Free Republic

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is to meet President Joe Biden at a summit Wednesday, has suggested that the hundreds of people arrested for rioting at the U.S. Capitol are being subjected to “persecution for political opinions.” ... “You are presenting it as dissent and intolerance toward dissent in Russia. We view it completely differently,” he said in an interview with NBC News broadcast Monday. He then pointed to the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington when protesters barged into the Capitol to try to halt the count of electoral votes to certify Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump. “Do you...

PHOENIX (AP) — Firms hired to run a partisan audit of the 2020 election for Senate Republicans in Arizona said Tuesday that data was not destroyed, reversing earlier allegations that election officials in the state's most populated county eliminated evidence. The claim of deleted databases was amplified by former President Donald Trump and his supporters, who believe conspiracy theories about election irregularities.Ben Cotton, founder of a computer forensics firm working on the audit, told key senators that he had recovered all data. The revelation came a day after Maricopa County officials released a scathing letter saying the auditors couldn't find...

WASHINGTON - The Associated Press’ top editor is calling for an independent investigation into the Israeli airstrike that targeted and destroyed a Gaza City building housing the AP, broadcaster Al-Jazeera and other media, saying the public deserves to know the facts. Separately, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel’s bombing of a building housing the media organizations as a possible war crime. Sally Buzbee, AP’s executive editor, said Sunday that the Israeli government has yet to provide clear evidence supporting its attack, which leveled the 12-story al-Jalaa tower. Buzbee said the AP has had...

The U.S. Department of Justice expressed concern Wednesday about ballot security and potential voter intimidation arising from the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate’s unprecedented private recount of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County. In a letter to GOP Senate President Karen Fann, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said the Senate’s farming out of 2.1 million ballots from the state’s most populous county to a contractor may run afoul of federal law requiring ballots to remain in the control of elections officials for 22 months. And Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pamela S. Karlan said that the...

Click here to read the full articleUnearthed doc­u­ments from one of the lead­ing Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da groups reveal the names of “main­stream” U.S. jour­nal­ists tak­ing jun­kets from the group in exchange for favor­able cov­er­age, The Nation­al Pulse can exclu­sive­ly reveal. The trips often came just before opin­ion edi­to­ri­als and news reports excus­ing Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty crimes, or oppos­ing trade show­downs with the nation.The Nation­al Pulse can now exclu­sive­ly reveal West­ern jour­nal­ists – includ­ing those praised by Pres­i­dent Biden and mar­ried to poten­tial mem­bers of his White House – who are list­ed as hav­ing accept­ed trips from the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist...

Dr. Amy Acton, the former state health director whose entry into the U.S. Senate race in Ohio had been highly anticipated, said Tuesday she will not run, after all. Acton, a Democrat, would have brought limited political experience to the race but strong name recognition gained from appearing alongside Republican Gov. Mike DeWine on widely watched virus briefings last year that aired daily online and on television. Acton, 55, did not address the reasons behind her decision in a statement. Rather, she used it to urge Ohioans play a role in the shape of the state’s and nation’s future, noting...

I just noted this update to the AP Style Manual — "2021 Impeachment Topical Guide."[T]here was no widespread fraud in the election, as has been confirmed by a range of election officials across the country and by former Attorney General William Barr. Nearly all the legal challenges to the election put forth by Trump and his allies were dismissed — a fact Democrats mention in their brief for the trial.In terms of fact-checkers, this lacks context. Yes, many courts dismissed the many motions of the Trump legal team filed. But what the AP fails to disclose is that these dismissals...

WASHINGTON - Happy Safe Harbor Day, America. Other than Wisconsin, every state appears to have met a deadline in federal law that essentially means Congress has to accept the electoral votes that will be cast next week and sent to the Capitol for counting on Jan. 6. Those votes will elect Joe Biden as the country’s next president. It’s called a safe harbor provision because it’s a kind of insurance policy by which a state can lock in its electoral votes by finishing up certification of the results and any state court legal challenges by a congressionally imposed deadline, which...

BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s doctor on Saturday painted a rosy picture of the president’s health as he remains hospitalized for coronavirus treatment. But that assessment was immediately contradicted by a person familiar with Trump’s condition, who said the president was administered supplemental oxygen on Friday at the White House. As well, Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said the president went through a “very concerning” period Friday and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care.

WASHINGTON - As the first alarms sounded in early January that an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China might ignite a global pandemic, the Trump administration squandered nearly two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment. A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated Press shows federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers. Now, three months into the crisis, that stockpile is nearly drained just as the numbers of...

WASHINGTON -- The “great American comeback” President Donald Trump claimed in his State of the Union speech drew on falsehoods about U.S. energy supremacy, health care and the economy as well as distortions about his predecessor’s record. In arguing, in essence, that he has made America great again, Trump took credit for an energy boom that actually began under Barack Obama in an assertion he recycled from his last State of the Union address. He inflated manufacturing gains, misrepresented policy on migrant detention and glossed over a rate of economic growth that has yet to reach the scale he promised....

Donald Trump has always been a man of absolutes. Something is the best or the worst, a person is a winner or a total loser, an event has never happened before, even when it has. Absolutism was the unwritten credo of his career in business and is the guiding light of his presidency as he makes an assertion rarely heard from an American president: that he can do as he pleases. Now that approach faces its ultimate test as a foundation of Trump’s defense in his impeachment trial, namely that he is cloaked with unrestrained authority. How that question is...

Poland’s ruling conservative party has targeted gays as a campaign tactic. Its programming on state media has drawn comparisons with communist-era propaganda and it has asserted so much control over the judicial system that the European Union has declared the rule of law at risk. Yet, Law and Justice heads into Sunday’s election to the 460-seat lower house and the 100-seat Senate as Poland’s most popular party, largely thanks to generous social spending and an assertive Poland-first stance toward the EU and other countries. Concerns about democracy have made this one of the country’s most momentous election since the fall...

<p>WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish officials joined war veterans on Sunday to pay tribute to a World War II-era underground force that collaborated with Nazi German forces toward the end of the war in their battle against the Communists, who were imposing control on the nation.</p>

Suburban women recoil as Trump dives into racial politics ROOKFIELD, Wis. (AP) — Carol Evans approves of Donald Trump’s immigration policy. She gives him credit for the strong economy. But the Republican from the affluent Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha County, a GOP bedrock in the state, just can’t commit to voting for the president next year like she did in 2016. “I just don’t like the way he talks about other people,” Evans, a 79-year-old retired data entry supervisor, said recently as she walked through a shopping mall in Brookfield, Wisconsin, days after Trump fired off a racist tweet at...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — They are fighting, yes, but the fight crackles with the enticing electricity that only Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn could deliver. He is storming out the door. She is throwing his golf clubs after him. The music is jaunty. He is charmingly irritated.</p>

The Environmental Protection Agency acted again Thursday to ease rules on the sagging U.S. coal industry, this time scaling back what would have been a tough control on climate-changing emissions from any new coal plants. The latest Trump administration targeting of legacy Obama administration efforts to slow climate change comes in the wake of multiplying warnings from the agency’s scientists and others about the accelerating pace of global warming. In a ceremony Thursday at the agency, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler signed a proposal to dismantle a 2015 rule that any new coal power plants include cutting-edge techniques to capture...

When conservatives consider media bias, they invariably jump to mainstream outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and so on. But what is often overlooked is the Associated Press, or AP, which indisputably has the biggest media impact because its stories run in virtually every daily newspaper and news network in the country including the New York Times and Washington Post, CNN and so on. People often complain about a story in the Times or Post or elsewhere, but it turns out to be an AP story. But that is only known by looking under the name...

Liberal activists resisting the presidency of Donald Trump say they’d rather defeat him and other Republicans at the ballot box than see Trump brought down in other ways. Those gathering for the annual Netroots Nation confab this weekend in Georgia say obsessing over subpoenas and clamoring for impeachment distracts from larger policy debates. They believe it also takes away from congressional midterm elections whose outcomes will last beyond Trump. …

The Associated Press will no longer employ Melanie Plenda, a leftist activist exposed by Breitbart News, after she was caught violating the news wire service’s editorial standards. Plenda announced that the AP has terminated her effective immediately in an interview with the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple. Her termination comes as a Nov. 10, 2016, Facebook post she wrote—in which she pledged resistance to then-incoming President Donald J. Trump—was found to be in direct violation of the AP’s editorial standards. Plenda, in her interview with Wemple, confirmed she wrote the leftist activist post on her Facebook page—a post she has since...