Free Republic

Matt Drudge, founder of the highly influential Drudge Report said on Thursday that Jeff Zucker is out at CNN due to abysmal ratings and personal feud with President Trump.

Being from West Virginia, Rep. Manchin has had to push back against the coastal Democratic machine from time to time, but this round, the Dems may have gone too far and might be losing one of their Representatives to the Republican side. We’ve already seen that the Governor of West Virginia, Jim Justice, was willing to switch to the Republican side of the aisle, making his announcement at a Trump rally. Now, it’s looking like Rep. Joe Manchin might do the same. Democrats have already lost the state, both in terms of their wide support for Trump and the loss...

By the time Labor Day weekend wraps, summer box-office revenue in North America will end up being down nearly 16 percent over last year, the steepest decline in modern times and eclipsing the 14.6 percent dip in 2014. It will also be the first time since 2006 that summer didn't clear $4 billion.

Most of the United States’ special envoys will be abolished and their responsibilities reassigned as part of the State Department overhaul, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress on Monday, including envoys for climate change and the Iran deal. Special envoys for Afghanistan-Pakistan, disability rights and closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center will be eliminated under the plan. But President Donald Trump’s administration plans to keep envoys for religious freedom, fighting anti-Semitism and LGBT rights, despite speculation from critics that it would seek to downgrade those priorities. Lawmakers of both parties, think tanks and even the diplomats’ association have long...

The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning. The charter for the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment — which includes academics as well as local officials and corporate representatives — expires Sunday. On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting administrator, Ben Friedman, informed the committee’s chair that the agency would not renew the panel.

After 30 years in the Environmental Protection Agency, Elizabeth “Betsy” Southerland has quit her post in a rejection of the direction the agency is taking under Administrator, Scott Pruitt. Whilst the media are having a field day with the news, it’s important to remember that Southerland had a hand in some of the most wasteful, damaging policies that have come out of the EPA in recent decades. If we look back to the beginning of her time in the EPA, scandals regarding the use of “near criminal” science and “fraudulent” data are rife. Congressman John Dingell (D-Mich.) said that “It...

The Trump administration put a hold Monday on an Obama-era policy that was designed to encourage foreign entrepreneurs to settle in the U.S. to build their companies, saying immigration officials are already overwhelmed with more important work. It’s the latest of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration to be unwound by President Trump, and it comes a week before the new policy was to take effect. Under the now-delayed program, foreigners who were trying to build or invest in startup companies were to be granted “parole” into the U.S., which is special permission to be here with legal status and...

BERLIN (Reuters) – In their campaign program for the German election, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives have dropped the term “friend” in describing the relationship with the United States. Four years ago, the joint program of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), referred to the United States as Germany’s “most important friend” outside of Europe. The 2013 program also described the “friendship” with Washington as a “cornerstone” of Germany’s international relations and talked about strengthening transatlantic economic ties through the removal of trade barriers. But the words “friend” and “friendship” are missing...

The progressive strategy of investigating President Donald Trump nonstop for Russian collusion or obstruction of justice or witness tampering so far has produced no substantial evidence of wrongdoing. The alternate strategy of derailing the new administration before it really gets started hasn’t succeeded either, despite serial efforts to sue over election results, alter the Electoral College vote, boycott the inauguration, delay the confirmation of appointments, demand recusals, promise Trump’s impeachment or removal through the 25th Amendment, and file suit under the Emoluments Clause. A third strategy of portraying Trump as a veritable monster likewise so far has failed in four...

The Supreme Court has given President Trump a major victory by reviving his disputed ban on foreign travelers from six Muslim-majority nations. The justices rejected a series of lower-court orders that had blocked Trump’s policy from taking effect. The court’s conservative justices agreed with Trump and his lawyers, who argued that the Constitution and federal immigration laws give the chief executive broad power to restrict or “suspend” the entry of foreign individuals or groups into this country. Despite the earlier defeats, Trump had voiced confidence he would prevail once the travel ban reached the Supreme Court. His confidence was bolstered...

The Supreme Court of the United States announced Monday that it will review the lower court injunctions blocking enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order barring travel from six Muslim-majority countries. In a per curiam opinion, the Court announced it will consolidate the cases from the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Ninth and Fourth circuit, Trump v. Hawaii and Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project, respectively. Both courts found the executive order unenforceable as a likely violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment Establishment Clause because the lower courts held it was motivated by an intent to disfavor Islam.

In the days and hours leading up to a hearing of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBC, and NBC) were giddy at the prospect of two heads of U.S. intelligence agencies fingering President Trump in a plot to shut down the Russian investigation. But after the two and a half hour long hearing, they weren’t kicking themselves for getting their hopes up, they were kicking Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and NSA Director Michael Rogers for not giving them what they wanted. .. The anonymous claims about Trump pressuring high-ranking intelligence officials were...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a crowd Sunday in southern Germany that Europe can no longer rely on foreign partners. Merkel on Sunday declared a new chapter in U.S.-European relations after contentious meetings with President Trump last week, saying that Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands.” Offering a tough review in the wake of Trump’s trip to visit E.U., NATO and Group of Seven leaders last week, Merkel told a packed Bavarian beer hall rally that the days when Europe could rely on others was “over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the...

New applications for unemployment insurance rose to 244,00 in the second week of April, the Department of Labor reported Thursday, up from an ultra-low 234,000 the week before. Investors had expected jobless claims to rebound to around 242,000 after falling to the second-lowest level since 1973 in the previous week. Thanks in part to new claims running low for so long, the total number of people receiving benefits of all durations fell to the lowest level in 17 years. Just 1.98 million people received benefits in the first week of April, according to Thursday's report, the lowest such number since...

RUSH: The second big story is how the Democrats… Remember we talked about it yesterday. Democrats were gonna take that special election in Kansas. This guy Estes? He was going down. Ron Estes was going down. This is the Mike Pompeo seat. There’s a special election ’cause Trump sent Mike Pompeo to CIA and there’s a special election to replace. The media yesterday was all about, “See? Democrats are gonna win this seat proving that Trump is hated and despised and everybody wants him to go, and his agenda has been pronounced a failure!” Except Estes won. So they’re ignoring...

Former White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said his old boss, former President Barack Obama, is worried about a lack of progress in Washington D.C. "[He's] viewing it from a distance, where he's writing a book, but I think that he's genuinely concerned," Earnest said on MSNBC on Friday. Earnest said Obama sees the White House and the federal government as "as an institution that could be used to advance the interest of the American public," and a lack of forward movement is a concern, "not just for the former president of the United States but Americans of both parties...

Although the details are scarce, President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again, paints a dramatic picture for the American science and medical communities that is facing huge potential budget cuts. If it’s been a while since you’ve had a civics class, the Constitution states that it’s Congress that gets to decide how to spend the government’s money and how to tax its citizens, so this proposal is not the final word on what goes and what stays. But a President essentially starts the conversation, and for many scientists, it’s not a happy...

The number of people illegally crossing the U.S. southern border has dropped 40 percent in President Trump’s first full month in office, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said Wednesday. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reported that the number of illegal border crossings dropped from 31,578 to 18,762 persons. Kelly said border agents usually see a 10 to 20 percent increase in illegal immigrant apprehensions from January to February. “The drop in apprehensions shows a marked change in trends,” Kelly said. “Since the administration’s implementation of executive orders to enforce immigration laws, apprehensions and inadmissible activity is trending toward the lowest...

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will propose plans to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US when he meets President Donald Trump at an upcoming summit in Washington, Kyodo news reported Tuesday. Tokyo is busy putting together an investment package which "would translate into hundreds of thousands" of new US jobs, Kyodo said, citing unnamed Japanese government sources. Abe will pitch Japanese companies' cooperation in projects like high-speed rail construction and shale oil development, the report added. The package is to be put forward when the two leaders meet on February 10. Japan is one of Washington's closest...

Fearing a loss of millions of dollars for defying immigration authorities, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Thursday ordered county jails to comply with federal immigration detention requests — effectively gutting the county’s position as a “sanctuary” for immigrants in the country illegally. Gimenez cited an executive order signed Wednesday by President Donald Trump that threatened to cut federal grants for any counties or cities that don’t cooperate fully with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since 2013, Miami-Dade has refused to indefinitely detain inmates who are in the country illegally and wanted by ICE — not based on principle, but because the...