Free Republic

President Biden has opened up a 6 point lead in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up with former President Trump, new polling shows, amid signs of a growing gender gap in support for the two party front-runners. A new Quinnipiac University national poll found Biden with 50 percent support among registered voters, ahead of Trump’s 44 percent. That’s a shift in the incumbent’s favor from December, when Quinnipiac found the same Biden-Trump hypothetical “too close to call,” with Biden at 47 percent support and Trump at 46 percent. Biden also scored majority support among independents in the latest findings, with 52 percent...

Internal turmoil is roiling the Michigan GOP as it looks to retake a key 2024 battleground that’s shown signs of moving away from President Biden. A Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of polls out of the Great Lakes State shows former President Trump several points ahead of Biden after the Democrat flipped Michigan blue in the 2020 election. Concerns are also growing that the state’s sizable Arab American population won’t turn out for Biden amid anger over the war in Gaza. But the Michigan GOP is facing its own setbacks. Republicans there voted this month to oust the controversial Kristina...

Election officials in Virginia’s Prince William County have acknowledged roughly 4,000 votes were misreported in former President Trump’s favor during the 2020 presidential election, when President Joe Biden went on to win the state. A release from the county’s Office of Elections announced Trump incorrectly received 2,327 extra votes, while Biden was shorted 1,648 votes.

President Biden tops former President Trump by 5 points among registered voters in a 2024 hypothetical matchup, new polling shows.Asked who they’d back if Trump and Biden were their respective party’s nominees, 45 percent of registered voters said they’d cast their ballots for Biden, while 40 said the same for Trump, according to the survey from The Economist-YouGov. Seven percent said “other,” 4 percent weren’t sure and another 3 percent said they would not vote. The new results show Biden’s lead widened since last month, when the pollsters found him and Trump at 43 and 40 percent, respectively.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that “uncertainty” over whether the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance will offer admission to Ukraine motivates Russia to continue “terror” in its war on Kyiv. “It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance,” Zelensky said. “This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror.”

Ukrainian troops are refining their tactics and undertaking “major offensive operations” in Kyiv’s counteroffensive against Moscow, according to a new intelligence update from the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense. “In recent days, Ukrainian forces have re-set and have again been undertaking major offensive operations on three main axes in southern and eastern Ukraine,” the British officials said in their assessment of the conflict.

GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie suggested Tuesday that former President Trump should have “skipped a couple of rounds of golf” to go through boxes containing classified materials after Trump said he did not have time to do so in response to a subpoena. “He said the reason he didn’t give the documents back was because he just so very busy, and he didn’t have time to respond to a grand jury subpoena because he needed to get his golf shirts and pants out of the box,” Christie said on “CBS Mornings.” “I mean, does anybody in America believe this?”

The police who responded to a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last May held off on confronting the shooter inside the classroom out of concern over the AR-15 rifle he used, according to a report. A new investigation from the Texas Tribune found that officers decided that “immediately confronting the gunman” and the assault-style weapon “would be too dangerous,” although some of the officers on-scene were equipped with the same rifle.

Former national security adviser John Bolton on Monday knocked Germany over its “incredibly disappointing” performance throughout Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “I think Germany’s performance throughout this war has been incredibly disappointing,” Bolton said in an appearance on CNN’s “This Morning.” INTERNATIONAL Bolton knocks Germany over ‘incredibly disappointing’ performance throughout invasion of Ukraine BY JULIA MUELLER - 01/23/23 9:53 AM ET SHARE TWEET Former national security adviser John Bolton on Monday knocked Germany over its “incredibly disappointing” performance throughout Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “I think Germany’s performance throughout this war has been incredibly disappointing,” Bolton said in an appearance on CNN’s...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has overtaken former President Trump in a hypothetical 2024 match-up for the GOP presidential nomination, according to a new Yahoo News-YouGov poll. The nationwide poll, released Thursday, shows DeSantis with a 5-point lead over Trump, with 47 percent of registered voters backing the governor compared to 42 percent for the former president. The latest results, taken in the first few days of December, are a stark turn from a mid-October poll that found Trump ahead by 9 percentage points, with 45 percent to DeSantis’s 36 percent. Trump announced his third run for the White House...

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) is coming down strongly on the side of those who think President Biden should run for a second White House term in 2024. “He was not my first or second choice for president, but I am a convert. I never thought I would say this, but I believe he should run for another term and finish this agenda we laid out,” Jayapal told Politico in an interview published Monday.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday said the GOP needs a leader who doesn’t claim “victimhood” in an apparent jab at former President Trump, who repeatedly referred to himself as a “victim” during his Tuesday night speech announcing his run for president in 2024. “We need more seriousness, less noise, and leaders who are looking forward, not staring in the rearview mirror claiming victimhood,” Pompeo wrote on Twitter. Though Pompeo didn’t mention the former president by name, but his comments came hours after Trump’s speech. “I’m a victim, I will tell you. I’m a victim,” Trump at his...

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) is leading Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams by 7 points in the state’s gubernatorial race, according to a new poll by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and UGA. The poll, published on Monday, found Kemp ahead with 51 percent of likely Georgia voters saying they’d vote for the Republican if the race were held today — while 44 percent said they’d cast their ballot for Abrams. The Journal-Constitution report notes that Kemp’s 7-point lead is narrower than the 10-point lead he enjoyed in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Georgia News Collaborative poll released earlier this month. Another 2 percent...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Thursday slammed Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) for his treatment of a witness during a House Oversight Committee hearing. Higgins had a contentious exchange during the hearing with clean energy advocate Raya Salter, who he at various points referred to as “young lady” and “boo.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday said the midterm election fight should be focused on cost of living rather than the global problem of inflation. “When I hear people talk about inflation… we have to change that subject. Inflation is a global phenomenon,” Pelosi said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan. “The EU, the European Union, the UK, the British, have higher inflation rate than we do here… The fight is not about inflation. It’s about the cost of living.”

Most Americans think former President Trump should testify before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, new polling shows. A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday found that six in 10 Americans think Trump should comply with the committee’s recent subpoena calling him to appear before the panel. At its ninth public hearing last week, the Jan. 6 committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump as it prepares to issue its final report before the end of the year. Eighty-nine percent of Democrats and 61 percent of independents polled think Trump should have to testify, while...

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Sunday said former President Trump kept classified documents “as a trophy” in regards to an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago where authorities seized troves of White House materials with various classified markings. “He wanted to keep these documents as a trophy. That’s what they were, more than anything,” Christie, and ABC News contributor and former Trump adviser, said on “This Week,” referring to over 100 classified documents and dozens of empty folders labeled classified found at Trump’s property.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Wednesday criticized her party for what she sees as a growing sector of the GOP that supports Russian President Vladimir Putin as he wages his attacks on Ukraine. “You know, the Republican Party is the party of Reagan, the party that essentially won the Cold War. And you look now at what I think is really a growing Putin wing of the Republican Party,” Cheney said at a McCain Institute event at Arizona State University. The outgoing congresswoman, who lost her reelection bid in Wyoming to her Trump-backed Republican challenger, knocked Fox News for “running...

Sen. Marco Rubio (R) holds a 4-point lead over Rep. Val Demings (D) in the race for Florida’s Senate seat, new polling shows. A USA Today-Suffolk University poll released Wednesday found Rubio ahead with 45 percent to Demings’s 41 percent. The results fall just inside the poll’s 4.4 percentage point margin of error.

New footage shows a forensics team working for allies of former President Trump spent hours handling voting equipment in a Georgia county elections office on Jan. 7, 2021, two months after the 2020 presidential election and the day after riots at the U.S. Capitol over the results. According to reports from The Washington Post and The New York Times, the videos show the Trump contractors copying data from voting machines in rural Coffee County, Georgia, as they handled poll pads with sensitive voter data.