Free Republic

Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that the Republican Party wanted a national abortion ban as part of their “war on women.” Newsom said, “They are not only restricting the rights of self-determination to bear a child for a young woman, and they’re determining their fate as it relates their future in life by saying they can’t even travel and they are modeled after a version that passed in Idaho is now being proposed in Tennessee and Oklahoma and Mississippi. The AG himself of Alabama wants to criminalize travel not just for children but for...

Democratic consultant and political commentator James Carville said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” that he believed Tuesday’s election results showed voters don’t trust Republicans on the issue of abortion because “they keep lying.” Host Ari Melber asked, “What are the voters saying?” Carville said, “Well, I think voters said that they don’t like being lied to. They did it in Kansas. They did it in Ohio. They tried to confuse people, change the wording.”

(RNS) — The latest chapter in Donald Trump’s ongoing legal drama played out on Monday evening (Aug. 14), as a grand jury in Georgia indicted the former president and 18 others as part of a sweeping probe of alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state. While most of those indicted are lawyers or people with close connections to Trump, at least one is a faith leader: an Illinois pastor and former police chaplain charged in connection with efforts to intimidate Georgia election workers. The indictment singles out the Rev. Stephen Cliffgard Lee, a pastor within the...

The White House issued a rebuke of Tucker Carlson’s January 6 video footage on Wednesday, suggesting it was a “false depiction” and adding it was roundly condemned by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and the Capitol Police chief. On Monday and Tuesday, Carlson aired video footage revealing Capitol Police escorting Shaman Jacob Chansley inside the Capitol. In addition, Carlson argued the footage showed that Democrats knew Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick had not been murdered during the riot but misled the public about his death, and that Ray Epps lied to the committee about when he left...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell joined a chorus of widespread attacks on Fox News host Tucker Carlson for his portrayal of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol since he accessed more than 40,000 hours of security footage. Carlson and his team had exclusive access to the security tape surrounding the attack thanks to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, drawing concerns the host would use the tapes to spread a new wave of disinformation. McConnell said he aligned himself with remarks issued earlier Tuesday by U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger to his rank-and-file slamming Carlson's "offensive and misleading conclusions" about...

But for some reason, CNN seems to think that just because Burns has made films about stuff like baseball or Prohibition, he’s qualified to deliver competent analysis of modern American politics. Evidently they didn’t learn anything from the time they had him on and he and anchor John Berman drew parallels between Ron DeSantis sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and the freakin’ Holocaust, because he was back today on “CNN This Morning” with more parallels between Ron DeSantis and Nazi Germany, plus a few other things sprinkled in for good measure: Transcript: Ken Burns: “You know, what makes America great...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) says Fox News made “a mistake” by depicting Jan. 6, 2021, as a largely peaceful if chaotic protest, a revision of history that the Capitol Police chief criticized as “offensive” and “misleading.” McConnell told reporters that he endorsed Police Chief Tom Manger’s criticism that Fox host Tucker Carlson “cherry-picked” calmer moments from the violent day failed to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened in the Capitol. “I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol police about what happened on Jan. 6,” McConnell told reporters...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Handed some 41,000 hours of Jan. 6 security footage, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has launched an impassioned new effort to explain away the deadly Capitol attack, linking the Republican Party ever more closely to pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the 2021 riot. The conservative commentator aired a first installment to millions of viewers on his prime-time show, working to bend perceptions of the violent, grueling siege that played out for the world to see into a narrative favorable to Donald Trump. He promised more Tuesday night. The undertaking by Fox News comes as Trump is again running for...

WASHINGTON — Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday released security video from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, using footage provided exclusively to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to portray the riot as a peaceful gathering. Carlson acquired the tapes as part of a push by McCarthy, R-Calif., to win the speaker’s gavel. When McCarthy was struggling to gather the votes to lead the House, Carlson used his program to list two “concessions” he could make to win over far-right Republicans. “First, release the January 6 files. Not some of the January 6 files and video —...

As a yoga teacher, Dina Pinelli exercised and had a healthy diet. That didn't prevent her from having three heart attacks in less than a month when she was 45. She thought her symptoms were anxiety or allergies, but has learned to advocate for her health.

IN THE THIRD installment of the ongoing “Twitter Files,” Substack writer Matt Taibbi detailed the internal Twitter correspondence that led to the ban of then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Like the first and second “leak” of documents, which Elon Musk touted as exposés of “free speech suppression,” the third part of the Twitter saga boils down to a lengthy explainer piece about social media’s most historic content-moderation decision: Kicking a sitting president off of their service. “Is this the first sitting head of state to ever be suspended?” an unnamed Twitter employee asks early in the...

During CNN’s coverage of the Georgia Senate runoff on Tuesday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) reacted to Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-GA) victory in the runoff by stating the Warnock win was because “the state saw through whatever political lens they had” or “everything everyone’s been through with COVID and inflation all over the world. And they said, you know what, I believe Raphael Warnock is going to have my back and he’s going to help our country and he’s the right guy in terms of our democracy.” Klobuchar said, “A lot of this has to do with Donald Trump, I agree....

Democrats would not have had such a good election night without the support of independent voters. ...Despite plenty of polling this year showing that independents were, like Republicans, primarily concerned with the state of the economy and inflation, they ended up making nuanced decisions in key statewide races — and that worked to benefit Democrats.... ...Perhaps the most confounding result for pundits across the spectrum was how the negative perception voters, and especially independents, had of President Joe Biden’s job performance and the state of the economy did not translate into a massive swing for Republicans. But voters weren’t viewing...

Former President Donald Trump was back peddling election fraud claims ahead of his expected announcement that he will be launching a 2024 presidential bid Tuesday night. Taking to Truth Social after ally Kari Lake lost in the race for Arizona governor, Trump, 76, falsely claimed that the election was stolen from her. “Wow! They just took the election away from Kari Lake. It’s really bad out there!” Trump wrote Monday night. Lake, Trump’s staunch supporter who maintained without any evidence that the 2020 election was rigged, lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs on Monday after being projected to lose in the...

Republicans succeeded in one of their top goals this year: They brought more of their party’s voters to the polls than did Democrats. But in the course of energizing their core voters, Republicans in many states lost voters in the political center—both independents and many Republicans who are uneasy with elements of the party’s focus under Mr. Trump. Undercutting the GOP advantage was that independents favored Democrats by 4 points nationally, the survey found, and by a far more substantial 18 points in Pennsylvania, 28 points in Georgia and more than 30 points in Arizona.

In middle school there were all these cheeky euphemisms for menstrual cycles. You might say that Aunt Flo was visiting, or that the crimson tide was coming in, or that you were riding the crimson wave. God forbid you called your period what it was, or said anything that could make boys aware that you had a body to tend. I was thinking of this, these euphemisms and this body apologia, late into the night of the midterm elections Tuesday. TV pundits remarked with apparent shock that the anticipated “red wave” — the Republican influx expected to overturn control of...

Former first lady Michelle Obama indicated Wednesday that as a black woman, she was never meant to serve as first lady of the United States of America. “A girl like me, she was never supposed to be up there next to Jaqueline Kennedy and Dolly Madison,” she said. “She was never supposed to live in this house and she definitely wasn’t supposed to serve as first lady.” The former first lady spoke as she joined her husband, President Barack Obama, to unveil their official portraits at the White House on Wednesday. She said she often wondered about who was responsible...

Democrats are entering the homestretch before November’s election in better shape than earlier this year, boosted by gains among independent voters, improved views of President Biden and higher voting enthusiasm among abortion-rights supporters, a Wall Street Journal poll shows.

Democrats are seeing new glimmers of hope for their chances of ousting Sen. Marco Rubio (R) in Florida after months of hand-wringing over just how aggressively they should pursue his seat. Until recently, the Senate race drew little attention from national Democrats who have grown increasingly skeptical that their candidates can remain competitive in the Sunshine State after a spate of narrow, though still painful, losses. Top party officials instead looked to Senate contests in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — two states that President Biden carried in 2020 — as safer bets.

Republican worries of a midterm flop are growing heading into the critical post-Labor Day campaign season, with analysts who had previously predicted massive GOP gains shifting their forecasts toward Democrats. Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist and analyst, said the environment looks “not even close” to a red wave election year. “The enthusiasm is just not there,” Tyler said. “Last time Republicans had a good year, they were six points ahead in the generic poll. Now we’re barely two points ahead. So it’s definitely not going to happen.”