Free Republic

There's just not much President Joe Biden can do about it. There's not much he can do to curb inflation. There's not much he can do to stop migrants from reaching America's southern border. Or to reduce crime, or to make vaccine resisters get shots that would hasten the end of the coronavirus pandemic. There's not much he can do to compel cooperation from defectors within his thin Democratic congressional majorities. There is nothing at all he can do to compel it from Republican adversaries who would rather aggravate than alleviate his burdens. In other words, there's not much Biden...

Gov. Ron DeSantis has governed like an extremist. He’s stoked racial animosity. He’s disregarded the 73,000-plus Floridians who have died from COVID-19. He’s scapegoated LGBTQ youth. He’s forced the state Legislature to cede power to him in the redrawing of congressional districts that likely diminish Black representation. He’s got autocratic tendencies, inflicting revenge on anyone who dares to disagree. DeSantis has not been punished politically — on the contrary, he’s benefited. For all the harm he’s done to the Sunshine State, DeSantis is meeting at least some voters where they are. Some even consider him the most powerful governor in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — With his sweeping domestic agenda on hold and images of horror in Ukraine dominating headlines, President Joe Biden is scrounging for ways to demonstrate that he’s still making progress for Americans at a time when many feel the country is heading in the wrong direction. Six months out from the midterm elections, Biden’s team is betting that smaller, discrete announcements can break through to voters better than talk of transformational plans that are so far only aspirational. Last week, that meant aides positioned big rigs outside the White House so Biden could talk about efforts to get...

WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s no such thing as a purely personal opinion from the Oval Office on policies that matter. Armchair quarterbacking when you’re the president is fraught when you’re the one with the ball. Armies can move on your words; markets can convulse; diplomacy can unravel. That has not stopped President Joe Biden from viscerally weighing in on the Ukraine war. It was Donald Trump who jettisoned the idea of a scripted presidency every way he could, with his multitude of tweets leading the way. Some reflected policy. Some just mirrored what was in his head at the moment....

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Members of California’s first-in-the-nation reparations task force convened in a historic African American church in San Francisco on Wednesday, making their own history as they work to educate the public and develop a restitution proposal for the people harmed by the institution of slavery. The two-day meeting at the Third Baptist Church in the city’s Fillmore district was the first time the nine-member task force gathered in person since its inaugural meeting nearly a year ago. The meeting comes mere weeks after the group voted to limit restitution to descendants of enslaved Black people. Morning attendance...

NEW YORK (AP) — The hiring of non-journalists as contributors to television news organizations isn’t new. Far less common is seeing pushback to such decisions from journalists working there, as has happened recently at CBS and NBC News. Discontent emerged over CBS’ hiring of former Trump administration official Mick Mulvaney as a commentator and discussions about current White House press secretary Jen Psaki working at MSNBC when her time in the Biden administration is through. In both cases, journalists have been quiet publicly about their concerns over the decisions. Because of concern about Psaki — which has raised ethical issues...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Colorado Republicans on Saturday voted to place on their U.S. Senate primary ballot a state representative who attended the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol and is a supporter of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election. The gathering is a key step toward garnering the party’s nomination to face Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet in November. State Rep. Ron Hanks was the lead choice of 3,700 delegates to the state GOP’s assembly, winning 39% of the vote. His only GOP rival in the June 28 Republican Senate...

The problem with Fox “News,” the cable TV channel, isn’t just what it is — it’s also what it isn’t. It is often a purveyor of propaganda and misinformation. What it’s not is a source of “news” — at least not by any normal definition. That’s one of the conclusions I drew from a fascinating new study in which arch-conservative Fox TV viewers were paid to watch CNN for a month. The study was performed by a pair of political scientists: David Broockman, who teaches at UC-Berkeley, and Joshua Kalla, who teaches at Yale. According to Broockman and Kalla, when...

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials predict Russian President Vladimir Putin may use U.S. support for Ukraine as justification for a new campaign to interfere in American politics. Intelligence officials tell The Associated Press that they have yet to find any evidence that Putin has authorized measures like the ones Russia undertook in the last two elections to support former President Donald Trump. Several people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive findings said it remains unclear which candidates Russia might try to promote next. Trump has repeatedly assailed U.S. intelligence officials and claimed that...

Beverly Hills’ only gun shop, Beverly Hills Guns, received an order on April 7 advising the shop that it has 60 days to close. Store owner Russell Stuart told Breitbart News the order came from property management. He recounted that his secretary received an envelope and walked to Stuart with sorrow in her eyes. Stuart opened the envelope and read the order. Beverly Hills Guns has been in existence for two years, at the same address, with zero issues. Stuart explained that the order to shutter the current store means he will have to find a new location, sign a...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tearfully embracing a history-making American moment, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said Friday her confirmation as the first Black woman to the Supreme Court showed the progress of America, declaring, ″We’ve made it — all of us.” Jackson delivered emotional remarks on the sunny White House South Lawn a day after the Senate approved her nomination, saying, it was a moment the entire country could be proud of. “We have come a long way toward perfecting our union,” she said. “In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign charged with lying to the FBI during the Trump-Russia investigation is asking a judge to block from his upcoming trial evidence or testimony related to a dossier of uncorroborated allegations compiled by an-ex British spy. Attorneys for Michael Sussmann said prosecutors on special counsel John Durham’s team told them last month that they plan to introduce testimony related to the so-called “Steele dossier,” a collection of Democratic-funded research assembled by former British operative Christopher Steele that purported to link Donald Trump to Russia. The dossier contains unproven and discredited assertions...

It’s not the end of the world. It only seems that way. Climate change is going to get worse, but as gloomy as the latest scientific reports are, including today’s from the United Nations, scientist after scientist stresses that curbing global warming is not hopeless. The science says it is not game over for planet Earth or humanity. Action can prevent some of the worst if done soon, they say. After decades of trying to get the public’s attention, spur action by governments and fight against organized movements denying the science, climate researchers say they have a new fight on...

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - Americans living in poorer counties died during the pandemic at almost twice the rate of those in rich counties, a study released Monday by the Poor People's Campaign showed. "The neglect of poor and low-wealth people in this country during a pandemic is immoral, shocking and unjust, especially in light of the trillions of dollars that profit-driven entities received," said William Barber, director of the Poor People's Campaign, an activist group that aims to correct the United States' income inequality.

A Sunday op-ed from the Washington Post editorial board called for a public reckoning over the media's handling over the Hunter Biden laptop story. The editorial is titled "The Hunter Biden story is an opportunity for a reckoning," and discusses what the press should learn from the saga surrounding Hunter Biden's laptop. In particular, the article referenced why news outlets like themselves are now authenticating thousands of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop when the emails were first reported in 2020. While the editorial board insisted that did not prove any corruption on the part of President Biden, this did raise...

Democrats were already staring into a deeply rough midterm election in six months. Then the Biden Administration decided to make a move that could result in huge negative political consequences it isn’t prepared to handle. Indeed, with persistent inflation, rising gas prices, and Democratic voter enthusiasm at a new historic low, the Biden administration may have just decided to spark an immigration crisis at the border. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that in late May, the United States will no longer prevent migrants from seeking asylum along the nation’s southern border out of concerns of...

My phone rang off the hook as soon as the news hit. According to reporting from The Washington Post, internal White House phone records turned over to the House Jan. 6 committee included a gap of seven hours and 37 minutes. A lot can be said in 457 minutes. Comparisons to the 18.5-minute gap in a crucial President Richard Nixon recording were immediately obvious to me. After all, I was the prosecutor who cross-examined Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, about how that gap came to be. And I am not the only one to make that connection. Those similarities —...

Los Angeles leaders have a history of making big pledges on climate change and the environment that are more ambitious than what they actually deliver. But in the race to succeed Eric Garcetti as mayor, candidates are hardly even talking about climate and environmental issues and are instead focusing almost exclusively on housing, homelessness and crime. L.A. needs a mayor that not only talks about climate change and environmental issues but also has clear and ambitious plans for accelerating action to reduce emissions and keep Angelenos safe from the escalating effects of a warming planet. But the climate crisis has...

In just the past month, liberal media networks such as MSNBC and CNN, as well as newspapers like Forbes and The Washington Post, expressed concern that President Biden was not seeing a bump in his poll numbers or receiving credit for his response to Ukraine and his impact on the "roaring" U.S. economy. MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, on multiple occasions, attempted to paint Biden’s handling of the economy in a positive light despite record inflation, sky-high gas prices and poor poll numbers for the president. During a March 1 segment on MSNBC, Todd pointed to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll which...

SALEM, Ore. — Over the past decade, Oregon saw the sixth-highest number of violent domestic extremism incidents in the nation, according to a new report from the secretary of state’s office. Secretary of State Shemia Fagan and the Oregon Audits Division released an advisory report on Wednesday that identifies efforts that Oregon state agencies can undertake to thwart it. There were 11 domestic violent extremism incidents in 2020 in Oregon, according to the report. A majority of the 2020 incidents were associated with the near nightly protests and riots in Portland, including the night a Donald Trump supporter was shot...