Free Republic

President Donald Trump's approval rating has dropped to 40 percent, lower than all other presidents at this point in their terms, new polling released by Pew Research Center on Wednesday shows. Americans want Trump to govern less by executive order, listen to the courts, and don't like tariffs. Trump is losing ground with people on the fence. From February to April, his approval rating fell from 88 percent to 75 percent among people who supported him in the 2024 election but "not strongly," and from 44 percent to 31 percent among nonvoters. Of course, partisans will be partisans, and Trump...

In an unprecedented move, the Justice Department has announced the indictment of a leader of the violent Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang, who will face terrorism and international drug distribution charges. This is the first time the DOJ has brought terrorism charges against a member of the newly designated foreign terrorist organization. FBI Director Kash Patel called the first-of-its-kind terrorism indictment ‘a critical step in dismantling their network and holding its members accountable.’ Enrique Martinez Flores, 24, a reportedly high-ranking member of TdA who goes by the name ‘Chiqui.’ He is charged with conspiring to provide, and providing, material support...

A disturbing surge of swatting attacks has struck media personalities, conservative influencers, and me too. The FBI is investigating. FBI Director Kash Patel has said, “This isn’t about politics—weaponizing law enforcement against ANY American is not only morally reprehensible but also endangers lives, including those of our officers. That will not be tolerated.” “Swatting” is the crime of making calls to report fake emergencies in order to provoke armed police responses. The calls often claim a shooting, hostage situation, or bomb threat—to dispatch heavily armed police, typically SWAT teams, to a victim’s address. As federal and local authorities scramble to...

During a swearing-in ceremony for Paul Atkins as the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, President Donald Trump was asked point-blank about the long-awaited release of documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein. A reporter asked, “When can we expect the Epstein documents to be released?” Trump replied, “Which documents?” “The Epstein files,” the reporter clarified. President Trump responded calmly but pointedly: “I don’t know. I’ll speak to the attorney general about that. I really don’t know.”

“If the guys around Hegseth, if there’s indictments or investigations going on and there’s no indictments—there’s no release of the Epstein files and there’s no investigation of Brennan and the 51,” “And you’re not spending your time on that and it somehow gets diverted over to this, it is going to be a FIRESTORM from the MAGA base.” “I think people are fed up with it. I think Tom Fitton gives a lot of the frustration that in the first 100 days we’ve seen nothing out of that crowd. ZERO.” “With all the hard work that went in to get...

Their big news “hook” is that after a solid few rounds of grappling, I injured my shoulder. Because it’s Adam Goldman, you can generally assume he’s wrong, and he is, again. The instructor I was grappling with got the best of me, because he’s incredibly talented. That’s why he’s there. And it was my not an “injury” but a bit of swelling in my right elbow, not shoulder, because I’m 50 years old and I can’t recover like I used to. But I felt it was important to get on the mats any way, because that’s what men do. But...

Charles McGonigal may be the most corrupt FBI official in modern history—and yet somehow, his name has barely made a blip on the radar. This wasn’t some mid-level pencil-pusher. McGonigal was one of the top counterintelligence agents at the FBI’s New York field office. He was directly involved in the bureau’s most sensitive operations, including the infamous “Crossfire Hurricane” probe into (phony) Trump–Russia “collusion.” And after that whole fraudulent mess, it turns out that he was secretly taking money from a Kremlin-linked oligarch and helping shake down Albanian oligarchs on the side. You can’t make this up, right? Now here...

brand new Russian nuclear submarine during visit an Arctic naval base yesterday. Speaking to submariners, Putin smugly declared: 'Not long ago I said we'd grind [Ukraine] down — now it looks like we'll finish them off. He also mocked the state of the British economy and armed forces after Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron revealed yesterday they would deploy an Anglo-French 'reassurance force' to Ukraine following a ceasefire deal. '[Britain] is jumping on us, behaving aggressively... but their economy is, I think, in the ninth or tenth place in the world,' the Russian President smirked. 'Hence the...

Far-right podcaster Dan Bongino will be the FBI's new deputy director, Donald Trump announced yesterday via The Washington Post. This is the same former Secret Service agent who says that power "is the only thing that matters," checks and balances be damned. And the same Kash Patel-pick who says liberals are "not ready for what comes next."

Some need to win a coin flip to use a desk. Others say they’re killing time when workstations aren’t available.As the Federal Emergency Management Agency prepared for its full workforce to report in person this month, it faced a situation many agencies are confronting as they scramble to comply with President Donald Trump’s return-to-office mandate: There weren’t enough workspaces for everyone.As a result, employees would have to “share workstations on a rotating basis,” the agency announced in guidance shared with employees last week. The guidance, obtained by The Washington Post, stated: “Supervisors will resolve workplace availability conflicts using the following...

WASHINGTON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's overhaul of U.S. foreign assistance has led to chaos in the aid and development field, leaving hundreds of contractors in a severe financial crunch with some already having to lay off staff and others facing millions of dollars in unpaid invoices. Hours after coming into office on Jan. 20, Trump ordered a sweeping review of almost all U.S. foreign aid and tasked billionaire Elon Musk, who has falsely accused USAID of being a "criminal" organization, with scaling down the agency. Since then, dozens of USAID staff has been put on leave, hundreds...

Mouaz Moustafa says Gabbard’s response to Assad’s atrocities is a worrisome sign of how she’d serve as director of national intelligence.As executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a nonprofit established to respond to attacks on civilians by former dictator Bashar al-Assad, Mouaz Moustafa has shared crucial information with the U.S. government about the war in Syria. But he isn’t sure he’d continue doing so if Tulsi Gabbard is confirmed as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence. And it wouldn’t surprise him if U.S. allies around the world followed suit.“If Tulsi Gabbard is running our intelligence services, France, UK,...

Steve Bannon unloaded on Elon Musk, calling him a “truly evil guy” who must be run out of the MAGA movement. Musk spent more than a quarter of a million dollars to help return President-elect Donald Trump to the White House. The billionaire Tesla CEO and owner of X has been a fixture at Mar-a-Lago ever since, with some reports indicating Musk’s near-constant presence is wearing on Trump. “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser, told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Wednesday....

Eh, this could get messy. Apparently, Steve Bannon was talking to media in Italy and said some rather confrontational things about Elon Musk. (CP) “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera this week. “He will not have a blue pass to the White House, he will not have full access to the White House, he will be like any other person.” “He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon added. “Before, because he...

France’s top diplomat fires a warning shot across the bows of Donald Trump, warning Europe considers Greenland part of its “sovereign borders” and should be left alone. European leaders are reacting with alarm as past and future President Donald Trump talks up the importance of the United States acquiring Greenland, the world’s largest island and a strategically valuable if underdeveloped Arctic territory in the North Atlantic. As Trump’s son flew into Greenland on the Trump jet this week the French foreign minister has appeared to tacitly put the notion of the United States buying territory off an ally on a...

...The program is capped at 65,000 news visas each year, although an additional 20,000 can be issued...

Tesla has replaced some of its US employees who were let go as part of a big wave of layoffs earlier this year with foreign workers using H-1B visas, which CEO Elon Musk is now campaigning to increase. Over the last week, Elon Musk has been promoting the increase of H-1B visas, which are used to bring foreign workers into the US for “specialty occupations.”

Effective December 26, Elon Musk changed the Twitter algorithm to diminish those voices who would openly confront his network of supporters within Silicon Valley and beyond. If large follower Twitter accounts, like those of Musk himself, David Sacks, Vivek Ramaswamy and Musks’ promoted network of influencers begin blocking accounts on the platform, then the voices of those accounts get purposefully diminished by the algorithm.Much like having a VIP section that can remove people from the audience, Musk is pushing opposing viewpoints into the background of the public square.[SOURCE]The timing of this is not accidental. The allies of Musk have been...

In Trump ‘45, the President had a showdown with the Tennessee Valley Authority over 200 American jobs that TVA had switched to H1Bs.. In the run-up to Christmas, TVA fired these 200 Americans - and had them train their foreign replacements on the way out. They did this despite the fact that TVA is (1) a government agency; (2) founded to improve the material station of poor Americans, and (3) manages critical energy infrastructure for a large swath of the country. My team and I proposed a plan to President Trump to reinstate the terminated American workers. Because the President...

There’s a raging debate on X right now about H1B visas and Vivek Ramaswamy is getting slammed for suggesting American culture is bad and thus can’t product high level talent that top tech companies want.Let’s start back from the beginning:THE HILL – Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, co-chairs of President-elect Trump’s new “Department of Government Efficiency,” are defending the tech industry’s reliance on foreign-born engineers as the incoming Trump administration prepares to crack down on immigration.Musk and Ramaswamy both pointed to a lack of engineers stateside.“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA...