Free Republic

AIN’T EASY BEING GREENE — Turns out it wasn’t a momentary lapse of judgment: DONALD TRUMP yesterday evening defended Speaker MIKE JOHNSON for the second time in as many weeks amid a swirl of speculation about his future atop the House GOP. After spending the day holed up in a Manhattan courtroom (more on that in a second), the former president told Real America’s Voice radio host John Fredericks that Johnson is “trying very hard” and “a very good person.” “Well, look, we have a majority of one, OK?” Trump said, extending Johnson some grace and echoing the speaker’s own...

<p>NEW YORK — A top aide to Mayor Eric Adams is facing another lawsuit alleging discrimination, sexual harassment and retaliation stemming from his stewardship of a mysterious mayoral office focused on policing city agencies from within.</p><p>And at one point that aide — Timothy Pearson, a former NYPD inspector — shared a desire to earn money from contracts doled out by the Adams administration despite his prominent role in City Hall, according to the suit filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan Wednesday.</p>

If anybody has any doubt about the extreme liberal bias of Politico, an article they published on Friday should resolve that matter. Their legal editor, James Romoser, attempted to portray the legal system as being too nice to Donald Trump. The diatribe was headlined: "How Donald Trump Gets Special Treatment in the Legal System."

For generations, American politics has been defined by the outsize influence of Christian conservatives, so much so that the intersection of religion and politics is often treated as the sole province of white evangelicals. And for generations, promises of a rising “religious left” have come and gone without any lasting political imprint. But to look at America’s religious left at this moment is to see something genuinely different. Places of worship are participating in demonstrations for civil rights larger than any protest movement in American history. Democrats like the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Joe Biden—political leaders whose faith isn’t just...

<p>The U.S. and other Western countries are considering transferring to NATO a U.S.-led multinational group that coordinates the shipment of weapons to Ukraine, one of several new proposals that could help maintain the flow of arms to Kyiv under a second Donald Trump presidency.</p>

<p>A California judge on Wednesday recommended the disbarment of John Eastman, calling to revoke the law license of one of former President Donald Trump’s top allies in his failed last-ditch gambit to subvert the 2020 election.</p><p>Judge Yvette Roland, who presided over months of testimony and argument about the basis of Eastman’s fringe legal theories, ruled that the veteran conservative attorney violated ethics rules — and even potentially criminal law — when he advanced Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results based on weak or discredited claims of fraud.</p>

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has replaced one of his longest-serving officials, Oleksiy Danilov, who had earlier criticized a Chinese peace plan. Danilov’s firing came after he expressively criticized Chinese Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs Li Hui, as well as a Chinese peace initiative, on air during a Ukrainian national telethon. “As for Li Hui, I want to remind everyone: No one will decide our fate but us,” Danilov said on March 19. “I don’t understand who can trade our territories, our lands like that. Because some Hui, I’m sorry, or whatever his last name is, or someone else think they...

<p>Fellow Democrats are excoriating Rep. Katie Porter for saying her opponents, including rival Rep. Adam Schiff, sought to “rig” California’s Senate primary — language that echoes former President Donald Trump’s election denialism.</p><p>Porter finished a distant third in the Super Tuesday contest behind Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey. The swift reaction to her social media outburst underscores how California’s enormously expensive Senate race — for a likely safe Democratic seat — has left lingering bruises. It also raises warnings for Democrats tempted to use rhetoric they’ve condemned as undermining public trust in the nation's elections.</p>

Rep. Barbara Lee delivered election night remarks before any results dropped. Lee, who was expected to fall short in the race for California’s Senate seat, emotionally greeted phone bank volunteers at her campaign headquarters in downtown Oakland. She also passed a baton — literally and figuratively — to Lateefah Simon, her chosen successor to replace her in the House. “There is a woman who has inspired millions of women around the world, millions of women who decided to pull up our own table, our own chairs,” Simon said as the two women wiped away tears. Lee, a three-decade veteran of...

<p>A woman who allegedly tried to hit her ex-husband with a car. A 30-year-old who marketed a conspiracy-theory movie. A pastor whose previous campaign was mired in election fraud.</p><p>These are some of the candidates national Republicans are trying not to nominate this week.</p>

One year ago, I set out to learn how local Republican powerbrokers would shape the 2024 presidential race. What I found surprised me, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. As I surveyed GOP county chairs across the country, I thought they would provide an early signal as to where the Republican nomination would end up. County chairs are influential in local GOP circles, party leaders who can offer the kind of endorsements that candidates are eager to collect. They’re also still close to the rank-and-file grassroots, and their shifts, I imagined, would signal where the rest of the party was going....

<p>The bad polls for President Joe Biden came one after the other this weekend.</p><p>A day after Democrats dragged a New York Times/Siena College poll that showed the president falling 4 points behind his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, in a general election matchup, Sunday brought an additional three major surveys also showing Trump leading amid broad and deep dissatisfaction with the incumbent.</p>

Someone should inform Politico's national security reporter Erin Banco and her colleague John Sakellariadis that the politicized intelligence community train had long ago left the station when it was fully weaponized against former President Donald Trump, almost from the moment (and even before) he took office in 2017. However, now that the prospect of Trump returning to the White House was a possibility, the intelligence agencies were suddenly clutching their pearls in deep concern over the politicization of their already politicized community.Banco and Sakellariadis went into a state of deep, deep concern on Monday over the future of the deep...

<p>House Republicans are facing a growing exodus of experienced and talented members that adds up to an alarming political maturity drain. A growing number of their well-respected members are fleeing Congress as the conference pulls further to the right, and the departures are starting to spark worries about a further erosion of GOP lawmakers' appetite for the basic tasks of governing. After a brutal year of their party's shaky stewardship of the House, 21 House GOP lawmakers have already announced their plans to retire at year's end — including five committee chairs. Many of the departing members share a common trait: They’re part of a loose coalition of governing-minded Republicans who are still willing to generally back leadership, support bipartisan deals and even defy former President Donald Trump at times. And while some Republicans have cited personal or health reasons for leaving office, others in the group are blunt as they lament their party’s inflated expectations for what’s achievable when the GOP controls just one half of one branch of the government.</p>

A conflict between Russia and NATO would be inevitable if Western troops go to Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said today. The Kremlin's comments come after French President Emmanuel Macron did not rule out putting boots on the ground in Ukraine as Kyiv struggles to fend off Russia's full-scale invasion. While Macron noted that there was no consensus about troops at this stage, Ukraine has not asked allies for soldiers to fight its cause and other Western governments even scrambled Tuesday to insist troops were not set to be deployed, the mere suggestion sparked a furious response from Moscow....

A recent Politico report described Biden complaining that Attorney General Merrick Garland did not stop Special Counsel Hur from editing out mentions of his diminished mental capacity in his report, that Garland should not have allowed a special counsel to look into his son’s misconduct and finally that Garland had failed to schedule a trial of former President Trump quickly enough. As a result, Politico reported that Biden would oust Garland if he gets a second term. Not only was Biden interfering with supposedly independent investigations of himself and his son, but even into criminal proceedings aimed at his likely...

Former President Donald Trump is allowing the Jan. 6-related cases against him to move forward by not petitioning the Supreme Court, which is already three-deep in Trump appeals. According to Politico, Trump opted not to ask the justices to overturn the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from December that rejected his claim of presidential immunity from prosecution for conduct while in office. Therefore, at least three lawsuits brought against him after the breach of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, can advance to a period of limited evidence-gathering to determine the nature of Trump's activities on...

The Democrats (and Politico) have a problem. In the wake of Special Counsel Robert Hur's report which did not charge President Joe Biden with improperly storing classified documents, not because he was innocent but because Hur judged him too senile due to age to be sent to trial, there was more urgency than ever among liberals to replace Biden on the 2024 presidential ticket. But how to do it? Politico's senior politics editor, Charlie Mahtesian, and his colleague, Steven Shepard, came up with a highly problematic "Plan B" chock full of wishful thinking on Monday in, "Democrats Might Need a...

It was easily one of the notable moments of President Joe Biden's Thursday press conference in which he angrily denounced Special Counsel Robert Hur for highlighting his memory loss several times in his report. Yet Politico neglected to mention how Biden seemingly failed to recall the name of the church he got the rosary from to memorialize his deceased son Beau. Here's that highly embarrassing moment for Biden that shocked viewers yet Politico disingenuously left out of their reports of the press conference.

Under intense pressure from farmers, the European Commission has dropped key passages in a proposal for a new 2040 goal for cutting greenhouse gas pollution. “All sectors” would need to contribute to the effort, the EU executive's plan says. But a mention of a possible 30 percent cut to agricultural pollution between 2015 and 2040, which was in previous drafts seen by POLITICO, had been removed. Also excised were recommendations for citizens to make changes to their behavior, like eating less meat, and a push to end fossil fuel subsidies. Farmers' protests have broken out in many countries across Europe...