Free Republic

Democrats are converting their emotional protests against “family separation” into unpopular calls for the catch-and-release of many Central American migrants into ordinary Americans’ jobsites and schools. The pre-election, pro-migration push is a huge risk, according to a poll by The Economist and YouGov which shows 3:1 public opposition to the Democrats’s catch-and-release policy. That opposition to catch-and-release was reinforced by President Donald Trump’s June 20 Executive Order to keep families together in detention until their appeal is decided by a judge. Many Democrats are pushing their demand that migrants caught at the border be quickly released into Americans’ workplaces and...

When President Donald Trump appointed Atlanta lawyer Christopher Wray to succeed James Comey as the director of the FBI, my initial reaction was not positive. Wray is a veteran of the Department of Justice and is part of that good-old-boy DOJ network that knows how to protect its own. Indeed, when then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former U.S. attorney, needed a good criminal defense lawyer -- whose millions in fees were paid by New Jersey taxpayers -- he hired Wray. Christie was never indicted in the Bridgegate scandal, but defense counsel for those who sought Christie's cellphone to demonstrate...

Hamas paid family to claim Gaza baby was killed by Israeli tear gas, says cousin Mahmoud Omar, arrested by Israel for terror-related offenses, tells interrogators his relatives lied: 8-month-old Layla actually died from fatal blood condition that runs in family. A 20-year-old Palestinian indicted Thursday on terror-related charges told Israeli investigators during his interrogation that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar paid his relatives to falsely tell the media that his baby cousin died of tear gas inhalation. The story of baby Layla Ghandour’s death, purportedly from inhaling tear gas fired by Israel at the Gaza border, made headlines around the world...

The Justice Department is reviewing the conduct of an employee who helped chase Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen from a Mexican restaurant on Tuesday, but First Amendment scholars say that she may be immune from workplace consequences. Allison Hrabar, a Justice Department paralegal specialist and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, helped organize a dozen-person DSA-led contingent that chanted “shame” at Nielsen until she left MXDC Cocina Mexicana. Hrabar came under intense scrutiny following the downtown D.C. protest, and political opponents demanded that she be fired for protesting Nielsen's role in separating suspected illegal immigrants from their children —...

While generally cautious about criticizing Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Clinton-emails investigation, Trump supporters have taken aim at its chief logical flaw: Although key investigators harbored anti-Trump and pro-Clinton bias, and even made statements indicating an intention to act on that bias, the IG did not find that this bias was the proximate cause of any particular investigative decision. This conclusion is easy to rebut; I did so myself in a column last week. Yet, the Trump camp should also be embracing it. Why? Because if this is the Justice Department’s position, then Special Counsel Robert Mueller has...

A 6-year-old Costa Rican boy was rescued by U.S. Border Patrol agents after he was abandoned on a border road in Arizona on Tuesday evening. The agents discovered the boy just north of the border west of Lukeville in temperatures over 100 degrees. The child claimed that he was dropped off by "his uncle" and that Border Patrol would pick him up.

Imagine what defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, would have done with notes to and from LAPD lead detectives Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter in which they demeaned Simpson's fans. Imagine a written exchange in which one detective said, "We'll stop him!" Imagine Cochran's opening and closing arguments, to say nothing of his cross-examination, if he'd had evidence similar to the kind of bias found in the Department of Justice inspector general's report on the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The DOJ IG report included several messages between FBI attorneys and employees who...

A majority of voters blame the parents of the separated children at the southwestern border for the current immigration crisis, not the federal government, according to a new poll. “When families are arrested and separated after attempting to enter the United States illegally, 54 percent of likely U.S. voters say the parents are more to blame for breaking the law,” says a Rasmussen Reports survey released Thursday. Rasmussen found 35 percent believe the federal government is more to blame for enforcing the law, while 11 percent are not sure about the situation. “A closer look shows that 82 percent of...

The Minnesota Vikings made history on Thursday. Vikings players, coaches and members of the LGBTQ community came together for a first of its kind inclusion summit held by an NFL team. The LGBTQ summit and fundraising event was held at the TCO Performance Center Auditorium in Eagan. It centered around bridging the gap between the LGBTQ community and sports. In front of a packed crowd, former and current LGBTQ athletes shared stories about how they were criticized for who they loved while playing the sport they love. The event featured four panel discussions. Each one about an hour long.

President Donald Trump says that Democrats are responsible for a 'massive child smuggling industry' in the United States that is making human traffickers a steep profit. The president says that 'traffickers are making a fortune' and its all thanks to loopholes he says are the fault of Democrats that exist in the immigration system. 'It's a whole big con job,' the president charged in a Cabinet meeting. 'They've let it happen.' Even before he took office, Trump noted that coyotes were helping floods of unaccompanied minors illegally cross the border.

VINALHAVEN, Me. - At 3:30 in the morning on a Friday in late May, the lobstermen ate breakfast. Outside, their boats bobbed in the labradorite water, lit only by the dull yellow of streetlamps across the bay. It was windy, too windy for fishing, but one by one the island’s fishermen showed up at the Surfside cafe anyway. Over pancakes and eggs, they grumbled about the season’s catch to date. Some of the lobstermen said it was just too early in the season. Others feared that it was a sign of things to come. Since the early 1980s, climate change...

Billionaire left-wing environmental activist and potential presidential candidate Tom Steyer launched a political ad on Wednesday featuring audio of children of illegal immigrants crying for their parents in detention centers titled, “Support the Keep Families Together Act.” The heart-wrenching video targeting President Donald Trump opens up with cries of, “Daddy! Daddy!” and “Mommy!” in Spanish from children, which viewers are told is “what it sounds like in Trump’s internment camps.”

It wasn’t what he said. But it was much more than nothing. Donald Trump didn’t get much in the way of North Korean denuclearization in Singapore. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In the days since the summit with Kim Jong Un, critics—including me—have pointed out how little the U.S. president got from North Korea’s leader during their much-hyped meeting. And it’s true that Trump fell far short in that meeting of his stated goal to fully dismantle North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program, and then wildly overstated his achievement by declaring the North Korean nuclear threat over. (It’s not.) But...

President Trump has now energized voters in both parties to levels not seen in decades as the midterm elections approach. On the GOP side, voter enthusiasm even exceeds the levels reported before the red wave of 2010, and one of the main reasons Republican voters cite is the progress being made on judicial appointments. When it was announced that Congress would need to hang around for most of the August recess and continue working, processing nominations was a key factor in that decision. But now somebody might be putting the brakes on the nominee confirmation process and it’s not even...

An openly gay Pennsylvania lawmaker has drawn backlash after he “welcomed” Vice President Mike Pence to Philadelphia with a picture of himself flipping the bird. “Get bent, then get out!” state Rep. Brian Sims, of Philadelphia, wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday ahead of Mr. Pence’s visit to a fundraiser for Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Wagner. “Vice President Mike Pence, let me be the first person to officially welcome you to the City of Brotherly Love, and to my District in the State House!” Mr. Sims wrote. “To be clear, we’re a City of soaring diversity. We believe in the...

One factor causing migrants to risk everything - even potentially losing their children - to travel through the heat of summer in the dangerous desert and towards the barbed wire fences and tent cities springing up just south of the United States border: climate change. Many of the migrants being detained here now hail from what's referred variously as the Dry Corridor or the Northern Triangle, which consists of the three countries immediately south of Mexico: Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. The United Nations published a report in June 2016 that described the depth of the food insecurity crisis in...

Rising temperatures from climate change are driving animals northward into new environments, raising concerns that pathogens hitching a ride may bring new diseases -- especially to southern U.S. states, including Louisiana. The world's warmest and wettest climates are home to some of its most worrying diseases like dengue, yellow fever and malaria. Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states could become a portal through which new diseases enter the United States, carried in the bloodstream of northward-bound species, scientists say. The warning comes as an Associated Press analysis this week of temperature data shows widespread and faster warming over the past...

The House on Thursday rejected a hardline immigration bill — introduced by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) — after leadership postponed a second vote on a compromise measure written with centrists. The 193-231 vote came a day after President Trump signed an executive order ending the controversial practice of separating children from parents who cross the border illegally. No Democrats voted in favor of Goodlatte's bill. House leadership had expressed pessimism on the chances for either Goodlatte’s legislation or a second compromise bill written with centrists, both of which come as the growing crisis at the border dominated headlines. The...

Child separation was bad policy but ultimately a red herring. It’s always been about open borders. This Executive Order doesn’t fix the crisis. Indefinitely detaining children with their families in camps is inhumane and will not make us safe.— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) June 20, 2018 How soft do you have to be on immigration to piss off Marco Rubio? Now we know: The ink isn’t even dry on the new executive order ending separation policy & some Democrats already arguing that keeping families together isn’t enough. Now they want them & their parents released after unlawful entry knowing full...

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee says a March subpoena issued by the head of the panel seeking documents related to how the FBI handled its probe into Hillary Clinton’s email server and information on the dismissal of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe did not follow committee rules and is therefore invalid. “Our Committee rules prevent the Majority from making substantive changes to a proposed subpoena without appropriate notice to the Minority,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote on Thursday to Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Hill. “Because...