Free Republic

There is of course nothing wrong with organizing to elect party officials; it is what partisan politics is about. The problem in this case is in the result: It defeats the fundamental purpose of a political party, which is to elect its members to political positions. This requires the party to nominate and support candidates who have broad support and have the best chance to win election. The rise of the MAGA movement has resulted in the party endorsing candidates who are challenging the party’s incumbents. We can see this happening now. The county party has rescinded its endorsements of...

Donald Trump has secured the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination. Joe Biden has secured the delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — In one of the most closely watched congressional races this year, U.S. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska is looking to defeat a fellow Republican in Tuesday's primary election in his quest for reelection. He'll have to do it without the support of the state Republican Party, which has endorsed his primary challenger. Bacon, whose district includes the state's largest city of Omaha, isn't the only one being snubbed. The Nebraska GOP, which was taken over by those loyal to former President Donald Trump during a contentious state convention in 2022, has refused to endorse any of...

A Washington grand jury has indicted former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., on charges he made false statements during a campaign finance probe, months after a federal appeals court threw out his 2022 conviction on similar charges in California. The indictment, released Thursday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, accuses Fortenberry of making false statements to investigators during a July 2019 interview in the District of Columbia and during a March 2019 interview at his residence in Lincoln, Neb. Both interviews were connected to an investigation into illegal political campaign contributions from a foreign national to Fortenberry’s...

State leadership and delegation chairs from several Libertarian Party chapters, including those in Florida, California, Colorado, Tennessee, Minnesota, Vermont, Nebraska, and the District of Columbia, have extended an invitation to independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., urging him to seek the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. The letter, published on Friday by Libertarians for Kennedy and signed by various party leaders, including an alternative region representative on the Libertarian National Committee, urges Kennedy to seek the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, with the understanding that the undersigned would consider voting for him in the first round if he accepts. Notably, the...

Increase includes vice chancellor for diversity, other DEI positions The University of Nebraska at Lincoln added more than 350 new positions in the past decade – nearly all of them administrative – while student enrollment numbers remained steady... Among the new hires is a vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion. His salary for the current year is $267,585 .. During the 2022-23 school year, the most recent data available, the public university’s Lincoln campus employed 4,014 full-time administrators and support staff... In 2013-2014, IPEDS data shows UNL employed 3,720 administrators and support staff – meaning it added 294 administrative positions...

Two Republicans joined Democrats in blocking legislation that would have stopped transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports in K-12 schools in Nebraska. A bill that would stop student athletes from participating on sports teams for the opposite sex, as well as using locker rooms and bathrooms for the opposite sex, was blocked by a filibuster on Friday in Nebraska, according to a report by Nebraska Public Media. After four hours of debate, 31 state senators voted for the legislation (LB575), but the bill needed 33 votes in order to end the filibuster.

Nebraska State Sen. Mike McDonnell (R-5) announced he is fleeing the Democrat party to become a Republican, giving the GOP what U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) calls a “filibuster-proof majority” in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature. McDonnell’s party change bears major implications for local and national politics as the state is on the verge of moving to a winner-take-all electoral vote allocation system for presidential elections. The state currently has a split electoral vote awarding system that gives “two electoral votes to the state popular vote winner, and then one electoral vote to the popular vote winner in each congressional district,” as...

After big changes to abortion laws both at the state and federal level, [black] women are concerned about the future. “As we get to this next cycle of elected officials and leaders, we absolutely want to hold folks accountable to ensuring that we can have bodily autonomy and power over our bodies,” said Ashlei Spivey, founder of I Be Black Girl. About 28 percent of [black] female voters surveyed by health policy firm KFF noted abortion as their top issue ahead of the presidential election. About 28 percent of Black female voters surveyed by health policy firm KFF noted abortion...

OMAHA — U.S. Rep. Don Bacon will face one Republican challenger in his party’s May primary instead of two after a candidate who filed to run against him changed his mind Friday. His lone GOP opponent will be Dan Frei of Omaha, a former tea party darling who lost narrowly in the 2014 primary to Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb. Frei says he wants to join the Freedom Caucus if elected. Michael Connely had also filed to run against Bacon in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District. He switched races on Friday to run in the 1st District House race. Connely told the...

One of Trump’s most vocal critics seems to have had a change of heart. Rep. Bacon probably watched the Super Tuesday results come in feeling pretty uneasy, especially seeing President Trump dominate by taking 14 out of the 15 states. The only state he narrowly missed was Vermont, thanks to its open primary system. There, Haley’s Democratic supporters turned out in force for her, netting her a single, rather unimpressive delegate. Join the fight and contribute to our war chest Ditch the ads for $5 per month or $49 per year One of Trump’s most vocal critics seems to have...

@LeadingReport BREAKING: Nebraska senator has introduced a bill that could make Nebraska the first in the country to forbid out-of-state hedge funds and other corporate entities from buying up single-family properties.

Renewable energy is the alternative that Democrats and other environmental nuts want to replace reliable oil, gas and coal. But time and time again, people who rely on wind and solar power have had to learn the tough lesson that such alternatives are both undependable and susceptible to the same elements they are supposed to harness. Nowhere was that more true than in Nebraska, where a thunderstorm dumped baseball-sized hail on a solar farm on Friday at a speed of 150 mph — destroying the facility in just a few minutes. Cowboy State Daily reported a storm moved east out...

Electric vehicles that typically weigh more than gasoline-powered cars can easily crash through steel highway guardrails that are not designed to withstand the extra force, raising concerns about the nation’s roadside safety system, according to crash test data released Wednesday by the University of Nebraska. Electric vehicles typically weigh 20% to 50% more than gas-powered vehicles thanks to batteries that can weigh almost as much as a small gas-powered car. And they have lower centers of gravity. Because of these differences, guardrails can do little to stop electric vehicles from pushing through barriers typically made of steel. Last fall, engineers...

Amid a revolt against incumbents, Nebraska’s State Central Committee of the Republican Party has endorsed a GOP challenger to incumbent Sen. and former Gov. Pete Ricketts. The committee is backing former Air Force Lt. Col. John Glen Weaver, according to the Nebraska Examiner. In 2022, former President Donald Trump branded Ricketts a “RINO,” which means Republican in Name Only, according to KLKN-TV.

PAPILLION, Neb. (Nebraska Examiner) - Former Tea Party darling Dan Frei of Omaha filed late last week to challenge U.S. Rep. Don Bacon of Papillion in the 2024 GOP primary in the 2nd District. Frei had no immediate comment Saturday about filing. He told the Examiner in early January that he was seriously considering a bid against Bacon. Frei later courted partisans attending a Nebraska Republican Party fundraiser in Omaha involving Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, who has still not conceded her loss in Arizona’s 2022 governor’s race. Some leaders in the Nebraska GOP have said they prefer candidates...

Bill Gates Set Up 20 Shell Companies to Hide Purchase of $113 Million of Nebraska Farmland The limited liability companies, buried under layers of business names, overlapping employees and addresses in at least three states, form a network more tangled and opaque than the one created by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is buying a giant amount of Nebraska ranch land.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reversed former Nebraska congressman Jeff Fortenberry's three felony convictions, agreeing with Fortenberry's argument that the trial should not have taken place in California. Fortenberry was convicted by a federal jury in Los Angeles in 2022 on one count of concealing conduit campaign contributions and two counts of lying to federal agents, all felonies. The charges stemmed from Fortenberry allegedly accepting an illegal campaign donation from billionaire Nigerian businessman Gilbert Chagoury at a 2016 fundraiser and then lying about the donation during later interviews with FBI agents. On Tuesday, a panel of three judges with...

After Ohio’s Issue 1 vote legalized abortion with no gestational limit, the pro-abortion lobby is planning to put similar referendums on the ballots of many other states. As of November 14, pro-abortion initiatives are guaranteed to be on the ballots of two deep-blue states: Maryland and New York. However, abortion is currently legal in both states until so-called “fetal viability” – which is usually defined as falling between 23 and 24 weeks of pregnancy. Loopholes allow killing babies in abortions up to birth in both states. In many other states, the prospect of putting abortion to a vote next year...

The Douglas County Health Department (DCHD) and its partners are responding to a confirmed case of active tuberculosis disease (TB) at Westview YMCA. DCHD is investigating more than 500 possible exposures that may have happened at the facility’s drop-in daycare and is working to identify individuals who had close contact with the patient. Those possible exposures would have happened from late spring into late October. The Douglas County Health Department is investigating the patient’s activities while they were contagious to learn of potential exposures, helping the patient isolate, and observing them complete their medication until they test negative for TB....