Free Republic

President Biden and his team on Friday marked two years since he was sworn into office, highlighting economic gains and bipartisan achievements that will likely form the backbone of a potential re-election bid. “When I came into office, we had a lot of problems,” Biden told a gathering of bipartisan mayors at the White House. “The pandemic was raging. Our economy was reeling, but we acted together. Now, two years in, it’s clearer than ever our plan is working.” The president gave a wide-ranging speech in which he pointed to infrastructure investments, the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act last...

fter facing a string of setbacks nearly a year into its war on Ukraine, Russia is planning another major offensive to make up for its losses on the ground and justify its heavy human cost at home. Intelligence analysts and researchers largely agree there is an offensive brewing in Moscow, likely to come sometime in the winter or early spring. Get Paid $200 by Signing Up for This New Card. (Yeah, Seriously) Ad CompareCards Get Paid $200 by Signing Up for This New Card. (Yeah, Seriously) Still, there is no clear picture of what that will look like, and whether...

The White House on Wednesday expressed shock at the arrest of a former GOP candidate in New Mexico in connection with shootings targeting the homes of state Democratic officials, calling it an illustration of the dangers of conspiracies and political violence. “The allegations here are shocking and horrifying, and it’s a miracle here no one was hurt,” said press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “The president has spoken out repeatedly and emphatically about how our nation rejects violence as a political tool. That is a bedrock principle of our democracy.”

Former President Trump holds at 17-point lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in a hypothetical GOP primary match-up, according to a new poll. A Morning Consult poll released Wednesday showed Trump with 48 percent support among potential Republican primary voters, followed by DeSantis with 31 percent. Trump’s front-runner position differs from some polls since the November midterm elections, which have shown DeSantis closing the gap with Trump or taking a lead in some cases.

Could a Democrat, understandably concerned that a Biden 2024 reelection bid would be disastrous for the Democratic Party (not to mention the country and the economy), have leaked President Biden’s “filegate” scandal to the media? It’s plausible, given what we know – or at least what we think we know – about the sources of the information, the timeline and the widespread opposition to Biden running for president again. To begin with, we apparently don’t know who tipped off the press about filegate. CBS broke the story on Jan. 9. The initial report cited only “two sources with knowledge of...

The White House on Thursday said it is confident that an investigation into the discovery of classified documents will find that President Biden accidentally misplaced them. “We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake,” Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a statement. Sauber added that the White House has “cooperated closely with the Justice Department throughout its review” and “will continue that cooperation with the Special Counsel.” The statement comes after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced earlier...

CBS broke the bombshell news that President Biden had stored a trove of government documents, including some two-dozen classified documents, in a private office in Washington that Biden used as part of his think tank relationship with the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an honorary professor from 2017 to 2019. “The documents were discovered when the President’s personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space,” Richard Sauber, special counsel to President Biden, said in a statement, adding, “The President periodically used this space from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020...

More Americans said things are going better in the U.S., including the economy and inflation, at the start of 2023 than at the start of last year, according to a new CBS and YouGov poll. The view of how things are going in America is slightly more positive this year, with 34 percent of Americans polled saying things are “going well,” compared to just 26 percent last year. Americans’ views of the economy are also up this year, as 31 percent said the economy is “good,” compared to 22 percent saying the same thing last year.

Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova on Sunday stressed that the billions of dollars in U.S. support to Kyiv in its fight against Russia is being put to good use, as some Republican lawmakers have started to question the aid. “Every U.S. dollar that is given to us, we’re putting it to a good use,” Markarova said on CBS’s “Face The Nation” with Margaret Brennan. “We’re using it as an investment into our joint fight for democracy.”

The Biden administration will send $3.75 billion in new military assistance to Ukraine and other countries related to Russia’s war that has lasted more than 10 months. We’ll share what’s in it plus details on a trip two U.S. senators took to Ukraine, the new U.S. sanctions targeting Iran and a day of remembrance on the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol Building.

ll sides’ strategic incentives in the Ukraine War point toward continued conflict in 2023. The war’s settlement will emerge from the battlefield, not primarily from negotiations. Russia, meanwhile, is planning another offensive to solidify its territorial position and prepare for another year of war. Every weapon that the West refrains from sending to Ukraine in the next two months will be regretted in the next six. In addition, the notion of Russia’s absolute incompetence must be eliminated. No military is perfect, and Russian forces have their problems — but Western analysts are far too optimistic about Russia’s initial failures.

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...

Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) reiterated on Sunday that he preferred a different GOP presidential candidate in 2024 who was not former President Trump, telling ABC’s “This Week” that Jan. 6 should disqualify Trump from holding office again. “I do not believe that Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States,” Hutchinson said. “I think he’s had his opportunity there. I think Jan. 6 really disqualifies him for the future.”

A Missouri judge ruled on Wednesday that Mark McCloskey — the St. Louis lawyer who pointed a gun at Black Lives Matter protesters marching near his front lawn in 2020 — will not get his guns or his money back despite receiving a pardon last year. McCloskey and his wife, Patricia McCloskey, pleaded guilty in July 2021 to misdemeanor charges for assault and harassment over the incident. The couple surrendered a Colt AR-15 rifle and a Bryco .380-caliber pistol as part of the plea agreement, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. However, after Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) pardoned the...

Democrats fresh off a triumph in the 2022 fight for the Senate now face an even more difficult battle: retaining their majority in the next election as they defend nearly two dozen seats. Of the 33 Senate seats contested in 2024, 23 are held by Democrats, including a number in states that former President Trump won or nearly won. Republicans have their sights on taking down the likes of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and reversing the “candidate quality” issues that plagued them in 2022. Here are some issues to watch that could affect...

The comments from the Russian leader follow intense Russian shelling on the Ukrainian city of Kherson on Christmas Eve that killed at least 10 people and injured more than 50 others. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Russia as “absolute evil” on Saturday following the deadly strikes, which he said were for “the sake of intimidation and pleasure.” Zelensky and President Biden discussed what a “just peace” would look like when Zelensky visited the United States on Wednesday for his first international trip since the war started in February.

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...