Free Republic

It’s not often that Europe speaks with one voice – or responds with such urgency.But US President Donald Trump’s announcement Saturday of sanctions against several European countries that reject any US claim to Greenland, a Danish territory, was one of those moments.EU ambassadors are holding an emergency meeting in Brussels on Sunday in response to Trump’s threat, which he made after an estimated quarter of the population of Greenland’s capital Nuuk joined protests against any potential annexation.Across the continent, among allies that usually tread carefully in responding to utterances from the White House, the response was immediate and emphatic, and...

The Democratic Party has a deeply motivated base and a clear advantage on the generic congressional ballot ahead of this fall’s midterms despite dismal impressions of its current leaders in Congress, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. Democratic registered voters are far more motivated right now than Republicans. While the party has a 5-point edge on the generic ballot, among those who say they’re deeply motivated to vote, that advantage expands to a massive 16 points. Democrats enter this year with a chance to capitalize on public dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled government in...

More than half of Americans in a survey released Friday rated President Trump’s first year back in office as a “failure.” The CNN/SSRS survey found that 58 percent of U.S. adults said 2025 was a failure for the president on a number of issues. Another 42 percent said the year was a “success,” and about 1 percent had no opinion. Overall, 61 percent of respondents said they disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job. Of that number, 35 percent cited personal behavior — including putting self-interests above the nation, bullying and being disrespectful, erratic behavior, allegations of racism,...

Several NATO countries are deploying small numbers of military personnel to Greenland to participate in joint exercises with Denmark as US President Donald Trump ramps up his threats to forcibly annex the Arctic island. Denmark, which is responsible for Greenland’s defense, has warned an attack on Greenland would all but end NATO, and announced on Wednesday that it was expanding its military presence “in close cooperation with NATO allies.” Germany, Sweden, France and Norway have all since confirmed they are sending military personnel to Greenland this week for a joint exercise with Danish troops. Canada and France have also said...

Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s comments that Greenland should be a U.S. territory were “unacceptable.” Host Jake Tapper said, “So do you want Stephen Miller to lose his job?’ Tillis said, “Either Stephen Miller needs to get into a lane where he knows what he’s talking about or get out of his job. The reason why I thought it was important for me to make a comment on the floor is I’ve been the Republican leader of the Senate NATO observer Group since 2018. There is no...

The 28-point plan hammered out by US and Russian envoys and put to Ukraine this week came with a deadline and an implicit threat: Sign up or face the risk of being abandoned. US President Donald Trump said Friday that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky would “have to like” the US plan, suggesting he is in no mood to negotiate. Since then, Trump has sent mixed messages, saying the plan was not his final offer but adding that if Zelensky did not accept it he could “continue to fight his little heart out.” Zelensky recognized the stark choice in a somber...

The US State Department will focus on “natural rights” like freedom of speech in its next human rights report, a senior State Department official said Thursday, as the Trump administration targets traditional European allies for alleged freedom of speech restrictions. The move further institutionalizes changes seen in the latest report released in August, which covered the 2024 calendar year. That report alleged “significant human rights issues” in allied countries including the United Kingdom, France and Germany over “serious restrictions on freedom of expression.” The State Department instructed all embassies and consulates in a diplomatic cable Thursday to begin preparing the...

Top Trump administration officials met Wednesday with a key GOP lawmaker about an effort in the US House to force a vote on releasing Justice Department case files related to Jeffrey Epstein... White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged the meeting later Wednesday when asked about reporting that administration officials were huddling with GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert. “Doesn’t that show the level of transparency when we are willing to sit down with members of Congress and address their concerns?” she told reporters at the press briefing. Leavitt added: “I’m not going to detail conversations that took place in the Situation...

Conservative podcast host Ben Shapiro argues Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a serious contender in the race for the White House, following Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City mayoral race.

The Trump administration excels at sowing uncertainty. But it is sending an unambiguous message to crypto entrepreneurs who may be operating on the fringes of the law, or outside of it: Don’t worry about a thing. ICYMI: President Donald Trump on Thursday issued yet another reprieve for a crypto mogul who happens to have greatly enriched the Trump family’s net worth. Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former CEO of crypto exchange Binance, served a four-month prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2023 to charges related to anti-money-laundering violations. Zhao, widely known as “CZ,” was released in September 2024. After months...

Washington — American farmers are having a tough year, in no small part because of President Donald Trump’s trade war. Now, the White House is gearing up to extend them a multi-billion-dollar bailout, sources tell CNN. Surging costs and foreign retaliation from tariffs have hurt the US agriculture industry — as have immigration-related labor shortages and plummeting commodity prices. Farm production expenses are estimated to reach $467.4 billion in 2025, according to the Agriculture Department, up $12 billion from last year. Farm bankruptcies rose in the first half of the year to the highest level since 2021, according to US...

Microsoft has terminated a set of services for the Israeli military after an investigation suggested Israel was using the company’s cloud computing technology for mass surveillance of Palestinians. In a statement posted the company’s blog, Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company had “ceased and disabled a set of services to a unit within the Israel Ministry of Defense.” The move comes after an investigation by The Guardian and Israel’s +972 Magazine in early-August reported that Israel’s military intelligence unit, known as 8200, relied on Microsoft Azure to store millions of phone calls made by Palestinians in Gaza and...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN International’s “The Brief,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard responded to arguments that Hamas could simply end the war right now if it surrendered and released hostages by saying that “Hamas must release all hostages. They must do that. Humanity must win. But this will not happen as long as the Israeli government keeps playing games on the back of its own Israeli citizens.” …

Angelina Jolie spoke up about the free speech debate going on in the United States. The Oscar-winning actress was asked at a film festival in Spain over the weekend, “What do you fear as an artist and an American?” “It is a very difficult question,” Jolie responded, according The Guardian, “I love my country, but at this time, I don’t recognize my country,” Jolie said. “I’ve always lived internationally, my family is international, my friends, my life.” She went on to say, “My worldview is equal, united and international. Anything anywhere that divides or limits personal expressions and freedoms from...

George Soros has been the go-to bogeyman for the American right — and right-wing leaders around the world — for years. The 95-year-old billionaire has funneled money into causes around the globe, supporting democratic endeavors, immigration efforts and criminal justice reform through his Open Society Foundations, which he founded in 1979. In the intervening decades, Soros, with his large network of progressive causes and opposition to strong-arm governments, has become the target of conspiracy theories in areas that range from Malaysia to his birth country of Hungary, where a so-called “Stop Soros” law made it illegal to aid undocumented immigrants...

Dozens of social media posts and messages about the murder of Charlie Kirk, including some that celebrated his death, are being spotlighted by conservative activists, Republican elected officials and a doxxing website as part of an online campaign to punish the posters behind the messages. Prominent far-right influencer Laura Loomer, a US senator, and a site called “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” have all drawn attention to people who have posted messages about Kirk’s Wednesday assassination. The campaigns show how social media posts or personal messages — even by accounts with few followers or from people who are not public figures —...

Vladimir Putin started it. Joe Biden didn’t stop it. But, no matter his efforts to the contrary, this is the week in which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine becomes US President Donald Trump’s war. The most powerful office in the world doesn’t always invite choices. Trump is mandated to address the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II because the United States was involved, under his predecessor, as Ukraine’s key ally and sponsor. Trump could have dropped the war entirely. But instead, he chose to impose the force of his personality, initially through the idea he could end it in...

Donald Trump told a private gathering of donors last year that he once sought to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine by threatening to “bomb the sh*t out of Moscow” in retaliation, according to audio provided to CNN. “With Putin I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb the sh*t out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice,’” Trump said during one 2024 fundraiser, according to the audio. “And then [Putin] goes, like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But he believed me 10%.” The remarks, which came as Trump made his case for a...

SNIPA new universe of deportable peopleWOLF: You have this exclusive report about a large universe of new people the Trump administration might be trying to deport. What did you find out?ALVAREZ: The plans that the administration has been working on are targeting people who came into the US unlawfully and then applied for asylum while in the country.The plan here is to dismiss those asylum claims, which could affect potentially hundreds of thousands of people and then make them immediately deportable.It also puts the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency responsible for managing federal immigration benefits, at the...

Monday on CNN’s “Inside Politics,” host Dana Bash said President Donald Trump was acting as the “arsonist” by sending the National Guard to Los Angeles. Reporter Manu Raju said, “Just to get the point of how much Donald Trump wants this fight, I mean, he’s been posting and talking about it pretty much nonstop over the weekend, including just moments ago saying if we had not done this, send the National Guard in Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated. Now, I’m not quite sure if that’s exactly the case of what people are saying on the ground here. But...