Free Republic

WASHINGTON — America's allies in Europe are plotting ways to bypass President Donald Trump's sanctions on Iran as they work to keep the nuclear deal alive without the United States. With a second round of U.S. sanctions set to take effect in November, European officials are working at cross-purposes with Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign as they try to preserve as much business as possible with Iran. The goal is to persuade Iran's leaders to stay in the deal for a few more years — perhaps long enough for Trump to be replaced and for a new U.S. president to rejoin...

Update: Paul Manafort is heading to jail, ahead of his trials for bank fraud and money laundering, Bloomberg News reports. A judge in Washington revoked Manafort’s bail Friday after being told by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s lawyers that Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, attempted to tamper with witnesses for his trial. Manafort has "abused" the trust placed in him six months ago, the judge said. Previous report: Paul Manafort could be locked up as soon as Friday if a judge agrees with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s argument that he tried to tamper with witnesses while under house arrest. Manafort,...

(Meredith/CBS13) – A new law passed in California will soon limit the number of gallons of water a person is allowed to use per day. By 2022, residents in California will be limited to 55 gallons per person, per day. In 2013, the number of gallons used is expected to fall to 50. According to CBS13, California is the first state across the country to institute tough, water-efficiency standards like this. “With a child and every day having to wash clothes, that’s not feasible. That’s my opinion,” Tanya Allen, the mother of a -four-year-old, told CBS13. “But I get it...

North Korea said on Friday it was still open to talks with the US despite Donald Trump's threat of military action after cancelling their June 12 summit in Singapore. Pyongyang described the US president's decision to pull the plug on the much anticipated meeting as "extremely regrettable". "The abrupt announcement of the cancellation of the meeting is unexpected for us and we cannot but find it extremely regrettable," Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea's First Vice Foreign Minister, said in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency. "We again state to the US our willingness to sit face-to-face at...

Full Title: A top Trump adviser reportedly recommended the suspected FBI informant on the Trump campaign for a senior administration jobA top White House adviser reportedly recommended the person now thought to have been an FBI informant on the Trump campaign for a senior position in the administration. Peter Navarro, President Donald Trump's top adviser on trade, pushed Stefan Halper for an ambassador role in Asia, the news website Axios reported. Halper, an American professor who teaches in Britain, is now thought to have been an FBI informant on the Trump campaign. He had contact with campaign advisers Carter Page,...

How can Democrats attack President Donald Trump this midterm season without getting swept up in and drowned out by his personal controversies? It's a question that has confounded party leaders, individual candidates, outside groups and activists across the liberal spectrum. Now, as the elections near, Democrats on Capitol Hill think they are getting closer to cracking the code. On Monday, they will introduce a new suite of anti-corruption proposals and "democracy reforms" designed to hammer at a variety of allegations of unethical behavior and investigations swirling around the Trump administration and team, from a personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, accused of...

To the tunes of Tina Turner and Katy Perry, Democrats gathered four floors below ground, deep in the Washington D.C. Marriott Marquis to hear from a litany of Democrats and one "special guest" whose name did not appear on any formal program. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the stage to high octave cheers, addressing a female coalition at the DNC Women's Leadership Forum she founded as First Lady alongside Tipper Gore, 25 years ago. The former secretary of state, U.S. senator, and first lady quickly got to the question she says she's hearing from Democrats across the country:...

NextGen America, a Democratic super PAC founded by liberal billionaire Tom Steyer, released a political ad urging mothers to "catch the signs" of conservativism early, lest their children develop into alt-right white nationalists. The Mother's Day-themed ad features a woman telling the story of her son, who had "some issues" starting in middle school. The woman let it slide when her son used "Go back to where you came from" as a yearbook quote, picketed against abortion with a "BABY KILLER" sign, and began supporting President Trump after leaving for college. It was only later that she realized "it might...

An FBI lawyer who made headlines for exchanging derogatory text messages about President Donald Trump has left the bureau. That's according to a person familiar with the situation, who said Page voluntarily resigned on Friday and is taking a new job. Text messages between Page and Peter Strzok, an FBI agent who was assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, show them expressing negative views about Trump and referring to him in derogatory ways.

With the unthinkable now cautiously possible, peace between North and South Korea, speculation about President Donald Trump becoming a Nobel Peace Prize winner has begun. If peace in the Korean Peninsula truly happens, the Nobel committee could be left with a difficult choice regarding Trump’s candidacy. Recognizing those who helped bring peace to the region would seem like an easy choice, but a decision to give Trump the award could force the Nobel Prize committee into a fierce political debate on whether a man who has openly mocked foreign leaders, launched multiple airstrikes and has threatened war, deserves an award...

Freedom of religion and speech are fundamental to American life, and some conservatives warn that a California bill threatens both. "California State Assembly bill would BAN the Bible!" said the April 19 headline on the Oath Keepers website. "Whatever happened to Free Speech and Religious Freedom? Of course, this is the People’s Republic of California, so such things are to be expected. They are so far down the totalitarian, Globalist path that they are oblivious to any sane, sensible ideas." The controversy is over California bill AB 2943, a measure that puts strict limits on programs that aim to change...

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a New York City native, raised eyebrows last week after he claimed that he was an illegal immigrant and taunted officials to deport him. “I’m undocumented. You want to deport an undocumented person, start with me because I’m an undocumented person,” Cuomo, 60, said during a bill signing. During the bizarre speech, the New York governor criticized the "extreme conservative movement" for being "anti-immigrant." He said his family, who emigrated to the U.S. from Italy, was constantly ridiculed with a racial slur that he said meant “without papers.” “I’m an Italian-American. I came from poor...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel called on President Donald Trump’s Justice Department Thursday to hand over grant money to Chicago, after a panel of federal judges said the funds can’t be withheld from so-called sanctuary cities. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld a nationwide injunction prohibiting Attorney General Jeff Sessions from requiring cities give immigration agents access to undocumented immigrants in their lock-ups in order to get certain public safety grants. Emanuel quickly called an afternoon news conference at City Hall to trumpet his latest win in the city’s lawsuit to stop the Trump administration from withholding the money....

A prominent LGBTQ rights lawyer died after setting himself on fire in Brooklyn's Prospect Park on Saturday. David Buckel, 60, killed himself after sending messages to multiple news outlets including The New York Times claiming his intentions to set himself on fire to protest the world's usage of fossil fuels at the expense of the environment. "Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather," Buckel wrote the Times in an email. "Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result - my early death...

WASHINGTON — Speaker Paul D. Ryan announced Wednesday that he will not seek re-election in November, ending a brief stint atop the House and signaling the peril that the Republican majority faces in the midterm elections. Mr. Ryan said he will serve until the end of this Congress in January, which will mark 20 years in Congress. He insisted he will be “leaving this majority in good hands with what I believe is a very bright future.” But his retirement, at the age of 48, is sure to kick off a succession battle for the leadership of the House Republican...

Oregon's governor says that if President Donald Trump asks to dispatch members of her state's National Guard to the US southern border, she'll "say no." In a set of tweets Wednesday, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown said she was "deeply troubled" by Trump's plan to send members of the US military to the border and implied that the President is doing so as a political distraction. "If @realDonaldTrump asks me to deploy Oregon Guard troops to the Mexico border, I'll say no. As Commander of Oregon's Guard, I'm deeply troubled by Trump's plan to militarize our border," the tweet said. Brown...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has been holding the floor of the House of Representatives for more than six hours and counting Wednesday, in a marathon speech protesting a budget deal reached by Senate leaders. In her remarks, Pelosi announced that she and many fellow House Democrats would oppose the package unless House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., promised to allow a vote on a plan to shield from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally. "Let Congress work its will," said Pelosi, who noted that Senate Republicans have slated a debate on the politically freighted...

Ian Calderon wants restaurateurs to think long and hard before giving you a straw. Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California's lower house, has introduced a bill to stop sit-down restaurants from offering customers straws with their beverages unless they specifically request one. Under Calderon's law, a waiter who serves a drink with an unrequested straw in it would face up to 6 months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000. "We need to create awareness around the issue of one-time use plastic straws and its detrimental effects on our landfills, waterways, and oceans," Calderon explained in a...

A New York City college professor said she supports women marching – unless they’re against abortion. New School professor Jennifer Begeal tweeted Friday that pro-life students and activists participating in the March for Life in Washington, D.C., should “sit down and shut up.” Begeal, who teaches digital storytelling at The New School, took to social media Friday to lambaste the anti-abortion marchers for not supporting myriad liberal causes, Campus Reform reported. “If you support #MarchforLife but don’t support a woman’s right to choose, please sit down and shut up,” Begeal wrote in one of the 17 posts she fired off...

The House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat announced Wednesday that the committee will release a memo to counter the claims of Republicans on the panel that law enforcement officials are biased against the Trump administration. Top Republicans on the committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes (Calif.), have sought the release of a classified memo compiled by Nunes's staff saying the FBI and Justice Department abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's wiretapping provisions. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the panel's ranking member, now says Democrats must release their own memo "setting out the relevant facts and exposing the misleading character of the Republicans’...