Free Republic

After years of claiming that American elections are rife with fraud, conservative election activists are preparing a new tool to take matters into their own hands. Activists are currently testing a computer program called EagleAI NETwork, a database loaded with voter rolls and other records that promises to quickly churn through the data and find registrations that may be suspect based on other sources. The activists then personally evaluate the flagged voter registrations one by one — looking up home addresses on Google Maps, searching for obituaries online — and prepare lists of questionable registrations to report to local officials....

The police chief whose “Gestapo”-style raid on a small town newspaper has become the focus of national outrage was being investigated by its reporters over claims of alleged sexual misconduct. Gideon Cody and every officer in the Marion Police Department stormed into the Marion County Record’s offices Friday with a search warrant where they seized computers and servers. They also raided the home of the editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, and his 98-year-old mother Joan Meyer, the paper’s co-owner. She died the following day of “shock and grief,” Meyer said, stressed and unable to sleep when police seized her computer...

<p>OPEKA — Marion County police on Saturday defended their unprecedented raid on a newspaper office and the publisher’s home by pointing to a loophole in federal law that protects journalists from searches and seizures.</p><p>Law enforcement raided the Marion County Record on Friday, seizing computers and reporters’ personal cellphones as part of an investigation into alleged identity theft of a restaurant operator who feuded with the newspaper. Officers also raided the home of publisher Eric Meyer, who lived with his 98-year-old mother, Joan.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is setting out Monday on a Western swing aimed at showcasing his work on conservation, clean energy and veterans’ benefits as he seeks to draw an implicit contrast between his administration’s accomplishments and former President Donald Trump’s legal troubles. Biden’s first stop will be the Grand Canyon, where he’s expected to announce plans for a new national monument to preserve more than 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) and limit uranium mining. After Arizona, he will travel to New Mexico and Utah. The Democratic president will be in Albuquerque on Wednesday and will talk about...

An ABC News reporter who bragged about ‘debunking’ evidence of an elite pedophile ring had pleaded guilty to a sickening array of child sex crimes, according to reports. James Gordon Meek, 53, who served as a national security journalist at ABC, is scheduled to appear in a Virginia federal court on Friday following his January 2023 indictment on child rape charges. He faces up to 20 years behind bars. The disturbing crimes were exposed after the FBI conducted a raid on the journalist’s Arlington home in April 2022. FBI officials were alerted by Dropbox in March 2021 of ‘sickening child...

CNN - GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa on Thursday released an internal FBI document containing unverified allegations President Joe Biden was involved in an illegal foreign bribery scheme. The FBI had previously allowed members of the House Oversight Committee to privately view – but not obtain – the unclassified FBI document, known as an FD-1023. The 1023 form memorializes claims from an FBI informant, but it doesn’t provide proof that the allegations are true. Republicans, though, have seized on the unverified material as part of their broader investigation into the Bidens. The FBI document says an informant described a...

Senator Chuck Grassley on Thursday released the FBI report that Republicans claim proves the Bidens accepted bribes from Ukraine. But there’s just one problem: there’s still no evidence. House Republicans have accused the Biden family of corruption for months but have been unable to provide any actual evidence linking President Joe Biden or his son Hunter to any wrongdoing. The GOP has repeatedly insisted that the just-released FBI document, which House members were initially allowed to see in June, proves the two men accepted bribes. But this is an unverified form, and it relies on a Rudy Giuliani conspiracy theory....

CLAIM: A video shows a “World Economic Forum agent” calling for a cashless society and saying those determined “less desirable” will be locked out. AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The video shows Eswar Prasad, an economics professor from Cornell University, speaking at a June WEF event, but Prasad does not work for or represent the organization. The video misrepresents remarks Prasad made at the event about the benefits and the dangers of central bank digital currencies. During the WEF session, Prasad was asked about the risks that come with a CBDC, and the pros and cons for governments thinking about a CBDC....

Of all the distortions and paranoia that Tucker Carlson promoted on his since-canceled Fox News program, one looms large: a conspiracy theory that an Arizona man working as a covert government agent incited the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol to sabotage and discredit former President Donald Trump and his political movement. What’s known about the man — a two-time Trump voter named Ray Epps — is that he took part in demonstrations in Washington that day and the night before. He was captured on camera urging a crowd to march with him and enter the Capitol. But at...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is heading to South Carolina on Thursday to make the case that economic measures he pushed through Congress despite stiff Republican opposition are helping to keep the deep red state — and others that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 — humming. Ahead of Biden’s visit to a state that he lost by nearly 12 percentage points in 2020, White House officials argued that if Republicans had their way, South Carolina, like many other Republican-controlled states, would have lost out on billions of dollars in investments and thousands of jobs. Biden will use his...

Less than 24 hours after Monday’s mass shooting in Philadelphia, in which a gunman dressed in a ski mask and body armor killed five people and injured two children, right-wing pockets of social media were exploding with speculation about the suspect’s gender identity. While he acknowledged the social media images that appear to show Carriker wearing women’s clothing and jewelry, Asa Khalif, a member of the LGBTQ advisory committee for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, condemned the “violent” language coming from the “conservative press” about Carriker’s gender identity and shared what the district attorney’s office knows firsthand about Carriker’s gender...

WASHINGTON — An intensive drive by right-wing Republicans in Congress to vilify the FBI with charges of political bias has imperiled a program allowing spy agencies to conduct warrantless surveillance on foreign targets, sapping support for a premier intelligence tool and amplifying demands for stricter limits. The once-secret program — created after the 9/11 attacks and described by intelligence officials as crucial to stopping overseas hackers, spy services and terrorists — has long faced resistance by Democrats concerned that it could trample on Americans’ civil liberties. But the law authorizing it is set to expire in December, and opposition among...

After the Supreme Court reversed President Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan, critics of the decision are pointing to other recent examples of the government forgiving debt —many with far larger amounts of money than at stake than in the student loan plan. In particular, the Paycheck Protection Program has so far forgiven $757 billion in loans to private businesses, according to government databases — nearly double what the Biden administration's student-loan forgiveness would have cost. Mr. Biden made that comparison in a press conference on Friday afternoon, pointing out that many members of Congress received PPP loans that were forgiven. "I...

PARIS, June 25 (Reuters) - France’s flagship Sunday newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD), was not published this Sunday after its staff went on strike to protest against the nomination of a new editor-in-chief who worked for a far-right magazine. The newspaper’s owner, French media group Lagardere on Friday named Geoffroy Lejeune as JDD's new editor-in-chief, succeeding Jerome Begle who left for Paris Match. Lejeune is the former head of magazine Valeurs Actuelles, which has courted controversy with anti-immigrant covers and was fined for racist insult in 2022. The company already owns news channel CNews, which has taken a conservative...

In a speech marking the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday condemned the conservative justices for creating a "health care crisis in America." “How dare they,” Harris, the first female vice president, said to a crowd gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina. She also criticized abortion bans that have been passed in several Republican-led states since the reversal of Roe. The politicians creating these laws “don’t even understand how a woman’s body actually works," Harris said, as she vowed that the Biden administration will continue to fight for a woman's right...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — La comunidad de Sacramento y líderes religiosos se reunieron el martes por la mañana para hablar en apoyo de los 36 migrantes que llegaron a la ciudad. Según las autoridades, fueron trasladados a la ciudad en dos vuelos bajo circunstancias engañosas. La primera ronda de migrantes llego el viernes con 16 personas a bordo, el lunes otros 20 más. Los migrantes fueron abordaron fuera de un centro de migrantes en El Paso, Texas, y se les dijo serían reubicados a un lugar que les brindaría refugio, vivienda y oportunidades laborales, según Cecilia Flores de Sacramento Act, la...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden promised voters in 2020 that he knew how to get things done in Washington and could bring stability to the capital. It seemed like a message out of step with the more combative era brought on by Donald Trump. But Biden prevailed, and as he seeks a second term, he’s again trying to frame the race as a referendum on competence and governance, pointing to the bipartisan debt limit and budget legislation he signed on Saturday as another exemplar of the success of his approach. His approach, favoring pragmatism over Trumpian pugilism, will be...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — More than 70 California law enforcement agencies are violating state law by sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with out-of-state agencies, putting out-of-state abortion seekers at risk, according to a trio of civil rights groups. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union chapters for both Northern and Southern California sent letters to 71 agencies — including the Folsom Police Department — giving them a June 15 deadline to stop sharing license plate data with states that criminalize abortion. On Friday, the Twitter account for Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, which was not listed in...

The day before a key meeting last year between a lawyer for former President Donald Trump and officials seeking the return of classified documents in Trump’s possession, a maintenance worker at the former president’s private club saw an aide moving boxes into a storage room, according to a person familiar with the matter. The maintenance worker offered to help the aide — Walt Nauta, who was Trump’s valet in the White House — move the boxes and ended up lending him a hand. But the worker had no idea what was inside the boxes, the person familiar with the matter...

Former President Donald Trump's staff moved boxes the day before a June 2022 visit to his Mar-a-Lago residence by the FBI and a federal prosecutor, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News. Trump's team was aware of the scheduled June 2022 visit, and held a so-called dress rehearsal for the visit ahead of time, the source told CBS News. The Washington Post first reported the movement of the documents. It's unclear exactly what the boxes contained.