Free Republic

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Monday lauded her fellow Democrats for “showing up” while Republicans are “hiding” from the American people, referring to the GOP’s avoidance of in-person town halls. Warren, in an interview with MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez, weighed in on the large numbers of rally goers attending fellow Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) gatherings across the country, intended to combat the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to overhaul the federal workforce. “Democrats are actually showing up to listen to people, to rally with people, while Republicans are hiding and being told by their leadership, don’t go out in public, don’t have...

The top political adviser to Democratic mega-donor Reid Hoffman suggested that the attack on Donald Trump could have been “staged,” even as Hoffman was criticized for joking before Saturday’s attack about Trump becoming a “martyr.” Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, whose net worth is reportedly $2.5 billion, joked at last week’s billionaire confab in Sun Valley that he wished he had made Trump “an actual martyr.” Sunday, he said on X that he was referring to “accountability to the rule of law” and that he’s “horrified and saddened” by the attack. The scale of Hoffman’s political donations isn’t public but...

The Syrian army has uncovered a clandestine plant in Eastern Ghouta that was used by the terrorists to produce military-grade agents, with equipment of Saudi origin and materials presumably made in Western countries having been found at the building, local media reported on Tuesday. The plant is located in al-Shefounieh town in the area of Duma. Among other toxic chemicals, chlorine was found at the site, the SANA news agency reported, adding that the papers of the Jaysh al-Islam militant group were also discovered. A Syrian field commander said that high-tech equipment was found at the plant, which indicates that...

CNN - President Donald Trump keeps lying not only about the 2020 election he lost but the 2024 election he won. In a Saturday speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump correctly noted that he earned 77 million votes in 2024 — then falsely said his vote total was “actually much more than that,” since unspecified people “cheated like hell.” There’s no basis for this claim. Trump’s official vote total is his actual vote total, and there is no evidence of unsuccessful cheating by vote counters or by his Democratic foes. Trump made various other false claims at CPAC,...

Nearly one in 10 adults in the United States identifies as L.G.B.T.Q., according to a large analysis from Gallup released Thursday — almost triple the share since Gallup began counting in 2012, and up by two-thirds since 2020.The increases have been driven by young people, and by bisexual women. Nearly one-quarter of adults in Generation Z, defined by Gallup as those 18 to 27, identify as L.G.B.T.Q., according to the analysis, which included 14,000 adults across all of Gallup’s telephone surveys last year. More than half of these L.G.B.T.Q. young adults identify as bisexual. ...Members of Gen Z were most...

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Thursday on CNN’s “OutFront” that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is illegal and unconstitutional. Host Erin Burnett said, “A group of 14 states tonight just filing a new lawsuit against DOGE, arguing that Elon Musk’s ascent to power in the Trump White House is unconstitutional.” Nessel said, “It’s a clear violation of The Appointments Clause, right? You know, the United States Constitution, it grants the President of the United States the ability with advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint cabinet secretaries and directors over particular agencies. But Elon Musk in...

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) claimed Thursday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that the Republican Party has become the “corruption party” with Elon Musk being the leading agent. Raskin said, “Whoever is left within the vague hemisphere of Trump world who believes in the rule of law will not be able to last because they put corruption first. They are the corruption party at this point. You know, they wiped out the inspectors general. They fired 17 of them illegally without notifying Congress. They have to come to us 30 days before they have to specifically set forth the rationale for...

Elon Musk and his deputies in the Department of Government Efficiency have gained access to Treasury Department systems and targeted a key foreign aid agency for closure, riling Democrats who say the billionaire has no such authority.The debate reflects growing tensions between long-standing government norms and laws, and President Trump’s vision for a new government order of his own making. The world’s richest man, acting as an unelected “efficiency” consultant to President Trump, has in recent days managed the rare feat of overshadowing his boss — presuming to storm into and begin closing out government agencies at will.After two weeks...

With a blizzard of executive orders, President Donald Trump has jump-started an extraordinary plan to transform the federal government into a leaner operation packed with his loyalists. The fine print of those directives reveals how shrewdly the new administration is maneuvering — and sometimes outright ignoring — the arcane laws, rules and regulations that have long protected the civil service of 2.3 million from a political takeover. Trump has skirted Biden-era rules by essentially declaring them unlawful, used probationary periods to place masses of civil servants in limbo and issued a memo lifting restrictions on hiring temporary political appointees to...

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) claimed Thursday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that President Donald Trump had “legitimized” political violence against Democrats. When asked about the J6 pardons, Murphy said, “I mean, let’s let’s really talk about who he let out of prison this week, who walked out of prison. The guy walked out of prison this week that pepper sprayed multiple officers to the point where one had a heart attack, he let out of jail this week. People who were beating police officers over the head with poles he let out of jail. Someone who said when he arrived...

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Tuesday on CNN’s “OutFront” that President Donald Trump’s pardoning the January 6 protesters was to create a “reserve army of political foot soldiers.” Raskin said, “The question is why? Pardons have generally been used when people are actually innocent or there was some procedural miscarriage of justice. Nobody’s claiming that these people were innocent. We’ve got them on tape, you know, hitting the police officers over the head with pipes and bats and Confederate battle flags and all of that’s been established. Most of them pled guilty. The others have been convicted. There was no...

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former member of the Jan. 6 committee, sought to distinguish between the pardon he received from former President Biden compared to those President Trump gave to those who stormed the Capitol. Just hours apart, both Biden and Trump issued a number of pardons. An order from Biden gave a preemptive pardon to all nine members of the panel that investigated the attack on the Capitol, while Trump, through a series of pardons and commutations, cleared the slate for the more than 1,500 people being prosecuted for the attack. “Look, the people who were pardoned the...

John Bolton, national security adviser in Donald Trump's first administration and now a harsh critic of the president-elect, told Newsmax on Friday he will be proven right that Trump is just an aberration in American politics.Bolton also told "Finnerty" he wouldn't take back recent remarks that if Ronald Reagan were alive today, he would be "stunned" that the Republican Party had anything to do with Trump, even after the president-elect defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the popular vote and Electoral College and ushered in GOP control of Congress."We'll see on Monday what the inaugural address looks like," Bolton, the...

Jen Psaki blames Trump, Elon, and Republicans in wake of California wildfires. Trump is not in office yet. Democrats control CaliforniaVideo

President-elect Donald Trump shared a ruthless highlight reel of Democrats repeatedly praising President Biden’s mental sharpness, sharing it soon after a veteran reporter blasted those who helped hide his “obvious cognitive decline.” Trump shared the brutal supercut hours after CBS News reporter Jan Crawford ripped the media for helping to cover up the eldest-ever president’s decline until it was too obvious to ignore at the debate. The nearly three-minute-long video — set to the goofy Wii theme music — started with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre appearing baffled that someone would even dare question Biden’s mental acuity. “Oh my...

Democrats have been caught doing the very thing they’ve been accusing President-elect Donald Trump of doing: Cutting Social Security. On Wednesday, the U.K. Daily Mail reported Senate Democrats are trying to push through a Social Security reform bill they want to see signed by President Joe Biden before Trump takes office. The Social Security Fairness Act aims to repeal provisions that reduce payouts to public sector employees like police officers, firefighters, teachers, and post workers. The Mail cites The Committee for a Responsible Budget in their article, and that group states this would make Social Security insolvent six months earlier...

Former California Rep. and now U.S Senator Adam Schiff appeared on a press stage with Chuck Schumer this week and complained about the idea of Trump sending his political opponents to jail. The nerve of this guy. Do Democrats really believe that no one remembers anything that has happened over the last eight years? Democrats and their allies in the media gleefully spoke about their ambitions to send Donald Trump to prison and repeatedly tried to ruin his presidency and his life. Now that the tables have turned, Schiff thinks everyone is going to shake hands and go about our...

Former President Barack Obama declared that if "one side" attempts to cement "a permanent grip on power" through "suppressing votes," "politicizing" the military or weaponizing the judiciary and criminal justice system to target opponents, "a line has been crossed." His comments came even as many Americans believe that President-elect Donald Trump has been unfairly targeted in unwarranted politically motivated cases. Obama made the comments during a speech on Thursday during the Obama Foundation's Democracy Forum. The speech marked his first public remarks following the 2024 election. "You see, it's easy to give democracy lip service when it delivers the outcomes...

In a coordinated operation, Russian authorities conducted raids on three of Moscow’s largest and most popular nightclubs on Friday night, detaining hundreds of men and taking them to military conscription offices. The raids, which took place at the Simachev, Mutabor/ARMA, and Mono nightclubs, began around 2 a.m. and continued for several hours, sending shockwaves through the city’s nightlife scene. According to witnesses, dozens of police vehicles, including paddy wagons, lined up outside the nightclubs as enforcement personnel, accompanied by police K9 units, systematically entered the establishments. Clubgoers described the scene as chaotic, with people being escorted out in groups. The...

When the Democratic convention took place in August, with new nominee Kamala Harris rising in the polls, Democrats were giddy with a sense of impending victory. In Chicago for the convention, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer of New York visited with party officials and reporters to outline his plans for a glorious new age in Washington with Democrats in control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives. Schumer’s top priority in the new Harris administration would have been to eliminate the legislative filibuster that has long protected minority rights in the Senate. That way, even if the Senate...