Free Republic

Sam Bankman-Fried, the man at the center of the FTX scandal, is back on US soil after having been extradited from the Bahamas to face federal charges. Naturally, because our justice system is about as coherent as a two-year-old quoting Shakespeare, the notorious fraudster was immediately granted bail and is now spending the holidays with his family. The American oligarchy is alive and well.But I digress, there’s a lot more to the FTX scandal than just Bankman-Fried’s fate, and one of the more interesting aspects of the entire ordeal is just how close many Democrats were to him. In fact,...

Democrats have a Senate problem, and not just in the sense that Republicans currently hold the majority or that the prospect of that changing in 2020 is relatively slim. The problem is that the odds of ever changing it are slimmer than is generally realized. Data for Progress, a progressive think tank and advocacy organization, is trying to raise alarm bells about the issue. In a new memo, co-founder Colin McAuliffe writes that “the Senate is an irredeemable institution” that’s biased 3 percentage points in the GOP’s favor and systematically underweights the interests of nonwhite Americans. Of course, the fact...

For the 2020 election, Democrats are proposing policies of sweep and ambition not seen since the New Deal or the Great Society. Ideas that would have seemed radical even five years ago — publicly funded college, a Green New Deal, Medicare for All — are now at the top of many candidates’ platforms. Most intriguing: As once-fringe ideas enter the mainstream debate, they are proving popular. “Medicare for All is supported by at least 55 percent of the public,” says Sean McElwee, a co-founder of the progressive think tank Data for Progress. “So why is that treated as an extreme...

Calls to "Abolish ICE" began as an obscure Twitter hashtag created by liberal activists. It's now a movement supported by prominent progressive leaders and candidates in races across the country and the center of a heated debate in Democratic circles. The viral campaign pushing for the elimination of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is the latest example of how Twitter has become a tool for groups outside the mainstream to get their ideas in front of power brokers. Writer and activist Sean McElwee, who is credited with creating the #AbolishICE hashtag, told The Hill that Twitter's platform and its...

The 2016 presidential election will be the second since the court’s disastrous Citizens United decision and the first without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act in place. That means big donors will have more sway over elected officials to dictate the agenda. Already the wealthy are pouring money into the election: Politico reports that the 67 biggest donors, who have each given a million dollars or more have donated three times more than 508,000 small donors combined. A new report from Every Voice Center finds that individuals living in 1 percent of the nation’s zip codes (equal to...

It’s three years away, but the ongoing government shutdown and debt ceiling debate makes it clear that Democrats need to be thinking now about a candidate able to effectively counter the Tea Party caucus in Congress — which thanks to gerrymandering, isn’t going anywhere until 2020. While the Republican field is already loaded with possible candidates — Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush III and Bobby Jindal – the Democratic field is apparently sealed: Hillary Clinton. RealClearPolitics finds Hillary getting 61 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary against Joe Biden (11), Elizabeth Warren (7),...