Free Republic

Liberals are perplexed by conservatives' increasing use of the word "groomer" to describe opponents of the Florida parental rights law and similar policies elsewhere. They are right that the term is hyperbolic at best and worst conflates a host of complex issues with pedophilia. But liberals (and conflict-averse conservatives) are wrong to confidently predict it will necessarily be perceived by persuadable people as QAnon craziness. It's not entirely clear that many such people even know what QAnon is. And it is just as risky for liberals to reduce all concerns about child pornography and age-appropriateness of sex education to Pizzagate....

The court considers 'Moore v. Harper' to be a legitimate constitutional question. Critics say it's a 'power grab.' The Supreme Court has announced its intention to take up Moore v. Harper this fall, a case that critics claim is "perhaps the gravest threat to American democracy since the Jan. 6 attack." Here's everything you need to know: What's at stake in 'Moore v. Harper'? North Carolina House Speaker Timothy Moore (R) is suing a voter named Rebecca Harper as part of a dispute over a federal electoral map drawn by the state's Republican-controlled legislature. According to The Carolina Journal, the...

Former President Donald Trump is acknowledging that his not-yet-launched 2024 presidential bid would not include his former vice president. Trump told the Washington Examiner his hypothetical run for re-election would most likely not select former Vice President Mike Pence as his running mate. "I don't think the people would accept it," Trump said, alluding to his supporters' anger with Pence for failing to support Trump's false claim he actually won the 2020 race. Trump wanted Pence to somehow overturn the election's results during the congressional certification of the Electoral College votes, notes the Examiner, but Pence explained he didn't have...

New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman is pushing back against claims her latest scoop about former President Donald Trump was saved for an upcoming book. Earlier this week, Axios revealed that Haberman in her forthcoming book about Trump titled Confidence Man reveals that while he was in office, White House staffers "periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet — and believed the president had flushed pieces of paper." The report quickly gained widespread attention, but it also sparked claims that Haberman sat on the piece of information for inclusion in the book rather than report it...

Mitt Romney Tim O'Donnell, Contributing Writer Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:02 AM·1 min read Mitt Romney Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney. Drew Angerer/Getty Images Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) would likely be among the first to admit that he's not the most popular name in Republican circles these days, but that doesn't mean his successful bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 can't serve as a template for future contenders. The Republican Party's 2024 picture is muddled. The consensus seems to be that until former President Donald Trump makes it clear whether he'll run, potential candidates will lay low. One way...

"They'll never say it publicly," Politico reports in Thursday morning's Playbook. "But Republicans in Washington are dreading Donald Trump's return to the stump, predicting his rallies will cause a major headache for the party as it mounts a bid to take back Congress in 2022." Congressional Republicans are privately relieved Twitter and Facebook banned Trump, Politico says, but the resumption of his rallies in June likely means he just gets a new platform to "spout conspiracy theories about the election and air his grievances," denying the party a chance to move on and attack President Biden's agenda. "If we win...

Click here to read the full articleUnearthed doc­u­ments from one of the lead­ing Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da groups reveal the names of “main­stream” U.S. jour­nal­ists tak­ing jun­kets from the group in exchange for favor­able cov­er­age, The Nation­al Pulse can exclu­sive­ly reveal. The trips often came just before opin­ion edi­to­ri­als and news reports excus­ing Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty crimes, or oppos­ing trade show­downs with the nation.The Nation­al Pulse can now exclu­sive­ly reveal West­ern jour­nal­ists – includ­ing those praised by Pres­i­dent Biden and mar­ried to poten­tial mem­bers of his White House – who are list­ed as hav­ing accept­ed trips from the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist...

President Trump called U.S. governors "weak" during a Monday phone call about nationwide protests, The Associated Press reports, and his rhetoric reportedly alarmed several people on the call, with one person describing his comments as "unhinged." The call seems to indicate the president may be siding with the faction of his advisers who want him to take a "hard line" on the unrest. The demonstrations against police brutality have taken place in several major cities over the last few days, and while most have remained peaceful, police and protesters have clashed violently on several occasions. Governors and mayors have expressed...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) has uh... something to say. In a Thursday interview with the Campaign HQ podcast, Hillary Clinton suggested Russia was "grooming" a current 2020 candidate "to be the third party candidate," clearly implying that the outsider Democrat Gabbard is a "favorite of the Russians." So with a very absurd and slightly unhinged tweet storm, Gabbard fired back. Reports have indicated Gabbard's campaign has become a target of foreign bots and Russian media — something Gabbard didn't address in her Friday tweets. She instead labeled Clinton "the queen of warmongers" and "embodiment of corruption," and taunted her by...

I wish I could say that the worst thing about John Hickenlooper's CNN town hall on Wednesday night was the part where he talked about watching Deep Throat with his mom. The former governor of Colorado, who is one of roughly 173 declared candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, explained that the porno-with-mom thing was not an accident. He said he knew that the movie was "naughty" but thought his mother might enjoy getting out of the house. Apparently after the infamous X-rated flick began she was "mortified." That poor woman... Meanwhile, there is Beto... I do want to know...

[snip] Inevitably, the divorce has become fodder for advancing policies unrelated to core issues of marriage, divorce, and fidelity. And in the Age of Ocasio-Cortez—she who has revived the hoary notion of confiscatory tax rates—it was inevitable that some liberal in the media would seize on the divorce as justification for soaking the rich. Enter Ryan Cooper, a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. The actual title of his column: "The real lesson of Jeff Bezos' divorce drama? Soak the rich." Give the guy credit for candor, if not for an understanding of our founding documents or of economics. Cooper claims that...

McSweeney's had a wry, Onion-like tongue-in-cheek response to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) entering the 2020 presidential arena: "I Don't Hate Women Candidates — I Just Hated Hillary And Coincidentally I'm Starting To Hate Elizabeth Warren." But it was anchored in reality. "The 2020 presidential campaign is expected to include the largest field ever of female candidates, all of them campaigning in the wake of the defeat of the first female nominee of a major party," say Annie Linskey and David Weigel at The Washington Post. And like Warren, they'll probably all "feel compelled to come up with an answer" to...

Democrats and the media have been pounding President Donald Trump over the past few days, as Hurricane Florence nears the Carolinas, over his alleged insensitivity to deaths in Puerto Rico last year from Hurricane Maria. On Thursday morning, President Trump pushed back on Twitter, alleging that Democrats had inflated the death toll “in order to make me look as bad as possible.” That led to more criticism, with the Associated Press accusing Trump of making claims “without evidence.” But Trump is correct. His opponents — including the media — have strained for more than a year to turn Hurricane Maria...

President Trump appears to be alone in his baseless assertion that Hurricane Maria's death toll was inflated "by the Democrats in order to make [him] look as bad as possible."[cut] Rick Scott ✔ @ScottforFlorida I disagree with @POTUS– an independent study said thousands were lost and Gov. Rosselló agreed. I've been to Puerto Rico 7 times & saw devastation firsthand. The loss of any life is tragic; the extent of lives lost as a result of Maria is heart wrenching. I'll continue to help PR 11:45 AM - Sep 13, 2018 11.4K 4,804 people are talking about this Additionally, the...

Jeb Bush criticized President Trump's controversial tweets about the death toll in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. "Incredibly disheartening comments from our President," Bush tweeted Thursday. Trump beat the former Florida governor for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Trump sparked controversy earlier Thursday when he tweeted that the estimated 3,000 death toll was intentionally inflated by Democrats. The 3,000 approximation comes from a George Washington University study that tried to total how many "excess deaths" occurred because of Hurricane Maria and would not have happened in the absence of the cyclone. Those involved with the study have emphasized...

In the early days of the Trump administration, a memo of uncertain origin circulated at the highest levels of the White House laying out a conspiracy theory about "coordinated attacks" on President Trump's foreign policy agenda from a group of former Obama administration officials, according to a memo obtained by The New Yorker's Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow. The memo, which "reads like a U.S. military-intelligence officer's analysis of a foreign-insurgent network," they wrote, posited that "the communications infrastructure ... used to sell ObamaCare and the Iran Deal to the public ('Echo Chamber') has been shifted from the White House...

The Russian revolution was the most utopian left-wing project in history, and it was a cataclysmic disaster. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many Western observers concluded that the old Marxist dream was dead forever. But they spoke too soon. History is not over, and with the absence of any Soviet competition, Western capitalist countries — and especially the United States — have become hideously unequal, misery-ridden, and economically stagnant. In many ways, socialists in the early 21st century stand just about where they were in the early 20th century: politically marginalized, but leveling an economic critique that becomes...

Newsweek Is Now History. The liberal Newsweek Magazine is going out of business, but not before it attacks the President. This is quite an article, even more so when you consider that NEWSWEEK finally had the guts to admit it. WOW! Newsweek COVER!!! It is their last cover before they fold. Also read the article at the end. AMAZING!!! Finally, Matt Patterson and Newsweek speak out about Obama. This is timely and tough. As many of you know, Newsweek has a reputation for being extremely liberal. The fact that their editor saw fit to print the following article about Obama...

Marco Rubio has emerged from 15 Republican presidential primary contests with a single measly victory. It's about time for the establishment to find a new savior. Lindsey Graham has some ideas about that. After stating the obvious -- there's no path for Rubio short of dirty deeds if he can't win his home state of Florida on March 15 -- Graham let it rip on CBS last night. "You know, Ted Cruz is not my favorite by any means. I don't wish him ill [...] but we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz...

The midterms are over, meaning the 2016 White House race has begun. Here's my bold prediction: Almost all the GOP presidential contenders will offer a big tax-cut plan. Of course they will. Income tax cuts have been the defining issue of the modern Republican Party since the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. As conservative political reporter Robert Novak once declared, "God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don't do that, they have no useful function." And if history is a reliable guide, most of those tax-cut plans will focus on cutting personal taxes so the...