Free Republic

In his first interview since dropping out of the presidential race, DeSantis told Blaze TV’s Steve Deace that the blame is on Iowa caucusgoers who rallied behind front-runner Donald Trump even though many didn’t like him. “They did not want to see Trump nominated again, but they had basically been told that it was inevitable, that it was over,” DeSantis told Deace on Tuesday. DeSantis, who lost to Trump in the Iowa caucuses earlier this month, added that those voters were “checked out” and had “just totally dropped out of the process.” The Florida governor told Deace he’d consider running...

On a recent flight, I found myself seated next to a man I’ll call Rick, who was keen for conversation. We established that we are both lawyers. Rick works for the government, and I explained that I lead a gun violence prevention organization. Rick took that as an invitation to talk about guns. A self-described “2A fanatic” from Texas, Rick grew up with guns and today owns more than 40 firearms. He considers himself a collector, and many of his guns are antiques — he’s not interested in assault-style firearms — and he makes his own ammunition from recycled casings....

Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation’s oldest Black fraternity, said it will no longer hold its 2025 convention in Orlando, making it the latest group to switch venues out of disdain for policies implemented by Florida’s hard-right Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. The convention drain, reported by localnewsoutlets, comes as the state economy is still heavily dependent on tourism. Willis L. Lonzer III, the fraternity’s president, said in a Wednesday statement that DeSantis had set in place “harmful, racist and insensitive policies against the Black community.”

Dr. David B. Agus is one of the world’s leading doctors and pioneering biomedical researchers. He is the founding director and CEO of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine and a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California. A medical oncologist, Dr. Agus leads a multidisciplinary team of researchers dedicated to the development and use of technologies to guide doctors in making health-care decisions tailored to individual needs. An international leader in global health and approaches for personalized healthcare, Dr. Agus serves in leadership roles at the World Economic Forum and is co-chair of...

The Republican Party may be girding for a brutal internal war amid the wreckage of its midterm elections — and Donald Trump is ready to “burn it all down” if he can’t keep his grip on the GOP, predicts New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. Who or what remains standing after such a clash is far from clear, she noted Friday. The throw-down is likely to begin next week when Trump is expected to announce that he’s running again for president, against the advice even of some of his allies. Trump has already been trashing potential primary rivals, including Florida...

Herschel Walker, the GOP nominee for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, said people who are worried about the high cost of insulin should “eat right” in his only debate against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) on Friday. During an exchange about the economy and the high cost of living, Warnock touted his work passing legislation lowering prescription drug prices, including a $35 cap on monthly insulin costs. He noted that Walker had opposed the law, which is called the Inflation Reduction Act. Walker responded by saying the Inflation Reduction Act had not reduced inflation. Then he argued that people who...

The Biden administration introduced a new regulation Tuesday that would make it harder for employers to misclassify workers as “independent contractors” to avoid minimum wage and overtime laws. The proposal from the White House would replace an earlier, more business-friendly rule created by the Trump administration that set looser guidelines around who could be considered a contractor in the workplace. Labor Department officials said the previous administration’s rule increased the likelihood of workers being exploited. Employers often mislabel their workers as contractors in order to evade workplace laws or shift certain costs of employment onto workers. Gig companies like Uber...

In 2010, Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof told Q Magazine that he was stunned at the number of young girls “p*ssing themselves” at a Beatles show he attended in the 1960s. “The Beatles was a case of watching females in excelsis,” he said. “It’s the old cliché, but you couldn’t hear them for all the screaming. I remember looking down at the cinema floor and seeing these rivulets of piss in the aisles. The girls were literally p*ssing themselves with excitement. So what I associate most with The Beatles is the smell of girls’ urine.”

Stephen Colbert returned to “The Late Show” Monday night after a bout of COVID-19 and jumped right back into the fray, suggesting Fox News host Tucker Carlson should probably be concerned that his “browser history matches that of a mass murderer.” First, the comedian expressed his sadness over the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York on Saturday that left 10 people dead, most of them Black. A white, 18-year-old male named Payton Gendron is accused of targeting the predominantly Black neighborhood in what authorities said was a hate crime. In online writings purportedly written by Gendron, he embraced the racist...

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) pleaded with voters in a viral tweet Friday to finally get off the “Trump train” and avoid the “wreckage.” Swalwell - who has been the target of vicious death threats over his opposition to Donald Trump and his supporters - issued the appeal after the dramatic revelations Friday in the unsealed warrant and property receipt used by the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago. **SNIP** The warrant indicated that Trump is under investigation for a possible violation of the Espionage Act. “If you’ve been aboard the Trump Train the last 7 years, you’ve been given an unexpected stop,”...

When the city of Friendswood, Texas, announced on Facebook that hometown hero Haley Carter would be the grand marshal for the town’s famed Fourth of July parade, the post was peppered with excited comments. Carter, who was in the Marines and is a retired professional soccer player, was just the type of person residents wanted to see lead the parade. Then the right-wing culture warriors showed up. Conservative radio host Jesse Kelly tweeted the same day that Friendswood had appointed a “gun-grabber” who is “into drag” and “trans activism” to lead the parade. Kelly is from Ohio, ran a failed...

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala,) is absolutely opposed to any new restrictions on guns — even regarding military-style assault weapons — because people need them to “take back” our government, he explained on Fox News Sunday. Such action should only be undertaken in the event America becomes “dictatorial,” Brooks told host Sandra Smith. “Oh, no, that’s wrong. That is absolutely false,” said Brooks, before Smith corrected him yet again. Brooks claims the whole idea of the Second Amendment was to arm citizens to take over the country if need be — and that not having enough guns will spark the appetite...

Andrew Walls, 26, was slapped with weapons and assault charges after he was seen on video sucker-punching a woman outside a bar in Akron, Ohio. A chapter leader in the far-right Proud Boys extremist gang was charged with assault Sunday in Akron, Ohio, after he was recorded shouting racial epithets at a black woman and then sucker-punching her in the face. A man police identified as Andrew Walls, 26, was caught on video outside a bar in the early hours of Sunday, stumbling and scuffling with other patrons while spewing a torrent of racial slurs. His victim, 23-year-old Cameron Morgan,...

If you’re having turkey at your Thanksgiving, Karen Davis is not the guest you want at your table. The president of United Poultry Concerns and a tireless advocate for chickens, turkeys and other farmed fowl, Davis can rattle off details and statistics about how turkeys are raised and “harvested” (industry-speak for slaughtered) that are guaranteed to curb — or kill — your appetite. But she’ll settle for three big reasons to skip the turkey this Thanksgiving: “Animal cruelty, disease, filth — the toxic waste in the conditions in which the birds are forced to live.” ADVERTISEMENT According to the U.S....

Former Vice President Mike Pence acknowledged Thursday for the first time his break from his ex-boss over the Jan. 6 insurrection, but he still did not blame Donald Trump for inciting the violent attack that nearly got him killed.

SNIP The audit, which is unprecedented in US elections, is being watched with alarm around the country. Experts say it is a non-credible effort to fuel doubts about the 2020 race. And there’s some evidence similar efforts could pop up elsewhere. Maricopa county has already conducted multiple audits of the 2020 race and confirmed the results. The firm hired by the GOP-controlled Arizona senate has little experience in election audits, and experts are deeply concerned its methodology is unreliable and will only lead to more doubt about the results of the 2020 race in Arizona. The CEO of the firm,...

ince last voicing Apu on “The Simpsons” in 2017, Hank Azaria says he now feels the character is “basically a slur at this point” and that he should apologize “to every single Indian person in this country” for voicing the character for nearly three decades. On Dax Shepard and Monica Padman’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, Azaria discussed how his feelings about Apu have changed in recent years and that he now feels guilty for taking the role. “I’ve had a date with destiny with this thing for about 31 years,” Azaria said before personally apologizing to Padman, who is the daughter...

There is a huge layoff at the Huffington Post. Key writers — 47 US writers — were fired. The failing leftist blog pushed for Trump supporters to be de-platformed and de-banked. It doesn’t seem to have worked for them financially. BuzzFeed announced layoffs for the HuffPost newsroom on Tuesday, three weeks after acquiring HuffPost from Verizon Media in February. Hillary Frey, the executive editor, and Louise Roug, the executive editor for international, will be departing in the restructuring effort. HuffPost Canada will also shutter operations later this month. They say they are fast-tracking the path to profitability.

**SNIP** Trump’s four years in office greatly empowered anti-government extremists. His Interior Department repeatedly hosted people who want to see federal lands sold off. Fierce critics of endangered species protections and federal land management were tapped for powerful department posts. William Perry Pendley, a conservative lawyer with extreme anti-environmental views who spent his career lobbying for the sale of federal lands, was put in charge of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. Trump issued pardons for people like Utah state Rep. Phil Lyman (R) - who in 2014 led anti-federal land protesters on an illegal ATV ride on public lands that...

Max Boot, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, in his latest op-ed Monday warned of what he fears will be President Donald Trump’s legacy for the GOP. Boot wrote of his hope that Trump’s “outrageous” bid to overturn the 2020 election would be “the last gasp of a pathetic presidency in its dying days” but also of his worry “it might represent only a middle chapter in the Republican Party’s transformation” into an authoritarian party. Boot, a vocal critic of Trump, noted how even before Trump’s arrival on the political stage, “Republicans had shown their willingness to use any...