Free Republic

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), who has been under the microscope this week for an anecdote about killing her dog, defended her actions Wednesday, saying she shot the “dangerous” pup in order to protect her children. “It was a dog that was extremely dangerous,” Noem said Wednesday on Fox News’s “Hannity.” “It had come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive.” “We were her second chance. And she was — the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbors,” she continued. “She attacked me....

The New York judge overseeing former President Trump’s hush money trial said Monday that Trump cannot attend arguments on presidential immunity at the Supreme Court next week. ... The decision to not allow Trump to be in Washington, D.C., on April 25, when the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on a presidential immunity claim Trump is making in his federal criminal case, came just before the New York trial adjourned Monday. “Arguing before the Supreme Court is a big deal, and I can certainly appreciate why your client would want to be there, but a trial in...

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) threatened possible contempt proceedings against Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) over a subpoena requesting information about her use of federal funds. Willis’s office has already sent information in response to the February subpoena, but the GOP leader complains she failed to turn over documents related to allegations from a now-terminated employee who flagged another former employee’s desire to misuse federal grant money. “We appreciate that you have produced a narrow set of documents in response to the subpoena, but your compliance with the subpoena to date is deficient,” Jordan wrote...

Former President Trump said in an interview that aired Monday that he predicts the U.S. economy will crash and that he hopes it does so within the next year. In the interview with Lou Dobbs, Trump, the current front-runner in the GOP presidential primary race, explained that, if he were elected again, he would not want to serve a term similar to President Hoover’s — who took office when the economy was stable but later oversaw the start of the Great Depression.

Nikki Haley is on the rise, looking for an upset that could derail former President Trump’s path to the Republican presidential nomination. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the New Hampshire primary is her best— and perhaps only — chance.Haley’s advance in the Granite State has been striking.A new American Research Group (ARG) poll released Thursday put Haley within 4 points of Trump in New Hampshire — a jaw-dropping result given that Trump has a lead of about 50 points in national polls. The ARG poll showed Trump with 33 percent support in New Hampshire and Haley at 29 percent, with...

The man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), offered an apology in court on Tuesday, claiming the former Speaker’s husband was “never” his target, according to the Associated Press. In an emotional testimony on Tuesday, David DePape, 43, described to the court how his political views shifted from leftist to right wing after reading a comment on a YouTube video about former President Trump.

President Biden tops former President Trump by 5 points among registered voters in a 2024 hypothetical matchup, new polling shows.Asked who they’d back if Trump and Biden were their respective party’s nominees, 45 percent of registered voters said they’d cast their ballots for Biden, while 40 said the same for Trump, according to the survey from The Economist-YouGov. Seven percent said “other,” 4 percent weren’t sure and another 3 percent said they would not vote. The new results show Biden’s lead widened since last month, when the pollsters found him and Trump at 43 and 40 percent, respectively.

Sidney Powell, a one-time attorney for former President Trump’s 2020 campaign who helped promulgate false claims of election fraud, has pleaded not guilty in the Georgia election interference case. Powell and 18 others including Trump are accused of joining a criminal conspiracy to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 presidential race by overturning the state’s election results. She faces seven charges, among them violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act — a charge designed to target organized crime of which all the defendants are accused. The Trump lawyer’s other charges stem from a Coffee County...

The multiplying charges brought against allies of former President Trump and their mounting legal fees are creating consternation in Trump world — while presenting a real risk to the former president. Trump has burned through millions of dollars in donor money to pay for legal fees as he defends himself against charges in New York City, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C. But the former president, who has built a reputation for stiffing workers, has shown no interest in providing financial aid to former aides charged over their efforts to keep him in power. Former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has listed...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that “uncertainty” over whether the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance will offer admission to Ukraine motivates Russia to continue “terror” in its war on Kyiv. “It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance,” Zelensky said. “This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror.”

A second firm hired by the Trump campaign to investigate fraud in the 2020 election said all of Trump’s fraud claims were false, the firm’s founder told The Washington Post The Trump campaign hired Simpatico Software Systems and its founder Ken Block to investigate fraud claims all over the country after the 2020 election. “No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside claims of voter fraud that I was asked to look at,” he told the Post. “Every fraud claim I was asked to investigate was...

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...

President Biden and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva marked the survival of their democracies in a bilateral White House meeting Friday, a common ground that led to the leaders to taking jabs at their predecessors. “Both of our democracies have been tested of late,” Biden said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the riots that broke out in Brazil last month.

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...

This weekend, I watched the breaking news reports from Southern California with a mixture of shock, disbelief and anger. On Saturday night, what had been a gathering to celebrate the Lunar New Year in a Los Angeles suburb became the scene of a massacre. By Sunday, President Biden had issued a statement, noting: “While there is still much we don’t know about the motive in this senseless attack, we do know that many families are grieving tonight, or praying that their loved one will recover from their wounds.” I am from Monterey Park, Calif. I am struggling to process a...

President Biden’s approval rating rose to 44 percent in a new Emerson College survey released on Tuesday. The 5-point improvement in Biden’s approval rating — up from 39 percent in Emerson College’s November poll — comes as the president is reportedly preparing to launch his reelection campaign in the coming weeks. ADMINISTRATION Biden approval rating ticks up to 44 percent in new survey BY JULIA SHAPERO - 01/24/23 10:08 AM ET SHARE TWEET AP-Carolyn Kaster President Joe Biden meets with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023. (AP...

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...

A GOP mega-donor said that he would no longer support former President Trump after his announcement of a third presidential bid in 2024 on Tuesday night. Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO and co-founder of the investment firm Blackstone, told Axios in a statement that the Republican Party should nominate someone else who will represent a new generation of leaders. “America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday,” he said. “It is time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders and I intend to support one of them in...

More than 150 Michigan Republicans launched a new campaign effort to boost the reelection prospects of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) against GOP opponent Tudor Dixon, who is backed by former President Trump. Republicans for Whitmer is led by a leadership council of 35 Republicans from Michigan, including business leaders, former lawmakers and staff who served under former state GOP governors John Engler and Rick Snyder. Bill Parfet, the chairman and CEO of commercial real estate company Northwood Group, said he was supporting Whitmer because she was seeking to build a common bridge between Democrats and Republicans.