Free Republic

False rumors of Haitian residents eating dogs and cats have thrown the Ohio city into turmoil.Daily life, says one resident, has been “turned upside down by such vitriol and ignorance.”Some Haitians have already decided to leave Springfield and Ohio altogether. A disturbing scenario has played out at public schools across Springfield, Ohio, in recent days, with children turned away as they arrive or, worse, rushed out of classrooms, all because of bomb threats.Parents have struggled to explain to 6- and 7-year-olds what is happening. Some aren’t quite sure about sending their kids back.“You don’t want to give in to the...

There are many damning anecdotes in Kate Conger and Ryan Mac’s new book, “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,” but one from February of last year perfectly captures the astonishing pettiness of the world’s richest man. Attending the Super Bowl as a guest of Rupert Murdoch, Musk had one of the most luxurious seats in the house, but rather than watching the game, he was glued to his phone in dismay. Both he and President Biden had sent tweets cheering on the Philadelphia Eagles, but even though Biden had far fewer followers than Musk on the platform, the president’s...

I am a physician and a scientist. Over 12 years, I had the privilege of serving Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden as the director of the National Institutes of Health. Before that, I led the U.S. component of the Human Genome Project. I am amazed by the medical progress that has been possible in the past few decades, both in alleviating suffering and saving lives. But I am also deeply troubled by the growing distrust of science in our society, just at the time when its insights are most needed. No recent experience highlights that disconnect more...

The classic example of chutzpah is that of the child who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy as an orphan. With the 2024 presidential election, we have a new way to illustrate the point: the candidate who condones violence, dehumanizes his opponents and whips his supporters into a frenzy, then turns around to condemn the harsh rhetoric of his opponents and call for peaceful discourse. Following the second attempt on his life in as many months, Trump blamed Democrats for casting him as an existential threat to American democracy. “Look,” his running mate JD Vance said on Monday,...

On Saturday night in Hershey, Pa., JD Vance will participate in one of the more unusual political events of this presidential campaign. Several thousand people — almost all of whom have paid for the privilege, some as much as $1,600 — will pack into a hockey arena to watch the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interview Mr. Vance, the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee.The money made from the event will not go to the Trump campaign but to Mr. Carlson’s new media company, which made headlines earlier this month when Mr. Carlson aired — and praised — the views of...

When Kamala Harris sat down for just the second major television interview of her campaign last week with the Philadelphia ABC affiliate, the anchor asked her to outline “one or two specific things” she would do to fulfill her pledge of “bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people.” She responded by recalling how she was “a middle-class kid” who grew up in a community of construction workers, nurses and teachers who were “very proud of their lawn.” She recounted her mother’s saving to buy her family’s first house. She paid tribute to a neighbor who became a...

Last year I was working on an article about foreign fighters and volunteers in Ukraine... Among the people I interviewed: Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old man whom the F.B.I. is investigating in what it is calling an assassination attempt... Mr. Routh, who had spent some time in Ukraine trying to raise support for the war, was seeking recruits from among Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban... There were a few complications. Mr. Routh, a former construction worker from Greensboro, N. C., said he never fought in Ukraine himself — he was too old and had no military experience. *** When...

Jack Poso 🇺🇸 @JackPosobiec BREAKING: NY Times refers to Trump assassin Ryan Routh as ‘crusader for causes large and small’ From thepostmillennial.com 11:52 AM · Sep 17, 2024

The FBI raided his home. The corporate media crusaded in lies for years to frame him as a Russian spy and insurrectionist. Fascist Democrats seek to imprison him for life, bankrupt him with lawfare, and take away his business empire. He’s constantly smeared as a “felon,” a “racist,” a “rapist,” a “threat to democracy,” and the “next Hitler.” When his 2024 campaign began to pull away from Joe Biden towards a triumphant November victory,” they shot him in the face and then threw the game board on the floor demanding a do-over with Kamala’s scrutiny-free “joy” campaign–a campaign backed by...

The right-wing think tank has been pushing misinformation about voting into social media feeds. The Georgia secretary of state’s office called one video “a stunt.”In July, two men went door to door at a sprawling apartment complex in Norcross, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is a hub for the region’s fast-growing Latino population, asking residents if they were U.S. citizens and whether they were registered to vote. Speaking in Spanish, often peeking from behind half-closed doors, seven people told the men that they were not citizens but that they were registered to vote. Although the two men claimed to represent...

Vice President Kamala Harris is holed up for five days in a Pittsburgh hotel, doing highly choreographed debate practice sessions ahead of Tuesday night’s clash. There’s a stage and replica TV lighting and an adviser in full Lee Strasberg method-acting mode, not just playing Donald J. Trump but inhabiting him, wearing a boxy suit and a long tie.The former president’s preparations are more improv. They are pointedly called not “debate prep” but “policy time,” meant to refresh him on his record. Nobody is playing Ms. Harris; sometimes his aides sit at a long table opposite him and bat questions back...

Senator JD Vance, the running mate of former President Donald J. Trump, has declined to denounce the right-wing talk-show host Tucker Carlson for praising and airing the views of a Holocaust revisionist who falsely claimed that the Nazis’ destruction of European Jewry was not an intentional act of premeditated genocide. Mr. Vance is scheduled to appear onstage Sept. 21 with Mr. Carlson in Hershey, Pa. Mr. Carlson no stranger to controversy, but his recent interview with Darryl Cooper, whom he described as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” has faced particularly fierce blowback. The Nazis’...

Since his selection as Donald Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance has performed poorly on most metrics by which we judge vice-presidential nominees. He has never been noted for his charisma, and his attacks and insults have rendered him exceptionally unpopular. But he was not picked for traditional political reasons, like electoral strength in a swing state or being the ambassador to a needed voting bloc. It may be hard to recall after weeks of talk about “cat ladies,” but Mr. Vance, as much as virtually anyone else in Mr. Trump’s orbit, has tried to put ideological and policy meat...

Attitudes on abortion are deeply entrenched and have motivated voters across the American political landscape for decades. But in a post-Roe world, with abortion access sharply limited or at stake in several states, voters who want to protect abortion rights are increasingly energized. Although the economy remains the No. 1 issue for voters, a growing share of voters in swing states now say abortion is central to their decision this fall, according to New York Times/Siena College polls earlier this month. This represents an increase since May, when President Joe Biden was still the Democratic presidential nominee. And by a...

In a sour commentary, NYT Deputy Opinion Editor Patrick Healy said he'd 'cringed' when former president Bill Clinton took the convention stage on Tuesday to claim that Harris would be 'the president of joy'..... Harris can't coast on "joy",' he concluded witheringly. How's that going to help the millions of Americans whose livelihoods are now at stake, Healey asked? On Monday, the newspaper published a guest essay titled 'Trump can win on character', by conservative commentator Rich Lowry......Pulling no punches, Lowry wrote that Harris is 'weak and a phony and doesn't truly care about the country or the middle class.'...

X owner Elon Musk’s plan to move the social media platform’s headquarters out of San Francisco has some city officials eager to bid farewell to the billionaire’s business. The outlet noted that San Francisco Mayor London Breed said she had met with Musk “several months ago” but that she didn’t extend offers aimed at keeping X in the city, saying, “I’m not going to beg anybody.” The report comes after Musk announced last month that he will move the company’s headquarters to Texas in response to a new law enacted by the state of California that prohibits schools from notifying...

This isn’t a policy election. There’s no defining issue like tax cuts in 2000 or health care in 2008 or trade in 2016. Democrats are focused on convincing voters that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to the American way of life, and vice versa. But policy remains the purpose of politics, and the choice of a president is also the choice of a housing policy. Kamala Harris has a plan to address the nation’s housing crisis. Donald Trump (kind of) has one, too. And the differences say a lot about the two candidates. Housing prices across the country have...

The left-wing New York Times is warning Democrats that “joy” is not a political strategy that will put Vice President Kamala Harris (D) in the White House. Following the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Patrick Healy wrote in his opinion piece that the convention’s message for the nation, if it were to be placed on a bumper sticker, would say “HARRIS IS JOY.” Healy continued: Don’t get me wrong — there are many worse things than joy — but I cringed a little in the convention hall Tuesday night when Bill Clinton said Harris would be “the president of joy.” Joy...

If the Republican convention’s message for America last month had to fit on a bumper sticker, it would read: “TRUMP IS GOD.” Delegates deified him relentlessly as the risen Trump after the assassination attempt. They told me over and over that he was spared to save the country with his re-election. Only on the final night did Trump come crashing down to earth with his nomination speech. Divine it was not.What a mistake. The most divisive man in America was suddenly getting a measure of goodwill from skeptical voters after he was nearly killed. People were tuning in to see...

When the Jewish State has to go it alone. The New York Times insists that if Israel rejects the Bidenites’ advice to pull out of Gaza, it does so at its peril: “NYT admits US officials were wrong about the IDF in October, and wrong about Rafah, but thinks they are right now,” Elder of Ziyon, August 15, 2024:So these officials were completely wrong in October. They were also wrong about Israel’s taking Rafah, which they now admit is exactly what destroyed Hamas’ supply lines from Egypt – and cost far fewer casualties thna they had confidently predicted.By ignoring warnings...