Free Republic

Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the highest-ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, pressed new Twitter CEO Elon Musk over data security concerns raised by a Twitter whistleblower who came forward before Musk completed his acquisition of the company. Grassley’s Wednesday letter to Musk focuses on issues Musk inherited when taking over Twitter, differing from pushback from the senator’s Democratic colleagues that centers on changes Musk has made since taking the reins at the end of October. Grassley told Musk Twitter’s former CEO cited “the ongoing litigation with you as an excuse” to sidestep questions about the whistleblower allegations. Now that Musk...

MTV will reportedly pay for the printing and mailing of ballot applications requested through the network’s voter initiative campaign. MTV will pay for costs through Oct. 6, the deadline for voters to receive applications and return them on time, network executives told Axios. Voters can access applications on the campaign websites www.VoteForYourLife.com or www.VoteEarlyDay.org. The VoteForYourLife campaign is sponsored by ViaComCBS, MTV’s parent company, and the Ad Council. Viacom’s Vh1 and Comedy Central are also partners in the campaign. The campaign’s website is also accessible in Spanish. The VoteForYourLiife campaign will also feature PSAs across the company’s networks, including MTV,...

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) said on Sunday that he would have responded differently to the coronavirus outbreak if President Trump had not downplayed its threat earlier this year. Garcetti said on CNN's "State of the Union" that he would have taken action earlier, and saved lives in the process, if Trump had publicly shared what he said privately to journalist Bob Woodward. “We were the first city to close things down, the first city to offer widespread testing. But we had to go it alone. And we heard that consistently. That's up to the states. That's up to...

Zelda Williams, the daughter of the late Robin Williams, hit back at President Trump’s son Eric Trump recently after he shared a video of her father mocking then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2009. Eric Trump tweeted a clip of Robin Williams’s stand-up making jokes about Biden, with text saying the comedian “just savages” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. In the 2009 clip, Williams mocks “rambling Joe Biden.” ADVERTISEMENT “Joe is like your uncle who is on a new drug and hasn’t got the dosage right,” he said. Zelda Williams urged Trump to instead look up what her father said about...

Holyoke, Mass., Mayor Alex Morse (D) said Sunday he will remain in his congressional primary race against Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) amid a University of Massachusetts investigation into allegations that Morse had sexual relationships with students while teaching at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Morse denied ever using his position of power as mayor or as a lecturer to take advantage of students. “I want to be very clear about this. I have never, in my entire life, had a non-consensual sexual encounter with anyone. I have never used my position of power as Mayor and UMass lecturer for romantic or...

Iran has released U.S. Navy veteran Michael White, who had been detained for nearly two years, his family confirmed Thursday. “I am blessed to announce that the nightmare is over, and my son is safely in American custody and on his way home,” White’s mother, Joanne White, said in a statement shared by a family spokesman on Twitter. Joanne White thanked the State Department, Swiss diplomats and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) in her statement. U.S. special envoy for Iran Brian Hook flew to Zurich with a doctor to meet...

A Republican candidate seeking to challenge Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) dropped out of the congressional GOP primary race late Monday.

Duran Duran bassist John Taylor said he is recovering from the coronavirus after testing positive three weeks ago. The 59-year-old musician said he was “blessed with getting only a mild case” and said he was sick for about a week with what he described as a “Turbo-charged Flu.” “I came out of it feeling okay- although I must admit I didn't mind the quarantine as it gave me the chance to really recover,” Taylor said in an Instagram post. “I am speaking out in answer to the enormous amount of fear being generated by the pandemic, some of it entirely...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday that there are signs that mitigation strategies implemented in response to the coronavirus pandemic may be starting to have an impact on the number of COVID-19 cases. “We're starting to see glimmers that that is actually having some dampening effect,” Fauci said in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto. “But that does not take away from the seriousness of what you've described on this show.” Fauci noted that the number of cases is still increasing, and virus hotspots like New York are “appropriately” trying to...

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday he would contest the presidential primary nomination at the Democratic convention if Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is leading in delegates without securing a majority. “The rules have been set,” Biden said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Biden questioned Sanders’ take that the candidate with a plurality of pledged delegates the convention should become the nominee. “I wonder where that view was when he was challenging Hillary when she went in with a commanding lead,” Biden added. “You don't change the rules in the middle of the game.” Sanders is the only candidate...

A majority of Americans surveyed in a new poll said they would not vote for a socialist candidate for president, with the most opposition coming from Republican voters. Asked whether they would vote for their party nominee who was a “generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be socialist,” just 45 percent said yes and 53 percent said no, according to the Gallup poll released Tuesday. The acceptance for a socialist nominee, is 2 percentage points lower in the recent poll than when Gallup asked the same question in June 2015. Democrats are much more likely to say they...

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the lead House manager in President Trump's Senate trial, said Sunday that there is nothing Democrats could have done differently during the impeachment process. Ahead of the Senate’s likely vote to acquit President Trump on Wednesday, Schiff defended Democrats’ methods and said that he and his colleagues “proved” their case. “Look, there's nothing that I can see that we could have done differently because as the senators have already admitted, we proved our case. We proved our case,” Schiff said on CBS's “Face the Nation.” **SNIP** CBS’s Margaret Brennan asked Schiff if it was...

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is considering backing former Vice President Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary, The New York Times reported Thursday. Multiple Democratic officials familiar with the California senator’s deliberations told the Times she’s weighing the option of backing her former primary opponent. The officials told the Times the potential endorsement would not be likely until after the Senate impeachment trial that kicked off this week. Harris’s spokesman Chris Harris told the Times the senator “remains focused on the ongoing impeachment trial.” “No decisions have been made about whether she will endorse, which candidate, nor when an endorsement...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is suing Hillary Clinton for defamation over the former secretary of state's remarks on a podcast characterizing the Democratic presidential candidate as a Russian asset. Gabbard filed the defamation lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Gabbard’s lawyers allege that Clinton’s comments have “smeared” Gabbard’s “political and personal reputation.” “Tulsi Gabbard is a loyal American civil servant who has also dedicated her life to protecting the safety of all Americans,” Gabbard’s lawyer Brian Dunne said in a statement. “Rep. Gabbard’s presidential campaign continues to gain momentum, but she has...

A former President George W. Bush administration official blasted Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg over his lack of experience in national politics, which she argues makes him underqualified for the Oval Office. Sheila Bair, the former chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), said Democrats are “almost maniacal in their eagerness to oust” President Trump and in doing so are less focussed on the qualifications of their candidates. “Enter Pete Buttigieg, whose primary asset seems to be a thin résumé,”Bair wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday in The Washington Post.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said he supports open House hearings regarding President Trump’s order last week for a strike that killed top Iranian commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Schiff, who is among lawmakers who were briefed a day after last week’s attack, told The Washington Post there should be open hearings on the administration's decision to strike. “The president has put us on a path where we may be at war with Iran. That requires the Congress to fully engage,” Schiff told the Post in an interview published Monday. Schiff said there’s “absolutely no way” Trump’s threat to...

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the focus of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump needs to shift away from the use of "quid pro quo" to describe Trump's alleged behavior. "They’ve got to get off the quid pro quo thing, because it's complicated, they've already attested to the fact that it occurred, and what we're dealing with here is corruption, abuse of power in a way that damaged American national security," Himes said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." Himes told host Chuck Todd he has two problems with the term. "... It...

A man seen in a viral video declining to shake Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) hand at the late Rep. Elijah Cummings's (D-Md.) funeral said the snub wasn’t based on his loyalty to Cummings as a friend. The man, identified as Bobby Rankin, told The Washington Post on Monday he blamed McConnell for denying veterans’ benefits to his brother before he died last October from cancer after being exposed to contaminated water while serving in the Marines. “When I saw Mitch McConnell, all I saw was my brother’s face,” Rankin told the Post. In a 16-second clip, Rankin, one...

Chuck Todd, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," called out Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for responding to a question with a "Fox News conspiracy" during a heated interview on Sunday. "I have no idea why a Fox News conspiracy propaganda stuff is popping up on here. I have no idea. I have no idea why we're going here," Todd said. He then pushed the senator to "answer the question that I asked you instead of trying to make Donald Trump feel better here that you're not criticizing him." "What made you wince? I’m asking a simple question about you clearly...

The Washington Post "Fact Checker" column gave former CIA operative and current Democratic New Mexico congressional candidate Valerie Plame three "Pinocchios" for her claim that former George W. Bush administration official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby leaked her identity. Plame blamed Libby for the leak in a campaign ad released Monday, but according to the Post's fact-check, there is no evidence he disclosed her role to columnist Robert Novak. Novak wrote the piece that reported that Plame, identified as a CIA operative, suggested sending her husband, Joe Wilson, to Niger to look into a report that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium...