Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — With Congress deadlocked over how to address racism and excessive use of force, President Joe Biden plans to sign an executive order on policing Wednesday, the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death, according to three people familiar with the matter. The decision reflects Biden’s struggle to use the limited powers of his office to advance his campaign promises, as well as his attempt to strike a balance between police and civil rights groups at a time when rising concerns about crime are eclipsing calls for reform. The order would require federal law enforcement to review and revise...

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - For thousands of migrants who have waited for months in northern Mexico, Monday was supposed to mark the moment when the U.S. government finally dropped a pandemic-era policy that has largely prevented them from seeking asylum in the United States. Instead, May 23 marked the latest setback for many migrants, after a federal judge in Louisiana blocked U.S. authorities from lifting the sweeping policy, known as Title 42, which since March 2020 has empowered U.S. agents to quickly turn back over a million migrants to Mexico and other countries. “First they said they were going to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nina Jankowicz, like so many millennials, was excited to share a social media post announcing her new job on Twitter late last month when she was named executive director for a new disinformation board established by the Department of Homeland Security. But instead of well-wishes, Jankowicz’s tweet set off a torrent of sexist profanities across social media and menacing emails filled with rape or death threats that continue to follow her even after she resigned from that new job on Wednesday morning following the disastrous rollout of the program. It’s a familiar scenario. A crush of online...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Joe Biden embarks for Asia on Thursday, he’s facing a new risk at home for the economy and his Democratic Party: a global slowdown caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic shutting down Chinese cities and factories. The world economy can’t cast U.S. ballots. But it’s a hidden force in this year’s midterm elections and could influence whether Democrats retain control of the House and Senate. It’s an additional challenge that highlights the steep climb for Biden, whose approval ratings have plunged as prices for everyday goods in the U.S. have soared. Several...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats unveiled a $28 million emergency spending bill Tuesday to address the shortage of infant formula in the United States. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said the money would increase Food and Drug Administration staffing to boost inspections of domestic and international suppliers, prevent fraudulent products from getting onto store shelves and acquire better data on the marketplace. The shortage stems from a February recall by Abbott Nutrition that exacerbated ongoing supply chain disruptions among formula makers, leaving fewer options on stores shelves across much of the country. DeLauro has...

NEW YORK (AP) — Several mainstream Republican Senate candidates are drawing on the “great replacement” conspiracy theory once confined to the far-right fringes of U.S. politics to court voters this campaign season, promoting the baseless notion that there is a plot to diminish the influence of white people in America. In some cases, the comments have gone largely overlooked given the hard-line immigration rhetoric that has become commonplace among conservatives during the Trump era. But a weekend mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, that may have been inspired by the racist theory is drawing new attention to the GOP’s growing...

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Joe Biden talks about his decision to run against President Donald Trump in 2020, the story always starts with Charlottesville. He says it was the men with torches shouting bigoted slogans that drove him to join what he calls the “battle for the soul of America.” Now Biden is facing the latest deadly manifestation of hatred after a white supremacist targeted Black people with an assault rifle at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and left 10 people dead, the most lethal racist attack since he took office. The president and first lady Jill Biden are...

Tanisha Boston has been feeling the effects of inflation, from the gas pump to the grocery store, for months. So in April, the 31-year-old Los Angeles resident shared her frustrations on social media, writing, “Please check on your LA friends, we are NOT okay!” under a photo of herself in front of a gas station charging $7 per gallon. And like most economic downturns, including the Great Recession and the pandemic, Black communities are disproportionately impacted. This means that Black households are now spending more of their post-tax income on necessities. Amid this financial crunch, activists and community leaders are...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s list of impossible tasks keeps getting longer. Despite lofty promises he’s made, from the campaign trail through his first year in office, he has limited power to safeguard voting rights or expand the fight against climate change on his own. And now it’s become clear that Biden has no good options for preserving abortion access as the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. It’s a disorienting and discouraging state of affairs for Democrats, who control both Congress and the White House for the first time in more than a decade. Perhaps...

The AP Style Guide recently made an update to its inclusive language protocols, adding the phrase "pregnant people" to cover trans or nonbinary people who can get pregnant but don’t identify as women. On Wednesday, Associated Press reporter Kimberlee Kruesi – who announces her pronouns in her Twitter bio – alerted Twitter to the new guidance. She tweeted, "New AP style guidance alert" and shared a screenshot of the update. The entry also included instructions on usage for the phrase "people who seek an abortion." It stated, "Phrasing like pregnant people or people who seek an abortion seeks to include...

A new poll found that some voters who didn't attend college also want student loan forgiveness. The Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) and Data for Progress released a poll Thursday, that asked 1,110 likely voters between April 30 and May 3 about "what actions the federal government should take on student loan debt?" Twenty-three percent of respondents who didn't go to college said the federal government should eliminate all student loan debt for every borrower. Meanwhile, 34 percent said that "some" debt should be eliminated for every borrower, and 34 percent said that any student loan debt shouldn't be eliminated...

On social media, Richard Whitehead is a warrior for the American right. He has praised extremist groups. He has called for public executions of government officials he sees as disloyal to former President Donald Trump. In a post in 2020, he urged law enforcement officers to disobey COVID-19 public-health orders from “tyrannical governors,” adding: “We are on the brink of civil war.” Whitehead also has a day job. He trains police officers around the United States. Whitehead is part of a trend in pushing a radical-right political agenda to American police forces. He’s one of five police trainers identified by...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden plans to highlight deficit reduction in remarks Wednesday at the White House, noting that the government will pay down the national debt this quarter for the first time in six years. The Democratic president has placed renewed emphasis on deficit reduction … the burst of $1.9 trillion in coronavirus relief approved in 2021 has already paid off in the form of faster growth that now makes it easier to stabilize government finances. It is unclear if greater fiscal responsibility can deliver politically for Biden as Democrats try to defend control of Congress. His two...

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — If you are Black or Hispanic in a conservative state that already limits access to abortions, you are far more likely than a white woman to have one. And if the U.S. Supreme court allows states to further restrict or even ban abortions, minority women will bear the brunt of it, according to statistics analyzed by The Associated Press. The potential impact on minority women became all the more clear on Monday with the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion suggesting the court’s conservative majority is poised to overturn the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion....

ATLANTA (AP) — Add one more group of contests to the white-hot races for Congress and governor that will dominate this year’s midterm elections: secretaries of state. Former President Donald Trump’s attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election and his subsequent endorsements of candidates for state election offices who are sympathetic to his view have elevated those races to top-tier status. At stake, say Democrats and others concerned about fair elections, is nothing less than American democracy. “If they win the general election, we’ve got real problems on our hands,” said former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman,...

Our ruling: Biden said, "For four years, I was a full professor at the University of Pennsylvania." Biden served as a "professor of the practice" at the University of Pennsylvania. However, the duration of his position was closer to two years, since he was on unpaid leave while running for president. His duties of his particular professorship did not include the same degree of teaching, research, and administrative responsibilities that some would associate with someone holding a position as "full professor." We rate the statement Half True.

RINGGOLD, Ga. (AP) — As he met with voters recently in a part of northwest Georgia where Donald Trump is still very popular, David Perdue invoked his belief in the lie that elections in 2020 and 2021 were stolen from the former president and himself. “First of all, it was stolen,” Perdue said. “The facts are coming out.” When the rally was over, Perdue visited the storefront office of a group that similarly espouses election falsehoods. Perdue posted a photo on his Facebook page of himself beaming as the group’s cofounder talks under a banner proclaiming “a legal vote requires...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Intelligence officials had gathered to brief select members of Congress on future threats to U.S. elections when a key lawmaker in the room, No. 3 House Republican Elise Stefanik of New York, tried to move the discussion to a new topic: Hunter Biden’s laptop. Stefanik, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, asked the officials during the April 1 briefing whether they had any evidence of Russian involvement in the release of Biden’s laptop to the news media in the fall of 2020 — a possibility floated by high-ranking former government officials in the weeks before the...

SEATTLE (AP) — With a backdrop of flowering trees, it was a setting fit for the signing of major environmental legislation. Even Seattle’s notorious clouds parted as President Joe Biden stepped up to speak Friday. But when he sat down at a small desk with the presidential seal that had been set up for the occasion, there was no new law to sign, just an executive order directing federal officials to keep better track of trees in national forests. The gap between the scale of the global warming crisis and the president’s initiatives seemed wider than ever on Earth Day....

A group of President Donald Trump’s allies and associates spent months trying to overturn the 2020 election based on his lie that he was the true winner. Now, some of the same confidants who tried and failed to invalidate the results based on a set of bogus legal theories are pushing an even wilder sequel: that by “decertifying” the 2020 vote in key states, the outcome can still be reversed. In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, as well as on right-wing news outlets, allies of Trump — including lawyer John Eastman — are pressing for states to pass resolutions...