. [T]hese Socialist...

If for nothing else, Jodi Kantor’s The Obamas will be remembered for an anecdote from 2010. After he spent hours disputing an allegation in the French media that Michelle Obama thought life in the White House was “hell,” press secretary Robert Gibbs encountered senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. She told him the first lady was unhappy with his work. Gibbs exploded in a rage, informing Jarrett that she didn’t “know what the f— you’re talking about” and that if Mrs. Obama was displeased, well, “f— her too.” Subsequent relations between the senior adviser and press secretary were strained. Gibbs told Kantor...

It's true: Black people are protective of President Barack Obama because he is the first African American to serve as the commander in chief of the United States. It's not that hard to figure out why that would be the case. Still, I didn't truly understand the depths of this loyalty until I recently moved to Chicago and the same South Side streets that the president used to walk. Now that I have, I tell you, I get it. Although I was always very aware and critical of people attacking an influential black man's actual manhood and character over policy...

Like any good coach, the president needs to make some halftime adjustments. Here are a few that will work. Legendary football coaches succeed in large part because of their ability to make halftime adjustments when their teams are losing. At the halftime of Obama's first term, our country is down -- and so is my party. As America's head coach, President Obama needs to make some big and smart adjustments to jump-start economic growth and business investment, stimulate job creation, and get wages up for ordinary Americans. The most important thing our leader can do is to push the reset...

Vote of Confidence A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago's electoral landscape—and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama. By Gretchen Reynolds A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago's electoral landscape-and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama. In the final, climactic buildup to November's general election, with George Bush gaining ground on Bill Clinton in Illinois and the once-unstoppable campaign of senatorial candidate Carol Moseley Braun embroiled in allegations about her mother's Medicare liability, one of the most important local stories managed to go virtually unreported: The...

Barack Obama's chief campaign strategist David Axelrod, once worked for a man who was an identified member of the Communist Party USA, a registered agent of the Soviet Union and a paid disseminator of Soviet black propaganda. This man went on to become a key Chicago political fixer who helped elect communist linked politicians including the late Chicago mayor Harold Washington and former US Senator Carol Moseley Braun. This man knew Barack Obama and was a key member of an organisation which endorsed Barack Obama in his 2004 US Senate race. Barack and Michelle Obama were active members of this...