Free Republic

ot long after President Joe Biden announced he was stepping aside from the presidential race Sunday, pro-Trump social media influencers had settled on one line of attack: that Democrats had carried out a coup against their own president. [snip] From people who support Donald Trump, the man who tried to steal the 2020 election, this is obviously a ridiculous and absurd thing to say. Yet it echoes a self-interested argument made by Biden himself just two weeks ago, when he argued that him dropping out would be tantamount to ignoring democracy. “The voters — and the voters alone — decide...

Users of Zyn, a brand of nicotine pouch that’s become a touchstone among right-wing commentators, extol its ability to free the mind, increase productivity, and even enhance sexual performance. “I use it every second I’m awake,” said Tucker Carlson on an episode of the Full Send comedy podcast in 2023. “Seconds before I fall asleep, I take it out.” There’s no evidence to promote Zyn as a sexual aid; nicotine actually constricts blood vessels, which can increase the risk of erectile dysfunction. The addictive substance can also raise blood sugar and blood pressure and may harden the walls of arteries,...

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...

The six Republican justices handed down a decision on Friday that effectively legalizes civilian ownership of automatic weapons. All three of the Court’s Democrats dissented. The Court’s decision in Garland v. Cargill involves bump stocks, devices that allow ordinary semiautomatic weapons that can legally be owned by civilians to automatically fire, much like a machine gun designed for that purpose. Bump stocks cause a semiautomatic gun’s trigger to buck against the shooter’s finger, repeatedly “bumping” the trigger and making the gun rapidly fire. A semiautomatic weapon refers to a gun that loads a bullet into the chamber or otherwise prepares...

Thursday’s argument in Trump v. United States was a disaster for Special Counsel Jack Smith, and for anyone who believes that the president of the United States should be subject to prosecution if they commit a crime.

The notion that Biden is less mentally fit for the presidency than Trump is extremely dubious. The president has been involved in public policy for more than half a century and Biden has almost certainly forgotten more about geopolitics and the federal bureaucracy than Trump has ever learned. Age notwithstanding, Biden remains far more cognitively qualified for the presidency than his 77-year-old rival... The president’s mental competence is similarly well established. Last year, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told allies that he “found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations,” as Politico put it. This comports with the assessment of...

Yet another Democratic Party thought leader has demanded that Joe Biden drop out of the 2024 presidential race. Ezra Klein, the co-founder of Vox and now a columnist and podcast host at The New York Times, said he understood that many liberals would be angry at him for calling on Biden to go but that it was necessary. "I want to say this clearly: I like Biden. I think he’s been a good president. I think he is a good president. I don’t like having this conversation. And I know a lot of liberals, a lot of Democrats are going...

Democrats perturbed about Donald Trump’s lead in 2024 polling have long had a comforting hope to fall back on: that Trump, who is facing four criminal prosecutions, will likely become a convicted felon before Election Day — or even be sent to prison. That’s still possible — but it’s not as sure a bet as it once seemed. Delays have piled up in federal court proceedings in the District of Columbia case about Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election and the Florida classified documents case against Trump, making it unclear whether either case will go to trial before November....

Violence has erupted between police and thousands of protesters during the fourth consecutive night of demonstrations outside the Spanish Socialist Party's headquarters in Madrid. On Thursday night, footage captured protesters throwing bottles, beer cans, and fireworks at a police cordon protecting the headquarters. Police used batons, tear gas, and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd as tensions rose. The protests were triggered by the Socialist Party's deal with a Catalan separatist party, granting amnesty for those involved in a failed secession bid. In exchange, the separatist party supports acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's bid to form a new government. Earlier...

Even before Tuesday’s elections, many progressives insisted the question of whether protecting abortion rights wins elections was already asked and answered. Democrats made abortion rights the centerpiece of their campaign advertising during the 2022 midterms, a cycle where Democrats outperformed expectations, kept control of the US Senate, and staved off a red wave. Polls last year also found abortion rights to be a significantly motivating issue for both independent and Democratic voters. Abortion rights ballot measures won in all six states where they appeared in 2022, including states like Montana, Kentucky, and Kansas that otherwise elected Republican candidates.

He is preparing for an investiture vote which is expected to see him form a new government and avoid a repeat election. That can only happen if he can secure the parliamentary support of Catalan separatists. The Socialists were runners-up in July's general election, behind the conservative People's Party (PP). However, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo failed to form a government in an investiture vote in September, receiving only the support of the far-right Vox out of the main parties. It is now Mr Sánchez's turn and he is close to securing enough parliamentary support to form a new administration...

Liberal journos like Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias continue to treat struggling Americans as stupid for not giving President Joe Biden kudos on his so-called “great” economy. Yglesias published a ludicrous Oct. 22 op-ed for Bloomberg Opinion with a headline that was nothing short of comical: “Biden’s Economy Is Great Everywhere Except in the Polls.” In Yglesias’s condescending, escapist worldview, those darn average Americans just don’t know what’s good for them: “Like a lot of world leaders, the US president must contend with voters who remain unhappy even as economic conditions improve.” Yglesias even outrageously attempted to make Biden out to...

Carlos Campos came to Miami from Venezuela in 1979, before dictator Hugo Chávez’s socialist revolution brought about the unraveling of the oil-rich country. But it wasn’t until 2016 that Campos became actively engaged in US politics. Donald Trump’s “America First” message stirred something in him. Sitting down at a Cuban restaurant just minutes from the Trump National Doral golf resort — one of the former president’s major Miami-area properties aside from his Mar-a-Lago estate — Campos described how he came to the realization that his values aligned more closely with Republicans than Democrats. He attends Alpha & Omega, a Spanish-language...

The right-wing Popular Party (PP) is projected to be ahead after a general election in Spain - but it is likely to need the support of the far-right to govern.

Spain’s conservative opposition Popular Party (PP) made significant gains in local and regional elections, offering a perilous assessment of public feeling towards the country’s ruling left-wing coalition ahead of general elections in December. MADRID -- Spain's conservative opposition Popular Party made significant gains in Sunday's local and regional elections, offering a dire assessment of public feeling towards the ruling left-wing coalition ahead of general elections in December. In the local vote, the Popular Party, or PP, won 31.5% of votes compared with 28.2% for the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, or PSOE, which leads the central government, with more than 97%...

Jewish News Syndicate editor-in-chief and National Review contributing writer Jonathan Tobin claimed that journalists who pushed the narrative that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman was completely healthy to run for office "lied" in order to ensure that Democrats "maintain control of the Senate." In his column for The Jewish News Syndicate, Tobin declared that these "team blue journalists" "were prepared to cover up or falsify the facts about his health in order to advance his candidacy." [cut] Tobin’s piece, titled, "The painful truth about media bias: Some journalists lie," began with the observation that the debate between Fetterman and...

Three judges appointed by former President Donald Trump handed down an astonishing decision on Wednesday, effectively holding that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency charged with protecting consumers from a wide range of predatory activity by lenders and other financial services, is unconstitutional and must be stripped of its authority. The decision by the conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit relies on a novel reading of an obscure provision of the Constitution, and is entirely at odds with a Supreme Court decision that rejects the Fifth Circuit’s reading of that provision. This is not...

Liberal media outlets are rallying around Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman after an NBC News reporter said he had difficulty understanding their conversation during a sit-down interview. On Monday, The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey wrote that despite his "relatively privileged upbringing," Fetterman has long been recognized as a "consummate everyman" and a straight talker. Speaking with Fetterman supporters during the campaign trail, Godfrey reported that supporters of the stroke survivor appeared unfazed by the candidate’s recent health challenges, and that he has now become "more relatable than ever." "Which is to say that Fetterman’s just-like-us appeal before his stroke may...

I’ve lived in Houston for most of my life, and there’s never been a time when I’ve reasonably been able to walk anywhere. Houston is practically the poster child for American urban sprawl — the landscape is dominated by spread-out neighborhoods with single-family homes and massive “stroads” (street-road hybrids with the worst aspects of both) lined with strip malls and expansive parking lots, connected by miles and miles of highways. It’s an environment designed to be solely traversed by car, not by foot. That had a dramatic effect on the friends I could make, especially when I was younger and...

CNN's Wolf Blitzer presses Saudi diplomat Adel al-Jubeir, who was in the room during President Joe Biden's meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Video at source.