Free Republic

After the great rebuke of 2024, many Democrats seem to think their party needs to become more moderate. But there’s another theory potent on the American left that believes Donald Trump’s election shows not just that American democracy is in danger, but that it doesn’t really work at all. What the country needs isn’t just a new policy agenda; it might need the kind of constitutional revolution — from adding new states, to packing the Supreme Court — that some Democrats already flirted with under Joe Biden. That’s the kind of argument that my guest today, Osita Nwanevu, makes in...

Craig Unger Author "House of Trump, House of Putin" "This book tells the story of the greatest intelligence operations in history, an undertaking decades in the making, through which the Russian Mafia and Russian intelligence operatives successfully targeted, compromised, and implanted either willfully ignorant or an inexplicably unaware Russian asset in the White House as the most powerful man on earth."

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy appeared to have a mental episode live on Larry Kudlow’s Fox Business show Tuesday, adding yet another entry to the long, bipartisan list of alarming age-related lowlights from our country’s leaders. “I’m sure Jesus loves him, but everybody else thinks—everybody else …” said Kennedy, 73, before trailing off. You can see it in his face—his eyes and mouth particularly—as he struggles to remember what he meant to say or where he is before ultimately giving up

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman was spotted Monday night chatting with Steve Bannon, according to Politico Playbook. Fetterman, who has displayed his own dramatic rightward shift, was reportedly dining at a top MAGA hangout near Capitol Hill with Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle, when the conservative news site’s old director wandered up and spoke to the pair for roughly 20 minutes. Bannon took over Breitbart in 2012, and directed the site to publish patently pugnacious rhetoric and conspiracy theories cooked up by far-right activists and white supremacists. In 2016, Bannon stepped down to join Trump’s presidential campaign as its CEO, and went on...

We are having enough problems in the war with Islam, just dealing with Muslims. Then on top of that, we have to deal with naive non-Muslims of the world, that help advance Islam. Muslims constantly play the victim card, and people like Stein fall for it over and over. Stein you are part of the problem. Smarten up. About Jeff Stein: SpyTalk columnist Jeff Stein is a longtime investigative reporter specializing in U.S. intelligence, defense and foreign policy issues. An Army Intelligence case officer in Vietnam, Stein has authored three highly regarded books and has been a frequent contributor to...

The European Commission is issuing burner phones to officials traveling to the United States amid fears of espionage in Trump’s America. It’s the kind of security measure typically saved for trips to China or the Ukraine, where the fear of IT surveillance is high. But three European Commissioners will test out burner phones and basic laptops at International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington next week, sources told the Financial Times. The move from the European Commission, the primary executive arm of the European Union, marks a new era of American-European relations, which have all but dissipated since...

...statues of treasonous Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee and Albert Pike will soon be returning. Their statues were removed nationwide after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

We thought we had seen it all with the astronomically stupid media takes surrounding Elon Musk and DOGE cutting up the federal government’s credit cards, but lefty magazine The New Republic just potentially one-upped them all. “Elon Musk’s DOGE Cuts Could Kill Your Dog,” TNR staff writer Kate Aronoff grumbled in an insane March 5 screed. Aronoff took aim at Musk’s reported cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which Aronoff railed “could have unexpectedly deadly consequences for your pets—not to mention your own health.” Aronoff was adamant that the cuts would hinder NOAA’s ability to pass information...

Multiple vaccine projects have been paused by the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy paused a multimillion-dollar project to create a new Covid-19 vaccine in pill form on Tuesday, and the Food and Drug Administration canceled an advisory committee meeting on updating next season’s flu vaccine, an advisory committee said Wednesday. The Covid project was a $460 million contract with Vaxart to develop a new Covid vaccine in pill form, with 10,000 people scheduled to begin clinical trials on Monday. Of that, $240 million was reportedly already authorized for the preliminary study. Advertisement “While...

The far-right is rejoicing at Daniel Penny being found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the May 2023 New York City subway strangling death of Jordan Neely. Penny, who is white, put Neely, a Black man, in a chokehold for six minutes while other train passengers captured the incident on film. Penny’s lawyers argued that he believed Neely was a volatile, mentally ill man who posed a threat to the public. Neely was unarmed and had a muffin in his pocket, but Penny quickly became a hero to the right wing. Right-wing figures, including one Donald Trump staffer, immediately...

They can’t fight back, because they don’t know what happened, they don’t know what’s happening, and they don’t know what will happen. One mildly interesting counterexample at the end, but wait for it. Watching anti-Trumper reactions to the election, I can only refer again to the “bag of sand” scene in The 40 Year-Old Virgin, where the weird new guy’s co-workers figure out he’s never been with a woman because he flails around helplessly while trying to describe the experience. Tom Nichols at poker night: Oh, yeah, man, America’s so hot, it’s like a…bag of sand. There’s an entire industry...

Potential Trump AG Mike Davis made a horrifyingly violent threat to take revenge. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/POOL ============================================================== Potential Trump cabinet appointees are trying to get into the president-elect’s good graces in disturbing ways. Mike Davis, a right-wing activist considered a leading candidate for Trump’s attorney general, on Wednesday threatened to (legally) “drag their dead political bodies through the streets” and burn them, referring to enemies of Trump and the right. ============================================================= The violent threat came after Davis appeared to blame Democrats for the assassination attempts on Trump. Davis, a former clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch who calls himself “Trump’s...

Steve Bannon told us he was feeling “empowered” after his release from prison last week. It’s quite obvious he means it. Hours after Donald Trump’s victory, the former Trump campaign official and self-described “political prisoner” went on an angry rant, during which he revealed what very well may be the first targets in Trump’s second term. “You stole the 2020 election.… This entire phony thing is getting swept out,” Bannon said. “Biden’s getting swept out. Kamala Harris is getting swept out. MSNBC is getting swept out. The Justice Department is getting swept out. The FBI is getting swept out. You...

September 2006:On September 2, 2006, Ilan Pappe - fake "historian"[1], promoted the false "genocide" label-libel.[2] July 2014:Francesca Albanese, as she promoted an Anti-Semitic trope (July 31)[3], 6 days earlier, she had also pushed the G word. As well as Susan Akram who equated "palestinian" Arabs and no less with Holocaust victims used the G word. Akram Is working in Albanese's Global Impact Network (GNQP). 2023 - before and after Oct 7: Before Oct 7 genocidal attacks, the G word om victim Israel picked up speed. After the Oct 7 atrocities it worked overtime for this. Her lobbies - network...

Who really owns the paper? I’ve seen this before, but never at such a high-profile level. Journalists, including Bari Weiss, were squeezed out at the New York Times and targeted by campaigns coordinated by their colleagues with outside radical leftist outlets like Huffington Post, Vox, and The New Republic, but this time it went bigger than ever before. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos decided that his pet paper, The Washington Post, needed a change of management and brought in vets from the UK’s Telegraph. The Post’s wokes and some around the media decided that wouldn’t fly and began running hit pieces...

<p>To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to Balaji Srinivasan. Before you do, steel yourself for what’s to come: A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius.</p>

NBC News’s recent hiring of Ronna McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, has baffled Democrats, journalists, and pretty much all of MSNBC’s star anchors. But to those who remain deep in the thrall of MAGA—and those, like me, who escaped it—it was utterly unsurprising that a mainstream (i.e., “fake”) news organization would shell out $300,000 a year for McDaniel’s point of view. I became a MAGA activist in 2015, shortly after Donald Trump famously descended that golden escalator. For the next half-decade, I not only vociferously supported Trump and those who pledged fealty to him, like Ron...

The function of the RNC changes again if Trump becomes president. If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, weaponizes government agencies, and becomes a dictator on “Day One,” the RNC is likely to become a tool for some epic-level shakedowns of individuals and corporations, reminiscent of Trump’s mob-like past. “Nice corporation you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if something happened to it. So, how much can we put you down for in contributions this year?” Corporations are likely to comply as long as they think paying the extortion is less of a hassle than fighting it. The RNC, for its...

Stacey Zolt Hara was in her office in downtown San Francisco when a text from her 16-year-old daughter arrived: “I’m scared,” she wrote. Her classmates at Berkeley High School were preparing to leave their desks and file into the halls, part of a planned “walkout” to protest Israel. Like many Jewish students, she didn’t want to participate. It was October 18, 11 days after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel. Zolt Hara told her daughter to wait in her classroom. She was trying to project calm. A public-relations executive, Zolt Hara had moved her family from Chicago to Berkeley six...

The case against Ron DeSantis from a Democrat’s perspective is straightforward and uncomplicated. For one thing, he’s a Republican. And not just any Republican: DeSantis has been one of the most odious and destructive governors in America since January 2019. He has been a vocal opponent not just of efforts to end the Covid-19 pandemic but of the vaccine that did more to control it than anything else; his anti-vaccine advocacy has also spurred on anti-vaccine activists’ assault on safe, protective measures to control diseases like mumps and polio. He has relentlessly attacked his state’s LGBTQ population, signing draconian bills...