Free Republic

Is Nikki Haley a true conservative, an establishment politician or something else entirely? That’s the question many conservatives have been asking since Haley officially announced she is running for president in February. Haley served as governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Trump. We can’t recall another Republican politician who has garnered such a mixed response from conservatives. Almost everyone in the conservative media and public policy world seems to have an opinion about Haley. But once pressed to explain the reasons behind those opinions, very few seem prepared...

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said former President Trump’s rhetoric regarding his possible indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is “more overt and blatant” than his language leading up to Jan. 6. “Well, I think it’s a concern, the rhetoric that he’s using today is not dissimilar to the type of rhetoric he used prior to January 6. In fact, in some ways, it’s more overt and blatant than the events leading up to January 6,” Lofgren told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Sunday. Lofgren, who served on the Jan. 6 House select committee, noted that Trump posted a photo of...

“District Attorney Bragg is a danger to our Country, and should be removed immediately, along with Radical Lunatic Bombthrower Jack Smith, who is harassing and intimidating innocent people at levels not seen before, ‘Get Trump’ Letitia James, the worst Attorney General in the United States, and Atlanta D.A. Fani Willis, who is trying to make PERFECT phone calls into a plot to destroy America, but reigns over the most violent Crime Scene in America, and does nothing about it!” Trump wrote in a post on his social media site. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) is set to meet Monday...

Former President Trump on Wednesday took a swing at Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) after the Florida governor knocked him in an interview with Fox News’s Piers Morgan, another clash between the two GOP figures as they prepare for what could be a 2024 presidential primary match-up. In an interview set to air on Fox Nation’s “Piers Morgan Uncensored” Thursday and published in part by The New York Post, DeSantis shifted from his previously veiled stance to more directly addressing the former president’s attacks with jabs of his own toward Trump’s character and leadership. Trump, who is facing a looming indictment...

A former Trump White House aide lamented Tuesday that former President Trump has “learned nothing” from the events of Jan. 6, 2021, after he urged supporters to protest his potential indictment in New York City. Sarah Matthews, who worked on the Trump campaign and as a deputy press secretary in the Trump White House, said on CNN she’s “definitely worried” the former president’s language leading up to potential charges against him in a hush money payment, though she downplayed the likelihood of violence like two years ago. “I think it goes to show he’s learned nothing in the aftermath of...

NBC) New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman on Sunday said former President Trump is “very anxious” about possibly being indicted as part of a New York probe into an alleged hush-money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels. Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday to say he thinks he’ll be arrested on Tuesday as the Manhattan district attorney’s office pursues the payment that came amid his 2016 presidential run. “Protest, take our nation back!” Trump wrote.

She can break a tie in the Senate but, apparently, Vice President Harris has no such voting power during Netflix viewing debates at home. “Right now, it’s definitely Netflix and chilling,” Doug Emhoff, the Georgetown University Law Center instructor and Harris’s husband, told Cosmopolitan of the couple’s favorite date night activity in an interview published Monday. “It’s hard to go out, so we’ll sit there and try to find something to watch,” Emhoff said, “and it takes so long to find something to watch, so it’s like, ‘Eh, let’s just go to bed.’ ” Fifty-eight-year-old Emhoff, who opened up to...

Politics aside, if you study the data trends, the 13 “Keys to the White House, ” created by analyst and historian Allan J. Lichtman, have demonstrated an uncanny knack for calling U.S. presidential elections. There have been a few hiccups, where it called Al Gore over George W. Bush in 2000, with Gore winning the popular vote and Bush winning the Electoral College. When a reverse phenomenon occurred in 2016, it correctly called Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016, with Trump winning the Electoral College and Clinton winning the popular vote. The key’s predictions now focus solely on the...

Lawyer Timothy Parlatore said on Sunday that former President Trump, whom Parlatore represents, used an empty folder that said “Classified Evening Summary” to block a light in his bedroom at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. “He has one of those landline telephones next to his bed, and it has a blue light on it, and it keeps him up at night. So he took the manilla folder and put it over so it would keep the light down so he could sleep at night,” Parlatore told CNN. “It’s just this folder. It says ‘Classified Evening Summary’ on it. It’s not...

Far more intriguing – and deserving of the intense media scrutiny afforded China’s ill-fated balloon – are U.S. military encounters with mysterious flying objects exhibiting seemingly extraordinary technology. Take, for example, the 2004 “Tic Tac” incident, which continues to perplex the U.S. government. Over the course of several days, a Navy warship’s state-of-the-art radar tracked mysterious targets descending from high altitudes at extreme velocities. Controllers ultimately directed two fighter jets to intercept one of the perplexing radar contacts. Just above an area of roiling whitewater amid an otherwise calm sea, four naval aviators observed a strange object with no wings,...

The Ohio Department of Education is reportedly investigating a pro-Nazi homeschooling network run by a couple in the state, according to several media outlets. The department is “actively reviewing compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements,” an official with the state agency told The Washington Post, after reports emerged last week about the homeschooling network known as “Dissident Homeschool.” The network, which distributes pro-Nazi curriculum via a Telegram channel, has more than 2,400 subscribers, according to Vice News. The Ohio couple who run the channel, known there as Mr. and Mrs. Saxon, have been identified as Katja and Logan Lawrence of...

American officials estimate that nearly 200,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded in Moscow’s nearly yearlong conflict with Ukraine, The New York Times reported. The rising number of casualties is driven in part by heavy fighting in Bakhmut and Soledar in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is increasingly sending poorly trained recruits and convicts to the front lines in an effort to deplete Ukrainian artillery, according to the Times. However, officials have warned that the casualty numbers — which are based on satellite imagery, intercepted communications, social media, on-the-ground reporting and official government numbers — are difficult to estimate and...

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday that a lot of the U.S.’s military aid to Ukraine “could have been done sooner.” “I think the only thing I would have said is that a lot of this could have been done sooner,” Gates said when asked by Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if he would have advised President Biden to do anything differently. “And, you know, they’re talking about potentially being six months, a year or more before the Abrams tanks get there,” he added. “I think the key thing about the Abrams tank decision was that...

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has introduced a bill that would ban members of Congress from trading and owning stocks, using the name of his legislation to take a jab at Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Hawley on Tuesday introduced the Pelosi Act — or the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act — renewing a legislative push to curtail stock trading by lawmakers that has failed over the last few years.

A historic stalemate over choosing a new Speaker has left the House GOP divided and the chamber unorganized and in chaos. After three votes on Tuesday in which Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) failed to win a majority and those opposed to his Speakership showed no signs of standing down, the question of how the fight will end is growing more intriguing. McCarthy and his allies have not given up, but McCarthy was weakened by the Tuesday votes. A number of observers have questioned whether he can win a vote or whether a new contender could emerge. Or could some Republicans...

The Hill predicted Sunday that Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis will secure the 2024 GOP presidential nomination with former President Donald Trump as the runner-up contender.DeSantis was picked as the top candidate for his double-digit reelection during the midterms and what The Hill calls "his embrace of culture war issues and his opposition to COVID-19–related lockdowns." Explaining why Trump was ranked as the second most likely 2024 nominee, the outlet said: "Trump would have been the runaway favorite had these rankings been drawn up the day before the midterm elections. Since then, virtually everything the president has touched has turned...

Many Americans are facing brutal cold this Christmas Eve. Freezing temperatures are plunging into Florida and Texas. Single-digit lows in the Plains and Great Lakes, and blizzard conditions are wrecking travel plans, while the same “bomb cyclone” is driving coastal flooding in the Northeast. Is climate change playing a role here? Weird weather and wild extremes have been the calling cards of a changing climate, and it’s almost reflexive to question how much influence the warming world has in this last angry burst of 2022. Recent advances in the science of weather attribution can offer quick insight — and believe...

Retiring Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said in an interview that too many politicians in Washington “don’t care” about the country, only about their “political ambitions.” In an interview with The Associated Press published Wednesday, Leahy said when he first joined the Senate in 1975, senators found ways to get things done regardless of differing views. Leahy, 82, the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, has spent the last 48 years in the Senate and serves as the chamber’s president pro tempore and is third in line to the presidency. “I think then, most of [the senators] knew there were basic things the...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) leads former President Trump by 14 points in a hypothetical 2024 GOP primary match-up, according to a new poll. The Wall Street Journal survey released on Wednesday found that DeSantis leads Trump among likely Republican voters, 52 percent to 38 percent. DeSantis also has an advantage in his approval rating, with 84 percent of Republicans surveyed having a favorable view of him. By comparison, 71 percent said they have a favorable view of Trump. DeSantis’s name recognition also appears strong, as only about 10 percent of likely GOP primary voters said they did not know...

Survivors of violent anti-LGBTQ attacks told their stories Wednesday at a House hearing where Democrats linked rising violence against the community to rhetoric and policies from the GOP. “We are experiencing a crisis,” House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday during the hearing, one of the last of the current Congress. The hearing comes just short of a month after a gunman shot and killed five people at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, injuring more than a dozen others. 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, the suspect in the shooting, has since been charged with...