Free Republic

Democrats still searching for a way out of the rubble of the 2024 election got a peek in Tuesday’s primaries of what their voters want for the future. The races spanned a mix of competitive and safe-blue seats across six states — including a pair of crucial swing states. The result: A slate of disparate candidates who won’t give them a much clearer sense of their future. State Rep. Chris Rabb, a progressive firebrand and self-styled “rabble-rouser,” won the open primary for the bluest House district in the country in Philadelphia. In a nearby Pennsylvania House battleground, Democrats nominated Bob...

VININGS, Ga. — Brad Raffensperger is fighting to save his political future as MAGA takes hold of the Georgia GOP. The secretary of state rose to national prominence by defying President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but he is carefully trying to avoid the anti-Trump lane while he runs for governor. Instead, he’s running an old-school campaign aimed at an old-school Republican Party: He’s holding low-key events compared with his GOP opponents’ flashier rallies, and he’s focusing on bread-and-butter issues, rather than harping on election security. At one Atlanta-area rotary club gathering in April, Raffensperger was all...

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger became the latest enemy of President Donald Trump’s to lose a Republican primary on Tuesday. Billionaire Rick Jackson and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones advanced to a runoff election for the GOP nomination for Georgia governor — locking out Raffensperger, who rose to prominence defending Georgia’s 2020 election results but struggled to gain traction among his party’s increasingly MAGA base. Raffensperger’s defeat is another sign of Trump’s grip on the GOP, following the president’s wins ousting state Republican senators who clashed with him over redistricting in Indiana and Sen. Bill Cassidy’s loss in Louisiana on...

The pro-Israel lobby that’s pumped millions into Democratic primaries this year is facing the next test of its political power on the right in ruby-red Kentucky. [AIPAC] and other pro-Israel interest groups have uncorked over $9 million in a bid to unseat Republican Rep. Thomas Massie on Tuesday in a competitive primary that has shattered spending records. Prominent pro-Israel GOP donors have funneled millions more into a super PAC stood up by President Donald Trump’s political operation that has spent nearly $7 million on the race. Overall ad spending has topped $32 million, making it the most expensive House primary...

Since retiring in early 2025, Mitt Romney avoided national politics — until his old friend Susan Collins needed help.Former Sen. Mitt Romney has made his first foray back into national politics since leaving the Senate, hosting a fundraiser on Wednesday for his former colleague Sen. Susan Collins.It was the first time the former Utah senator directly reengaged with Washington politics since leaving office at the beginning of 2025. And it shows how seriously the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and sharp critic of President Donald Trump — who has prized privacy in his retirement — wishes to preserve a group of...

OTTAWA — The video playing was clearly Pete Hoekstra, the frequently combative U.S. ambassador to Canada. But something was off. He kept referring to Canada as a partner? “For all of the critical things that we need, Canada would be an ideal partner,” Hoekstra said in a prerecorded conversation at a conservative think tank in March. Hoekstra ticked off the ways the two countries could work together: deepened military cooperation in the Arctic, including through Trump’s “Golden Dome”; beefed-up energy cooperation on oil and gas, critical minerals and uranium; coordinating on artificial intelligence. At one point, he even cited the...

LAS VEGAS — Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo is trying to run a reelection campaign befitting the neon-drenched, sagebrush-pocked desert he has for five decades called home. President Donald Trump is making that hard. The Republican governor started the year with a sevenfold fundraising advantage, double-digit net favorability ratings and the tailwinds of a swing state the GOP presidential candidate carried for the first time in two decades. Five months later, he finds himself in a neck-and-neck race with Democrat Aaron Ford, the state’s attorney general, yoked to a highly unpopular president, a wobbling economy and a Middle Eastern war that...

British monarchs deliver their political messages in code — and the reference we just heard Charles make to 9/11 is worth unpacking. “In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time … we answered the call together, as our people have done so for more than a century, shoulder to shoulder,” the king said. Make no mistake — this is a carefully targeted rebuff to Trump and his allies in Congress that, contrary to the president’s repeated claims over recent weeks, NATO was in fact there to help in America’s hour of need. Charles...

Former Rep. Barney Frank, a liberal icon who was a key architect of the landmark Wall Street regulations Democrats enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, has entered hospice care at his home in Maine. And as one of his last acts, he is preparing to release a book repudiating his party’s left flank. A champion of liberal causes during his 32 years representing Massachusetts in the House, Frank says progressive Democrats have “embraced an agenda that goes beyond what’s politically acceptable.” “Until we separate ourselves from that agenda, we don’t win,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

It wasn't a political story so much as The Adoration of the Bayh Child with the three Magi all wrapped into one Politico national political correspondent by the name of Adam Wren, who's based in Indiana. His article on Friday was "Can a Democratic Dynasty Survive in This Red State?"The subtitle even casts young Bayh in the role of potential political savior for the Democrats: "A race for statewide office in Indiana could chart the way forward for national Democrats."This is a beatification of Bayh, a big bowl of fluff. It starts with a jog: "How else would a chiseled,...

Grindr’s in bed with strange fellows. The LGBTQ+ dating app has expanded its political presence in both Washington and California as it seeks to flex its influence muscles on a range of policy priorities. The app’s ambitions have grown since President Donald Trump’s return to office — and much of that is due to the registered Republican running the shop. Since April 2025, Joe Hack has navigated a GOP-controlled Washington as he pushes forward Grindr’s biggest legislative priorities. Out in California, George Arison, Grindr’s self-described “conservative” CEO, has waded into primary politics, pushing moderate San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan as...

King Charles is expected to meet New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York during his visit next week, according to two people familiar with the planning The unlikely duo will both attend a wreath laying at the 9/11 memorial in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday. The event will also be attended by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other New York government officials, according to the two people, who were granted anonymity to discuss private plans. Mamdani, son of one of world’s most prominent postcolonial theorists, will have a camera-ready moment when he greets the man whose forebears oversaw...

Trump haters always think they haven't been aggressive enough in taking Trump down. Politico senior writer Ankush Khardori posted an article on Election Day headlined "Avoiding Merrick Garland’s Mistakes the Next Time Democrats Hold Power." The "mistakes" Khardori sees are that Garland did not push hard enough nor fast enough in his politically motivated lawfare against Trump, even though it resulted in two federal indictments as well as two federally influenced state indictments.Khardori's thirst for lawfare vengeance in the next future Democrat DOJ was inspired by a newly published book. Leftist journalists scold Garland as a spineless jellyfish.

Members on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are divided over whether President Donald Trump should pardon Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for her cooperation in the panel’s Epstein investigation, Chair James Comer said in an interview Wednesday. Maxwell, who was deposed by the Oversight Committee as the sole convicted accomplice in the Epstein sex trafficking scheme, previously invoked her Fifth Amendment right in declining to answer the panel’s questions. Her lawyer has said that she would only speak if granted clemency — a power available solely to Trump, who has not ruled out the prospect...

Tensions are continuing to rise inside the House GOP Conference as Republican leaders race to land a backup plan in the coming hours to reauthorize a controversial spy powers program. Speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview Wednesday afternoon that he’s “targeting tomorrow” for release of an updated proposal for extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “It’s coming along well.” It comes as Senate Majority Leader John Thune warned Wednesday that the House would need to file the bill by the end of this week to give his chamber time to act on the legislation ahead of...

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Sunday urged the EU to end its association agreement with Israel. In an escalation of his criticism against Israel, he said during a rally in Andalusia that “a government that violates international law or the principles of the EU cannot be its partner.” Spain will formally propose the termination of the agreement at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Tuesday in Luxembourg. Sánchez has emerged as one of Israel’s most vocal critics in the EU. He accused Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing genocide in Gaza and denounced the joint U.S.-Israel strikes...

Since 9/11 a lot of people have promoted themselves as “terrorism experts.” Most are not. Many of these new “terrorism experts” hail from the halls of American academia–places that frankly provide very little in the way of background for the study of terrorism. It’s as if the same bunch who got it wrong during most of the Cold War saw an opportunity in the field of terrorism and became instant experts overnight. There are a lot of problems with this phenomenon of overnight terrorism experts, not the least of which is the fact that oil-rich Gulf states such as Qatar,...

Politico's senior executive editor, Alexander Burns, has a long history of attempting to foist far left politics upon the public. In his latest incarnation on Monday, Burns uses the defeat of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán at the polls to argue the Democrats need to embrace socialism if they want to defeat the nasty MAGA Republicans at the polls, "Orbán’s Defeat Shows What Trump’s Opponents Keep Doing Wrong."

On March 5, Politico economics correspondent Victoria Guida made it clear she's frustrated that President Trump isn't losing momentum. noted That March piece is dripping with frustration and irritation, starting with the headline: "Trump Keeps Gambling With the Economy — And Getting Away With It."Well it now appears that same bitterness on the part of Guida has carried over into April as reflected in title of her Friday story, "Job growth shatters expectations in March, in boost to Trump." And if you missed the bitterness in the title, the subtitle makes it quite clear, "That report gives the president some...

An American journalist was reportedly kidnapped by Iran-backed militant group Kataib Hezbollah in the Iraqi capital Baghdad — with terrifying surveillance footage showing armed men dragging her into the back of a car. Tuesday’s abduction of Shelly Kittleson, 49, from Monticello, Wisconsin, was confirmed by Al-Monitor, the independent media outlet for which she had written. “We are deeply alarmed by the kidnapping of Al-Monitor contributor Shelly Kittleson in Iraq on Tuesday. We call for her safe and immediate release,” Al-Monitor said in a statement. “We stand by her vital reporting from the region and call for her swift return to...