Free Republic

MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, COLLEEN LONG and MICHAEL BALSAMO Tue, March 8, 2022, 6:49 PM·4 min read WASHINGTON (AP) — A leader of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group was arrested Tuesday on a conspiracy charge for his suspected role in a coordinated attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. Henry “Enrique” Tarrio wasn’t there when the riot erupted on Jan. 6, 2021. Police had arrested Tarrio in Washington two days before the riot and charged him with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Republicans impose new restrictions on ballot access in multiple states, President Biden has no easy options for safeguarding voting rights despite rising pressure from frustrated activists. Unlike on other issues such as immigration or environmental protection, the White House has little leverage without congressional action as the November elections creep up. “If there were some sort of easily available presidential power on this, others would have done it,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard Law School professor who researches election law. “There is no significant unilateral authority here.” Nine months before elections that will determine control of...

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Two days after the presidential election on Nov. 2, 2020, the Oath Keepers were already convinced that victory had been stolen from President Donald Trump and members of the far-right militia group were making plans to march on the U.S. Capitol. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, wrote fellow members, according to court documents. “Too late for that. Prepare your mind. body. spirit.” Five days after the election, when The Associated Press and other news outlets declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner, the documents say Rhodes told Oath...

It’s not just about Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The national soul-searching over whether to take down monuments to the Confederacy’s demigods has extended to other historical figures accused of wrongdoing, including Christopher Columbus (brutality toward Native Americans), the man for whom Boston’s Faneuil Hall is named (slave trader) and former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo (bigotry). Historians interviewed by The Associated Press offered varying thoughts about where exactly the line should be drawn in judging someone’s statue-worthiness, but they agreed on one thing: Scrapping a monument is not a decision that should be made in haste during political fervor....

After a confusing few weeks in which Southwest Airlines struggled to adequately explain significant flight disruptions, the airline is again facing questions about the political leanings of its pilots and flight crew. The airline announced Sunday it is now investigating the most recent incident.

Social media users took to their keyboards Saturday to react to a newly surfaced video that purportedly shows a Southwest Airlines pilot concluding an announcement to passengers by saying "Let's go Brandon" over the plane's intercom system.

The new anti-Biden slogan of "Let's Go Brandon!" has truly taken the country by storm, as a more polite way of saying "F*ck Joe Biden!" A Southwest pilot recently signed off using the phrase, as Colleen Long reported for the Associated Press. On Friday morning on a Southwest flight from Houston to Albuquerque, the pilot signed off his greeting over the public address system with the phrase, to audible gasps from some passengers. Southwest said in a statement that the airline “takes pride in providing a welcoming, comfortable, and respectful environment” and that “behavior from any individual that is divisive...

A Southwest Airlines flight on Saturday turned political when one of its pilots finished an announcement to passengers with "Let's Go, Brandon," a slur used to insult President Joe Biden. "On Friday morning on a Southwest flight from Houston to Albuquerque, the pilot signed off his greeting over the public address system with the phrase, to audible gasps from some passengers," AP's Colleen Long wrote in an article published on Saturday. Long was a passenger onboard the flight for a vacation, she explained in a Twitter thread, and was almost removed from the aircraft after unsuccessfully trying to get the...

Though Dominion serves 28 states, until the 2020 election it had been largely unknown outside the election community. It is now widely targeted in conservative circles, seen by millions of people as one of the main villains in a fictional tale in which Democrats nationwide conspired to steal votes from Trump, the lawsuit said.

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump and allies say their lawsuits aimed at subverting the 2020 election and reversing his loss to Joe Biden would be substantiated, if only judges were allowed to hear the cases. There is a central flaw in the argument. Judges have heard the cases and have been among the harshest critics of the legal arguments put forth by Trump’s legal team, often dismissing them with scathing language of repudiation. This has been true whether the judge has been appointed by a Democrat or a Republican, including those named by Trump himself. The judicial rulings that have...

WASHINGTON - Monday seemed like the end of President Donald Trump’s relentless challenges to the election, after the federal government acknowledged President-elect Joe Biden was the “apparent winner” and Trump cleared the way for cooperation on a transition of power. But his baseless claims have a way of coming back. And back. And back. The 2020 presidential race is turning into the zombie election that Trump just won’t let die. Despite dozens of legal and procedural setbacks, his campaign keeps filing new challenges that have no hope of succeeding and making fresh, unfounded claims of fraud. But that’s the point....

Getting nowhere in the courts, President Donald Trump’s scattershot effort to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory is shifting toward obscure election boards that certify the vote as Trump and his allies seek to upend the electoral process, sow chaos and perpetuate unsubstantiated doubts about the count.

WASHINGTON - It’s a “foreign” virus, he says — one that can be fought by closing the nation’s borders to dangerous foreigners carrying scary disease. President Donald Trump has turned to a familiar playbook as he tries to grapple with the spiraling coronavirus outbreak, blaming immigrants for the country’s problems and casting the global health pandemic as another case of the U.S. against the world. It’s an approach that public health officials say ignores the new reality of a situation that is fueling panic and confusion and fundamentally altering the American way of life. But it’s business as usual for...

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...

The words from one president to another, somewhat casual in tone, were not casual at all in meaning: “I would like you to do us a favor, though.” Those words have now prompted deployment of the ultimate political weapon, an impeachment process enshrined in the Constitution as a means other than the ballot to remove a president from office. When history writes the story, the seemingly innocent request from President Donald Trump to his Ukrainian counterpart will show their infamous July 25 phone call had a lot behind it, at least implicitly. It had the weight of U.S. military power...