Free Republic

“You need Chevron, I need Chevron.” That’s the message from Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner Xavier Becerra, who’s making waves by breaking with the left on one of California’s most ambitious climate policies — as he refuses to fully back the state’s plan to phase out new gas-powered vehicle sales by 2035. The former Health and Human Services secretary, who leads polling ahead of the June 2 primary to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, stopped short of endorsing the state’s target to ban new gas and hybrid vehicle purchases starting in 2035. “California should transition from gas-powered vehicles when it makes sense —...

Graham Platner exchanged sexually explicit texts with multiple women while married to his wife, Amy Gertner, his campaign confirmed to POLITICO on Saturday, the latest scandal he has faced since launching his Maine Senate campaign last year.In a statement, Gertner slammed a former friend for spreading “malicious gossip” in the wake of a Wall Street Journal report that she had informed her husband’s campaign of the texts in late August.“I confided deeply personal details about my marriage to someone I considered a friend,” she said. “In the months since, I have had to watch as she spread malicious gossip to...

Federal income tax experts tell POLITICO money from the DOJ's Judgment Fund, which the new $1.8 billion program is drawing on, is generally taxable.President Donald Trump isn’t supposed to directly profit from the dismissal of his lawsuit against the IRS.And yet, he could still owe taxes on the money going to set up a central feature of that deal — the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”Some tax practitioners say the way that the fund, which Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced May 18, is structured likely makes it an income tax liability for the president, potentially costing hundreds of millions of...

President Donald Trump offered a cryptic excuse Friday for missing his son Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding later this weekend, which comes amid bubbling international tensions. Trump confirmed he will not be attending his son’s wedding to Palm Beach socialite Bettina Anderson, citing “circumstances pertaining to Government” without providing details.

Politico’s Dylan Byers, in a piece for his buddies in the MSM, declares that conservative criticism of the mainstream media is overblown. Byers writes: So often conservative media, like conservative media criticism, can't be taken seriously because it overplays its hand. Like someone who shouts "thief!" the second his keys go missing, much of the conservative echo-chamber has a hyper-aggressive penchant to see conspiracy where they'd do better to see questions in need of answers. As a general rule -- albeit with plenty of exceptions -- there is a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach among those who fashion themselves as "anti-MSM," which can...

Democrats won an unexpected victory Tuesday when legislation to halt the Iran war cleared an initial hurdle in the Senate — a vote that strengthens their hand in the increasingly fractious debate over the conflict. Critics of the military operation took advantage of a shorthanded Republican conference — three GOP senators missed the vote — resulting in a 50-47 decision to force debate on a rebuke of President Donald Trump. War opponents gained another GOP defector in Sen. Bill Cassidy. The Louisiana Republican, who voted to convict President Donald Trump in the wake of his second impeachment over the Jan....

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...

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...