Free Republic

CLAIM: Members of Congress gave themselves a 21% pay raise in early March. AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Social media users are misrepresenting a government spending bill that increased funding for legislative office budgets, not lawmakers’ salaries. Members of Congress use these budgets to hire and pay staff, and to manage other official expenses. Annual salaries for members of the House and Senate will remain the same this year, as they have since 2009.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — They railed against politicians, conducted military-style exercises and spoke darkly of confronting tyrants scheming to seize their guns and enslave them. Yet historian JoEllen Vinyard says the “citizen militia” activists she got to know in the 1990s didn’t seem like the types who would abduct a governor or stage a coup. “I don’t think they were dangerous,” said Vinyard, an Eastern Michigan University professor emeritus and author of a book about far-right movements in the state. “They reminded me of the good old boys I knew growing up in Nebraska.” But as four men charged...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court’s decision to halt efforts to create a second mostly Black congressional district in Alabama for the 2022 election sparked fresh warnings Tuesday that the court is becoming too politicized, eroding the Voting Rights Act and reviving the need for Congress to intervene. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority put on hold a lower court ruling that Alabama must draw new congressional districts to increase Black voting power. Civil rights groups had argued that the state, with its “sordid record” of racial discrimination, drew new maps by “packing” Black voters into one single district and “cracking”...

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Wednesday on his show “The Lead” that members of Congress forwarding a “fringe conspiracy theory” about a man named Ray Epps, were not members of the high IQ society, Mensa International. Tapper said, “This is a fringe conspiracy theory, but I have to ask you because it’s showing up at congressional hearings raised by House and Senate Republicans. An Arizona man, Ray Epps, has become a target of what appears to be a completely baseless right-wing conspiracy theory that he was an undercover FBI agent or informant or operative at the Capitol on January 6...

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Sunday on “State of the Union” that the Republican Party was conducting a “bigotry campaign’ while discussing Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) calling Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) the “jihad squad.” When asked about death threats, Omar said, “We receive too many to count. There’s a general fear that I have, my staff has, and the community at large has. We constantly hear from so many people across the country where their children’s hijabs have been pulled off. My daughters have experienced this. I have experienced this as a young person in this country. We know what...

NEW RICHMOND, Wisconsin - For a few hours last weekend, thousands of Donald Trump’s supporters came together in a field under the blazing Wisconsin sun to live in an alternate reality where the former president was still in office — or would soon return. Clad in red MAGA hats and holding “Trump 2021” signs, they cheered in approval as Mike Lindell, the My Pillow creator-turned-conspiracy peddler, introduced “our real president.” Then Trump appeared via Jumbotron to repeat the lie that has become his central talking point since losing to Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes: “The election was...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are accusing President Joe Biden of being weak on Russia after his summit with Vladimir Putin, conveniently ignoring four years of Putin flattery from former President Donald Trump. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Biden had given Putin a “pass” at their summit in Switzerland Wednesday, while Trump said the U.S. “didn’t get anything” from the meeting. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a potential 2024 contender, declared, “America today is weaker than it was on the world stage just 48 hours ago.” It’s a curious line of attack from a party that largely turned a...

(CNN) American democracy -- under a relentless, multi-front assault from pro-Donald Trump Republicans -- is about to show whether it is strong enough to save itself. Such a premise would have been considered absurd through much of history. But since Trump left office after destroying the tradition of peaceful transfers of power in a failed attempt to steal the 2020 election, it has become clear that his insurrectionism was only the first battle in a longer political war as his allies tout ridiculous fantasies about returning him to power to applause and online acclaim. The mechanisms of American institutions that...

Senate Republicans on Friday blocked an independent, bipartisan commission to study the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.Eager to put the events of that day and former President Trump’s role in it behind them, Republicans blasted the commission proposal as a partisan attempt by Democrats to keep both in the news during next year’s pivotal midterm elections.The bill fell in the first legislative filibuster of the year as it failed to get the 60 votes needed to advance. The vote was 54 to 35 to move the bill forward, with a handful of Republicans breaking ranks — Sens. Mitt...

Once obscure, the Senate filibuster is coming under fresh scrutiny not only because of the enormous power it gives a single senator to halt President Joe Biden’s agenda, but as a tool historically used for racism. Senators advocating for changes to the practice say the procedure that allows endless debate is a Jim Crow-relic whose time is up. Among the most vivid examples, they point to landmark filibusters including Strom Thurmond's 24-hour speech against a 1957 Civil Rights bill, as ways it has been used to stall changes. Carrying echoes of the Civil Rights era, the Senate is poised to...

Just how deep does the hole “60 Minutes” is digging for itself go? Let’s just say they’ve already got both feet in the grave: Members of both parties have accused the venerable newsmagazine show of concocting a “hit piece” accusing the potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate of engaging in a “pay-for-play” scheme involving the grocery store chain Publix. CBS News issued a statement on Tuesday defending its Sunday night report. “When Florida state data revealed people of color were vaccinated at a much lower rate than their wealthier neighbors, ‘60 Minutes’ reported the facts surrounding the vaccine’s rollout, which is...

"60 Minutes" condensed Florida governor's lengthy "pay-to-play" rebuttal down to several seconds. ================================================================= CBS is facing bipartisan backlash after using heavily edited footage of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a"60 Minutes" story alleging potential political corruption on the part of the Republican politician. "60 Minutes" reporter Sharyn Alfonsi alleged in a recent report for the long-running news magazine that wealthy residents of Florida "cut the line during [the state's] frenzied vaccine rollout." In the segment, Alfonsi suggested that the state government's recent decision to award a vaccine distribution contract to the grocery chain Publix had the appearance of potential favoritism....

Sharyn Alfonsi: Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign, and then you rewarded them with the exclusive rights to distribute the vaccination in Palm Beach— Ron DeSantis: So, first of all, that — what you’re saying is wrong. That’s— Sharyn Alfonsi: How is that not pay-to-play? Ron DeSantis: —that, that’s a fake narrative. So, first of all, when we did, the first pharmacies that had it were CVS and Walgreens. And they had a long term care mission. So they were going to the long term care facilities. They got vaccine in the middle of December, they started...

Has anyone else noticed the the big media meat puppets are now referring to illegal immigration as "Migration"?

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed something they call the "Equality Act," which would, in their lingo, "amend existing federal civil rights laws to extend protections for LGBTQ Americans." But some other Americans would have their "protections" removed. On Thursday morning's New Day, co-host Alisyn Camerota interviewed one of the bill's chief sponsors, freshman Rep. Marie Newman (D-Illinois). When Camerota broached the issue of the Act forcing women to compete in sports against biological "trans" men, she couched it in terms of conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and her allies being "very concerned" about that possibility. In fact, it's...