Free Republic

President Trump recently announced plans to launch his own social media platform called “TRUTH Social.” This puts an end to speculation that the former president would launch a social media site or some other digital platform to reach his base. The new platform made a big splash during its announcement, with only invited guests allowed as part of the soft launch. While some are quick to point to the seeming hypocrisy of TRUTH Social’s terms and conditions, the launch of this platform could be a positive development for internet regulations. President Trump’s high profile expulsion from large social media platforms...

This week, the University of Virginia Center for Politics released a poll surveying Americans' feelings about their political opponents. According to the poll, 80% of Biden voters and 84% of Trump voters believed that elected officials of the opposite party present a "clear and present danger to American democracy"; 78% of Biden voters believed that the Republican Party wanted to eliminate the influence of "progressive values" in American life, while 87% of Trump voters believed that the Democrats wanted to eliminate "traditional values"; 75% of Biden voters and 78% of Trump voters believed that the opposing party's supporters were a...

"First you win the argument, then you win the vote." That advice from Margaret Thatcher has been ignored by resident Joe Biden and Democratic Party leaders to their detriment. Democrats, aided by former President Donald Trump's denigration of Georgia's electoral system, which gifted them the state's two Senate seats, were gifted by voters with the narrowest of legislative majorities: 51 to 50 in the Senate and 220 to 212 (with three current vacancies) in the House. Biden himself won the crucial three swing states by just 42,918 popular votes. Incautiously, Democrats plunged into policymaking without making anything like cognizable policy...

It's the biggest political hoax since Titus Oates's allegations of a "Popish Plot" to assassinate King Charles II in 1678. Oates's charge of a Jesuit conspiracy swept through London and led to the execution of four innocent men before Oates was proved a fraud. The full consequences of the great political hoax of our time – the charge that former President Donald Trump was colluding with Russia – are not yet fully apparent. Yet they are surely serious. We have heard from many Democrats and those in media that Trump's claims that he actually won the 2020 presidential election tend...

There’s an appetite to deregulate suppressors and make the process to obtain them easier. What explains this push, and why now? Why didn’t Republicans pull the trigger when they controlled all branches of government during the 114th Congress? Passing legislation under a Democratic-controlled Congress, even with slim majorities, is unlikely. And don’t count on President Biden, a gun rights foe, to sign any bill into law. While efforts may not succeed today, the future of suppressor deregulation isn’t out of sight yet. The Industry SpeaksThe push for suppressor deregulation isn’t new. It’s always been a top priority for the firearms...

The Federal Election Commission recently rejected a claim by the Republican National Committee and ruled that Twitter didn't violate campaign finance laws when it prevented users from sharing New York Post articles on the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020. The New York Times falsely claimed it was "unsubstantiated." Liberal outlets often try to ignore conservative journalism, refusing to recognize facts and substance that they fear are damaging to Democrats. The closer the election gets, the more hypersensitive their censoring instincts become. They repeated Democrat claims of "Russian misinformation" and moved on. This never happens to Bob Woodward, the...

resident Joe Biden was right in his speech to the nation about our withdrawal from Afghanistan, that a long legacy of American involvement there preceded him. But across the board, in domestic as well as foreign policy, any new president inherits realities that precede him. The issue confronting every president is what principles and policies will he put in place to deal with these existing realities that will define his administration. Most clear now is that America's withdrawal from Afghanistan is surrounded by a perception of confusion, weakness and humiliation. For anyone who believes that our nation should be a...

To many in America, the West coast and the East coast seem to be the only regions that matter. There’s California, New York and Washington, DC. Why bother with flyover America? But as I traveled across America, I realized that it is flyover country that truly makes America great and provides its solid ground of values and patriotism. When my son accepted a call to Edenton First Baptist Church in Southwestern Ohio, we had to use Google to find it. Edenton doesn’t have any businesses, just a few homes, Stonelick Lake, and my son’s church. Just weeks before, there was...

So, a criminal with a warrant who resists arrest meets up with an incompetent government employee who can’t tell a Glock from a taser, then there are Democrat riots, and what’s the result? You must be disarmed. If you’re looking for logical logic, keep on looking. If you understand the logic of power, you came to the right place. Facts don’t matter. Evidence is racist. 2+2=4 means you’re a transphobe. This is about power, people. Their power over you. Understand that you can’t reason your way out of this. We’re not going to explain to our enemies why it’s inefficient,...

Political hell broke loose when America learned, just as the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah was about to commence, that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- a decades-long liberal lion of the Supreme Court and erstwhile feminist trailblazer -- had succumbed to pancreatic cancer. In a presidential election year already marked by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic unleashed upon the world by a geopolitical archfoe, a once-in-a-lifetime pansocietal conversation about race, and unprecedented political rancor fanning the flames of a grieving nation's cold civil war, the passing of "RBG" has upended anew the battle lines for November. Within hours of Ginsburg's passing, Senate...

The Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic will be debated, analyzed, and investigated for decades. It’s also unlikely the critique of President Trump and his administration is fair, given the already highly politicized coverage in most media outlets. Congress is getting into the action too by starting to call upon administration officials to testify and requesting documents and reports relating to the federal government’s efforts to combat the deadly virus. This effort appears to be an attempt to win political points for the Democrats leading up to the election. There are many unintended consequences of partisan fishing expeditions, but...

Is this the end of the ‘expert’? If not, we’re on that trajectory with the medical community’s transparent shift regarding the lockdowns over the coronavirus outbreak. Businesses couldn’t reopen because we needed to control the spread, flatten the curve, and ensure the hospitals were not overrun. Venturing out made you a selfish bastard. And then, a couple of weeks prior, though some of you were already poking holes through the narrative, there was a great reversal. Some were grounded in good news. New York City, the mecca of the US-based outbreak, saw deaths decline and hospitalizations stabilize. Hooray! Then, the...

In the clashing commentary about whether lockdowns and stay-at-home orders should continue, or whether businesses and stores should be reopened, one senses a yearning for consensus. Why can't everybody just agree? One reason is that we continue to be ignorant on many important points. How many people have been infected with the disease? Some fragmentary evidence has come in, but since many infected people are asymptomatic, no one knows the death rate per infection. How is the virus disseminated in different environments? No one really knows. Some attribute the high number of deaths in New York to transmission in the...

The Supreme Court is making it harder for noncitizens who are authorized to live permanently in the United States to argue they should be allowed to stay in the country if they've committed crimes. The decision Thursday split the court 5-4 along ideological lines. The decision came in the case of Andre Barton, a Jamaican national and green card holder. In 1996, when he was a teenager, he was present when a friend fired a gun at the home of Barton's ex-girlfriend in Georgia. And in 2007 and 2008, he was convicted of drug possession in the state. His crimes...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court's decision that an immigrant with lawful permanent resident status cannot fight deportation due to a previous offense, even though that crime was not grounds for his removal. In a 5-4 ruling with conservative justices on one side and liberals on the other, the court ruled for the Trump administration in holding that the statute in question, as drafted by Congress, requires deportation in the case of Andre Barton, even though the assault offenses that prevent him from appealing were not enough to deport him in the first place. "Removal of...

Several months ago, before anyone imagined the current crisis, I read a book called "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a Jewish Viennese psychiatrist who was captured by the Nazis during World War II and managed to survive four concentration camps including the infamous Auschwitz and Dachau. He went through the ordeal observing human behavior, and the result was his formulation of a system of therapy he called logotherapy. Frankl found that those who were most successful, surviving under the most challenging circumstances, were those who retained a sense of meaning in their lives. That is, the...

I have always lived my life around a simple principle, “Don’t eat weird stuff.” And see? I was right. The Coronavirus ripping through the Wuhan region of Red China – and that has now spread here – may well have crossed over to our species because some people in China eat bats. Yeah, on purpose. How the hell did they ever get the idea that dining on Dracula birds was a good plan? It doesn’t matter – what does is our response, and right now the Administration is behind the power curve. With attention fixed on the circle of self-abuse...

The Trump administration announced a key step toward opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas exploration Thursday, rolling out a plan that would see lease sales occur by the end of the year. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its finalized Environmental Impact Statement, which favors the option to offer lease sales across 1.56 million acres of Alaska’s coastal plains. “After rigorous review, robust public comment, and a consideration of a range of alternatives, today’s announcement is a big step to carry out the clear mandate we received from Congress to develop and implement a...

Over the past two months, the world has seen the people of Hong Kong bravely stand up to the growing threat of totalitarianism. What began as a protest against a bill that would allow prisoners to be extradited to mainland China has evolved into a movement to demand that the Hong Kong government (largely now controlled by China’s Communist Party) adhere to the promises of freedom and autonomy it made when Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. Protesters have flooded the streets since June – despite the threat of being arrested, smothered with tear gas, pelted with rubber...

President Trump took to Twitter Saturday to criticize media reports on the partial government shutdown that said there was chaos in the White House over the impasse between Trump and House Democrats on his $5 billion funding demand for a border wall. I just watched a Fake reporter from the Amazon Washington Post say the White House is “chaotic, there does not seem to be a strategy for this Shutdown. There is no plan.” The Fakes always like talking Chaos, there is NONE. In fact, there’s almost nobody in the W.H. but me, and...— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January...