Free Republic

<p>WASHINGTON - The sun had just dipped below the horizon Wednesday evening when the lights flicked off inside the Venezuelan embassy in Washington.</p> <p>Waves of cheers rolled up and down the ordinarily quiet street in the elite Georgetown neighborhood at the center of an intensifying standoff between backers of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó and left-wing activists who oppose U.S. intervention and support President Nicolás Maduro.</p>

The hysteria is very, very real, and the Washington Swamp is practically percolating because of it. President Trump has been working overtime to thwart the best efforts of democrats to undermine his presidency. Unfortunately for Trump, much of what Congress is attempting to do, however distasteful and wasteful that it is, is likely protected by the Constitution. This makes Trump’s rebukes of the processes a troubling piece of optics. On one hand, the President is defending himself against attacks that are undoubtedly driven by partisan politics, but his defenses are triggering some alarming language to emerge on the left side...

A 91-year-old World War II veteran has finally received his high school diploma, eight decades after leaving school to support his family. Pete Sabedra walked across the stage at Derry Area Middle School, about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, to accept his degree at a special awards ceremony on Wednesday. His daughter-in-law put in a request for him to receive an honorary diploma from the school after a lifetime of hard work. Speaking of his work on the railroads when he was a child, she said: 'The weight of the wheelbarrows loaded with the ballast and the moving...

TAMPA, Fla. (FOX 13) - A 3-year-old cancer patient must undergo chemotherapy over the next 28 days despite the wishes of his parents, a Tampa judge ruled Wednesday afternoon. But she did not make a decision about treatment options after that. The ruling marks the latest twist in the case of Noah McAdams, who was was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia back in April. After two rounds of chemotherapy, his parents Joshua McAdams and Taylor Bland decided they wanted to try a more natural, holistic approach. When they failed to show up for a chemo appointment at All Children’s Hospital...

The number of illegal aliens who are choosing to voluntarily deport themselves has spiked since President Donald Trump entered the White House. Illegal immigrants who were granted voluntary departure — also known as “self-deportation” — increased by 50% in 2017, according to information compiled by The Marshall Project. In fiscal year 2018, the number of aliens who asked an immigration court for permission to leave the country on their own accord doubled from the previous fiscal year. Applications in 2018, in fact, reached a seven-year high. The rising number of self-deportations far outpaces the 17% growth in overall U.S. immigration...

Several leading pro-life groups and activists are planning a rally on Friday at the Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Philadelphia where state representative Brian Sims filmed himself twice harassing and bullying pro-life women. The rally is planned for Friday morning and hundreds of pro-life people are expected to attend. The goal of the rally is to send the message to Representative Sims that he can’t stop pro-life people from helping women find abortion alternatives outside that Planned Parenthood clinic. Rally organizers have invited Sims to attend and even to bring his camera and have a conversation with her life leaders...

Sen. Bernie Sanders told MSNBC on Thursday that his strategy for defeating Donald Trump in 2020 will be to speak to his working-class base and "expose him as the fraud that he is." "Trump essentially lied to the American people," Sanders said. "Who were hurting, and for too many years the Democratic leadership ignored that pain and ignored the midwest and the flyover states." "So you expand the base, talking to working people and young people, and we expose Trump for the fraud that he is... when he campaigned on being a friend of the working people," he explained. "You...

National advocacy groups on Thursday delivered to Congress multiple petitions of what they said contained 10 million signatures from people who support the impeachment of President Donald Trump. They delivered the signatures to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who has introduced a bill that would direct the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Trump committed impeachable offenses — an issues that has been heating up among congressional Democrats and presidential contenders. MoveOn spearheaded the effort that included groups such as Need to Impeach, CREDO and the organizers behind the annual Women's March. "This is incredible because this is how movements start,"...

It’s not just high-profile anti-leftist political commentators such as Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson and Laura Loomer who are being banned from Facebook and de-platformed elsewhere. Facebook has forced a well-known Christian apologist off their platform for things he posted years earlier — such as death and rape threats he received and even a famous anti-Nazi picture — after repeatedly being reported by online by Muslim activist group targeting Christians. Apologist Dr. David Wood finally gave up Facebook because every time a suspension finished he was suspended again almost immediately, within hours, for older and older posts and for longer...

Disney's new film Tolkien premiers this weekend, and the trailers promise an engrossing biopic, complete with scenes from the First World War. The movie aims to show how J.R.R. Tolkien's early life inspired the creative genius behind such works as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which are rightly recognized as classics and which both inspired epic film franchises (one far superior to the other). Yet the new Disney film cuts out some of the most important influences in his life. The movie does not once mention the great ex-atheist and Christian author C.S. Lewis, a close friend...

The bill, known as the TRUST Act, would lift a state restriction on revealing an individual's tax returns. It says the state commissioner of taxation and finance shall release those returns if requested by the House Ways and Means Committee, Finance Committee, or Joint Committee on Taxation. The bill says that the chair of the requesting committee must certify that the request is for a legitimate legislative purpose. When Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin denied a request for Trump’s federal tax returns, he said the request failed to meet that standard. On the floor of the state Senate, Republican Sen. Fred...

Vice President Mike Pence announced that the administration will look for opportunities to challenge nationwide injunctions before the Supreme Court. Such orders have obstructed the Trump administration’s agenda in a number of areas. Though such injunctions have angered Trump loyalists, conservative litigators employed them against former President Barack Obama. The Trump administration is searching for an appropriate case in which to ask the Supreme Court to end nationwide injunctions, Vice President Mike Pence announced Wednesday in Washington at a Federalist Society conference. Nationwide injunctions, in which federal trial judges bar the federal government from enforcing a law or carrying out...

The Army Corps of Engineers informed the Government Accountability Office's lawyers it had "reevaluated its decision" to give Barnard Construction Co. a contract to build more than seven miles of steel bollard fence near Yuma, Ariz. "After further review, the Agency has decided to take corrective action to remedy a flaw in the acquisition process. The Agency will terminate for the convenience of the Government the contract that resulted from the Yuma Solicitation and will re-compete the requirement.

Rod Rosenstein was "one of the Justice Department's most important leaders in its history," said former attorney general Jeff Sessions Thursday at a farewell ceremony for the deputy attorney general. On Thursday, Rosenstein was praised by Sessions, Attorney General William Barr, FBI Director Chris Wray, and other officials during a ceremony in the Justice Department's ornate Great Hall. Barr was deputy attorney general when Rosenstein first arrived at the Justice Department in 1990. "In those days, the deputy job was a lot different. But I'll tell you now, the attorney general job is a lot different also. This must be...

The Middle East peace plan were revealed by on Tuesday.....from a leaked document circulated by the Israeli Foreign Ministry: A tripartite agreement between Israel, and Hamas, and a Palestinian state will be established that will be called "the new Palestine" that will be established on Judea, Samaria and Gaza, with the exception of the settlements. The settlement blocs will remain in the hands of Israel and will be joined by the few settlements. Jerusalem - Will not be divided and will be the capital of Israel and the new Palestine. Jews will not be allowed to buy Arab homes, and...

Immigrants — not the 280 million native-born Americans — make America great, says Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the U.N.

When China levied additional tariffs on pork from the United States last year, Zhu Mengzhou, a manager of an imported food distributor in Guangzhou, was one of many traders who stopped buying it. “Unless the tariffs are adjusted, the cost is too high for us,” Zhu said. Even as an outbreak of African swine fever threatens to decimate China’s most important meat market, Zhu cannot afford to resume US purchases due to two rounds of trade war tariffs which added a total of 50% to import duties. For some US pork products, Chinese buyers have to pay duties up to...

NEW YORK - The number of Americans who said President Donald Trump should be impeached rose 5 percentage points to 45 percent since mid-April, while more than half said multiple congressional probes of Trump interfered with important government business, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday. The opinion poll, conducted on Monday, did not make clear whether investigation-fatigued Americans wanted House of Representatives Democrats to pull back on their probes or press forward aggressively and just get impeachment over with. The question is an urgent one for senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, who are wrestling with...

Stunning: Dirty Cop Mueller Spent $732,000 on Private Contractors for Special Counsel Investigation But Won’t Say Who They Were (Title) Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent more than $732,000 on outside contractors, including private investigators and researchers, records show, but his office refuses to say who they were. While it’s not unusual for special government offices to outsource for services such as computer support, Mueller also hired contractors to compile “investigative reports” and other “information.” The arrangement has led congressional investigators, government watchdog groups and others to speculate that the private investigators and researchers who worked for the special counsel’s office...

[Catholic Caucus] Theologians, cardinals defend pope’s theology in wake of heresy charge ROME - In the wake of an April 30 open letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy signed by 19 clergymen and scholars, demanding the pontiff’s resignation, theologians and cardinals at a conference in Rome on Wednesday instead praised Francis’s theology and magisterium.“Pope Francis is the pope, and when he speaks it’s magisterium,” Italian Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the Synod of Bishops, told Crux after the event.The symposium, called “Theology and Magisterium in the Church with Pope Francis,” took place May 8 in Rome at the Pontifical...