Free Republic

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani pleaded not guilty Tuesday to nine felony charges stemming from his role in an effort to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Arizona to Joe Biden. Giuliani appeared remotely for the arraignment that was held in a Phoenix courtroom. His trial will be held in October.

Anthony Fauci’s top adviser, David Morens, once bragged about “how to make emails disappear,” emails obtained by a congressional subpoena revealed. Morens — who works at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — worked as an adviser for Fauci for more than 20 years, and it has been revealed that he boasted about how to make emails “disappear” in an email to EcoHealth Alliance’s (EHA) Peter Daszak. EcoHealth Alliance is significant, as it received a grant before the pandemic that later funded studies on the coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). “I learned from our...

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that offering condolences to Iran for the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash on Sunday was the “normal course of business.” The State Department issued a statement of condolences without mentioning Raisi’s brutal legacy, including the executions of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s, and prosecuting pro-democracy activists more recently. Raisi was also seen as a hardliner, and suppressed protests by women, including Mahsa Amini, resulting in what Breitbart News’ Frances Martel called “some of the most violent repression of dissidents caught on...

NATO, the U.S.-led military alliance of Western nations, expressed condolences to the Iranian people for the death of their brutal president, Ebrahim Raisi, after he and other high-level officials were killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday. NATO spokeswoman Farah Dakhlallah posted on X: “Our condolences to the people of #Iran for the death of President Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and others who perished in the helicopter crash.” Our condolences to the people of #Iran for the death of President Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and others who perished in the helicopter crash. — NATO Spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah (@NATOpress) May 20,...

The Biden administration ordered a ban on 2024 election betting markets, which often show former President Donald Trump winning in November and President Joe Biden remaining his party’s nominee. Betting markets often provide different insights than election polling that established media outlets perform and are often useful to academics and journalists. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposed a rule on May 10 to permanently ban betting on election commercial prediction markets in the United States, the New York Times’ Jeff Sommer recently reported, even as sports gambling became largely deregulated, soaring in popularity: Rostin Behnam, the chairman of the C.F.T.C.,...

Our Federal Government Needs an InterventionAllison Pearson has an important article in the Telegraph about the British National Health System (NHS). People in Britian are dying of treatable conditions because the NHS will not provide quality care in a timely fashion. As one doctor complained: “The NHS is run by managers for the benefit of managers.” It has shifted from doctors serving patients to the bureaucracy serving itself -- internally, rather than externally, focused. The NHS is a chilling illustration of where our federal government is headed.All complex systems require feedback and response. The driver of a car needs a...

“Corporate price gouging” is the Biden administration’s latest narrative to displace the responsibility of soaring costs. President Joe Biden, who falsely claimed twice in two weeks that inflation was at nine percent when he assumed office, is transitioning to another tack, albeit a strategy he has used before. “President Biden’s top economic priorities are fighting inflation and lowering costs for the American people,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates claimed. “Standing up to corporate price gouging is at the core of that fight.”

It's no secret that Judge Juan Merchan is a partisan judge who has exhibited prejudicial behavior against Donald Trump in his Manhattan trial, but famed lawyer and law professor Alan Dershowitz had to see for himself. He attended the Trump trial on Monday and was appalled at what he saw.Dershowitz appeared on Sean Hannity's show on Fox News Monday evening, during which he destroyed Merchan for his conduct during the testimony of Michael Cohen's former lawyer, Bob Costello. It got extremely tense at times, and Merchan even cleared the courtroom before scolding Costello over his alleged violation of decorum. “I’d...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) slammed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for an American flag that flew upside down at his Virginia home in 2021, saying that despite tensions reportedly running high in the neighborhood at the time, it was “not good judgment” on Alito’s part. “Emotions are apparently high in that neighborhood,” Graham told reporters Monday. “But no, it’s not good judgment to do that. He said his wife was insulted and got mad. I assume that to be true, but he’s still a Supreme Court justice, and people have to realize that [at] moments like that to think it...

Judge Juan Merchan gagged President Trump and his lawyers, but doesn’t gag Micheal Cohen or the prosecution. Merchan doesn’t care that the prosecution hasn’t actually shown a crime that segues to a supposed bookkeeping violation. The judge won’t allow an expert defense witness who would testify that there was clearly no campaign finance violation that would allow the prosecution to go back to the supposed hush money expenses. The judge doesn’t care that state courts have no jurisdiction over federal election laws. The judge doesn’t care how much Cohen lies on the stand. He doesn’t even care that Cohen is...

After Michael Cohen's disastrous testimony, it would seem that the case against President Trump over the bookkeeping entry in a hush-money payment case would be in tatters as it goes to the jury. Many legal eagles have said as much. But the politically partisan New York justice in this case, Juan Merchan, doesn't give up that fast and clearly wants to salvage the case. He's instructing the jury to ignore the detail about the 'underlying crime' and treat the case the same way a burglary case is treated. According to Newsweek:A hush-money payment is not illegal, and under New York...

Comedian Bill Maher said Monday on CNN’s “AC360” that Republicans were “natural-born cultists” and former President Donald Trump is their “American Caesar.” Maher said, “The Republican Party is unrecognizable especially the congresspeople. They’re just there to do performative nonsense.” He continued, “People like Marjorie Taylor Greene, real mental midgets that they are not interested in legislation. They don’t know how it works. They’re not really interested in improving the country. They are just interested, as you said, in owning the libs, making liberals cry the tears and getting revenge, and also their cultish. They are natural-born cultists.”

On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” host Joy Reid stated that “it feels like the Biden administration wants soft regime change” in Israel and that the administration appears to be “sort of openly supporting Netanyahu’s chief rival, who said he will leave the government if they don’t have a plan for the post-war Gaza.” But they also have contradicted this position by supporting Netanyahu against the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against him. Reid said, “[I]t baffles my mind, because, on the one hand, it feels like the Biden administration wants soft regime change. They seem to be...

THE SCOOP World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab will be stepping back from his role running the global gathering since he founded it in 1971. Schwab announced his intentions in an email to staff on Tuesday that was shared with Semafor by a person connected to the organization. He will be stepping down as executive chairman and transitioning to a role as non-executive chairman, he said, adding the change in his role is pending approval by the Swiss government but should be finalized ahead of the WEF’s annual meeting in 2025. Schwab has not named his successor,...

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, many Americans have been left scrambling to understand the widespread doubt that has been cast over the U.S. election systems. More Americans than ever now doubt the integrity of American elections, and most U.S. voters believe that cheating is likely to affect the 2024 presidential election results. The potential implications that have arisen after the 2020 election and the mass chaos that kicked off in the wake of drawn-out vote-counting and murky mail-in ballot drop boxes have drawn the ire of many proponents of election integrity, including President Donald Trump. He has...

Democratic strategist James Carville said Monday on MSNBC’s “Inside” that presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will take votes from former President Donald Trump. Host Jen Psaki said, “Let me ask you about RFK Jr. because this is like another question that comes up a lot as you are talking to people. He will not be on the first debate stage. You told my colleague Ari Melber, you think he might hurt Trump more than Biden. That is what the NBC polls say too for people who are anxious out there, given how much he is getting in the polls....

The Biden administration on Monday expressed condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi and several Iranian regime officials were killed in a helicopter crash in northern Iran over the weekend. Raisi, known as the “Butcher of Tehran,” oversaw aggressive foreign policies that increased tensions with the West and authoritarian domestic policies to repress and abuse the Iranian population, whom he was deeply unpopular with. This would be “The United States expresses its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest...

On Monday’s broadcast of Fox 5’s “Good Day New York,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) claimed that President Joe Biden can’t reverse his reversal of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies because “The law on asylum is really clear. If you have a colorable claim that you’re coming from a horrible country that has horrible things happening, you have a right to come here.” Gillibrand said, “President Trump — former President Trump has come out to say, I don’t want any fixes to immigration, which is just cynical and terrible for a state like New York, because we need these laws...

It’s a hallmark of totalitarian regimes. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about it in his monumental exploration of the nightmare of totalitarianism, “The Gulag Archipelago”: “The sharp nighttime ring or the rude knock at the door. The insolent entrance of the unwiped jackboots of the unsleeping State Security operatives.” The left has now adopted this tactic in the United States, not for arrests (yet), but to frighten its foes into submission.The Jerusalem Post recently reported that “anti-Israel masked men arrived at the homes of University of Michigan Board of Regents members before dawn on Wednesday to protest and demand the adoption of...

Radical Marxist groups, including some with ties to China, are planning on protests at the Chicago Democratic Convention this year. What is so surprising is that there are many Democrats so surprised. They question why groups they have supported with resources and fiery speeches would turn against them. Those Democrats have coddled and loved on the Marxists with glowing praise while condemning their opponents with the harshest of rhetoric and most disparaging of words. These naïve souls are still in need of history lessons that the federal Department of Education does not mandate nor provide.Many have at least noted that...