Free Republic

Four months before my daughter’s wedding, she told me that her uncle (my brother, “Dave”) would make her feel unsafe if he was a guest. She asked me not to invite him. My daughter is very politically progressive, as are many of her friends, and although she and Dave have always had a good relationship (I thought), he is a conservative voter and has supported candidates we all abhor. Dave has always been very nice, so my daughter’s request surprised me. I wrote Dave a very nice note, telling him that we would not be comfortable with him at the...

Top Democrats and former Republicans met at a Washington, D.C. think tank in early June 2023 to discuss election interference strategies to block former President Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, according to a report in the Washington Post. The meeting is said to have included recent Biden White House chief of staff Ron Klain, Democratic National Committee senior advisor Cedric L. Richmond, as well as Stephanie Cutter, a former campaign adviser to Barack Obama who has also worked with Biden. “They were joined by former senators Doug Jones (D-Ala.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), along...

New York Times columnist and the supposedly conservative half of PBS NewsHour’s weekly Friday Brooks and Capehart panel was dismayed that even “supposedly mature and moderate” Republicans were decrying President Trump’s latest indictment as “selective prosecution.” Washington Post columnist and pinch hitter Ruth Marcus went even further, labelling it “sickening.” Host Geoff Bennett led Brooks with an unrelated question about the trial being held in Florida which would mean the jury pool will be far less liberal than in New York City, “it's harder for him to make a convincing argument that he's being railroaded when it's happening in —...

When rats jump ship, we don't usually hear them crying about it. But then there's White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, a.k.a. Joe Biden's "Big Rat" who couldn't stop bawling as he exited the White House. According to the New York Post: WASHINGTON — Outgoing White House chief of staff Ron Klain broke down in tears over and over again Wednesday while handing over power to his successor Jeff Zients — going so far as to praise President Biden as a role model for parenting and Vice President Kamala Harris as a great officemate. “This is the best job...

Ron Klain sobs uncontrollably, praises Biden’s parenting, VP at goodbye party WASHINGTON — Outgoing White House chief of staff Ron Klain broke down in tears over and over again Wednesday while handing over power to his successor Jeff Zients — going so far as to praise President Biden as a role model for parenting and Vice President Kamala Harris as a great officemate. “This is the best job I ever had,” the 61-year-old Klain blubbered as he began his remarks at an East Room transition celebration, forcing his 80-year-old boss to supportively rub his shoulder as he regained his composure....

The US moratorium on gain-of-function experiments has been rescinded, but scientists are split over the benefits—and risks—of such studies. Talha Burki reports. On Dec 19, 2017, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that they would resume funding gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. A moratorium had been in place since October, 2014. At the time, the NIH had stated that the moratorium “will be effective until a robust and broad deliberative process is completed that results in the adoption of a new US Government gain-of-function research policy”. This process...

Breaking News: Ron Klain is expected to step down as White House chief of staff in coming weeks, according to Biden administration officials. More at link

The White House chief of staff is claiming a victory for Joe Biden on inflation, but many on social media lashed out at him over the continued high prices they're paying. Ron Klain complained on Twitter that the media was not covering new statistics about inflation as much as it did when inflation was at a 40-year high. "When inflation was at 40-year highs, there was no shortage of coverage. But now," he tweeted and pointed to a report that inflation over the last half 2022 had decreased to 2% after climbing to a rate above 7%. While Klain was...

There's no silver cloud for which the identity-politics crowd can't detect a downbeat lining! Take the news of black women being appointed to some of the country's most prestigious positions. You'd think that would be cause for unqualified celebration in liberal circles. But not so fast! On Mehdi Hasan's MSNBC show today, guest host Melissa Murray led a segment on "the glass cliff." The notion is that women, particularly women of color, tend only to be appointed to prestigious positions at institutions that are in crisis, and thereby are being "set up to fail."Get the rest of the story and...

House Republicans want to launch investigations into a baseless claim that China and Russia unduly influence U.S. climate activism. Why it matters: Republicans are using this claim to seek donation information from climate groups and could potentially use subpoenas. Driving the news: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) last week said that if elected House speaker, he’d support investigations into “environmental NGOs’ collusion with Russia and China to hurt American energy.” What they’re saying: Asked if he’ll subpoena environmental groups, incoming House Natural Resources chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) said: “If I need to, I will.” What we're hearing: Environmental groups...

The "Twitter files", an exposé of internal communications at the social media platform, has reheated interest in Hunter Biden's laptop, a story that revealed potentially compromising correspondence between an adviser at Ukraine energy firm Burisma and President Joe Biden's son. While the significance of the "Twitter files" is under debate, it has reignited examination of the reach that behind-the-scenes characters had in the proliferation of the early Hunter Biden reports, including the role of figures from the U.S. intelligence community. The Claim Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) stated in a Facebook post published on 15 December 2022, that "51 former 'intelligence'...

by Becca London | RNNElon Musk triggered a whole lot of folks on the left Sunday when he dared to tweet against their beloved Anthony Fauci – while also making fun of the ridiculous “pronouns” fad: We already covered how the Krispy Kreme Colonel Alexander Vindman lost his donuts over it. Well now Scott Kelly - liberal astronaut and identical twin brother of Democrat Senator Mark Kelly (AZ) has shown his displeasure as well, sending this tweet Musk's way, both defending Lord Fauci and basically accusing Elon of being a bigot as well: After all, people who have "preferred pronouns"...

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline ” that former President Donald Trump unleashed racism, authoritarianism and neo-fascism on America. Anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “My next question, I know the press is hung up. We’re all hung up on the criminal referrals. It seems to a person your perhaps greatest commitment is to is the story, and there’s an impact on what the committee did. We went to school learning about how endangered our democracy really was. We heard from lifelong republicans testifying that story. To you, what is the most important thing that people take from the...

President Biden will establish a task force to coordinate government efforts to address antisemitism and other forms of religious bigotry, the White House said Monday, in the wake of a rise in antisemitic rhetoric from high-profile public figures. Biden is creating an interagency group led by the staff at the Domestic Policy Council and the National Security Council, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement. The group’s first order of business will be to formulate a national strategy to counter antisemitism.

IN THE THIRD installment of the ongoing “Twitter Files,” Substack writer Matt Taibbi detailed the internal Twitter correspondence that led to the ban of then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Like the first and second “leak” of documents, which Elon Musk touted as exposés of “free speech suppression,” the third part of the Twitter saga boils down to a lengthy explainer piece about social media’s most historic content-moderation decision: Kicking a sitting president off of their service. “Is this the first sitting head of state to ever be suspended?” an unnamed Twitter employee asks early in the...

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...

After “The Twitter Files” dropped and we were actually able to see the evidence of collusion between Twitter execs and the Biden administration to suppress reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop, a whole bunch of journalists have been on a real crusade to delegitimize Matt Taibbi’s reporting and make Taibbi and Elon Musk look like the bad guys here, like they’re the ones who did something wrong. One of those journalists is apparently James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds” and kneejerk defender of Hunter Biden’s honor. Here’s what Surowiecki had to offer to the conversation surrounding the material that...

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Tuesday urged members of her party to stop discouraging early voting and vote by mail. “Our voters need to vote early,” McDaniel told Fox News. “I have said this over and over again. There were many in 2020 saying, ‘Don’t vote by mail, don’t vote early.’ And we have to stop that and understand that if Democrats are getting ballots in for a month, we can’t expect to get it all done in one day.” Former President Trump was among the leading voices that questioned the security and validity of early and...

Two Democratic congressional committee chairs have co-authored letters to the State and Defense departments on Tuesday asking for an array of records on Jared Kushner’s family business, raising concerns about his financial interests as he influenced the Trump administration’s foreign policy in the Persian Gulf. House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (Ore.) in asking for the records cited previously undisclosed emails that largely relate to a 2018 bailout of a Kushner-owned office building. The request comes as part of the committees’ investigation into whether the former White House senior adviser’s...

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D.-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R.-Ky., have struck a deal to include the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), according to Axios. If the deal holds, it will move this essential piece of legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk. The NDAA must pass by year’s end to fund America’s military. The JCPA would allow news organizations to band together to negotiate fair fees from online platforms, such as Facebook and Google, who derive ad revenue from the hard work of newsrooms — mostly small, local, community-rooted...