Free Republic

President-elect Trump ran much of his campaign based on retribution and absolute loyalty. As he prepares for a second term in office, what might that mean for the future of U.S. democracy? Laura Barrón-López discussed more with Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor and author of “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.” William Brangham: President-elect Donald Trump ran a lot of his campaign promising retribution for his enemies and asking absolute loyalty from his supporters. Now, as he prepares for a second term in office, Laura Barron-Lopez has a look at what that might mean...

Speaking to Maria Bartiromo on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures, MTG talked about the goals of her new subcommittee, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will operate under the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. DOGE, which will be led by billionaire Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, aims to cut government spending under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has stated that her new subcommittee addressing government efficiency will look at defunding National Public Radio and applying budget cuts to sanctuary states.

Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh BREAKING: Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene announces DOGE may defund NPR. "We'll be looking at everything from government-funded media programs like NPR, that spread nothing but Democrat propaganda." Rep. MTG is leading a House subcommittee that will work with Elon Musk/Vivek Ramaswamy's Dept. of Govt. Efficiency.

A little more than a week ago, Axios published a darkly comical story about the conflict between the Houthis and our near-trillion-dollar-annually American military, the Most Powerful Military in the History of the World™. The conclusion: the Pentagon is scared. Yemen is among the poorest countries in the world, the Houthis are a minority faction that controls only a portion of that country, we’re nearly a full year into an undeclared war on them, and…they’re winning. We can’t stop them from firing at ships in the Red Sea, with dire consequences for global trade. The Taliban could not be reached...

His election has communities of trans people and their allies fearful of widespread discrimination and a loss of health care access. Polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans support protecting transgender people from discrimination. But they have also found that 55 percent believe support for trans rights has — quote — "gone too far." We spoke with three Americans, a parent of a trans daughter, the executive director of a trans crisis hot line, and a two-spirit activist and parent to a two-spirit kid. That's a term used by indigenous people that acknowledges the diverse nature of gender...

John McIntyre couldn’t believe it. The publisher of the Real Clear Polling National Average, America’s first presidential poll aggregator, woke on October 31st to see his product denounced in the New York Times. Launched in 2002 and long a mainstay of campaign writers and news consumers alike, the RCP average, he learned, was part of a “torrent” of partisan rubbish being “weaponized” to “deflate Democrats’ enthusiasm” and “undermine faith in the entire system.” “They actually wrote that our problem was we didn’t weight results,” says an incredulous McIntyre. “That we didn’t put a thumb on the scale.” The Times ended...

…Even after the creation of the World Wide Web and web browsers, for many years readers of news largely found it on journalism websites, where information was handpicked by professional editors. Now, half of adult Americans get their news from social media (Pew Research center 2023) often curated—that is, selected, organized, interpreted, and presented—by their family and friends. “The editors are being replaced by just people posting whatever they want, so it’s loss of a professional standard about what counts,” explains Stephen Ansolabehere, a government professor at Harvard University. “What is being lost is the idea that people trust an...

The 2024 presidential election results reveal the diminishing influence of legacy mainstream media, whose relentless campaign against Donald Trump - unprecedented in scale and hostility - has largely backfired. Over half of American voters have shown that they’re no longer swayed by the daily narratives from ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and PBS. They’re no longer buying what’s published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal (editorial page excepted), or other prominent outlets. Trump’s decisive victory underscores the waning power of this era’s “Yellow Journalism,” though it’s doubtful the media will change course.

Defund NPR' was trending on X Tuesday following Musk's post.. Elon Musk renewed calls on Tuesday to defund NPR after a controversial video of its CEO questioning the importance of truth resurfaced online. Footage of NPR CEO Katherine Maher from an August 2021 Ted Talk reappeared on X Tuesday, sparking new debate over the taxpayer funded broadcaster's alleged bias, which has come under scrutiny in recent months. ... Musk shared the clip to his 204.3 million followers with the caption, "Should your tax dollars really be paying for an organization run by people who think the truth is a ‘distraction’?"...

NPR Results.

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working. Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first. Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate,...

National Public Radio’s public editor said she was “really uncomfortable” with large tech companies “censoring” The Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop — but gave her own outlet a free pass for declining to cover the story. Kelly McBride, who has been NPR’s ombudsman since 2020, told The Wrap that tech firms such as X and Facebook were wrong to prevent users from sharing links to The Post’s revelations about the laptop, whose hard drive included emails linking the Biden family to a Ukrainian businessman. “I was really uncomfortable with the tech companies censoring it,” McBride said. “Who are...

A deaf Black man with cerebral palsy was allegedly beaten and tased by Phoenix police officers this summer, in a violent incident that has gained national attention following the release of police body camera footage. In the recently publicized bodycam footage, Tyron McAlpin, 34, can be seen walking through a parking lot in Phoenix, on Aug. 19, when he is approached by two officers in separate police vehicles. The footage was provided to NPR by the McAlpin's attorney. Within seconds of first addressing McAlpin, who is deaf, officer Benjamin Harris jumps out of his vehicle and begins punching McAlpin, followed...

During Tuesday night’s debate with Kamala Harris, Donald Trump called out Tim Walz’s extremely radical and, frankly, diabolical abortion stance as governor of Minnesota, but for PBS’s Christiane Amanpour, the fact that Trump even brought it up made him “very, very extreme,” while her panel labeled it "extraordinarily stupid." Amanpour styles herself as a journalist, but when abortion comes up for discussion, she becomes a full-on activist, “So, women were front and center. That as, an issue, was, you know, really something very important. The idea that women in America have now been denied their rights over their own bodies,...

TALENT, Ore. — When Diane Ware’s home state of Oregon proposed a natural gas pipeline that threatened local waterways, she sprang into action — leading workshops on lobbying state lawmakers, mentoring student activists and organizing lectures at her church. But when plans for the pipeline were canceled, Ware, 78, found little pleasure in the victory. The retired elementary school teacher couldn’t shake the feeling that it may be too late to save a planet in deep peril — a prospect tinged with grief, anger and depression. Ware realized she had a case of "climate grief” — and needed help.

One piece of PBS’s coverage of the last night of the Democratic National Convention unwittingly confirmed media labeling bias on PBS and other “mainstream “outlets. First, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart hailed the Democrat’s vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz for using the supposedly less frightening and more convincing term “gun safety legislation” instead of “gun violence laws” (a term the PBS News Hour also uses). Anchor Geoff Bennett expanded that "language" argument to encompass abortion. Anchor Geoff Bennett, 9:50 p.m. (ET): We have seen Democrats do that on abortion, talking less about abortion rights and more about reproductive freedom. To what...

On Friday, we faced yet another black swan event. We’ve had an attempted Trump assassination, the surprise coup against President Biden, and now Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s, defection and joining up with Donald Trump. Before getting into this and a discussion of the DNC convention in Chicago, I want to expose the partisan perfidy of NPR’s Judy Woodruff and the ease with which she and the press are manipulated by the deep state. Press PatsiesDuring the convention, Judy Woodruff reported (using the most authoritative voice and concerned visage she could muster) that Donald Trump had a telephone conversation with Israeli...

"PBS NewsHour" anchor Judy Woodruff apologized Wednesday for reporting a story about former President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that both leaders have staunchly denied.

In Bob Dylan’s criminally overlooked 2003 cinematic masterpiece, “Masked and Anonymous,” a newspaper editor tells a reporter: “I will tell you this, there is a story there… Make something out of it. And if you can't do that, sir, then — make it up!” It’s advice that actual journalists today all too often follow. Sometimes, however, they get caught, as PBS just was. Rick laid out all the ugly details here.What is noteworthy is that PBS was clearly caught out because it thought it had a sensational story, one so useful to the leftist cause that it just had to...

“PBS NewsHour” senior correspondent Judy Woodruff issued an apology Wednesday after her comments about former President Trump’s role in Gaza cease-fire talks sparked criticism.“The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the prime minister of Israel urging him not to cut a deal right now because … it’s believed that would help the Harris campaign,” Woodruff said while broadcasting from the Democratic National Convention on Monday.****snip*** In a post on social platform X, Woodruff said Wednesday she wanted to clarify her comments. “As I said, this was not based on my original reporting; I was referring...