Free Republic

Blindsided Europeans warned Thursday that a "dirty deal" between US President Donald Trump and Moscow on ending the Ukraine war was doomed to fail -- insisting they and Kyiv must have a seat at the negotiating table.Meeting NATO partners the day after Trump revealed he had agreed to start peace talks with Russia's Vladimir Putin, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth denied it meant a betrayal of Kyiv's three-year war effort.But Trump's move stunned European allies -- several of whom openly called his strategy into question.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected any "dictated peace" and his defence minister called it "regrettable" that Washington...

I am requesting prayers of a couple of people. The first is for a wyoming State Trooper's family. His wife and children were T-BONED by a snow plow. Wife and one child received minor injuries but the 2 year old who was on the side of the hit was critically injured. He was life flighted, but due to the severity of the injuries had to make an emergency landing. The second is for an elderly husband and wife from Arizona. They've been married to each other since they were grown kids. He was just discovered to have stage 4 bone...

Democratic Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith said she will not seek reelection for a second term in a shock announcement Thursday. Smith, who was elected to the Senate in 2018, is the second Democratic incumbent to announce their retirement since Republicans retook Senate control in January. Democratic Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who was expected to face a tough reelection contest, announced his retirement on Jan. 28

@RandPaul Congratulations to @RobertKennedyJr on his confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Finally, someone to detox the place after the Fauci era. Get ready for health care freedom and MAHA!

The USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier collided with a merchant ship off the coast of Egypt, officials said. The US Navy said the carrier collided with the Besiktas-M ship at 11:46 p.m. Wednesday while operating near Port Said, in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Washington Post ran a terrifically encouraging story yesterday headlined, “Tulsi Gabbard sworn in as Trump’s director of national intelligence.” Welp. There it is. It is Trump’s genius to nominate Cabinet heads who hate the agencies they have been appointed to re-engineer. Tulsi, for instance, was hounded by the deep state, who put her on the dreaded “Quad-S” travel list, which requires invasive (ahem) “enhanced” screenings and a mandatory DEI airport escort. It means you have to get to the airport five hours before your flight for a painful, unnecessarily intimate, and socially awkward experience. They did it to her...

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the pick of President Donald Trump ally Kash Patel to lead the FBI on a party-line vote Thursday, setting up a final confirmation vote on the Senate floor as early as next week. Patel, who served in the first Trump administration and had branded himself a crusader against the “Deep State” and Trump’s enemies in the media, would lead the federal law enforcement agency. The committee voted 12-10 to advance Patel’s nomination to the Senate floor. Democrats remain powerless to block his confirmation without help from Republicans, who have a 53-seat majority. Republicans at the...

President Trump will hold a major news conference on reciprocal tariffs at 1 pm EST on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025. Watch LIVE on RSBN!

'These people didn't get the message in the last election and they're just digging the hole deeper,' says supervisor Jim Desmond. A middle school in San Diego has been thrust into local controversy because of a transgender student using the girls' locker room. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted against a measure to carry out the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would prevent trans athletes from competing in girls' sports or entering girls' locker rooms. Vice Chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors Jim Desmond brought forth the proposal at...

Two weeks ago, a medical jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood and killed a total of seven people while injuring at least two dozen. It marked the second aviation disaster in the United States in the span of two days, and occurred right before the Philadelphia Eagles were set to travel to New Orleans to play the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. There was a heartwarming story that came out of this tragedy, however, as a 10-year-old boy put his life on the line to protect his sister from flying debris during the crash. The little boy, Andre...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 🚨BREAKING: Brooke Rollins has been confirmed as Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture. 10:58 AM · Feb 13, 2025

The Brief A statue of "Great Gatsby" author F. Scott Fitzgerald was stolen from the steps of his former school in St. Paul. The bronze statue was cut from the steps sometime last week. Police are searching for the statue. ================================================================== ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - St. Paul police are trying to find a statue of "Great Gatsby" author F. Scott Fitzgerald that was stolen from outside his old school last week. F. Scott Fitzgerald statue stolen Timeline: Police said on Tuesday the Fitzgerald statue was stolen from in front of the former St. Paul Academy on Dale Street...

USAID: British politician complaining that his wife was supposed to get $1M in USAID grants before Trump cancelled the contract. Rory Stewart's wife runs Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which exposes modern art to puzzled Afghan women.

President Donald Trump unleashed on “Radical Left Reuters” over a 2018 Pentagon contract to “study large-scale social deception”—a contract awarded during his own administration—and demanded the news agency “GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!”The brief but furious outburst was pushed out early on Thursday as the president cited the revelation as a finding of his newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump posted on Truth Social:DOGE: Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study “large scale social deception.” GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!Indeed, DOGE’s agency head Elon Musk boosted a post on X...

Vaccine policy, Medicare drug negotiations and a potential DTC advertising ban will all fall under Kennedy’s purview as HHS Secretary.. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was confirmed as the next Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Thursday morning. Kennedy was confirmed by the Senate in a full floor vote. The Senate advanced Kennedy following a key procedural vote of 53 to 47 on Wednesday afternoon. The confirmation came weeks after a pair of Senate committee hearings in which Kennedy was interrogated by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over his controversial views on vaccines, public...

If there’s one thing that has sent the Dems into a full-blown meltdown, it’s DOGE investigating waste and fraud. And now, we’re getting a crystal-clear picture of how Dems have managed to keep their wildly unpopular agenda alive—by treating government programs like their own personal piggy bank. Elon and his team are just scratching the surface, but what they’ve already uncovered is enough to make any taxpayer’s blood boil. One of the biggest offenders thus far is USAID. This over-funded, shady organization has been caught red-handed funding fake news, bankrolling CIA-backed color revolutions abroad (and let’s be honest, probably here...

NOW – Trump Protestors Interrupt Today's USAID Betrayal Hearing w/ Signs Reading "Trump K*lls People With AIDS Worldwide" PROTESTORS: "PEPFAR saves lives. Restore AIDS funding now." REP. BRIAN MAST: "They didn't realize that PEPFAR was one of the many programs that did prove to be life saving. So the funding was restored."

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said the quiet part out loud during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, revealing the Democrats’ true concerns about DOGE and Elon Musk. .... Snip.... While interrogating Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Waters demanded to know whether he would let Musk audit the fed. When Powell refused to give a straight answer, Waters let her mask slip. “Well, you know what happened at Treasury, and you know what happened over at the CFPB,” Waters said.” People of this country are being violated because all of our privacy has been taken up by Elon Musk...

VIDEOThis video reveals why you haven't seen Politics Girl aka Leigh McGowan on CNN for a couple of months. She has gone so far off the deep end that she is too toxic for even CNN. That leftist network wants to make a case against President Trump but Politics Girl is now so far gone that she would turn off their viewers and cause their ratings to go even more into the toilet. In fact the only reason CNN's ratings don't slump even deeper is because Scott Jennings now basically owns the network with his witty rebuttals of the rantings...

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German army's battle-readiness is less than when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, military officials, lawmakers and defence experts told Reuters.Even if a new government boosts defence spending, it will remain hamstrung for years, particularly by a lack of air defence, artillery and soldiers, they said."Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we had eight brigades at around 65% readiness," Colonel Andre Wuestner, head of the German Armed Forces Association, told Reuters in an interview. Sending weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine, as well as accelerating Germany's own drills, took a toll on the available equipment, he said."Together, this...