Free Republic

When it comes to politics and the media, we live in very stupid times and this story is proof. Now that Democrats have utterly failed to redistrict the state of Virginia, the liberal media outlet Politico is reporting that the Dems are pivoting to a ‘new’ strategy of demonizing Trump and blaming him for everything. This is new? Really? That’s news to us. It sounds like the oldest Democrat strategy in the book. Haven’t they been doing this since at least 2015? From Politico: As Republicans carve up Black districts, Democrats pivot to a new midterm message Democrats are changing...

Fentanyl — along with trade and the Iran war — is one of the key items on Trump’s agenda during his long-anticipated two-day summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping... Since his first term, Trump has prioritized pushing China to take serious action to curb the flow of precursor chemicals from China to Mexican cartels that process them into fentanyl... U.S. drug overdose deaths have declined sharply since their peak three years ago. Still, nearly 40,000 people died from synthetic opioids, which include fentanyl, in 2025, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention... “President Trump has made it clear...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

It's the Great Fear that has been haunting California Democrats, and especially Politico, since they noticed the possibility last December that because of the Democrats splitting the votes among each other in the open gubernatorial primary in June. The two top candidates could end up being Republicans, thus locking Democrats out of the November general election.The angst over this possibility has only increased dramatically since then, with the latest poll results sending poor Politico over the edge to the extent they have completely dropped even the bare pretense of objectivity as they MindMeld with the Democrats in deep deep concern...

For years, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has waged a relentless antisemitic hate campaign against the Jewish people and Israel. It dates back at least to 2014, when she peddled classic conspiracy tropes, claiming America was “subjugated by Jews” and Europe paralyzed by Holocaust guilt—rhetoric straight out of the antisemitic playbook that has endangered Jews for generations. Her twisted path only intensified in 2022, when backing from the OIC [Islamic countries bloc] and like-minded lobbies helped install her as the UN’s so-called “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” From that platform,...

For decades, one of the most reliable pillars of pro-Israel sentiment in the United States was not just Jews but conservative Christians. That support had a theological motor: Israel mattered not just as an ally on a Cold War map, but as a central actor on the map of the End Times. Put simply, Christians needed Jews to return to the homeland of Israel to usher in the second coming of Christ. But now, that theological motor is sputtering… Young evangelicals are less tethered to elaborate prophetic systems… The consequence is subtle but profound: Support for Israel increasingly has to...

It's not the story that Politico really wanted but unfortunately for them, it is the story they ended up with due to cold hard reality. The story in question by Erica Orden appeared on Sunday, "The Epstein files’ cottage industry."What is interesting is that none of the clients that the lawyers are representing is named Donald Trump despite the desperate Politico attempt in the summer of 2025 to link the President to Jeffrey Epstein culminating in SIX Epstein-Trump stories in a 24 hour period in July of that year.As you read the story about the new "cottage industry" for lawyers,...

Prominent Democrat lawyer David Boies, best known for representing Al Gore in Bush v. Gore after the contested 2000 election, riled many of his fellow Democrats by recently writing a Wall Street Journal op-ed, "Partisanship on Iran Is Dangerous for America," with the subtitle of "Trump is doing the right thing for the U.S., and we Democrats should judge the war on the merits."Needless to say this set many liberals on edge, including a highly irked Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker. He doesn't tolerate dissent from the Democrat party line well. Earlier, Politico found an anonymous Democrat strategist to...

Trump supporters who backed his promise to avoid new Middle East wars worry Iran’s attacks on shipping are pushing the U.S. toward escalation — and maybe even boots on the ground.When the U.S. started firing Tomahawk missiles at Iran late last month, many of President Donald Trump’s allies hoped it would be a quick, surgical operation, similar to last year’s strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities or the ouster of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January. Though uneasy, they were reassured by the belief that Trump’s open-ended objectives gave him the flexibility to declare victory whenever he saw fit. Now, more...

Coach Tommy Tuberville @SenTuberville · To be clear, I didn’t “suggest” Islamists are the enemy. I said it plainly. POLITICO @politico: Tuberville shares social media post suggesting Muslims are ‘the enemy’. Mar 12, 2026

Republicans attempting to oust Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in a bitter primary are deploying his opposition to the war in Iran. The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund on Thursday released an ad supporting Ed Gallrein, the candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump, that focuses on Massie’s opposition to the war. “America is at war with a fanatical regime that seeks nuclear weapons. American hero Ed Gallrein stands with President Trump, our country and our military,” a narrator says in the 30-second spot. “Thomas Massie, he stands with Iran and radical leftists in Congress,” the narrator says, “opposing Trump just like...

President Donald Trump is just incredibly lucky. He kept rolling the dice on the economy and somehow the doom-sayers keep losing. All the experts said his tariffs would drastically increase inflation; instead it went down. Democrats projected at the end of 2024 that "Mass Deportations Would Deliver a Catastrophic Blow to the U.S. Economy." It has not.This luck just has to stop at some point. Such is the weird attitude of Politico's economics correspondent, Victoria Guida. She thinks that the economic success of the Trump administration is based just on the sheer luck of making the correct gambles as reflected...

According to a Politico report citing an internal Pentagon notification, United States Central Command (CENTCOM) has requested additional military intelligence officers to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days and possibly through September. When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran last Saturday, the operation was framed as a swift military campaign. Donald Trump later described it as a limited effort expected to last roughly four to five weeks. ...