Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie ripped President Biden on his prisoner exchange deal with Iran, arguing “you cannot give $6 billion to a terrorist state.” “I wouldn’t have made this deal,” Christie said Monday in an interview on CNN’s “The Source” with Kaitlan Collins. “As much as I would’ve liked those Americans to be home, you cannot give $6 billion to a terrorist state. In exchange for the release of five wrongfully detained American prisoners, the White House’s agreement granted clemency to five Iranians and issued a blanket waiver for international banks to allow the transfer of $6 billion of...

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) expressed frustration Thursday with the Biden administration's lack of urgency in addressing what the United States has described as a "rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation" in Nagorno-Karabakh, a hotly disputed region at the center of rising tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan.Menendez, while chairing of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the crisis, said he was "amazed" by the responses from Yuri Kim, the acting assistant secretary for the State Department's Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs...The senator's frustration centered on the administration's application of Section 907 of the United States Freedom Support Act, which bans direct...

Twice-elected Mendham Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner today announced her campaign to challenge Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, hoping to use her strong ties to the national GOP and former President Donald Trump to take out the scandal-tarred lawmaker. In a statement to Secrets, the mayor of Mendham Borough, which sits 40 miles from Manhattan, blasted Menendez’s “career of cronyism” and unbending support of President Joe Biden. “We need a fighter -- someone who believes hard working Americans matter, and who will stop Joe Biden’s failed economic policies,” she said. “Bob Menendez has failed New Jersey -- because he’s more interested in...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats were loudly heckled Friday at a press conference in New York City regarding the migrant crisis there. The Democrats, speaking outside of a hotel in Manhattan that has become a relief center for asylum seekers, were drowned out by shouting protesters chanting "send them back!" and "close the border!" "My name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I'm here alongside Representative Adriano Espaillat, and we're incredibly thrilled and excited to be here..." Ocasio-Cortez started saying as the crowd started growing in noise outside the Roosevelt Hotel. "We have geographic diversity here, including representative from California, Texas, Illinois...

Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the House GOP members are “cheapening” impeachment if they open an inquiry into President Joe Biden. Co-host Jonathan Lemire said, “There is new reporting today that House Speaker McCarthy is going to endorse the idea of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. It’s not quite clear if he has the votes, but there’s a sense if he were to secure as many, that’d lead beyond an inquiry to impeachment. Do you think that is an appropriate step for your...

Today in insanity, James O'Keefe's O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) recently released nearly 20 minutes of police bodycam footage, obtained through FOIA requests, which showed New Jersey school board officials calling the police on citizens who they claimed looked “Trumpish.” “The police colluded with school officials to scan license plates of school board meeting attendees who looked different,” OMG head James O’Keefe said. Because, you know, the Left doesn’t like those who look “different.” Or think different. In fact, progressives want to persecute anyone who looks “Trumpish.” And they are actively doing so to Trump and his supporters. One might state,...

How can educated men like former Vice President Mike Pence, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and former Texas Representative Will Hurd be so stupid? (I am leaving out former Attorney General Bill Barr since he’s busy looking at bridges.) They have spent much of their lives in Republican politics and yet have a minuscule understanding of the largest grassroots Republican movement in modern history that is embraced and endorsed by more than half of Republicans—primarily the “base.”No Republican can win the nomination without the MAGA base. America First Patriots stand with Donald Trump just...

Only three in ten Republican primary voters hold favorable views of former Vice President Mike Pence, earning him the second-worst rating of any Republican presidential candidate behind former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), according to a national poll. His (Pence) favorability has dropped considerably since April’s Wall Street Journal poll, when 54 percent of the population saw him positively and 35 percent viewed him negatively. This marks a staggering 52-point swing in the wrong direction in five months’ time. Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), with a net favorability rating of -55 among Republicans, is in even worse shape than Pence. Only...

* New Jersey's nursing homes are battling COVID-19 once again as new variants spread through the US. *One in every four facilities has reported an outbreak over the past week, according to state data. *The surge comes with both hospitalizations and deaths from the virus steadily rising.

O’Keefe Media Group on Wednesday released 20 minutes of police bodycam footage showing New Jersey school board officials calling the police on citizens they don’t recognize who look “Trumpish.” “The police colluded with school officials to scan license plates of school board meeting attendees who looked different,” James O’Keefe said. OMG obtained the recordings through FOIA requests. This is the first in a series of police body cam recordings, James O’Keefe said. Here’s what the school board officials and police really think of ‘Trumpish’ people when they forget the cameras are rolling. On August 8, Livingston school board officials called...

A man accused of fatally shooting a New Jersey councilwoman was pictured yawning as he pled not guilty to the brutal murder on Monday. Rashid Ali Bynum, 29, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Eunice Dwumfour, 30, who was gunned down in her car outside her Sayreville home in February. Images obtained by DailyMail.com show a careless Bynum at the Middlesex County Courthouse making faces as the charges against him are read. Wearing all green, he appeared to smirk as he peered behind his hair every time the gun used in the killing was mentioned. Dwumfour's relatives...

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has fallen behind both Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy in the early GOP battleground state of New Hampshire, dropping to just 9 percent of the vote as former President Donald Trump continues to dominate the field.A poll by Echelon Insights, quizzing 800 likely Republican Primary Voters, puts Chris Christie in second at 14 percent. Previously little-known Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy is also in double digits at 11 percent – putting him in third place. Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) is polling at 7 percent, just two points behind the Florida Governor.Donald Trump stands at 34 percent in...

Former Navy pilot and Americans for Safe Aerospace founder Ryan Graves called out Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie for laughing off questions about UFOs on Wednesday. "I get the UFO question?" Christie said at the first Republican primary debate, laughing when asked about what he would do in the White House if he had authority over what the Pentagon now calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs. "I think it's horrible that just because I’m from New Jersey, you asked me about unidentified flying objects and Martians," Christie said to laughter. "We're different, but we're not that different." [...] Christie then...

Former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) said Wednesday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that he was “embarrassed and disgusted” during the GOP debate when the six presidential candidates raised their hands when asked if they would support former President Donald Trump even if he convicted of a crime. Hogan said, “That was the low light of the entire debate. I was embarrassed and disgusted by it. The fact that we have to let the court cases play themselves out. Everybody is presumed innocent until proven guilty no man is above the law. But for six people to raise their hand and say...

Focus on the signal, not the noise,” is a phrase that might as well have been coined by Steve Bannon given how frequently he and his acolytes make use of it. At this stage in the game, it should be the mantra of the MAGA movement writ large; for the hour is already late, there is a mountain of work left to do to haul President Trump over the finish line: navigating a corrupt, weaponized justice system; dealing with rigged election procedures; combatting both soft and overt censorship by mainstream networks and social media – and that is just the...

Allies of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis outlined a strategy for next week's GOP presidential primary debate in a memo encouraging him to defend former President Donald Trump from attacks by rival Chris Christie and call upstart contender Vivek Ramaswamy "fake." The two-page memo, written by leaders of the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down, was published to the website of Axiom Strategies and dated Aug. 15. Axiom founder Jeff Roe also leads the pro-DeSantis' super PAC. “Defend Trump when Chris Christie attacks him,” the memo reads, adding a potential line for DeSantis to use on stage in Milwaukee against the...

Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-N.J.) support among New Jersey Democrats took a hit over the past year, according to a poll published Thursday. In the latest Monmouth University poll, Menendez, who is up for reelection in 2024, had the approval of 58 percent of New Jersey Democrats, with 23 percent disapproving, and 19 percent saying they don’t know. That’s down from April 2022, when New Jersey Democrats’ approval of Menendez was at 66 percent, with at 16 percent disapproving, and 17 percent said they didn’t know.

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The Supreme Court of New Jersey ruled Monday that religious schools are allowed to screen their employees based on their adherence to the institution's faith. The Garden State's high court ruled unanimously in favor of St. Theresa School, a Catholic elementary school in the Archdiocese of Newark, for its decision to terminate the contract of a teacher due to her becoming pregnant out of wedlock, in violation of church teaching. New Jersey law states that religious institutions are allowed to establish employment criteria based on their faith, Justice Lee Solomon wrote in his opinion, and that it is "an affirmative...

The Biden administration is out promoting religion through the State Department door to the locals in other countries, on our taxpayer dime. That right there is illegal, because the First Amendment states that there is to be no state sponsorship of anybody's religion. What religion is it? Why, the religion of Democrats, which generally speaking, is atheism. According to Susan Crabtree at RealClearPolitics: "Rep. Mike McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who heads the panel’s human rights subcommittee, are reviving a nearly year-long inquiry into a 2021...