Free Republic

"The election was not close. There was no evidence of fraud. The states have certified the results," Clinton said in a tweet on Thursday. "Yet Trump continues to try to overturn the election at the expense of our democracy." "The emperor has no clothes," she added. "Republican electeds who continue to humor him have no spines."

But Newsmax and OANN understand that mimicking conventional programming helps their dire and drastic stories seem acceptable and reasonable. Greg Kelly, the rising star of Newsmax, was himself once a reliable, chatty mainstream morning news show personality on local TV in New York. And these relatively small operations can look big time on a budget. No need any longer for down-market mimeographs. Thanks to the digital revolution, putting together a sophisticated news studio doesn’t cost much at all. That’s a red flag for what may be coming. As more extreme parts of the post-Trump audience break off from outlets like...

The Hill opinion columnist Joe Concha nuked the “marshmallow media” for consistently lobbing “T-ball” questions at former Vice President Joe Biden in the relatively few press conferences he’s held since clinching the Democratic nomination. This comes after the pro-Biden liberal media has dragged the country through nearly four years of mind-numbing anti-Trump political hell. With a potential new presidency at hand, the media have barely made Biden have to defend much — if any — of his leftist policy agenda. This is especially true of how the media has handled coverage of Biden’s radical economic agenda. As Concha put it...

The remote working and learning taken as a preventative measure against COVID-19 transmission has rendered millions of Americans housebound. Offices, schools and other public working spaces have been closed for months as the pandemic rages on. A new report commissioned by financial giant Deutsche Bank proposes that for individuals who continue to work from home rather than in an office, a 5 percent income tax should be levied to support lower income workers who do not have the opportunity to stay home. As part of its “Rebuild” report, Deutsche Bank calculates that the average worker would not be any worse...

Attorney General William Barr’s decision to have the Department of Justice (DOJ) probe any "substantial allegations" of voter fraud has triggered a wave of backlash that he is seeking to breathe life into President Trump’s unfounded claims of a stolen election. Barr’s announcement Monday quickly sparked fallout at the agency, with the top official in charge of voting crimes investigations saying just hours later that he would step down from his role. In a carefully worded memo, the attorney general authorized federal prosecutors to take investigative steps on “specific instances” of abuse “prior to the certification of elections” in their...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Friday pushed back against President Trump's baseless claim that the election is being stolen, warning that his rhetoric is only inflaming partisan tensions. Romney, in a statement posted to Twitter, said the president was "right" to "exhaust legal remedies," including asking for recounts and that alleged voting irregularities be investigated, but "wrong to say that the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen." "Doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions," Romney added. His...

I voted for Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican primary election, left my ballot blank in the 2016 general election, and now must decide whom to vote for this year. In several ways, I find Donald Trump over the top and offensive. I have said this on air and on Twitter. He can be too hot to handle, insulting people and often making himself the issue, diverting attention from more important policy matters. Many of my Republican friends, notably women, will not vote for him, not because they are “Republicans in name only” but because the president has given them...

Victory for President Trump in Tuesday’s election remains a distinct possibility, despite the fact that he lags in national polls. There is no question that Trump is the underdog against his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. Biden has several realistic routes to the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the White House, and a Democratic landslide is also possible. But there are plausible scenarios that give Trump a narrow path to a second term — and they are giving Democrats sleepless nights. Above all, Democrats are traumatized by the memory of what happened four years ago, when Trump won a shock...

BULVERDE, Texas — Texas Republicans remain bullish that President Trump will repeat his 2016 win here next week. But they warn the party nonetheless has a lot of work to do in the coming years as Democrats continue to make inroads across the state, especially in suburban areas. For two cycles now, Texas Republicans have watched as Democrats picked off long-held GOP House seats in the Dallas and Houston suburbs, with the minority party continuing to go on offense in a number of seats few saw as possible pick-up opportunities years ago. This has set off alarm bells for party...

The Hill published an extremely partisan, anti-Trump opinion column, “Science Seeks Truth, Trump Denies It,” by outside contributors. Once again they beat the drum that Trump denies "the science," but in fact it is Trump critics doing so. (Note that The Hill declined to publish this rebuttal to its anti-Trump screed.) Our antennae should go up when we hear vague, foggy slogans. They say Trump should follow the science. Yet they do not identify anything that a Joe Biden or anyone else could do as president that President Trump hasn't already done. The only example in the fog is wearing masks, but...

Shift in tone dominates at final Trump-Biden clash BY BRETT SAMUELS AND MORGAN CHALFANT - 10/22/20 11:11 PM EDT President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Thursday clashed for a final time before Election Day, exchanging blows on the public health and economic crises facing the country in what was a decidedly more orderly — though still at times personal — contest than the first debate. The proceedings, which took place in Nashville, Tenn., were aided in part by a mute button that allowed each candidate to speak uninterrupted for two minutes about each of the six topics before...

Israel's minister of regional cooperation said Wednesday that he expects normalize relations with another Arab state before the U.S. elections. Reuters reported that Ofir Akunis, who is also a member of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, told Army Radio that the announcement would come before Nov. 3. "I have a reasonable basis to believe that the announcement will come before November 3 - that, if you'll permit me, is what I understand from my sources," he said, according to the news service. "I will be very happy if the announcement will happen - and before the elections in the United States,"...

The Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald told Megyn Kelly that he was "formally banned" from MSNBC because of his criticism of the network's coverage of Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. "I used to be really good friends with Rachel Maddow," Greenwald told Kelly on the inaugural episode of her new podcast. "Before she got her MSNBC show and was on Air America, I used to go on all the time and we used to bash Democrats from the left as a fraudulent political party." "She's very, very smart. Same with [MSNBC host Chris Hayes], who's been a longtime friend...

The Senate will vote Monday on confirming President Trump's nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, to the Supreme Court. "With regard to the Supreme Court justice ... we'll be voting to confirm justice-to-be Barrett next Monday," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said during a weekly press conference, confirming the timing of a final vote on her nomination. ... Top GOP senators and aides had previously indicated to The Hill that they were likely to set up the final vote for Monday, allowing vulnerable GOP senators to spend the final week before the election back on the campaign trail. To set...

The Biden campaign is facing renewed criticism over its deep connections with Big Tech after both Twitter and Facebook censored a story from The New York Post detailing allegedly corrupt business deals by Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden. The move prompted fresh criticism on social media over the Biden transition team’s hiring of top Facebook executive Jessica Hertz, which reportedly came days after the 2020 Democrat’s campaign penned a letter to the social media giant urging them to censor President Trump’s posts. Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden revelations also came days after the company’s director of public policy, Carlos...

A progressive push to expand the Supreme Court is running into an unusual buzzsaw: fellow Democrats. Calls for Democrats to remake the judiciary are ramping up as Republicans appear poised to put Amy Coney Barrett, a sixth conservative justice, on the bench. It’s a decision that will have decades-long reverberations, progressives warn, unless Democrats make systemic changes to the judiciary next year if they win back the Senate majority and White House in November, something they are feeling increasingly bullish about. “If Republicans proceed as expected, Democrats will have every right to consider Barrett illegitimate and pursue structural reform to...

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Trump by 7 points in Georgia, according to a new poll. The latest Quinnipiac University survey finds Biden's support at 51 percent and Trump's at 44 percent, with 4 percent of respondents undecided. Biden led by only 3 points in the same poll in September, before the first presidential debate and Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis. Biden is now viewed favorably by 51 percent of Georgians, compared to 46 percent who view him negatively. Trump is underwater at 43 positive and 54 negative. Trump will campaign in Georgia, which last went for the Democratic nominee...

The Trump campaign released a new ad Saturday featuring infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci as it looks to present a positive portrait of the White House's pandemic response. In a 30-second ad titled "Carefully," a narrator notes Trump's own recovery from the coronavirus and includes a clip of Fauci, the director of the National Institutes for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, touting the administration's efforts to blunt the virus's spread

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that President Trump’s use of emergency powers to allocate millions of dollars in funding for the construction of a southern border wall was illegal, the latest blow to the Trump administration’s effort to limit immigration. In the 2-1 decision, the court upheld a December 2019 district court summary judgment in favor of a request from the advocacy groups the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition against Defense Secretary Mark Esper, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and “all persons acting under their direction ... from using military construction funds...

Firearms experts say that a ballistics report from Kentucky State Police supports Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s (R) claim that Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend fired the shot that wounded a Louisville officer in the raid that resulted in Taylor’s death. According to the Louisville Courier Journal, the report challenges previous analysis that Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly was wounded by “friendly fire” from other officers involved in the March incident. Instead, experts are saying the 9 mm round that hit Mattingly came from the gun of Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. Walker had previously admitted to firing one shot from his legally owned handgun. Experts...