Free Republic

Actress Kristin Davis opened up recently about her fear for the safety of her 5-year-old daughter, who is black, after Donald Trump’s Nov. 8 victory. A reported spike in hate crimes since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election has raised concerns of a continued increase in racially motivated acts of violence. “I’m on the intense learning curve because I have to protect my child,” the “Sex and the City” star said in a “How I Got Over” interview with WNYC’s Rebecca Carroll. “I might have had the intellectual learning curve that we all hope and wish we...

Tim O’Brien, a former campaign aide for Mike Bloomberg and a Bloomberg opinion writer, is coming under fire for posting side-by-side photos of Joe Biden at a war memorial on Memorial Day and a photo of President Trump golfing on a different day with the caption, “Different approaches to Memorial Day.” The photo of Joe Biden was taken when Biden visited Delaware Memorial Bridge Veteran's Memorial Park. It was the former vice president’s first outing since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. He and wife Jill Biden, both wearing masks, laid a wreath at a memorial wall commemorating war veterans...

Michigan GOP state Sen. Tom Barrett claimed Tuesday that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her staff "duped" him "into a cover-up" after the governor's office "adamantly denied" that Whitmer's husband had tried to use her position to convince a dock company to quickly get the family's boat on the water ahead of the Memorial Day weekend amid the coronavirus pandemic. Barrett, in an interview with Fox News, said that over the weekend he initially heard a story on Facebook about someone purportedly calling NorthShore Dock LLC, a company that reportedly stores the family's boat, and mentioning that he is married to...

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has airily dismissed U.S. President Donald Trump’s leadership during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, instead harking back to his work alongside Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as examples of how global inter-governmental cooperation can win the day. His remarks in an interview with NBC News last Friday followed an earlier intervention in the crisis when his own globalist think tank claimed it is “embedded in governments around the world,” as Breitbart News reported. In his most recent observations, he told NBC News he was worried about the lack of global coordination in tackling the crisis.

Glenn Fine, the Pentagon's principal deputy inspector general, submitted his resignation on Tuesday. Why it matters: President Trump removed Fine as the Pentagon's acting inspector general in April 7 after a group of independent federal watchdogs selected him to lead the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which was set up to oversee the rollout of the $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill. The move effectively sidelined Fine from serving as chair of the panel, since the law only allows sitting inspectors general to fill the role. The big picture: His ouster as the Defense Department's acting inspector general came amid Trump's continuing...

He blamed issues at The North Star on over-ambition, but seven former employees of the site King launched with great fanfare painted a darker picture. When Shaun King and progressive journalist Benjamin Dixon launched an ambitious multimedia reboot of Frederick Douglass’ abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, last February, it was celebrated across social media by prominent voices including Susan Sarandon, Michael Eric Dyson and Megan Mullally. A month later, the company boasted on Twitter that it already had “multiple angel investors” and more than 30,000 subscribers contributing $5 per month for students and $10 a month and up for the...

A GOP Illinois Representative has demanded that Donald Trump stop pushing a conspiracy theory that MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough had something to do with the death of his intern while he was in Congress. Trump renewed theories about Morning Joe anchor Scarborough on Sunday morning by questioning how a marathon runner could fall, hit her head and die. It led to the family of Lori Klausutis revealing they are living in fear of retaliation from conspiracy theorists if they comment, but Republican Adam Kinzinger has called for the president to cease mentioning it. 'A lot of interest in this story...

One of the most durable political assets that Republicans have enjoyed throughout the 21st century is their edge among Americans 65 and older, who tend to turn out at the polls more reliably any other group. But with President Trump’s inept and erratic handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic, he is rapidly losing support among the age group most vulnerable to its ravages - which is a big warning sign to Republicans as they look to the fall. Trump has also been showing slippage in support among the next-oldest cohort, those 55 and older. The shift has been showing up...

So many mysteries surround Donald Trump: the contents of his tax returns, the apparent miracle of his graduation from college. Some of them are merely curiosities; others are of national importance, such as whether he understood the nuclear-weapons briefing given to every president. I prefer not to dwell on this question. But since his first day as a presidential candidate, I have been baffled by one mystery in particular: Why do working-class white men—the most reliable component of Donald Trump’s base—support someone who is, by their own standards, the least masculine man ever to hold the modern presidency? The question...

Any belief that Rachel Maddow is a journalist was set to rest in a San Diego federal courtroom on Friday, with a federal judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought against Maddow. The judge concluded that Maddow was far too silly to be taken as a credible news source. The lawsuit against Maddow was brought by OANN, a news network that Maddow falsely accused on her show as being controlled by the Kremlin. For the lawsuit to go forward, OANN would had to have shown that Maddow’s show stated facts rather than opinions. In court Maddow’s lawyer argued that her show...

New York Times economist Paul Krugman continues to unleash liberal bile just to take disgusting shots at President Donald Trump, Republicans and ordinary Americans for wanting to reopen the economy. Krugman penned an absurd May 14 op-ed headlined, “Covid-19 Reality Has a Liberal Bias.” In that article, Krugman encouraged readers to speculate about the potential “blowback — especially, by the way, among senior citizens — if an attempt to restart the economy leads to a new wave of infections.” He used that speculation about senior citizens to question: “[W]hy are Trump and company going down this route?” He then answered...

The former high school football player with the lightning speed often jogged for miles near the southeastern Georgia enclave where he grew up. Ahmaud Arbery's runs set him free from the blue-collar coastal city of Brunswick, where 56% of its 16,000 residents are black and more than a third of the population lives in poverty. In high school, Arbery was so fast coaches had him slow down during practices. Now 25, his athletic gait delivered him beyond the arbitrary borders of his community. Wanda Cooper, Arbery's mother, may have occasionally worried about him but never about his running. On February...

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel continued her criticism of President Trump on Friday, claiming he had “risked the health, safety and welfare” of all Michiganders by removing his mask during a tour of a Ford Motor Co. factory in the state Tuesday. “I will not remain silent and just twiddle my thumbs as I see him do that," Nessel told NPR's "All Things Considered." Nessel said she believes Trump has been at odds with the state’s top three leaders recently, in part because they’re all women.

It was the politics of pandemic that took over Real Time with Bill Maher tonight with Michael Moore as the marquee guest. “The only way they are going to pull it off is if he’s able to cancel the election or postpone it,” the Fahrenheit 9/11 director said of Donald Trump’s chances at the ballot box in November against Joe Biden after this COVID-19 spring that has seen almost 100,000 deaths so far from the respiratory ailment. “I’m certain that’s what’s going on in his head right now,” Moore worried as he has before, pledging that people will need to...

Facebook has taken action against PragerU’s page on the platform for what it described as “repeated sharing of false news.” In detail: Facebook has reduced the page’s reach and banned it from running ads on the platform or using its monetizing features. PragerU, the conservative non-profit, announced the move on Twitter earlier this week, accusing Facebook of censorship.

Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign has hired MSNBC political analyst and MoveOn chief public affairs officer Karine Jean-Pierre as a senior adviser. "I am thrilled to announce that I will be joining the Biden campaign as a Senior Adviser. This is the most important general election in generations and I just could not sit this election out. I look forward to doing this work with @JoeBiden and the team!," Jean-Pierre wrote on Twitter announcing the move. SNIP

Stacey Abrams is running a less-than-subtle campaign to be Joe Biden’s vice-presidential running mate. Republicans should hope she succeeds. If selected, she would displace Sarah Palin as the least-qualified person ever to serve on a major-party ticket. Biden should understand this, because he saw firsthand how much damage Palin’s selection did to then-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Republican presidential nominee in 2008. Preelection polls showed that 6 out of 10 Americans said Palin was not qualified for the job, and a Stanford University study found that she cost McCain more than 2 million votes.

Comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan has signed a multiyear licensing deal with music streaming service Spotify reported to be worth more than $100 million to move his podcast exclusively to Spotify’s platform. Variety reports that Joe Rogan, popular comedian and host of the Joe Rogan Experience, has signed a deal with Spotify to move his podcast exclusively to the Spotify platform. The podcast will debut on Spotify on September 1 on a non-exclusive basis but will become exclusive to the Spotify platform later in the year under the multiyear licensing deal. Rogan’s podcast currently ranks as the second most...

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday she’s “very disappointed” in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for fanning the flames of fear about the spread of the coronavirus in the United States. Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, is warning Americans to start preparing now for “the expectation that this might be bad,” triggering a severe disruption in their daily lives. That may require what she called, “social distancing measures” that include smaller classes or closing schools, canceling meetings and conferences and allowing employees to work from home. Lightfoot essentially accused the federal...

The economy has gone from President Donald Trump's greatest political asset to perhaps his biggest weakness. Unemployment is spiking at an unprecedented rate. Consumer spending is vanishing. And GDP is collapsing. History shows that dreadful economic trends like these spell doom for sitting presidents seeking reelection. The coronavirus recession will cause Trump to suffer a "historic defeat" in November, a national election model released Wednesday by Oxford Economics predicted. The model, which uses unemployment, disposable income and inflation to forecast election results, predicts that Trump will lose in a landslide, capturing just 35% of the popular vote. That's a sharp...