Free Republic

WASHINGTON — A watchdog investigation into former special counsel Jack Smith over his prosecutions of President Trump is based on an “imaginary and unfounded” premise, Smith’s lawyers wrote in a letter obtained by the Associated Press on Tuesday. The letter marks the first response by Smith and his legal team to news that the Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog office, had launched an investigation into whether Smith engaged in improper political activity through his criminal inquiries into Trump. The attorneys told Jamieson Greer, the acting head of the office, that his investigation into Smith was “wholly without merit.”...

The Trump administration’s suspension of grants at UCLA totaling $584 million has imperiled research in an array of subjects. Professors at the university said that some researchers rely on the funding to pay their salaries, and the loss of the money could be devastating. Their medical research focuses on potentially lifesaving breakthroughs in cancer treatment, and developing tools to more easily diagnose debilitating diseases. Their studies in mathematics could make online systems more robust and secure. But as the academic year opens, the work of UCLA’s professors in these and many other fields has been imperiled by the Trump administration’s...

The Trump Administration immigration sweeps that have roiled Southern California have shown no signs of slowing despite lawsuits, a court order and growing signs the aggressive actions are not popular with the public. The operations, which began in early June in the Los Angeles area, largely focused on small-scale targets like car washes, strip malls and Home Depot parking lots before authorities hit their biggest target last week — two farms for one of the largest cannabis companies in California. One worker died after falling from a green house roof during the raid while 361 others were arrested. Responding to...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Around 300 National Guard troops arrived in Los Angeles early Sunday on orders from President Donald Trump, staging outside a federal complex that remained largely quiet and without major protests following two days of clashes with immigration authorities.The deployment appeared to be the first time in decades that a state’s national guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who have sought to hinder the administration’s mass deportation efforts. On Sunday morning, some of the troops were stationed outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, dressed in tactical...

Has any American company run away from a public commitment faster than Target?In an Aug. 19, 2020, conference call, Target Chief Executive Brian Cornell forthrightly put his company in the forefront of the quest for racial and ethnic justice. George Floyd had been murdered by Police Officer Derek Chauvin, abetted by several other officers in Minneapolis, Target’s home city, only about three months earlier. Calls for recognition of the racism exposed by the killing were still reverberating nationwide.“Our team is passionately demanding equity and justice for our Black colleagues and guests,” Cornell said. “We are united in that passion and...

Some right-leaning voters who oppose Donald Trump are thinking of voting neither for him nor Kamala Harris. I understand how they feel. In 2016, I published an article urging Never Trump conservatives to consider casting their ballot for a third-party candidate. In the election that year, I did just that. regret writing that column. I regret casting that vote. To people like me, Trump represented a repudiation of everything that Ronald Reagan stood for. But as a conservative and former GOP staffer who had never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, I harbored reservations about Hillary Clinton. Voting for neither...

Last week, we gathered with other scholars at Ground Zero for a summit on terrorism and political violence. The mood was somber, not only because of reflections on 9/11 but also because of pained predictions of violence to come. It would have surprised nobody in attendance had they been told another assassination attempt against the former president would occur days later. This was, of course, not merely the second assassination attempt against Donald Trump. There have been many more plots over the past several years — aimed at politicians of all stripes — that never reached the point of gunfire...

CHICAGO — He walked down a side street, eyes darting here and there, wondering how it would unfold. “What kind of fences will the police have? Will they bring dogs?” Hatem Abudayyeh asked. He stopped in the shadow of the United Center, home of the NBA’s Bulls and the NHL’s Blackhawks and a draw for tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who are expected to protest against U.S. support for Israel at the Democratic National Convention this month. “I hope they don’t militarize it,” he said. “The first statement the police made was about mass arrests. They’ve backed off a...