Free Republic

LONDON (Reuters) - The author of a book that is highly critical of Donald Trump’s first year as U.S. president said his revelations were likely to bring an end to Trump’s time in the White House. Michael Wolff told BBC radio that his conclusion in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House”-- that Trump is not fit to do the job -- was becoming a widespread view. “I think one of the interesting effects of the book so far is a very clear emperor-has-no-clothes effect,” Wolff said in an interview broadcast on Saturday. “The story that I have told...

Former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon’s hopes of leading a revolt in the Republican Party this year suffered a severe blow Thursday as his allies rebuked and abandoned him following a nasty public break with President Trump. Candidates who once embraced Bannon distanced themselves from his efforts, groups aligned with his views sought separation, and his most important financial backer, the billionaire Mercer family, which has championed him for years, announced that it was severing ties. Even his position as chairman of Breitbart News, a website he has referred to as one of his most effective “weapons,” was...

Alarmed by the proliferation of false content online, state lawmakers around the country are pushing schools to put more emphasis on teaching students how to tell fact from fiction. Lawmakers in several states have introduced or passed bills calling on public school systems to do more to teach media literacy skills that they say are critical to democracy. The effort has been bipartisan but has received little attention despite successful legislation in Washington state, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Mexico. Several more states are expected to consider such bills in the coming year, including Arizona, New York and Hawaii. “I...

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders isn't a big fan of the media. Which is, of course, her right. The relationship between any White House and any press corps tasked with covering that White House is almost always fraught and fractious. But, on Monday, Sanders made an accusation that went way, way beyond the pale of the usual give and take between White House and press corps. Here's what she said: "There's a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people. Something that happens regularly. You can't say -- I'm not done. You can't say...

Republicans rammed a bill through the House on Wednesday that would make it easier for gun owners to legally carry concealed weapons across state lines, the first significant action on guns in Congress since mass shootings in Nevada and Texas killed more than 80 people. The House approved the bill, 231-198, largely along party lines. Six Democrats voted yes, while 14 Republicans voted no. The measure would allow gun owners with a state-issued concealed-carry permit to carry a handgun in any state that allows concealed weapons. It now goes to the Senate. Republicans said the reciprocity measure, a top priority...

Fake news tweets and social media posts that flooded the internet leading up to the 2016 presidential election came from a Russian troll factory that works around the clock like any IT facility—except lies were pumping out to control the American mind and put Donald Trump in the White House. The Internet Research Agency, which works on behalf of Russia inside a guarded, concrete building in St. Petersburg, has day and night shifts and hundreds of former journalists and bloggers creating thousands of posts with false and controversial information to reach certain quotas It was "a merry-go-round of lies," Vitaly...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with a lower court that ordered a New Mexico city to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lawn outside City Hall. Civil liberties advocates behind the case called the decision involving the city of Bloomfield a victory for the separation of church and state. ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson said it sends a “strong message that the government should not be in the business of picking and choosing which sets of religious beliefs enjoy special favor in the community.” However, David Cortman, a senior counsel and vice president of...

Some House Democrats are raising the specter of withholding support for must-pass spending legislation later this year in response to President Trump’s hard-line immigration proposals — meaning the fate of roughly 690,000 younger undocumented immigrants could become a major factor in negotiations to keep the government open after December. Democrats on Monday dismissed Trump’s calls to construct a wall along the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border, crack down on “sanctuary cities” and seek ways to curb Central American migrants from illegally crossing into the country. But conservative Republicans insisted that such issues must be addressed before Congress considers offering...

The reality TV breakout hit of the season — White House Family Feud, starring Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon — is far from over. After the media frenzy of the last two weeks, Bannon’s been cut down to size, and removed from the National Security Council. Still, he remains a dangerous figure. Bannon reportedly works 18-hour days behind the scenes to promote a far-right, extremist, white nationalist agenda. He is still officially Trump’s “chief strategic adviser,” backed by insiders like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, mega-donors like Rebekah Mercer, and many alt-right leaders (who have made personal and political...

Helen Beristain voted for Donald Trump even though she is married to an undocumented immigrant. In November, she thought Trump would deport only people with criminal records -- people he called "bad hombres" -- and that he would leave families intact. "I don't think ICE is out there to detain anyone and break families, no," Beristain told CNN affiliate WSBT in March, shortly after her husband, Roberto Beristain was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a statement to CNN, ICE said, "On April 4, 2017, officers with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO)...

While most Americans say that both traditional and online media are reporting “fake news,” they’re more than twice as likely to attribute the falsehoods to deliberate deception rather than to incompetence, a new poll by Monmouth University reveals. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of Americans say they’re either “regularly” (27%) or “occasionally” being fed fake news by traditional major TV and newspaper outlets. Asked to cite the reason that these media report fake news, 39% say they do it “On purpose in order to push an agenda,” while only 17% say it is “By accident or because of poor fact checking.” Another...

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather called President Trump a “threat to our democracy” after his actions Friday banning some media from a press gaggle. He authored a scathing note on his Facebook account and sent it out via Twitter Friday evening.(TWEET-AT-LINK) “The time for normalizing, dissembling, and explaining away Donald Trump has long since passed,” the post began. The barring of respected journalistic outlets from the White House briefing is so far beyond the norms and traditions that have governed this republic for generations, that they must be seen as a real and present threat to our democracy. These...

Trump’s actions in office have been even more disturbing. His visit to CIA headquarters on his first full day in office, an overture designed to repair relations, was undone by his ego and bluster. Standing in front of a memorial to the CIA’s fallen officers, he seemed to be addressing the cameras and reporters in the room, rather than the agency personnel in front of them, bragging about his inauguration crowd the previous day. Whether delusional or deceitful, these were not the remarks many of my colleagues and I wanted to hear from our new commander in chief. I couldn’t...

One of the course designers, Doreen Bradley, director of learning programs and initiatives at the U-M Library, says misinformation, disinformation, half-truths and propaganda have always been around, but are these days so readily sharable that students encounter a much greater volume than ever before. Students taking the class will: •Learn how to find trusted sources of statistics. •Be challenged to confront their own biases. •Consider how their opinions, and the opinions of others, can affect the interpretation of news items. •Practice dissecting a news graph in order to understand the message that graph is trying to convey. •Assess how their...

The always 'fair and balanced' New York Times' Nicholas Kristof (author of such 'real news' as "Donald Trump: Kremlin Employee of the Month?", "What Did Trump Know, and When Did He Know It?" and "Donald Trump: The Russian Poodle") has outdone himself with this week's 'opinion' piece, asking "We’re just a month into the Trump presidency, and already so many are wondering: How can we end it?" While thousands turn out to Trump's rallies, and several polls suggest the America that voted for Trump is still supportive of Trump and his actions, Kristoff points out that one poll from Public...

President Donald Trump reportedly isn't adjusting well to life in the White House after his first month in office. That's according to Axios' Mike Allen's latest newsletter, in which he writes that a Trump adviser told him the president is experiencing "cabin fever" in the White House. Trump is reportedly experiencing headaches and frustration that he can't spend his evenings dining at restaurants like he could around Trump Tower in his old neighborhood in New York City. Trump's campaign-style rally in Melbourne, Florida, on Saturday — during which he castigated the news media and mentioned a nonexistent incident in Sweden...

Let’s face it — every Irish person in New York knows someone who’s undocumented. Usually they know more than one. They also know that if weren’t for them and other immigrants half the bars, restaurants, shops and even colleges in the city would be deserted. New York has always had a special welcome for immigrants — even the undocumented ones — because it’s been the historical landing point for intending Americans since the earliest days of our national story. Welcoming immigrants is really the city’s oldest tradition. It actually makes sound financial sense. The undocumented often do the work that...

C-SPAN released a survey Friday that asked historians to rank past presidents and former-President Obama was voted the country's 12th best, right behind Woodrow Wilson and in front of James Monroe. Historians were asked to essentially grade the presidents on items like “public persuasion” and “moral authority.” Politico reported that Obama rated high in the category of “equal justice for all,” but received low marks for his relationship with Congress.

Over the strong objections of environmental groups, the Senate confirmed Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday, giving President Donald Trump an eager partner to fulfill his campaign pledge to increase the use of planet-warming fossil fuels. Pruitt was sworn in later Friday by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. In six years as Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt filed 14 lawsuits challenging EPA regulations that included limits on carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. He also sued over the EPA’s recent expansion of water bodies regulated under the Clean Water Act, a federal measure opposed by industries that...

Whether or not you believe that voting fraud is a problem in the U.S., one thing is certain: Tidying up outdated voter rolls is sometimes easier said than done. Just ask election officials in the nation’s largest city. After an independent review found that New York City’s voting lists contained people who were dead or in prison, elections officials began an aggressive purge in 2014 and 2015 that eliminated more than 200,000 supposedly invalid registrations. The result? A record number of complaints during the 2016 presidential primary from legal voters who turned up to cast a ballot, but found that...