Free Republic

ussian spies have developed an artificial intelligence tool that Moscow is using to meddle in elections in Britain and the United States on a scale “exponentially greater” than ever before, Ukraine’s national security adviser has warned. In an interview with The Times, Oleksiy Danilov said that AI had enabled Russia to substantially ramp up its disinformation campaigns, designed to sow division and influence public opinion, and that Moscow now had specific units dedicated to every country holding an election in Europe. He said: “Artificial intelligence is a huge step forward for Russia and it makes the impact [of their meddling]...

The 10 Wisconsin Republicans who posed as electors for President Donald Trump in 2020 even though he had lost the election settled a lawsuit against them Wednesday, acknowledging their actions were part of an effort to overturn the election results. The lawsuit was filed last year by two of the state’s rightful electors, alleging the 10 false electors had engaged in a plot to defraud Wisconsin voters. The lawsuit had sought up to $200,000 from each elector, but no money is being exchanged as part of the settlement. Wisconsin was one of several swing states in which groups of Republicans...

The towering Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv — one of the nation’s most recognizable landmarks — lost its hammer-and-sickle symbol on Sunday as officials replaced the Soviet-era emblem with the country’s trident coat of arms. The move is part of a wider shift to reclaim Ukraine’s cultural identity from the Communist past amid Russia’s ongoing invasion. Erected in 1981 as part of a larger complex housing the national World War II museum, the 200-foot (61-meter) Mother Ukraine monument stands on the right bank of the Dnieper River in Kyiv, facing eastward toward Moscow. Created in the image of a fearless...

When Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida convened a round-table discussion about the news media this week, he spared no effort to play the part, perching at a faux anchor’s desk in front of a wall of video screens while firing questions to his guests like a seasoned cable TV host. But the panel’s message was as notable as its slick presentation: Over the course of an hour, Mr. DeSantis and his guests laid out a detailed case for revisiting a landmark Supreme Court decision protecting the press from defamation lawsuits. Mr. DeSantis is the latest figure, and among the most...

St Petersburg outfit hijacks discussions on Twitter, TikTok, world leaders’ social accounts and media websites, as well as manipulating opinion polls ...Online operatives were found to be ordering followers to target western media outlets and politicians The headquarters is allegedly located in rented space in St Petersburg’s Arsenal Machine-building Factory, a company that manufactures military equipment and technology. The study details how the Russian president’s regime is trying to manipulate public opinion on social media, as well as in the comments sections of major media outlets. Targets include the social media accounts of Boris Johnson, the British prime minister; the...

A coalition of House committees is asking the White House and 16 other agencies to turn over a trove of documents from the Trump administration related to the electoral vote count and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The request includes the Office of the Vice President, and seeks all White House communications between Dec. 1 and Inauguration Day, specifically asking to relay "communications, if any, with participants in the events of Jan. 6" or their associates. The documents could provide an insight into how a number of Trump administration officials prepared for and responded to the attacks. The...

On September 2, 2014, Russia fired at us with all kinds of heavy fire from its territory, and today #2_September_2020, everything is on fire. It started yesterday in a gray zone behind a demolished school building (many “thanks” for the withdrawal of troops), and today there is a fire in Bolotenny and Sizom. These villages are right at the Russian border. I am not hinting at anything, but I am very interested in why does it burn exactly where the Russian snout is sticking out?! In short: we are f***ed. The photo was taken just now at the Olkhovsky dachas,...

George Will plans to break the habit of a lifetime for the 2020 election. The longtime conservative commentator said Monday he’ll cast his vote for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in order to help defeat President Donald Trump at the ballot box. It will likely be the first time that he has ever voted for a Democrat, Will told USA Today’s Susan Page during a conversation for The Aspen Institute. “I’m a big believer in parties, in party strength and party tickets. Not this year,” said Will, who quit the GOP in June 2016 in protest of Trump’s then-imminent nomination...

President Trump’s allies are urging him to change his tone and key figures in the campaign’s orbit are pointing fingers over who is to blame for the president’s spiraling poll numbers with just over four months to go until Election Day. There is frustration in Trump World over the president's lack of discipline and his confrontational tone during a time of high anxiety over the coronavirus and civil unrest around the death of George Floyd while in police custody. Some Trump allies are worried that campaign manager Brad Parscale is in over his head. And there is sniping between pro-Trump...

President Trump is hosting a rally this weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at an indoor arena with space for more than 19,000 people. Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter protests continue outdoors in cities around the globe. Both rallies and protests involve large crowds, standing close together, which means people could presumably catch the coronavirus at either type of event. But scientific evidence suggests that gathering indoors, without masks, as Trump's campaign plans to do this weekend, is a much more dangerous place for the coronavirus to spread than outside at a protest.

A Senate committee voted along party lines Wednesday to issue a subpoena as part of the Republican-led investigation into the Ukrainian energy firm that hired former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. The subpoena is one of several steps Senate Republicans are taking to ramp up probes related to the Obama administration and Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee who will likely challenge President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 8-6 to authorize the subpoena Chairman Ron Johnson requested for Blue Star Strategies, a US public affairs firm that worked...

Republicans and right-wing media are in a conspiracy theory-spewing meltdown. In the wake of selective, politically motivated “leaks” of sensitive documents, conservative pundits are launching an avalanche of baseless attacks against President Trump’s political opponents. But the reality is brutally obvious: Trump is weaponizing the American government to distract from his catastrophically incompetent pandemic response and the crushing economic fallout. While right-wing media continue to whip their audiences into hysteria over a nefarious Obama-led plot to undermine Trump, the documents — strategically released by Trump’s political lackeys atop the intelligence and law enforcement communities — do absolutely nothing to further...

Small businesses in areas hit hardest by the coronavirus epidemic haven't been able to secure loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), according to a new study released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The study has actually shown a "negative relationship" between a state's COVID-19 cases per capita and its share of small businesses getting PPP funding. Most PPP loans have gone to central and midwestern states that have reported the fewest number of coronavirus cases. "In New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus in the United States, less than 20 percent of small businesses have...

Well, that’s a big change. A formerly vegan influencer revealed to her fans that she spent 30 days eating nothing but meat and animal products. She also revealed that the new diet had some surprisingly positive effects on her health. Alyse Parker, who has over 200K Instagram followers and over 700K Youtube subscribers, explained her decision on Instagram. In a post, she revealed that she decided to try the Carnivore Diet after hearing about all of the health benefits from friends who switched from being vegan to eating only meat and animal products.

The skies grew dark Saturday afternoon as tornado alerts buzzed cell phones across the city. Which might have explained the initial lackluster turnout for an Independence Mall protest against President Donald Trump — the third in Philadelphia in a week. But eventually, as a steady rain began to fall, three dozen protesters were listening as organizers with Refuse Fascism Philly played an audio recording published by ProPublica in 2018 of immigrant children separated from their families at the Mexican border. Chanting, “Close the camps! Trump, Pence must go!” protesters then marched with police escorts to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement...

A group of Arizona police officers were asked to leave a Starbucks coffee shop on July 4 after a customer complained to staff that she “didn’t feel safe” with them being there, reports say. Five cops from the Tempe Police Department were drinking at a branch of the coffee chain in the city when they were approached by a barista and told that a customer had made a complaint about their presence. The worker is said to have told them to either move out of the complaining customer’s line of sight or leave the premises entirely, the Tempe Officers Association...

In recent days, President Donald Trump has turned his Twitter account into a stream of 280-character invective against Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, giving the former vice president a somnolent nickname and calling him "not very bright." Despite the ability to broadcast his electoral weapon directly at his 60 million followers, could the president’s participation on his favorite social media network actually hamper his chances at winning a second term? Nearly half of voters, 46 percent, in a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll say that, yes, Trump’s Twitter use hurts his reelection campaign - more than twice the number who say his direct-to-voters...

CNN had its lowest primetime weekly ratings overall and in the key age demographic last week, according to Nielsen Media Research. ... CNN finished 15th, behind networks like Discovery Channel, Food Network, TLC and A&E Network.

I am a Jew — a New York Writer Liberal Jew, the scariest Jew of all — and from a very young age, I was taught about an unimaginable horror called the Holocaust and about an evil man named Adolf Hitler. The elderly man who sat beside me every Saturday morning in synagogue was a Holocaust survivor, and his elderly wife was a Holocaust survivor, as well. And so the first reason the comparison of Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler bothers me is not because it belittles the deaths of millions of innocents, but because, frankly, it belittles Adolf Hitler.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said the United States will lose its credibility on human rights if it does not take action against Saudi Arabia after the apparent death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.