Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration must give more than 100 migrants sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador a chance to challenge their deportations. U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg said that people who were sent to the prison in March under an 18th-century wartime law haven’t been able to formally contest the removals or allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He ordered the administration to work toward giving them a way to file those challenges. The judge wrote that “significant evidence” has surfaced...

President Donald Trump delivered what sounded like one of his typical meandering, grievance-laden campaign speeches on Friday, but it was where he did it — inside the U.S. Department of Justice — that mattered.The appearance marked Trump’s clearest exertion yet of personal control over the country’s federal law enforcement apparatus, which is normally run by appointees who keep at least an arm’s length from the president to avoid the appearance that politics are governing prosecutorial decisions. Trump, instead, embraced the notion of the agency as his own personal tool of vengeance.The appearance marked Trump’s clearest exertion yet of personal control...

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s second inaugural address featured similar themes to his first: a sweeping indictment of the country he inherits and grand promises to fix its problems. Eight years ago, Trump described “American carnage” and promised to end it immediately. On Monday, he declared that the country’s “decline” will end immediately, ushering in “the golden age of America.” Trump added a long list of policies that sounded more like a State of the Union speech than an Inauguration Day speech. But the broad themes were fundamentally Trumpian, setting himself up as a national savior

DENVER (AP) — The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.

NEW YORK (AP) — Legally, the most important words former President Donald Trump said after he was charged with 34 felonies by the Manhattan District Attorney last week were “not guilty.” But, politically, the most significant may be “election interference.” Trump’s repetition of those words, which have been taken up by other top Republicans, show how he is trying to turn his historic position as the first former president charged with crimes to his advantage. It’s another example of what’s been a consistent refrain throughout his political career — claiming without evidence that an election is being rigged against him....

Election officials warned about poll watchers who had been steeped in conspiracy theories falsely claiming that then-President Donald Trump did not actually lose the 2020 election. Democrats and voting rights groups worried about the effects of new election laws, in some Republican-controlled states, that President Joe Biden decried as “Jim Crow 2.0.” Law enforcement agencies were monitoring possible threats at the polls. Yet Election Day, and the weeks of early voting before it, went fairly smoothly. There were some reports of unruly poll watchers disrupting voting, but they were scattered. Groups of armed vigilantes began watching over a handful of...

GOLDSBORO, N.C. (AP) — The situation with the poll watcher had gotten so bad that Anne Risku, the election director in North Carolina's Wayne County, had to intervene via speakerphone. “You need to back off!” Risku recalled hollering after the woman wedged herself between a voter and the machine where the voter was trying to cast his ballot at a precinct about 60 miles southeast of Raleigh. Poll watchers have traditionally been an essential element of electoral transparency, the eyes and ears for the two major political parties who help ensure that the actual mechanics of voting are administered fairly...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Colorado Republicans on Saturday voted to place on their U.S. Senate primary ballot a state representative who attended the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol and is a supporter of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election. The gathering is a key step toward garnering the party’s nomination to face Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet in November. State Rep. Ron Hanks was the lead choice of 3,700 delegates to the state GOP’s assembly, winning 39% of the vote. His only GOP rival in the June 28 Republican Senate...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Justice Department sued Texas over new redistricting maps Monday, saying the plans discriminate against the very Black and Latino voters who have fueled the state’s population boom. The lawsuit, filed in the Western District of Texas, claims the Republican-controlled state violated part of the Voting Rights Act in drawing up new maps for its congressional delegation and state legislature. The case is the first legal action challenging a state’s maps from the Biden Justice Department during this redistricting cycle. The lawsuit notes that the vast majority of Texas’ population growth over the past decade came...

LITTLETON, Colo. — Pedro Gonzalez has faith in Donald Trump and his party. The 55-year-old Colombian immigrant is a pastor at an evangelical church in suburban Denver. Initially repelled by Trump in 2016, he’s been heartened by the president’s steps to protect religious groups and appoint judges who oppose abortion rights. More important, Gonzalez sees Trump’s presidency as part of a divine plan. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” Gonzalez said of the president. “He was put there.” Though Latino voters are a key part of the Democratic coalition, there is a larger bloc of reliable Republican Latinos than many...

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and his allies are taking new steps toward launching a presidential campaign, including interviews with dozens of potential staffers and hiring a pollster and national fundraiser, according to a person close to the Democrat.He’s already launched a political action committee that allows him to raise money nationally and hired his 2014 campaign manager, Brad Komar, to run it. Since the PAC was formed in September, Komar has done 80 interviews with possible campaign staffers, the person said. Of those, Hickenlooper has conducted or participated in 30 interviews. The operation has hired Democratic veteran Anna Greenberg as...

On Sunday morning, Thomas Beaumont and Nicholas Riccardi at the Associated Press did all they could to convince readers that the tax bill just passed by Congress and signed by Donald Trump isn't seen as a big deal and has no genuine enthusiastic support (even though they found some) among those who voted for him in 2016. They predictably claimed that the law bestows "its richest benefits on companies and wealthy individuals,' and employed a classic statistical deception to support that false contention.Here are the opening paragraphs of the pair's downbeat report, with the final excerpted paragraph presenting the misleading statistics (bolds...

By Steve Peoples and Nicholas Riccardi | AP March 17 at 3:54 PM PHOENIX — Fearful of a Donald Trump nomination to lead the GOP, conservative leaders huddled privately in Washington on Thursday in search of a plan to stop the billionaire businessman. His Republican rivals braced for another Trump victory, this time in delegate-rich Arizona. The GOP has an eager alternative in Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, yet some party leaders are exploring “other avenues” instead of rallying behind the fiery conservative, an ominous sign that Republican leaders’ deep dislike of Cruz complicates their overwhelming concern about Trump. “The establishment is like...