Free Republic

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come a long way since 2018. When she first arrived on the political scene by beating out not just an incumbent, but a member of her party’s leadership in a Democratic primary contest, she was a rebel — an avatar of insurgent impulses within her coalition. And, among Republicans, something of a joke. Now, she’s the Democratic Party’s most popular elected official. A Yale University poll released this week found that among Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez boasts the single highest net favorability rating of all the party’s many potential 2028 presidential candidates — a sky-high 62%. In addition, 41%...

Vice President JD Vance criticized the judgment of his boss, President Donald Trump, in a leaked group chat in which Vance and several other senior Trump administration officials discussed the possibility of American military strikes against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen. On Monday, The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he had accidentally been added to a Signal group chat in which the Principals Committee – the heads of the top American national security agencies — debated how and whether to strike the Houthis earlier this month. At one point, after National Security Advisor Mike Waltz informed the group that they...

Former Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) called Elon Musk a “thief” and a “Nazi” during a fiery CNN segment Thursday night. After Joe Borelli, the ex-Republican leader on the New York City Council, argued that much of the discontent at Republican congressmen’s town hall events were protests organized by Democrats, Bowman interrupted to insist that “that’s not true.” “That’s not true. And this shows, again, the American people do not trust Elon Musk,” began Bowman. “And Elon Musk is incompetent in his position. And how do we know? Because they fired tens of thousands of people, it was challenged in...

President-elect Donald Trump fawned over Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) after a recent meeting between the two, calling him a “fascinating man” who he “couldn’t be more impressed” by. CBS News reported late last week that Fetterman was set to become the first Democratic senator to meet Trump since his triumph in November’s presidential election. “I think that one, he’s the president, or he will be officially…and I think it’s pretty reasonable that if the president would like to have a conversation — or invite someone to have a conversation — to have it. And no one is my gatekeeper,” said...

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson fawned over Darryl Cooper, whom he described as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” during a recent interview in which Cooper identified Winston Churchill as the “chief villain” of World War Two and appeared to argue that the Holocaust was an accident. Cooper’s claims followed Carlson’s profession to be “highly distressed by the uses to which the myths about World War Two have been put in the context of modern foreign policy — particularly the war in Ukraine.” “You know, Churchill’s the good guy, Neville Chamberlain’s the bad guy....

A new round of polls from Morning Consult and Bloomberg News suggests that Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is beating or tied with former President Donald Trump in every major swing state. According to the survey of 4,962 registered voters conducted between August 23 and 27, Harris leads by 2 points in Georgia and North Carolina, 3 points in Michigan, 4 points in Nevada and Pennsylvania, a whopping 8 points in Wisconsin, and tied with Trump in Arizona.

“We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong but when they are weak,” declared Ronald Reagan at the 1980 Republican National Convention. “It is then that tyrants are tempted,” he added, summing up his conviction that peace could only be secured through strength. Until Donald Trump followed in Reagan’s footsteps as the GOP’s standard-bearer, this formulation was axiomatic on the American right. But Trump’s careless rhetoric — which often flirted with isolationism and flattered America’s sworn enemies in Moscow and Pyongyang — emboldened the Republican Party’s isolationist wing. In an op-ed endorsing...

Only two questions mattered going into Wednesday night’s GOP primary debate. Number one: Would any one viable candidate stand out among the crowd? Number two: If the answer to the first was “Yes,” would our champion distinguish themselves by acting as the absent Donald Trump’s proxy or by setting up a favorable contrast with the frontrunner? Trump’s decision to sit out the first forum of the 2024 primary season has been cast as a cautious, cowardly decision. It was undoubtedly the latter, but despite the illusion of political safety, the choice also came with considerable risks. If another candidate was...

Longshot presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has accused his prospective Republican rivals of parroting him, but Ramaswamy himself has made an intentional effort to conceal his own biography, even paying a Wikipedia editor to remove potentially politically damaging details about his past from his page.

Last week Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) voiced the commonly held belief that the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the country was wrongly decided — yet popular Twitter personalities twisted his words to tell a more sinister story. Yet that is an oversimplification of the senator’s comments on the subject on his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1548340766920978434?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1548465411481432065%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2Fnews%2Fprogressives-twist-ted-cruzs-obergefell-criticism-beyond-recognition%2F Cruz, asked what the argument would be for overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, replied that the decision, like Roe v. Wade, “ignored two centuries of our nation’s history.” “Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states,” he...

An old video circulating on social media shows Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warning that even just “close contact” with those already afflicted with AIDS could result in infection. In the context of a conversation about childhood infections, Fauci speculates that “if the close contact of a child is a household contact, perhaps there will be a certain number of cases of individuals who are just living with and in close contact with someone with AIDS, or at risk of AIDS ----SNIP--- The clip was posted in response to Chasten Buttigieg, the...

An Australian reporter covering President Biden’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday was “startled” by how aggressively the press pool was treated by the White House communications team. The designated pooler, France24’s Washington correspondent Kethevane Gorjestani, reported that she “was asked by a very startled Australian reporter whether WH wranglers were always so strict about ushering the pool out without questions,” after a press conference held by Biden and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison. Biden and his press team have been criticized for a reclusive, question-averse approach. His first press conference as president did not come until...