Free Republic

As the president tries to send in the National Guard, a phalanx of conservative influencers is working to support his claim that Portland is burning. PORTLAND, Ore. — During the four hours Nick Sortor sat in jail on the morning of Oct. 3, the conservative influencer wondered if anyone even knew he’d been arrested. He had no cellphone. He could make local calls, but he didn’t know anyone’s number in Portland. Outside, though, his online allies were blaring the news: A right-wing journalist — and not the leftists who assaulted him at an ICE protest — had been arrested by...

Leonardo DiCaprio's One Battle After Another has sparked backlash from conservative audiences despite being the most critically acclaimed film of the year. The sprawling 162-minute thriller, directed by 11-time Oscar nominee Paul Thomas Anderson, has wowed mainstream critics and won praise from the likes of Steven Spielberg and Taylor Swift. But despite the film's many accolades, One Battle After Another has struggled to recoup its rumored $175 million budget at the box office so far. The movie's progressive plot has also been blasted as 'woke' by conservative viewers, who accuse it of being 'pro-Antifa' for having a group of left-wing...

MAGA commentators are stepping up as soldiers in Trump’s culture war to provoke confrontations against “Antifa” with the backing of DHS.TWO WEEKS AGO, THE X ACCOUNT for the Department of Homeland Security was being, all things considered, relatively normal.There was a repost of a video about law enforcement at the Charlie Kirk memorial, a video on how the Secret Service had dismantled a digital network that could have carried out attacks near the United Nations General Assembly, a video of part of Trump’s tone-deaf, chest-beating speech at the U.N., and posts and news updates on the Dallas ICE field office...

The Illinois governor, a potential presidential candidate, is fighting the presence of National Guard troops and the activities of ICE agents in Chicago.When President Trump ordered the National Guard to Chicago last week, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois became the latest Democrat to bear the brunt of managing an aggressive federal government. He has concluded it must be combated with a national campaign. Aside from instructing his attorney general to file a lawsuit to block troops from other states coming to Illinois, Mr. Pritzker has few formal options to resist what he described this week as an “unconstitutional invasion of...

President Trump has unleashed new weaponry in his war against Democrats, liberals and the left. Over the past four weeks, he has initiated what amounts to a unique form of partisan civil war designed to amass power in a nominal democracy and defang, decimate and defund the opposition. Trump’s assault on the left combines the use of the available tools of violent conflict — the military, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE in particular — with the prosecution of critics (and people he just doesn’t like), cuts of essential funds for liberal institutions, the use of regulation to threaten...

Let’s be clear. There is zero cause or justification for President Donald Trump to send federal troops to Portland and authorize “full force.” Despite Trump’s bluster over the very limited protests outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in South Portland, the city is not “war ravaged,” nor is the ICE building “under siege” by “domestic terrorists.” Portlanders, of course, know this already, because we live, work and raise our families here. We know from our daily routines – school drop-offs, commutes through the city and evening get-togethers – that Trump’s characterizations are divorced from reality. While the modest protests...

FRANKFURT/BERLIN (Reuters) - Hundreds of people protested in European cities on Saturday against U.S. President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, following a bruising week for financial markets after Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs.

Plenty of presidents have been called dictators by their political opponents, but none until now has been publicly accused of being a “fascist” by his own handpicked advisers.When former President Donald J. Trump’s longest serving chief of staff said the other day that his old boss “falls into the general definition of fascist,” Mr. Trump let loose with the insults, assailing his onetime right hand as a “total degenerate,” a “LOWLIFE” and a “bad General.”What Mr. Trump did not do, at least at first, was actually deny that he was or aspired to be a fascist.Any other politician might consider...

The Aug. 22 clash between far-right groups and counter-protesters in Portland was the latest in a series of violent confrontations that have rocked the city over the last year. While last month's incident was not as destructive as the riots that took place last summer, it highlights how the city, with its reputation as a liberal bastion amid the state's early history of white supremacy, has become a proxy in the culture wars, researchers said. City officials said in an October 2020 statement that in recent months, alt-right groups amassed in Portland in response to the Black Lives Matter movement...