Free Republic

@ky_statesman I've lived in KY-04 my entire life and closely follow the election results here. There is no way that the turnout legitimately doubled. This was election fraud carried out by the highest levels of our state & federal governments.

Republicans’ support for President Donald Trump's war on Iran fractured on Wednesday. Senate Democrats have tried to splinter off Republicans from their near-unified backing of Operation Epic Fury for months with a campaign of attrition, putting war powers resolution after war powers resolution on the floor ever since fighting began. And after two months of trying, they finally got some in the GOP to flip on Trump with Sen. Jeff Merkley's, D-Ore., latest attempt. Still, it wasn’t enough to terminate ongoing operations in the Middle East. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has consistently...

The adult son of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) launched a vile antisemitic and homophobic tirade at Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) at a DC bar Tuesday night, saying at one point that the Iran war was “about the gays and the Jews, and I hate them both, and I don’t care if they die.” In a phone conversation recounting the evening, Lawler told The Post that he was sitting at a popular DC bar with a friend and a reporter for NOTUS, which first revealed the incident involving William Paul. “So Rand Paul’s f—ing son is sitting next to us at...

Israel is betting nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars that it can talk its way out of a reputation crisis. Lawmakers in Jerusalem approved a 2026 national budget at the end of March that includes roughly $730 million for public diplomacy — the broad category known in Hebrew as hasbara — more than four times the $150 million they allocated the year before… Most striking for a country long accustomed to bipartisan American support: 57% of Republicans under 50 hold negative views of Israel. Support has cratered among the religiously unaffiliated, Black Protestants and Catholics. Among American Jews, support has...

Washington — As inflation rose to its highest rate in years and CBS News polling shows high prices at the pump are causing financial strain for many Americans, President Trump told reporters Tuesday, "I don't think about Americans' financial situation" as a motivation for negotiations with Iran, and said he is only concerned with preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. When asked by a reporter how much Americans' finances are "motivating you to make a deal," Mr. Trump responded: "Not even a little bit."

President Donald Trump will not control the Republican Party forever. No political figure does... History is littered with figures who seemed immovable — until they moved. The question is never whether change will come. The question is whether honorable people are ready when it does. We intend to be ready. What does that mean in practice? It means identifying and supporting candidates, at every level of government, but most importantly a candidate for President in 2028, who hold genuine conservative values rather than merely pay lip service to them. It means building a coalition of Republicans who understand that winning...

In a report from The Bulwark on Republican sentiment on soaring gas prices… Cornyn, R-TX, said the hike in gas is a "small price to pay" to continue the war. "If the American people understood," Cornyn said, "they would certainly agree." “After 40 years in public office, John Cornyn still doesn’t understand that working Texans are drowning because DC politicians like him are driving up the cost of everything," said Talarico campaign spokesperson J.T. Ennis in a news release… Cornyn is set to face Attorney General Ken Paxton in a May 26 runoff. The winner of that contest will face...

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was presented with a birthday cake featuring a large picture of a noose at his 50th birthday party tonight, photos circulating online show. The noose is a reference to the controversial law mandating the death penalty for Palestinians terrorists, which has long been championed by Ben Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit party. The ultra-nationalist minister’s birthday party had already sparked controversy after he invited members of the police’s General Command Staff to attend the event. Ben Gvir has faced scrutiny over allegations of undue influence over the police, including in petitions at the High...

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett said his new alliance with opposition leader Yair Lapid will hold and enable the opposition bloc to form a long-lasting government to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unveiling in a Wednesday interview with The Jerusalem Post his “Israeli Renaissance” plan to bring one million olim (new immigrants) to Israel over the next decade. Bennett spoke to the Post after the recent announcement that his and Lapid’s parties, Yesh Atid and Bennett 2026, will merge into a single list named Together, led by Bennett. The move to run together could reshape the direction of the elections,...

The U.S. government learned last week that it may have reached an unfortunate milestone: The size of its debt surpassed the nation’s total economic output. It was a striking imbalance, according to early estimates, one that the country has experienced only in rare circumstances — briefly during the pandemic, and in the aftermath of World War II. But the development barely seemed to register in the nation’s capital, where few policymakers bothered to acknowledge the latest warning sign about the government’s poor fiscal health. The root of the problem is well-documented and widely known. U.S. debt has soared in recent...

An IDF soldier was seen placing a cigarette into the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary, in a Christian village in southern Lebanon, in a photo shared online on Wednesday. After identifying the soldier, the Israel Defense Forces said he will be disciplined. In response to a query, the IDF said that it “views the incident gravely and emphasizes that the soldier’s conduct completely deviates from the values expected of its troops.” An initial inquiry conducted by the IDF found that the photo was taken in the village of Debel several weeks ago, although it was only shared...

Fox News contributor Mark Thiessen joined anchor John Roberts on Thursday to discuss the latest developments in President Donald Trump’s negotiations to end the conflict in Iran, which Thiessen warned risked putting the U.S. in a weaker position. Roberts introduced Thiessen and noted, “He’s got a new column out today in the Washington Post titled ‘Trump Risks Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory.’” Roberts continued: You’re offering the president some advice here, including on X, where you said: “Here’s what Iran sees after being warned not to. They hit UAE and fired on a U.S. ship, and we didn’t...

Karina is six months pregnant, but the foetus inside her womb is not her own. The 22-year-old from eastern Ukraine is a surrogate, pregnant with an embryo from a Chinese couple's egg and sperm. At the age of 17 Karina's home was destroyed when her city, Bakhmut, became one of the most fiercely contested battlegrounds in the early phase of Russia's full-scale invasion. With most of the city turned to rubble and ash, she and her partner moved to Kyiv but they struggled to find steady work. It was when Karina was in a shop one day, with barely enough...

Donald Trump is on the verge of securing a sweeping peace deal with Iran that would lift US sanctions, free billions in frozen assets and open a path to uranium enrichment, mirroring the Barack Obama pact he spent years trashing. A one-page, 14-point memorandum of understanding is being negotiated between senior Iranian officials and Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The White House believes the memo could finalize a framework to end the war within 48 hours. If signed, a 30-day window would open for both countries to negotiate a larger agreement covering the reopening of the Strait of...

Donald Trump is on the verge of securing a sweeping peace deal with Iran that would lift US sanctions, free billions in frozen assets and open a path to uranium enrichment, mirroring the Barack Obama pact he spent years trashing. If signed, a 30-day window would open for both countries to negotiate a larger agreement covering the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of all US sanctions on Iran, and new limits on its nuclear program. The deal calls for Iran to halt all uranium enrichment for 12 to 15 years with automatic extensions if Tehran violates the...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday called for Anthony Fauci, former longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to be indicted for what the senator claimed was his lying under oath about gain-of-function research. “6 days from now, on May 11th, the statute of limitations expires on the possibility of indicting Anthony Fauci for denying under oath that he funded gain-of-function research involving bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, the origin city of the pandemic,” Paul wrote on social media. Paul was referencing the May 11, 2021, hearing held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor,...

The national retail average for a regular gallon of gas was $4.457 on Monday. That's a 1-cent increase from Sunday, according to the American Automobile Association, and 35 cents more than last Monday. At this time last year, a gallon of gas was $1.29 cheaper. The surging prices seemed to stabilize or even decrease for about two weeks, following a temporary ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran that has been indefinitely extended. However, the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route where roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes, has effectively remained closed or extremely limited to passage...

Six months before Election Day, America’s $39 trillion national debt has moved from an abstract fiscal concern to a dinner-table anxiety… A new national survey released Thursday by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation found that 92% of registered voters are concerned that the national debt is fueling inflation and driving up their personal cost of living, including prices for groceries, energy, housing, and transportation. The figure includes 94% of Democrats, 92% of independents, and 89% of Republicans — a degree of bipartisan alignment rarely seen in today’s fractured political environment… The concern extends beyond deficits in the abstract. Eighty-eight percent...

Support for President Donald Trump’s war with Iran has dipped to the same levels as unpopular wars like Vietnam and Iraq, according to a new poll. A survey released by ABC-The Washington Post-Ipsos shows support for the ongoing conflict in Iran is continuing to fall, with six in 10 Americans calling the military action a mistake and just 2 in 10 calling the campaign a success. “President Donald Trump’s war in Iran is as unpopular among Americans as the Iraq War during the year of peak violence in 2006 and the Vietnam War in the early 1970s,” The Washington Post...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested on Monday that Ukraine may have to accept that parts of its territory could remain outside Kyiv's control in ​a future peace deal with Russia, linking such concessions to ‌the country's prospects for joining the European Union. "At some point, Ukraine will sign a ceasefire agreement; at some point, hopefully, a peace treaty with Russia. Then it may ​be that part of Ukraine's territory is no longer Ukrainian," Merz ​told students at the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Marsberg, a town in ⁠North Rhine-Westphalia, on Monday. "If President (Volodymyr) Zelenskiy wants to communicate this to his ​own population...