Free Republic

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP) — Lawmakers critical of President Donald Trump’s approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine war said Saturday they spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio who told them that the peace plan Trump is pushing Kyiv to accept is a “wish list” of the Russians and not the actual proposal offering Washington’s positions.A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false."Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The secretary of state doubled down on the assertion that...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Several nations and environmental groups on Friday slammed proposals in the final stages of this year’s U.N. climate talks for failing to explicitly mention the cause of global warming — the burning of fuels such as oil, gas and coal — with one top negotiator warning the talks are on “the verge of collapse.” Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, a top negotiator for Panama, said the decades-long United Nations process risks “becoming a clown show” for the omission.

Fátima Bosch Fernández of Mexico was crowned Miss Universe 2025 on Friday, a dramatic victory for a 25-year-old at the center of the turbulent 74th staging of the popular beauty pageant in Bangkok who stood up to public bullying from one of the hosts. The issues at this year’s event sprang from a sharp-tongued scolding of Bosch, which sparked a controversy marked by a walkout, feminist solidarity and a teary, melodramatic apology from the local organizer who set it all off. When Bosch was announced as the winner, cheers and screams erupted from the audience, with Mexican flags waved by...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department engaged in a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” in the process of securing an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, a federal judge ruled Monday in directing prosecutors to produce to defense lawyers all grand jury materials from the case. Those problems, wrote Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick, include “fundamental misstatements of the law” by a prosecutor to the grand jury that indicted Comey in September, the use of potentially privileged communications during the investigation and unexplained irregularities in the transcript of the grand jury proceedings. “The Court recognizes that the relief sought...

CHICAGO (AP) — Baltazar Enriquez starts most mornings with street patrols, leaving his home in Chicago’s Little Village on foot or by car to find immigration agents that have repeatedly targeted his largely Mexican neighborhood.Wearing an orange whistle around his neck, the activist broadcasts his plans on Facebook.“We don’t know if they’re going to come back. All we know is we’ve got to get ready,” he tells thousands of followers. “Give us any tips if you see any suspicious cars.”Moments later, his phone buzzes.As an unprecedented immigration crackdown enters a third month, a growing number of Chicago residents are fighting...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — The world’s climate leaders are conceding that Earth’s warming will shoot past a hard limit they set a decade ago in hopes of keeping the planet out of a danger zone. But they’re not conceding defeat. United Nations officials, scientists, and analysts are pinning their hopes on eventually forcing global temperatures back below the red line they set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which sought to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times. Busting that limit and then coming back down is called “overshoot.” In the way climate science uses the term,...

U.S. Catholic bishops voted Wednesday to make official a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender patients at Catholic hospitals. The step formalizes a yearslong process for the U.S. church to address transgender health care. From a Baltimore hotel ballroom, the bishops overwhelmingly approved revisions to their ethical and religious directives that guide the nation's thousands of Catholic health care institutions and providers.

Despite detailed photographic evidence to the contrary, many liberals continue to assert that the Venezuelan boats recently destroyed by the U.S. Navy are merely fishing, not drug, boats. The Associated Press has jumped into the fray and in a roundabout "nuanced" way admitted that the destroyed boats are indeed drug boats. The "nuance" comes in via the AP asserting that among the crews of the drug boats, some worked mostly as fishermen or other low paying jobs with drug smuggling only as a side gig to boost their income. The AP reluctantly made the 'nuanced' admission that the destroyed boats...

GÜIRIA, Venezuela (AP) — One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on $100 a month. Another was a career criminal. A third was a former military cadet. And a fourth was a down-on-his-luck bus driver. The men had little in common beyond their Venezuelan seaside hometowns and the fact all four were among the more than 60 people killed since early September when the U.S. military began attacking boats that the Trump administration alleges were smuggling drugs. President Donald Trump and top U.S. officials have alleged the craft were being operated by narco-terrorists and cartel members bound...

California voters approved new congressional district boundaries Tuesday, delivering a victory for Democrats in the state-by-state redistricting battle that will help determine which party wins control of the U.S. House in 2026 and, with it, the power to thwart or advance President Donald Trump’s agenda. The approval of Proposition 50 gives Democrats a shot at winning as many as five additional seats, just enough to blunt Texas Republicans’ move to redraw their own maps to pick up five GOP seats at Trump’s urging. Texas’ move and California’s response have kicked off a flurry of redistricting efforts around the country, with...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney may have been a legendary figure within the Republican Party, but for President Donald Trump, he was part of a long list of people he viewed as political opponents. While White House flags were lowered to half-staff in remembrance of Cheney on Tuesday, there was no fanfare, and Trump made no comment about Cheney’s death on social media. His press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not mention his passing in a press briefing until she was asked by a reporter — and then made only perfunctory comments

WASHINGTON (AP) — Protesting the direction of the country under President Donald Trump, people gathered Saturday in the nation’s capital and communities across the U.S. for “ No Kings ” demonstrations that the president’s Republican Party disparaged as “Hate America” rallies.With signs such as “Nothing is more patriotic than protesting” or “Resist Fascism,” in many places the events looked more like a street party. There were marching bands, a huge banner with the U.S. Constitution’s “We The People” preamble that people could sign, and protesters wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance in Portland,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is asking nine major universities to commit to President Donald Trump’s political priorities in exchange for more favorable access to federal money.Universities were asked to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” committing them to adopt the White House’s vision for America’s campuses. It asks the schools to accept the government’s priorities on admissions, women’s sports, free speech, student discipline and college affordability, among other topics.Signing on would give universities priority access to some federal grants, but government money would not be limited solely to those schools, according to a White House...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — President Donald Trump broke from his prepared remarks at the United Nations on Tuesday to bemoan an inoperable escalator and a defective teleprompter, using the incidents to portray the global body as dysfunctional.... Stephane Dujarric, the U.N. spokesman, said a videographer from the U.S. delegation who ran ahead of him triggered the stop mechanism at the top of the escalator.... In recent months, U.N. offices in New York and Geneva have intermittently turned off elevators and escalators as part of steps to save money because of a “liquidity crisis” at the world body. That’s due in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider expanding President Donald Trump’s power to shape independent agencies by overturning a nearly century-old decision limiting when presidents can fire board members. In a 6-3 decision, the high court also allowed the Republican president to carry out the firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, while the case plays out. It’s the latest high-profile firing the court has allowed in recent months, signaling the conservative majority could be poised to overturn or narrow a 1935 Supreme Court decision that found commissioners can only be...

Ken Martin, Democratic National Committee chairman “The state under Donald Trump has amassed a chilling record of restricting speech, extorting private companies, and dropping the full weight of the government censorship hammer on First Amendment rights. This is no exaggeration. Trump’s attorney general has directly confirmed that they’ll come after you for your speech, and now his FCC chair has doubled down. It’s not the bully pulpit anymore — it’s the thought police presidency.” Wanda Sykes, comedian “I was supposed to go over and have a chat with my friend Jimmy Kimmel on his show, but as you have heard...

The Masjid Omar Mosque was probed by a program that drew criticism from civil liberties advocates and was the subject of two federal lawsuits. The Paterson mosque that some neighbors said the suspect in Tuesday's deadly terror attack in New York City attended was among several in New Jersey that the New York Police Department targeted as part of a broad surveillance program that was intended to identify "budding terrorist conspiracies." The Masjid Omar Mosque is on Getty Avenue, around the corner from the apartment where the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, lived with his family. Wednesday morning, the mosque was within...

Venezuela’s opposition candidate trounced President Nicolás Maduro in last week’s election, according to election tallies that show the opposition’s Edmundo González received more than double the votes of Maduro. A Washington Post review, published Sunday, analyzed more than 23,000 precinct-level tally sheets collected by the opposition. It found Maduro received about 30 percent of the vote (3,131,103 votes) compared to 67 percent for González (6,901,845 votes), further fueling doubts over Maduro’s declared victory in the race. The tally sheets analyzed by the Post represented 79 percent of the voting tables from the July 28 election. The outlet noted that even...

WASHINGTON — A watchdog investigation into former special counsel Jack Smith over his prosecutions of President Trump is based on an “imaginary and unfounded” premise, Smith’s lawyers wrote in a letter obtained by the Associated Press on Tuesday. The letter marks the first response by Smith and his legal team to news that the Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog office, had launched an investigation into whether Smith engaged in improper political activity through his criminal inquiries into Trump. The attorneys told Jamieson Greer, the acting head of the office, that his investigation into Smith was “wholly without merit.”...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s announcement this week that it would rescind the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials was hardly an isolated act.In ordering the revocation of the clearances, President Donald Trump was turning to a favored retributive tactic that he’s wielded — or at least tried to — against high-profile political figures, lawyers and intelligence officials.The latest targets include officials who have served in the government across a range of agencies and positions, including on former President Joe Biden’s national security team and at the CIA and National Security Agency. It’s not entirely...