Free Republic

President Biden’s approval rating has ticked up following the 2022 midterm elections, but remains lower than it was at this time last year. CNN’s December survey found 46 percent said they approve of the job Biden is doing as president, up from 41 percent in late October. Last year, 49 percent of those surveyed said they approved of the president’s job performance, but his rating has been steadily below that number since December 2021. Respondents rated Biden lower on economic issues than overall job performance, with 36 percent expressing approval for the president’s leadership of the economy. Thirty-three percent of...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has overtaken former President Trump in a hypothetical 2024 match-up for the GOP presidential nomination, according to a new Yahoo News-YouGov poll. The nationwide poll, released Thursday, shows DeSantis with a 5-point lead over Trump, with 47 percent of registered voters backing the governor compared to 42 percent for the former president. The latest results, taken in the first few days of December, are a stark turn from a mid-October poll that found Trump ahead by 9 percentage points, with 45 percent to DeSantis’s 36 percent. Trump announced his third run for the White House...

After being out all week with a sinus infection, Joe Scarborough was back with a roided-out vengeance on today's Morning Joe. His word of the day was "loser," which he used ad nauseam to rip Donald Trump and Republicans in general over their midterm losses, and what he sees as the GOP's complacent attitude toward losing. At the end of the half-hour, Scarborough's rant became so unhinged that poor Mika repeatedly tried to shut him down. She explained to the viewers that Joe had been given a steroid for his infection. Scarborough embraced the notion, calling himself "roided-out" and suggesting...

Senate Republicans who want to move on from Donald Trump are smelling blood after a series of self-destructive errors by the former president that they think is opening the door for GOP rivals to challenge and defeat him in a 2024 presidential primary. The GOP lawmakers say Trump looks increasingly vulnerable in a primary after what they describe as his erratic behavior in recent weeks, which has raised new doubts about his ability to beat President Biden or any other Democrat in a general election. Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said Trump’s most recent self-inflicted wound — in which...

Columnist Karen Attiah claimed 'attacks against Black educators, authors and journalists are increasing across the country'Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah blamed racism for MSNBC’s abrupt firing of Black weekend anchor Tiffany Cross earlier last month.In a Friday column, Attiah argued that Cross’s ouster was a "a reminder that the rug could be pulled out from under [Black journalists] at any time." She added that it was a "bad look" in a time when "attacks against Black educators, authors and journalists are increasing across the country."

<p>Former President Donald Trump suggested the “termination” of the United States Constitution could be allowable in response to the bombshell report that the Democrat Party colluded with Twitter to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election.</p><p>The former president made his observation via his Truth Social account on Saturday following journalist Matt Taibbi’s thorough report on Twitter’s internal communications during the 2020 elections at the behest of newly-minted CEO Elon Musk.</p>

Former President Donald Trump said in a video message Thursday that those imprisoned for January 6 crimes were being 'tormented' and treated 'very, very unfairly,' and he would 'get to the bottom of it' during his 2024 White House run. ... ...we can't let this happen in our country because our country is going - not socialist, they've skipped over that, they've skipped over socialism - our country is going communist,' Trump also claimed. 'This is what happens and we can't let it happen, we have to stop it.' ... ...In September Trump pledged that if he was re-elected president...

Former President Donald Trump again rejected the result of Arizona’s gubernatorial election Monday, calling for Republican Kari Lake to be declared the winner due to a supposed “criminal voting operation.” “Massive numbers of ‘BROKEN’ voting machines in Republican Districts on Election Day. Mechanics sent in to ‘FIX’ them made them worse,” Trump, 76, said in a Truth Social post without offering evidence. “Kari had to be taken to a Democrat area, which was working perfectly, to vote. Her opponent ran the Election.” Trump added it was “SO OBVIOUS” that Lake, 53, should not have lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s...

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Monday said former President Trump was “wrong” to have dinner with white nationalist Nick Fuentes last week, but said he does not believe Trump is an antisemite or racist. “President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table, and I think he should apologize,” Pence told NewsNation in an interview. “With that being said, as I point out in the book as well, I don’t believe Donald Trump is an antisemite. I don’t believe he’s a racist or a bigot,” Pence continued. “I...

It’s clear that Generation Z has earned a seat at the table. We’ve led the social movements that have shaped our current politic climate and helped elect President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris into office. Our growing political power is driven by our unique perspective on the future as we ask ourselves: What does the future hold? Too often, as young people we are underestimated due to our age, but in reality many of us have years of experience and our youth and age is not a detriment, but an asset providing our perspective as members of the...

Nothing against Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio's 3rd District, but it was difficult not to raise an eyebrow at his tweet on Tuesday suggesting that the "Left is furious that there's Free Speech on Twitter." There certainly does seem to be something going on at Twitter to allow more conservative voices to be heard, and given the openly malicious censorship on the platform that conservatives have endured these past years, that does bring more balance to the dialogue taking place there. Conservatives are celebrating this as a victory, while vexed liberals lament their loss of command in the progressive echo...

Former Trump Justice Department head William Barr, in the course of reiterating his strong preference that his party nominate a less deranged presidential candidate next time, expressed a fear that has been in wide circulation: If defeated in the primary, Donald Trump “will burn the whole house down by leading ‘his people’ out of the GOP.” One version of this is that Trump will either form a third party or simply refuse to endorse another Republican, thereby dooming his party’s chances. Those of us considering the question from a less friendly standpoint than Barr — I consider the Republican Party...

CNN — The results of this month’s election point toward a 2024 presidential contest that will likely be decided by a tiny sliver of voters in a rapidly shrinking list of swing states realistically within reach for either party. With only a few exceptions, this year’s results showed each side further consolidating its hold over the states that already lean in its direction. And in 2024 that will likely leave control of the White House in the hands of a very small number of states that are themselves divided almost exactly in half between the parties – a list that...

Defeated Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s campaign has sued Maricopa County and its election officials, demanding they respond to the campaign’s public records requests about malfunctions on Election Day before the county certifies its vote canvass on Monday. Maricopa County, which spans the Phoenix area and comprises about 60 percent of Arizona’s population, has become the epicenter of election challenges this cycle, and the complaint marks the Lake campaign’s first post-Election Day lawsuit. County election officials acknowledge printer mishaps at some vote centers on Election Day but insist residents still had multiple ways to cast a ballot for counting....

By all accounts, the risk of another winter surge of COVID-19 in the U.S. is high. And this time coronavirus is on the prowl alongside two pals — influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). In some areas, hospitals are already overwhelmed. Just how severe this “tripledemic” is going to be is unclear. But what is very clear is that a pandemic-weary public isn’t taking the threat seriously enough. Shockingly, neither is government. Biden administration officials have expressed concerns for months, but there’s been no loud alarm bells, so far. That includes at a White House briefing on Tuesday where officials...

Sen. Lisa Murkowski has won re-election in Alaska, dealing former President Donald Trump another loss in what has largely been a miserable midterm cycle for his hand-picked candidates in competitive Senate races. Murkowski, one of only seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial, survived a challenge from Trump-endorsed Kelly Tshibaka, a former Alaska Department of Administration commissioner, in the state’s first Senate election to be decided by ranked-choice voting. Rather than limiting voters to one choice, the format allows for candidates to be ranked in order of preference. Neither Murkowski nor Tshibaka, the top two-vote...

Donors just didn’t want to back a loser — and that’s just what Mr. Trump is now — a loser. “Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, the second-most prolific GOP donor of the midterms, said Tuesday that he would support [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis over Trump, pointing to the Florida governor’s dominant reelection victory in a state that was considered competitive until recently,” The Hill reported this week. “I’d like to think that the Republican Party is ready to move on from somebody who has been for this party a three-time loser,” said Mr. Griffin, who funded a pro-Trump super political...

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) blasted former President Trump and Republican leadership for the party’s failure to secure a red wave in the midterm elections on Friday. Hogan and other GOP political leaders spoke at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition meeting, which started Friday and runs throughout the weekend, about the state of the coalition, the party and U.S.-Israel relations.

Kari Lake, the perpetually soft-lit, camera-ready political newcomer from Arizona, may have lost her bid to become the state's next governor, but it's unlikely she'll leave the spotlight. A Phoenix-area news anchor for 22 years, Lake called it quits in 2021 and decided to go all in on politics. She fended off better-funded, more qualified GOP challengers in the primaries and ran a ground game in the general election in which she regularly made headlines for tearing into fellow reporters and mocking her political opponent. Lake ran a full Trumpist campaign and pushed a familiar but divisive message that questioned...

To paraphrase Voltaire after he attended an orgy, once was an experiment, twice would be perverse.A bruised Donald Trump announced a new presidential bid on Tuesday night, an invitation to double down on the outrages and failures of the last several years that Republicans should reject without hesitation or doubt.To his credit, Trump killed off the Clinton dynasty in 2016, nominated and got confirmed three constitutionalist justices, reformed taxes, pushed deregulation, got control of the border, significantly degraded ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and cinched normalization deals between Israel and the Gulf states, among other things. These are achievements that...