Free Republic

A campaign marked by Donald J. Trump’s apocalyptic extremes has turned even darker in its final days.With voting already underway in battleground states, the former president on Friday escalated his threats to prosecute and imprison a wide range of people involved in elections and politics. Hours later, on the hugely popular “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, he said that the “enemy within,” a phrase he has used to describe political opponents, poses a bigger threat to the nation than North Korea.For eight years, Democrats have warned that Mr. Trump’s political ambitions have fueled some of the nation’s deepest divides. But...

It seems a strange twist of American history that the only man to have run against two female nominees in two presidential elections is one with a long and explicit record of denigrating women. From the earliest days of his presidential candidacy in 2015 to a Trump Tower news conference on Friday, Donald J. Trump has repeatedly attempted to attack, embarrass and threaten the women standing in his way — especially on the debate stage.Mr. Trump has, of course, treated men with intense bellicosity, launching a blizzard of interruptions against President Biden during their first debate in 2020 and lobbing...

PHOENIX — What former president Donald Trump seems to think is his best hope to unravel the 2020 election looks a lot like an outsize board game — a game with few apparent rules and no clear endpoint. On a recent day on the floor of a sports arena with a roof shaped like a Pringle, there were four teams of ballot-counters clad in cartoonish colors: banana yellow, Gumby green, Cookie Monster blue, and Elmo red. They were clustered in groups of three around big round tables, each outfitted with a lazy Susan that matched their T-shirts and whirled ballots...

Senator Elizabeth Warren named a new chief of staff on Thursday, changing up her office ahead of a possible presidential run and making it one of only a handful in the Senate to be led by a person of color. **SNIP** Although Reid is not on Warren’s campaign team, her appointment is a sign the senator is taking the diversity of her staff seriously. Earlier this year, Warren faced criticism for releasing the results of a DNA test she took to address President Trump’s taunts that she had lied about her claims of having distant Native American heritage. Some progressives...

Since a federal jury on Friday sentenced the convicted bomber to death, the [Boston Marathon] finish line suddenly seems to be a place of ambivalence. Fresh flowers are accumulating. A sense of sorrow lingers in the air. Sightseers who come to snap a photo feel a little self-conscious. Residents train their gaze on the line, and the conversations turn to death — and disappointment. “I was shocked,” said Scott Larson, 47, a records manager who works near the finish line. “The death penalty — for Boston.” To many, the death sentence almost feels like a blot on the city’s collective...