Free Republic

President Trump has always defied the laws of political gravity, seemingly impervious to setbacks that would sink any other figure and immune from the traditional ebb and flow of campaign cycles. But his capitulation in the fight over releasing the Epstein files, and other recent developments, suggest that, when it comes to Congress, the president is subject to at least some of the same currents as his predecessors, as the first signs of his lame duck status emerge. The willingness of congressional Republicans to defy Mr. Trump and back legislation requiring the disclosure of federal files on Jeffrey Epstein, the...

Sir Keir Starmer has insisted the G20 still matters and is a "really important" forum to bang the drum for British business, despite the decision of Donald Trump to boycott the international summit in South Africa. Asked what he thought of the US president's decision, the prime minister simply said Mr Trump had "set out his position". The PM added he thought it was "really important to be [at the G20] to talk to other partners and allies so we can get on with the discussions around global issues that have to be addressed, and do have an impact back...

Gov. Kathy Hochul has spent $66 million of taxpayer money on grants to radical left-wing groups that conduct overt political operations to defund the police, close prisons, abolish ICE, decriminalize prostitution, promote open borders, target minors with transgender ideology, promote anti-Israel extremism, impose crippling climate mandates on new housing — and increase taxation to pay for it all. An examination of 13,000 grants since Hochul took office in 2021 shows a massive investment in far-left causes, with $66 million paid so far and almost $50 million promised for a total contract value of $113 million. “Our tax dollars should go...

Rigid ideologies like DEI, climate dogma, and anti-Trump obsession keep collapsing under their own contradictions, leaving their loudest champions looking increasingly absurd. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is a euphemism for a rigid racialist theology. It deductively postulates that a large percentage of the population is oppressed by racism and sexism, mostly by white males. DEI makes no allowance for the class or wealth of the alleged victims or their supposed victimizers. So once that rigid party line is set, it cannot account for tens of millions of affluent and privileged non-white Americans or like numbers of poor and non-privileged...

A Utah judge just turned a safe Republican congressional seat into a near-guaranteed Democrat seat — and she did it in a state controlled top to bottom by Republicans. How does that happen? A generation of weak Republicans in the elected branches handed liberals control of the judicial branch and gave them the ballot initiative system they needed to take over the state piece by piece. Democrats can’t win statewide office in half the country, so they’ve turned ballot initiatives into their weapon of choice. Pollsters craft soothing messaging, activists gather signatures, and voters — thinking they’re supporting neutrality —...

Today’s Republican Party is big on manliness and masculine virtues. The MAGA right in particular is forever obsessing over who is the biggest, the strongest, the most fearless among them.This is why, watching President Trump’s fight to keep a lid on the Epstein files, I have been struck, delighted even, that among the vanishingly few Republican lawmakers with the courage to defy him have been three fire-breathing congresswomen: Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina.Love ’em or hate ’em, these House troublemakers bucked their party leadership, stared down their president and made...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed he would deal with the violent "handful of extremists" among Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, following clashes and another attack on Monday. Homes and vehicles in a Palestinian village were torched on Monday evening, hours after members of the so-called Hilltop Youth movement clashed with security forces who were dismantling an illegal settler outpost. In recent weeks, attacks attributed to Israeli settlers, notably those living in outposts, have multiplied, targeting Palestinians and sometimes Israeli soldiers. "I view with great severity the violent riots and the attempt by a handful of extremists to...

The climate creed that once ruled unquestioned is cracking as energy needs, geopolitical reality, and basic science force the West to admit carbon isn’t dying anytime soon. For decades, the monolithic and sacrosanct international climate change hierarchy went unquestioned. Western nations in particular spent trillions of dollars over the past half-century to subsidize expensive but erratic wind and solar energy while demonizing carbon fuels as toxic threats to the planet. Like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion dogma, climate change orthodoxy was embedded into every aspect of Western culture, from the corporate boardroom to the university campus. Question whether man-made global warming...

Embattled UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is channelling his inner Donald Trump as he tries to stop the relentless flow of small boats carrying immigrants across the English Channel from sinking his Labour government. A package of harsh measures to be officially unveiled on Monday would make Starmer the human rights lawyer blanch. But Starmer the prime minister has little choice but to get tough if he is to stop the votes flowing to the insurgent Nigel Farage. The new measures are modelled on those adopted by Denmark’s centre-left government, which has managed to cut the flow of irregular immigrants...

Epstein was supposedly advising Arab countries on how to deal with America, had an audience scheduled with a Qatari prince, and close to Trump’s future ambassador to Turkey.

When the show’s over, what federal agents will leave behind is predictable. All the president’s men are coming to Charlotte. After several days of rumors, federal officials confirmed to local leaders in North Carolina that, indeed, Border Patrol agents will be conducting operations in the state’s largest city. I used to live in Charlotte. I still have a lot of friends and family there. I’m told Donald Trump is coming to save them, but from what? We don’t know. If Charlotte residents are living in terror — other than the terror President Trump has created by frightening the city’s...

"How do empires fall? Not by war, but by unbalanced minds disconnected from reality." — The Vigilant Fox on “X" By now, whenever you hear anyone invoke the phrase “saving our democracy,” that should be a signal that they are intent on destroying this republic, and with that, your natural rights to free speech, economic liberty, and public order. What began in 2016 as a simple, high-level plot to take out Donald Trump and squash Trumpism — a grassroots revolt against those very high-level DC insiders —turned sharply in 2017 into a long-running cover-up operation that spawned a multiplying cycle...

For the second straight year, about one in five Americans say they would like to leave the U.S. and move permanently to another country if they could. This heightened desire to migrate is driven primarily by younger women. In 2025, 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they would move abroad permanently if they had the opportunity. The current figure is four times higher than the 10% who shared this desire in 2014, when it was generally in line with other age and gender groups. The percentage of younger women wanting to move to another country first rose decisively...

n a land where rivers have run dry, lakes have vanished, and fertile soil has turned to dust, men in clerical robes still stand on pulpits without shame and declare: “Women’s unveiled hair causes drought!” This is not satire, nor the delirium of a lone village cleric. It reflects the mindset of a regime that has ruled Iran for forty-six years, a regime still incapable of understanding that the connection between clouds and rain is scientific, not moral or religious. From its inception, the Islamic Republic was built on ignorance and superstition. Today, it stands idle before the greatest environmental...

Ellis Island built a nation through law and order; Biden’s border chaos dismantled it with lawlessness, division, and the greatest illegal influx in U.S. history. Between 1892 and 1954, approximately 12 million immigrants arrived at the now-iconic Ellis Island to enter the U.S.—or nearly 200,000 legal entries per year. All were registered, documented, and given rudimentary health exams. They arrived as rich and poor, white and non-white, and, without exception, legally. With the gradual decline of such great influxes, Ellis Island finally ceased operating roughly 71 years ago. Yet Ellis Island’s successful tenure offers a sharp contrast to the failures...

For the last several months, Democrats have been trying furiously to tie Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein. Aside from the fact that this media campaign is obviously not organic, it’s utterly bizarre and disingenuous. Democrats simply don’t care about ties to Epstein, and never have. They only care that these allegations can be used to possibly harm Trump. For instance, the evidence tying Bill Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein is far stronger than that involving Donald Trump, and Clinton spoke in primetime at the Democratic National Convention last year and is hardly persona non grata. Similarly, LinkedIn’s billionaire founder Reid Hoffman...

Jeffrey Epstein told author Michael Wolff that his ex-friend President Donald Trump "knew about the girls" in a 2019 email released by House Democrats...Epstein told Maxwell that a victim of his "spent hours at my house with" Trump, the email says.

The collapse of Chuck Schumer’s shutdown gambit, when seven fellow Democrats and one independent broke ranks with him, serves as a humiliating bookend to the longest government closure ever. It also simultaneously highlights one of President Trump’s most sweeping and crucial Washington victories over his most toxic opponents.Ever since his first election in 2016, Trump has been thwarted, tormented, impeached and mocked by Schumer and Democratic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.And now he has turned the tables on them in devastating fashion, with Schumer likely to be dethroned as Senate minority leader and Pelosi packing her money bags to leave...

At first blush, the deal that paved the way to end the government shutdown this week looked exactly like the kind of feeble outcome many Democrats have come to expect from their leaders in Washington. After waging a 40-day fight to protect Americans’ access to health care — one they framed as existential — their side folded after eight defectors struck a deal that would allow President Trump and Republicans to reopen the government this week without doing anything about health coverage or costs, enraging all corners of the party. But even some of the Democrats most outraged by the...

During the interview, Ingraham pressed the president on H-1B foreign visas, arguing the president could not fulfill his promise of revitalizing the manufacturing economy in the United States by bringing in foreign workers.“I mean, the H-1B visa thing will not be a big priority for your administration, because if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can’t flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers,” Ingraham told the president.“Well, I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent when a country,” Trump pushed back.“Well, we have plenty of talented people...