Free Republic

Liberals love to insist they're on the "right side of history," and their confidence crests in the liberal dominance among historians. Just as the liberal media dominate our evaluation of day-to-day developments, liberals count on their historians to dominate our evaluation of the decades behind us. It's not just historians but our taxpayer-funded storytellers, like the insufferable PBS documentarian Ken Burns. On the day before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, NPR's "Morning Edition" presented him as an American treasure with no partisan bias. So, skip over the propaganda film on Ted Kennedy he made for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, which...

‘Louder and more hateful’: Big-city leaders say Trump’s attacks on Baltimore are escalation of his strategy to denigrate diverse, liberal areas President Trump’s denunciations of Baltimore as an uninhabitable city are the latest in a string of disparaging attacks on diverse, liberal enclaves as violent, dirty and outside the mainstream — rhetoric that paints those areas of the country as fundamentally less American than whiter, more conservative strongholds. Trump denigrated Maryland’s largest city over the weekend as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and blamed it on Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), who is black, and claimed on Sunday...

President Trump on Monday became the first president since Bill Clinton to play host to a college football team that won a title in the NCAA’s secondary division when he feted the North Dakota State Bison at the White House. Trump surprised the squad with a spread of fast-food sandwiches in the East Room, posed for pictures and accepted a jersey emblazoned with the number 45. The affair has become a presidential tradition since Ronald Reagan began hosting championship teams in the 1980s. But while Trump went out of his way to shine a light on a team that toils...

President Trump remained out of public view Friday as the ­partial government shutdown reached the one-week mark, content to issue threats via Twitter amid a continuing standoff with Democrats over border wall funding. Since arriving back at the White House early Thursday from a surprise trip to Iraq, Trump has had no public events, and aides offered few details about his schedule, other than saying the president was working and making phone calls. In the evening, Trump left the White House for a short ride to Vice President Pence’s residence to join him, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and...

The United States joined a controversial proposal by Saudi Arabia and Russia this weekend to weaken a reference to a key report on the severity of global warming, sharpening battle lines at the global climate summit in Poland aimed at gaining consensus over how to combat rising temperatures. Arguments erupted Saturday night before a United Nations working group focused on science and technology, where the United States teamed with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to challenge language that would have welcomed the findings of the landmark report, which said that the world has barely 10 years to cut carbon emissions...

Democrats are struggling to respond to President Trump and his Republican allies, who are casting the caravan of thousands of migrants headed toward the U.S.-Mexico border as a failure of Democrats to help enact immigration policy in the GOP-controlled Congress. Some Democrats said Trump is vulnerable to a counterattack on his core campaign issue given that his policies failed to reduce the number of unauthorized immigrants. Yet party leaders and Democratic candidates have largely been silent ahead of the midterm elections, refusing to engage with Trump. The Democratic and Republican strategies reflect the path each party has charted with two...

There may have been a real White House briefing with real White House officials, but The New York Times couldn't be trusted to accurately summarize what the White House official said. And it wasn't on a minor point. On the path to the June 12 summit with North Korea, journalists claimed President Donald Trump would not be willing to walk away from the negotiating table because he was too desperate for a win. The Washington Post’s David Nakamura wrote that “critics fear that a president determined to declare victory where his predecessors failed will allow his desire for a legacy-making...

PHILADELPHIA — Three dozen union workers gathered outside city hall here on Thursday to rally against the global free-trade deals they believe have harmed Americans like them. Their candidate was Katie McGinty, the Democrats’ nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania. But their spiritual leader was Republican Donald Trump. “He recognized there’s some problems we need to solve,” said McGinty, who is challenging Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R), a free-trade advocate. “One, we have to stop bad trade agreements. . . . And two, we have to take the Chinese on when they manipulate their currency and dump goods in our markets.” Just two...

Hillary Clinton’s pledge not to deport any illegal immigrants except violent criminals and terrorists represents a major break from President Obama, and it could vastly increase the number of people who would be allowed to stay in the country. The declaration this week from the Democratic presidential front-runner drew praise from immigrant rights groups, which have largely given up hope on pushing legislation that would create a path to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants. Many activists have sought in recent months to push Obama and his potential Democratic successors for stronger executive actions. ... Conservative critics of...

BRISBANE, Australia — President Obama dismissed renewed criticism of his signature health care law Sunday and disputed an assertion from a former architect of the policy who claimed the administration had deceived lawmakers. Jonathan Gruber, an economist, suggested last year that the administration’s signature health-care legislation passed in part because of the “stupidity of the American voter” and a “lack of transparency” over its funding mechanisms. “I just heard about this,” Obama said at a new conference, after wrapping up two days of meetings with world leaders here at the G-20 Summit. “The fact that some adviser who never worked...

The front page of Saturday's Washington Post took the publicity stunt of shutting down White House tours and spun it as an educational event. The headline was “In canceled White House tours, a civics lesson: Disappointed tourists help administration show sequester’s pain.” Inside the paper, the headline was “Worthless tickets drive home government’s dysfunction.” Ahem, the tickets are free even when they are honored. The online headline was even worse: "With canceled tours, White House teaching how democracy works." Reporter David Nakamura blamed not Obama but the "dysfunctional state of the union": The White House tour is a civics lesson...

The District today asked the Supreme Court to uphold the city's ban on private ownership of handguns, saying the appeals court decision that overturned the law "drastically departs from the mainstream of American jurisprudence." Most legal experts believe the court will accept the case, which could lead to a historic decision next year on whether the ambiguously worded Second Amendment to the Constitution protects private gun ownership or only imparts a civic right related to maintaining state militias. The District argues in its petition for review that its law--one of the toughest handgun bans in the nation--should be upheld regardless...