Free Republic

ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump said Wednesday that an Arizona law that criminalizes nearly all abortions goes too far and called on Arizona lawmakers to change it, while also defending the overturning of Roe v. Wade that cleared states to ban the procedure. “It’ll be straightened out and as you know, it’s all about states’ rights,” the former president told supporters and journalists after landing in Atlanta for a fundraiser. “It’ll be straightened out, and I’m sure that the governor and everybody else are going to bring it back into reason and that’ll be taken care of, I think, very...

While Trump and Netanyahu were close allies for years, the former president turned on the embattled Israel leader after Netanyahu congratulated then-President-elect Biden for winning the 2020 election while Trump was still trying to overturn the results. In interviews for a book about his Middle East peace efforts, Trump, according to its author, used an expletive to describe Netanyahu and said he believed the Israeli leader never really wanted to make peace. Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who serves on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said he wished Trump would “let his personal grievances with...

An international charity suspended delivery of food to starving Palestinians on Tuesday, a day after an Israeli airstrike killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen who were trying to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.Ships still laden with some 240 tons of aid from the charity that arrived Monday turned back from Gaza, according to Cyprus, which has played a key role in trying to establish a sea route to bring food to the territory.*** Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that the country’s forces had carried out the “unintended strike ... on innocent people.” He said officials were...

A conservative group has told a Georgia judge that it doesn't have evidence to support its claims of illegal ballot stuffing during the the 2020 general election and a runoff two months later. Texas-based True the Vote filed complaints with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2021, including one in which it said it had obtained “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta” during the November 2020 election and a January 2021 runoff. A Fulton County Superior Court judge in Atlanta signed an order last year requiring True the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — For Jonathan Peter Jackson, a direct relative of two prominent members of the Black Panther Party, revolutionary thought and family history have always been intertwined, particularly in August. That’s the month in 1971 when his uncle, the famed Panther George Jackson, was killed during an uprising at San Quentin State Prison in California. A revolutionary whose words resonated inside and out of the prison walls, he was a published author, activist and radical thought leader. To many, February is the month dedicated to celebrating Black Americans’ contributions to a country where they were once enslaved. But Black...

The Republican Party’s once-crowded 2024 presidential primary field has suddenly shrunk to just a handful of viable candidates. But a day after Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina stunned many of his own staff by suspending his campaign, it’s unclear whether the GOP is any closer to coalescing behind a clear alternative to former President Donald Trump. Instead, the fight between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis for a distant second place appears to be intensifying. And some lower-tier candidates insist on battling for relevance, despite growing pressure to bow out of the race altogether. Meanwhile, Trump’s team is cheering on...

On Sept. 19, Azerbaijan launched an assault to recapture separatist region Nagorno-Karabakh. The reintegration of Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan has prompted tens of thousands of Armenians to flee. Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh has been quietly fueled by Israel’s powerful weapons. Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the ethnic Armenian enclave back under its control, officials and experts say.

Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy swiped at former President Donald Trump on Thursday for failing to repeal and replace the health care overhaul championed by his predecessor, former President Barack Obama. “I am never somebody who will make a false promise,” Ramaswamy said at an event in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. “My friend Donald Trump promised us: repeal and replace Obamacare. Eight years later, did it happen? No, it did not. It is a false promise if it is contingent on Congress.” *** It was a rare dig at Trump by Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old businessman who is a fierce...

A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll out Wednesday found that former President Donald Trump is increasing his grip on the Republican Party but still distancing a majority of the American electorate. The poll found that 63% of Republican voters “now say they want the former president to run again,” noted an AP summary. The strong support from inside the GOP marked an increase from the same poll last April, which showed 55% of Republican voters wanted to see Trump on the party’s ticket again. “Seven in 10 Republicans now have a favorable opinion of Trump, an...

Far-right populist Javier Milei rocked Argentina’s political establishment Sunday by emerging as the biggest vote-getter in primary elections to choose presidential candidates for the October general election in a nation battered by economic woes. Milei, an admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, says Argentina’s Central Bank should be abolished, thinks climate change is a lie, characterizes sex education as a ploy to destroy the family, believes the sale of human organs should be legal and wants to make it easier to own handguns. Votes were still being counted late Sunday, but analysts agreed that the upstart candidate who gained...

While meat lovers look forward to a Memorial Day barbecue, many people might be looking for a vegetarian option. With their high protein content, black beans lend meaty substance to veggie burgers. Too often, though, the patties turn to mush. So for this recipe from our book “Cook What You Have,” which draws on pantry staples to assemble easy, weeknight meals, we went looking for ways to improve their texture. The answer was three-fold. First, we only mash the beans coarsely so that when combined with other ingredients, we’re not left with a smooth paste. Second, we incorporate a significant...

A judge on Monday dismissed the only remaining legal claim in Republican Kari Lake's challenge of her loss in last year's race for Arizona governor, affirming the election of Democrat Katie Hobbs. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Thompson said Lake failed to prove her claim that Maricopa County did not verify signatures on mail ballots as required by law. Lake was among the most vocal of last year's Republican candidates promoting former President Donald Trump's election lies, which she made the centerpiece of her campaign. She has built a loyal following among Trump supporters and is openly considering...

NEW YORK (AP) — At the end of “The Searchers,” one of John Wayne’s most renowned Westerns, a kidnapped girl has been rescued and a family reunited. As the closing music swells, Wayne’s character looks around at his kin — people who have other people to lean on — and then walks off toward the dusty West Texas horizon, lonesome and alone. It’s a classic example of a fundamental American tall tale — that of a nation built on notions of individualism, a male-dominated story filled with loners and “rugged individualists” who suck it up, do what needs to be...

Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said under oath that he believes the 2020 presidential election was free, fair and not stolen, according to court filings released Tuesday in a voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit over Fox News’ coverage of former President Donald Trump’s unfounded election fraud claims. In sworn questioning in January by lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems, Murdoch was asked, “Do you believe that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair?” “Yes,” he replied, according to a transcript. “The election was not stolen,” he said later. …

A network of bots have been busily singing the praises of former President Donald Trump while targeting his political rivals Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — as well as trolling critics like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to a report on Monday. The fake accounts — estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands — are behind popularizing the suggestion that DeSantis, 44, would be unable to defeat Trump, 76, for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination but would make a good running mate. They also attacked Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations in the...

While some Republicans blame the COVID-19 vaccine or “wokeness” for the Army’s recruiting woes, the military service says the bigger hurdles are more traditional ones: Young people don’t want to die or get injured, deal with the stress of Army life and put their lives on hold. They “just don’t see the Army as something that’s relevant,” said Maj. Gen. Alex Fink, head of Army marketing. “They see us as revered, but not relevant, in their lives.” […] Guiding the Army’s efforts are surveys intended to help pinpoint why young people dismiss the Army as a career. […] Officials said...

A majority of Democrats now think one term is plenty for President Joe Biden, despite his insistence that he plans to seek reelection in 2024. That’s according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that shows just 37% of Democrats say they want him to seek a second term, down from 52% in the weeks before last year’s midterm elections. While Biden has trumpeted his legislative victories and ability to govern, the poll suggests relatively few U.S. adults give him high marks on either. Follow-up interviews with poll respondents suggest that many believe the...

More U.S. adults disapprove than approve of the way President Joe Biden has handled the discovery of classified documents at his home and former office, a new poll shows, but that seems to have had little impact on his overall approval rating. The new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds 41% of Americans say they approve of how Biden is handling his job as president, about the same as the 43% who said that in December. In the new poll, 77% of Democrats approve of how Biden is handling his job, while 91% of Republicans...

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the Biden White House, a quartet of four female judges in Colorado encapsulates its mission when it comes to the federal judiciary. Charlotte Sweeney is the first openly LGBT woman to serve on the federal bench west of the Mississippi River and has a background in workers’ rights. Nina Wang, an immigrant from Taiwan, is the first magistrate judge in the state to be elevated to a federal district seat. Regina Rodriguez, who is Latina and Asian American, served in a U.S. attorney’s office. Veronica Rossman, who came from the former Soviet Union with her family...

WASHINGTON (AP) — At least three Republicans running for the U.S. House attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and made their way toward the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection to stop Joe Biden’s election. Countless other House Republican candidates are skeptics and deniers of the 2020 election lost by Donald Trump. There are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, small-business owners and the most geographically, racially and culturally diverse group of Republicans seeking House seats in the modern era — many of whom, like Trump in 2016, are political newcomers who have never held elected...