Free Republic

As President Donald Trump threatens legal action against his adversaries, particularly after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, he’s repeatedly talked about using one federal law: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. Trump wants to bring racketeering charges against left-wing groups he’s accused of promoting violence. Some influential Republicans agree with him and have been pushing to include rioting as one of the crimes that falls under the racketeering statute, a decades-old law once aimed at cracking down on organized crime. Kirk’s death and the resulting calls by influential conservatives to crack down on the left using the federal government’s...

BREAKING: The FCC Chairman is threatening immediate action against Jimmy Kimmel, ABC, and Disney for deliberately misleading the public by claiming Charlie Kirk’s assassin was a MAGA Conservative. Chairman Brendan Carr calls Kimmel’s malicious lies are “truly sick” and says they should result in Kimmel's immediate suspension and may lead to ABC losing its broadcast license. Chairman Carr confirms the agency has a “strong case” to hold Kimmel, ABC, and Disney accountable for spreading dangerous, politically motivated misinformation. "This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way....

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel insinuated Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin was a member of the "MAGA gang" while mocking President Donald Trump’s response to his death during his show Monday night. The "Jimmy Kimmel Live" host brought up the matter during his monologue and claimed right-wing critics were hitting "new lows" trying to frame the suspect, 22-year-old Utah native Tyler Robinson, as someone who wasn’t "MAGA." "We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything...

Recently declassified documents indicate that people close to former FBI Director James Comey and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff were connected to leaks of classified information to prominent reporters designed to portray Donald Trump and his allies as being in league with Russia. Reporters from the New York Times and Washington Post shared a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for articles that used classified leaks to advance the Russigate hoax. Columbia University, Photo by Eileen BarrosoWritten in 2017, the FBI documents expose how selected Washington reporters, including Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post and Michael Schmidt of the New York Times, scored a...

Left-wing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel has attacked President Donald Trump for mourning the assassination of Charlie Kirk like “how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.” Kimmel showed his sneering disregard for the president’s empathy during his show on Monday night, alleging Republicans and Trump “are doing everything they can to score political points” from the tragedy. He further made clear his belief Trump and his supporters are somehow “desperately trying to characterize the kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” MSNBC Senior Reporter Brandy Zadrozny said that there is left-wing extremist content online, “but not that much. It’s pretty hard. On the right, you can find it literally everywhere. It’s just overflowing.” But most of the shooters who came out of these spaces likely “aren’t huge fans of Donald Trump. They’re fans of nothing. They’re fans of extremism. They’re fans of burn it down.” Host Jacob Soboroff asked, “Do you see a common denominator, a common type of politics across or amongst all of these incidents, all of these shooters?” Zadrozny answered, “Yeah,...

A Long Island newspaper was forced to apologize after publishing a graphic Charlie Kirk cartoon slammed as 'unconscionable' and 'despicable'. Newsday removed the offending political illustration from all its platforms and acknowledged an 'error in judgment' after intense backlash from readers. The cartoon depicted an empty blood-splattered chair under a tent labeled 'Charlie Kirk.' An arrow points upwards toward the seat with the caption 'Turning Point USA,' the non-profit organization founded in 2012 by Kirk. The banner above the tent reads 'prove me wrong', which was Kirk's slogan for his college campus political debate events. The illustration was created by...

The New York Times issued a correction Thursday, admitting it had wrongly attributed an antisemitic remark to Charlie Kirk when the late Turning Point USA founder was actually critiquing the comment. As part of its story on where Kirk stood on key political issues in the wake of his assassination, The Times reported Kirk was "repeatedly accused of antisemitism." Kirk was a staunch supporter of Israel and has been praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an antisemitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made on an episode of his podcast. He was...

As editors and reporters in the Chicago Sun-Times/WBEZ newsroom geared up for President Trump’s proclamation earlier this month that he intended to send the National Guard to Chicago, we asked ourselves: How could we possibly cover the deployment of troops and more ICE agents if the operation was large and dispersed? One avenue? Engage the public. (As we published this story, Trump announced that he would be sending the National Guard to Memphis instead. The administration’s anti-immigration operation in Chicago continues.) So interactive developer Andjela Padejski and Chicago Public Media’s AI fellow Mark Chonofsky got to work on a...

A stew of hypertoxic rhetoric has surged through social media and American discourse after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, inflaming a political environment that was already deeply polarized. The most concerning messages, experts told NBC News, are proclamations from far-right activists, Republican politicians and conservative influencers about a coming civil war and the need for retribution or payback against the left for Kirk’s killing. The phrase “civil war” has spiked on social media and in Google searches. “The Left is the party of murder,” Elon Musk posted on X to his 226 million followers, shortly after the shooting...

Dozens of social media posts and messages about the murder of Charlie Kirk, including some that celebrated his death, are being spotlighted by conservative activists, Republican elected officials and a doxxing website as part of an online campaign to punish the posters behind the messages. Prominent far-right influencer Laura Loomer, a US senator, and a site called “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” have all drawn attention to people who have posted messages about Kirk’s Wednesday assassination. The campaigns show how social media posts or personal messages — even by accounts with few followers or from people who are not public figures —...

"We don’t know why that man did what he did. And for Charlie Kirk to say, ‘We know he did it because she’s white’ when there’s no evidence of that is just pure race-mongering, hate-mongering. It’s wrong," Jones said. "For someone like Charlie Kirk, he should be ashamed of himself. No one mentioned the word ‘race,’ ‘white,’ ‘black,’ or anything—except him."

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, once a casino owner and always a man in search of his next deal, is fond of a poker analogy when sizing up partners and adversaries. … Seven months into his second term, he has accumulated presidential power that he has used against universities, media companies, law firms, and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized “deep state” is, in some ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents. And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren’t recoiling. They’re...

NBC News reported shocking interviews with a dozen federal court judges who hid behind anonymity to attack the Supreme Court for overturning their anti-Trump decisions, accusing the conservative dominated Supreme Court of undermining the judiciary. This is the latest in an ongoing battle this year between anti-Trump Resistance judges on the federal bench using their rulings to enact their preferred policies and the Supreme Court trying to rein them in under constitutional order. With Republicans holding the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrat activists are using their allies on the federal bench to obstruct and delay actions by...

The Supreme Court has already expanded President Donald Trump’s authority in a string of emergency rulings, but he’s signaling in his firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and other issues likely headed to the court that he continues to seek broader powers for the executive branch. The cases could serve as major tests of how much further the nation’s high court is willing to go to bless the president’s assertion of executive authority. They differ from previous showdowns because of the sheer magnitude of the authority Trump is seeking to wield and because he wants greater control over powers...

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is ripping into CBS News for omitting her full answers during an interview on Face the Nation. The network cut almost 25 percent of her answers for their Sunday show, where Ms. Noem spoke about the ongoing efforts and operations to deport illegal aliens. She also expounded more about the ongoing case against Abrego Garcia, but CBS News took the hatchet to that as well (via DHS): During the broadcast, CBS edits deprived the American people from hearing the truth about MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The following 25 seconds were cut from...

President Donald Trump’s recent focus on urban crime presents a classic dilemma for Democrats. If they point out that his lurid portrait of a violent epidemic is inaccurate, they risk turning off voters who agree with him on an emotional level. But if they go along with it, they risk legitimizing his power grab. Trump and his Republican allies clearly hope to ride this issue all the way into next year’s midterms, so Democrats need to come up with a counteroffensive soon. Fortunately for them, there is a group of Democrats who know exactly how to run — and win...

Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones, a Democrat, told a vigorously agreeing MSNBC host Ali Velshi on Saturday that offering thoughts and prayers following a tragedy like the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting is “theological malpractice” and accused those doing so of “idolatry.” Jones is a frequent cable news guest and far-left activist lawmaker who came to prominence when he and other members helped lead protesters in occupying the Tennessee House to protest against guns.

Summary Nearly half of recent cases in crackdown target minor offenses Large teams of federal agents assist in routine policework Effort turns up guns, large quantities of drugs WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) - One night last week, police officers in Washington stopped a man carrying a designer handbag after spotting a small, clear plastic bag poking out of it, which they suspected might contain marijuana. It was the kind of encounter that is a staple of local police work, only this time the officers who asked to look inside the bag were accompanied by agents from five separate federal law...

“We’ve also been going through it, and I can tell you there are crude diagrams of the church. There are also photos of the weapons, and they include all sorts of writings, the names of past mass shooters, criticism of Israel, the name of President Trump written on the guns,” Katersky added.