Free Republic

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States was getting very close to securing a nuclear deal with Iran, and Tehran had “sort of” agreed to the terms. “We’re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace,” Trump said on a tour of the Gulf, according to a shared pool report by AFP. “We’re getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this… there (are) two steps to doing this, there is a very, very nice step and there is the violent step, but I don’t want to do it the second way,” he...

The century-old retailer is set to shutter additional locations by May 25, marking another blow to traditional shopping malls. As JCPenney battles changing consumer habits, many wonder if this iconic chain can survive the challenges still on the horizon. For over a hundred years, JCPenney has served as a go-to destination for clothes, home décor, and memorable holiday gifts. Founded in 1902, it became a staple in malls across the United States. However, the past decade saw shifting shopper preferences and tough economic conditions, and the pandemic further accelerated the move to online retail.

San Diego County’s system of migrant shelters is shutting down, thanks to President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration at the border, which has halted the flow of migrants from around the world via Central America. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Sunday: [T]he county’s two major migrant sheltering agencies gave notice that they will be laying off employees by the end of next month. Catholic Charities in San Diego will let go of 73 employees at its two shelters, one in San Diego County and the other in Imperial County. Jewish Family Service will do the same with about 115...

New York City was the world’s epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, but five years and 46,000 deaths later a memorial to the victims and their caregivers is nowhere close to being realized. A City Council bill to study building a memorial on Hart Island — the Potter’s Field where thousands were buried during the peak of the pandemic – remains stalled a year after being introduced, and state legislation to fund memorials going up throughout the Empire State sits dormant in Senate and Assembly committees.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is set to close dozens of offices across the U.S. this year as part of the advisory Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) efforts to shrink the size of the federal government and cut waste. The closures, which will span 18 states, have raised concerns over their possible impact on the agency's efficiency and the delivery of benefits that millions of Americans receive every month. Why It Matters According to the SSA, more than 72.5 million of Americans receive Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, including some of the most vulnerable individuals in U.S....

Former national security adviser John Bolton called President Trump’s positioning on ending the war in Ukraine “pretty close to surrender” in an interview released Thursday. “I think Trump’s remarks and that of [Secretary of Defense] Pete Hegseth and others come pretty close to surrender,” he told Politico. “It’s a position that’s similar to what [Vice President] JD Vance announced during the campaign about Ukraine: There’d be a ceasefire in place, a militarized zone would be created, negotiations would begin, Ukraine would agree not to join NATO.” Trump and Hegseth made waves last week with comments that broke starkly with U.S....

New York officials are taking precautions against the avian flu after seven cases were detected at live bird markets in New York City. The markets were ordered on Friday to shut down for about one week to combat the illness, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Friday. “The order came after seven cases of bird flu were found in poultry during routine inspections of live bird markets in the New York City boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens,” the outlet said, noting that officials said there have been no cases of the avian flu among New Yorkers. In an...

Many businesses across America will be closed Monday for “A Day Without Immigrants” to protest President Donald Trump’s deportation policies. Workers in those businesses who are participating will stay at home, CBS News reported Sunday, noting some workplaces in Minnesota were shutting down for the allotted time. “The movement highlights immigrant workers’ contributions and their everyday impact on businesses, from restaurants to retail shops,” the outlet said. Several restaurants in Washington, DC, will also reportedly be closed for the day, and NBC Washington said the demonstration also urges immigrants to stay home from school. In addition, several Chicago businesses are...

Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) detractors are falling in line after President-elect Donald Trump put his thumb on the scale. Johnson ended the 118th Congress by bungling through a government funding battle – angering conservatives, moderates, and even Trump himself – and his chances at retaining the gavel into the next Congress appeared dire. Trump, with a single Truth Social post, appears to have saved Johnson. The once and future president left Johnson twisting in the wind for over a week after Johnson failed to deliver Trump’s ask of raising the debt ceiling through a government funding bill. With no word...

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen fired another ballistic missile at Israel late Monday night, reminding Israelis that there is still unfinished business in the war that Hamas launched with the October 7, 2023, terror attack. The missile was intercepted outside Israeli airspace, but the fragments continued on their trajectory, falling on the central Israeli town of Ramat Beit Shemesh. Sirens were heard throughout central Israel in the late evening hours. The Times of Israel reported: Air defenses intercepted a ballistic missile launched at Israel from Yemen that triggered sirens across central Israel late Monday night, the military said, in...

It’s no big secret that the cost of attending a four-year college or university in the United States is out of control. It’s almost gravity defying how the cost of college has increased relative to regular inflation over the past twenty years. In fact, more than 500 nonprofit private colleges have shut down in the last decade according to the Wall Street Journal, which was "three times what it was in the decade prior." The news is about to get worse, and there is a stern warning announcement coming from the pilot in the cockpit. 2025 is going to have...

The Safeway supermarket chain has announced that it will close down one of its key locations in San Francisco in February due to concerns that customers and employees were at risk from rampant theft and threats to their safety. The closure, which had been put off for 11 months, will affect the Safeway store on Webster Street in the Fillmore section of San Francisco, which had been operating for the last 40 years. The company said that the store will close for good on Feb. 7, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Advertisement

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum pushed back on President-elect Trump’s claim suggesting Mexico agreed to close its border with the U.S. “effectively immediately.” “In our conversation with President Trump, I explained to him the comprehensive strategy that Mexico has followed to address the migration phenomenon, respecting human rights,” Sheinbaum wrote Wednesday evening in a post on social platform X, according to translation from CNN. “Thanks to this, migrants and caravans are assisted before they arrive at the border,” she added. “We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples.”

Polling guru Nate Silver lashed out at other survey junkies in his field for “cheating” in the final stretch of the 2024 presidential election — accusing them of recycling some results to keep the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris close. The FiveThirtyEight founder said irresponsible pollsters were “herding” their numbers, or using past results to affect current ones, to keep Vice President Harris and former President Trump to within a point or two of each other each time. “I kind of trust pollsters less,” Silver said on his podcast, name-checking Emerson College. “They all, every time a pollster...

The presidential election might be slipping away from Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats indicated Wednesday. With preliminary early voting trends on Tuesday suggesting that Republicans are outperforming Democrats in key swing states, the Harris campaign will likely hit the panic button in the coming days with ramped-up rhetoric meant to drive turnout. Both Harris and Barack Obama claimed Tuesday that former President Donald Trump is unhinged and incompetent “with no guardrails.” “Everyone keeps saying, ‘It’s close.’ Yes, it’s close, but are things trending our way? No. And no one wants to openly admit that,” a Democrat strategist told the Hill’s...

Suffs, the feminist Broadway musical that counts Hillary Clinton as one of its main producers, is officially a box-office bomb, with the show announcing a closing date after reportedly failing to turn a profit after nearly six months. The musical — a nearly three-hour celebration of the suffragette movement, featuring a cast comprised entirely of women and gender “non-binary” performers — cost $19 million to produce, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing reviewed by the New York Times. That money has not been recouped, with ticket revenue failing to cover the weekly cost of operations.

Kamala Harris has deployed a gaggle of Hollywood celebrities — whose estimated personal net worths exceed $200 million — to campaign for her in Arizona as former President Donald Trump’s lead in the Grand Canyon state continues to grow, with one recent poll showing him leading 48 percent to 42 percent in the crucial swing state.Actresses including Kerry Washington, Jessica Alba, and Fatal Attraction’s Glenn Close lent their star power to a Kamala Harris campaign event in Phoenix. on Sunday, while Jennifer Garner put in a separate appearance on Saturday, according to a report from the Arizona Republic.***The celebrities didn’t...

Vice President Kamala Harris declined to say Sunday whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a reliable ally, in a clip released by CBS News’ 60 Minutes. Harris was presented with a series of controversial (but effective) wartime decisions made by Netanyahu against the express public demands of the Biden administration, then asked whether the U.S. still has any “sway” over Netanyahu. Harris was not clear in her reply, calling diplomatic relations with Israel an “ongoing pursuit.”

Glenn Close made good money and earned an Oscar nomination for playing JD Vance’s mamaw in the Hollywood movie adaptation of his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Now she is trashing Vance over his cat comment from years ago — making her the latest celebrity to obsess over the remark in an apparent attempt to distract voters from Kamala Harris’ disastrous record on the economy and illegal immigration. Under the Kamala economy, consumer prices have skyrocketed to unprecedented levels, forcing tens of millions of Americans — like the kind Close played in Hillbilly Elegy — to struggle to pay for essential...

(NEXSTAR) — Roughly 300 additional Big Lots stores are set to be closed as speculation that the company could file for bankruptcy looms. In early July, Big Lots warned in a U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that between 35 and 40 locations could shutter this year. In a new SEC filing, submitted on July 31, Big Lots said the total number of closures could reach 315, much higher than the originally agreed number of 150. Company leaders have pointed to inflation and difficulties in competing, saying they had “a substantial doubt” in their ability to continue. Between the...