Free Republic

More than 250 Republican donors and self-described gun rights supporters penned an open letter this weekend calling for Congress to move on limited gun reform after an elementary school shooting in Uvalde left 19 children and two teachers dead. “Most law enforcement experts believe these measures would make a difference,” said the letter, according to The Texas Tribune. “And recent polls of fellow conservatives suggest that there is strong support for such gun-safety measures.” The letter, which ran as a full-page advertisement in The Dallas Morning News on Sunday, also expressed support for the work of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas),...

... On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Chuck Todd said the network received a similar response to its invitation to all 50 GOP senators. “I should add, we asked each of the Senate’s 50 Republicans, every single one of them, to join us and none agreed on this weekend,” Todd said during his show on Sunday.

TheHill.com STATE WATCH These three Democrat-led states are pushing ahead on gun control BY MONIQUE BEALS - 05/29/22 5:57 PM ET SHARE TWEET ... MORE Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom (Calif.), Kathy Hochul (N.Y) and Phil Murphy (N.J.). AP photos/Eric Risberg-Mary Altaffer-Wayne Parry Three Democratic-led states — California, New York and New Jersey — have pressed forward with gun reform legislation in the wake of the deadly shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 children and two adults dead. The state action comes as Democrats in Congress eye votes on measures including a federal red-flag law and expanded background checks, however...

Former President Trump on Monday called for an end to the violence in Ukraine weeks after Moscow launched its unprovoked military attack. “It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement,” Trump, who initially praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as “smart” over the invasion before later denouncing the move as genocide, said in a statement. “If they don’t do it soon, there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage,” he added. “This is a war that never should have happened, but it did. The solution can never be...

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) said on Sunday that he disagreed with former President Trump's idea of potentially pardoning people charged in connection with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 of last year. "Of course not, oh, my goodness, no," Sununu said on CNN's "State of the Union" when asked if the rioters who were part of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol should be pardoned.

Ukraine has received a second shipment of weapons from the United States as part of $200 million in defensive aid promised amid fears of a Russian invasion. "The second bird in Kyiv! More than 80 tons of weapons to strengthen Ukraine's defense capabilities from our friends in the USA! And this is not the end," Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in a tweet on Sunday.

Dozens of scientists and medical professionals have signed a letter defending White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci after he faced fierce criticism from Republican lawmakers during a hearing earlier this week. "We deplore the personal attacks on Dr. Fauci," the letter, obtained by Politico, said. "The criticism is inaccurate, unscientific, ill-founded in the facts and, increasingly, motivated by partisan politics. It is a distraction from what should be the national focus - working together to finally overcome a pandemic that is killing about 500,000 people a year." It added that Fauci has "unswervingly served the United States guiding the...

Michael Fanone, a 41-year-old D.C. police officer who was dragged into a crowd and beaten on Jan. 6, announced his resignation from the police force on Monday. Since the attack on the Capitol when Fanone suffered a heart attack and was beaten by rioters, the officer has publicly criticized the lawmakers and others who downplayed the attack, The Washington Post reported.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Wednesday suggested that standard mouthwash could treat COVID-19, and criticized federal agencies for telling people to "do nothing." "Standard gargle, mouthwash, has been proven to kill the coronavirus," Johnson said, according to The Washington Post. "If you get it, you may reduce viral replication. Why not try all these things?" "It just boggles my mind that the NIH continues to tell people to do nothing," he added of the National Institutes of Health, in a recording posted online by Heartland Signal. The mouthwash strategy has been refuted by both health experts and mouthwash brands themselves....

The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo issued a tweet on Sunday warning that foreigners were being stopped by Japanese police in "suspected racial profiling incidents." "The U.S. Embassy has received reports of foreigners stopped and searched by Japanese police in suspected racial profiling incidents. Several were detained, questioned, and searched," the tweet said. "U.S. citizens should carry proof of immigration and request consular notification if detained," it added. The U.S. Embassy has received reports of foreigners stopped and searched by Japanese police in suspected racial profiling incidents. Several were detained, questioned, and searched. U.S. citizens should carry proof of immigration and...

Georgia gubernatorial candidate and former Sen. David Perdue (R) said on Wednesday that he would not have certified Georgia's 2020 presidential election results. "Not with the information that was available at the time and not with the information that has come out now. They had plenty of time to investigate this. And I wouldn’t have signed it until those things had been investigated and that’s all we were asking for," Perdue told Axios. He added if he had been governor at the time, he would have called for a special session of the state legislature to "protect and fix what...

The defense for former "Empire" actor, Jussie Smollett, rested their case on Tuesday after Smollett testified that the brothers involved in what prosecutors argued was a feigned hate crime were "liars." "They're liars," Smollett said of the brothers as he testified on Tuesday, according to NBC News. "They also said I had something to do with it, and I didn't." The prosecution has argued that Smollett staged a “fake hate crime” against himself by hiring two brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, to stage a fake attack against him in 2019.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's (R) campaign on Monday released a minutelong video advertisement in an effort to drum up support from both conservatives and independents ahead of his 2022 reelection bid. “The last three years, Georgia’s been tested in ways we could never imagine,” the video says. “And it fell to Gov. Brian Kemp to successfully lead us during these troubling times.” The ad then touts Georgia as the top state for business and the lowest unemployment rate in state history while also saying Kemp backs law enforcement.

Hate crimes in Los Angeles increased by 20 percent last year, hitting a 10-year high as racially and sexually motivated crimes jump in cities nationwide. A report from the L.A. County Commission on Human Relations published on Wednesday showed that 635 hate crimes were reported in Los Angeles in 2020, up from 530 in 2019. This marked the largest number of reported hate crimes in the area since 2008. Among racially-motivated hate crimes, Black people, who account for just 9 percent of county residents, were disproportionately targeted, accounting for 42 percent of the incidents reported. Overall, anti-Black hate crimes were...