Free Republic

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented tariffs, particularly on China, and recent attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell caused alarm among some of his top advisers and America’s biggest CEOs, who warned of financial chaos and store shelves that could go bare, people familiar with the conversations said. The warnings — and the markets’ own volatility this week — seemed to have broken through. Trump backed down Tuesday from his threats to try to remove Powell from the job, telling reporters in the Oval Office: “I have no intention of firing him.” That prompted sighs of relief on Wall Street. A...

Scott Jennings GOES OFF on CNN panel after they blame the RIGHT-WING for a lack of trust in media and call new media "freaks." JENNINGS: "What the right wing is taking advantage of is finally the American people saying enough is enough. They're tired of feeling like the mass media screens out one viewpoint versus another in political coverage. They're tired of media institutions favoring one party over another. They're tired of narratives over factual stories. If I had any advice for 60 Minutes or anybody else, it would be: just cover the news and try to be fair about...

WASHINGTON — Many Republican lawmakers lie low when they have differences with President Trump. Sen. Rand Paul has taken the opposite approach. “Congress needs to grow a spine, and Congress needs to stand up for its prerogatives,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters, complaining that Trump relied on a national-emergency law to impose tariffs that Paul believes should be controlled by lawmakers. His comments came just days after he was one of only two GOP senators to vote against the party’s budget framework that is key to Trump’s tax cuts, saying it didn’t do enough to reduce the deficit. The libertarian...

A Congressional delegation traveled to Louisiana on Tuesday to demand the release of Rümeysa Öztürk, a PhD student at Tufts University, and Mahmoud Khalil, a 2024 Columbia University graduate, and to examine conditions at their separate detention facilities. It’s the first time a delegation has visited with either detainee. The visit was first reported by CNN. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) shared on X that he was heading to Louisiana to demand the release of Ozturk, one of his constituents. Markey was joined by fellow Democrats, Reps. Troy Carter (La.), Bennie Thompson (Miss.), Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern (Mass.). Ozturk’s arrest...

Far-left Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., broke his silence on Tuesday after an unearthed social media post of rap lyrics set off a firestorm of controversy. Frost, who recently made headlines for flying to El Salvador to visit deported illegal immigrant and alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was heavily criticized on social media after a seemingly cryptic tweet from 2016 resurfaced reading "f----- wit my gang gon get u spilled." The post was in response to tweets including one by an account named "Hits LeBlunt." The line is from the song "Gang" by rapper "Max P." The post generated...

The first RICO racketeering charges against members and associates of the migrant terrorist group Tren de Aragua were filed this week in New York. A statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said that the case is part of "Operation Take Back America," which it said is a "nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Justice Department to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime." According to the statement, the charges filed...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is accusing the Democratic Party of not yet performing a thorough autopsy on what went wrong in its devastating loss of the White House and Senate majority in November. In an exclusive sit-down interview with The Hill on Monday, Newsom said that if the party wants to find its way back from the wilderness, it has to be willing to look inward at what led to the losses — and the failure to win back the House majority. “We have not done a forensic of what just went wrong, period, full stop,” Newsom said. “I don’t...

“Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary suggested Monday that President Trump will not oust Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whom the president has heavily criticized in recent days after the central bank decided to hold interest rates steady last month. “You don’t want to whack the Fed. That’s a really bad idea,” O’Leary said on NewsNation’s “The Hill” in an interview Monday night. “You want the Fed and the executive to be working together. You know, that’s the markets want an independent fed.” “The whole world wants an independent Fed. The Fed maintains the debt market too,” he continued. “You gotta...

SAN FRANCISCO — Former Vice President Al Gore on Monday compared President Donald Trump’s administration to Nazi Germany and issued a dire warning about Trump’s use of power in a speech devoted to climate change. Speaking at an event at the start of San Francisco’s Climate Week, Gore said the Trump administration was “trying to create their own preferred version of reality” to achieve their sweeping objectives similar to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in the 1930s and ‘40s. “I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement,” Gore said to an...

A Texas politician was stabbed and her husband was killed after their grandson allegedly attacked them at their Lewisville home early Monday morning. Republican Denton County Commissioner Bobbie Mitchell, 76, and her husband were stabbed early Monday morning by their grandson, according to police. Fred Mitchell, Bobbie Mitchell's husband, was pronounced dead just after 5 a.m. Bobbie Mitchell was taken to a local hospital and is expected to survive her injuries. The Lewisville Police Department said on Facebook that the double stabbing happened on Monday at 3:53 a.m. Mitchell Blake Reinacher, the couple's 23-year-old grandson, was arrested at the house...

The UK Supreme Court's landmark ruling limiting the definition of a woman to biological sex stirred outrage among the stars of BBC’s "RuPaul’s Drag Race UK," who pledged to "fight back" against the decision they say will "marginalize" the transgender community. "The fight back starts today," season one runner-up Divina De Campo wrote in an X post last Wednesday, adding, "We will not go back into the shadows to make you comfortable. F--- all the way off." LGBTQ+ news outlet PinkNews reported on season two finalist Tayce's rage expressed through Instagram with posts calling the UK Supreme Court a "POS...

The Department of Education is poised to resume collections on defaulted federal student loans in May for the first time since 2020. While the first Trump administration paused referring federal student loans to collections in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the extended lapse has prompted Trump administration officials to worry that the federal student loan portfolio is "headed toward a fiscal cliff if we don't start repayment in collections," according to a senior department official. "The result has been that the federal government student loan portfolio has continued to grow, and we've got a record number...

@PeterSchiff Gold is not just any commodity, it's money. Under normal circumstances gold does not move the way it is now. It's already up another $58 tonight, trading above $3,483. This is the end of the U.S. dollar's dominance. Life in America is about to change in ways few can imagine.

Yuppies of the world, unite! New York Times columnist David Brooks, calling for a “mass civic uprising” against Donald Trump: "We live in a country with catastrophically low levels of institutional trust. University presidents, big law firms, media organizations and corporate executives face a wall of skepticism and cynicism. If they are going to participate in a mass civic uprising against Trump, they have to show the rest of the country that they understand the establishment sins that gave rise to Trump in the first place… [that] this is not just defending the establishment; it’s moving somewhere new." You don’t...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) suggested Monday that the US government may have played a role in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks during an interview with MAGA influencer Benny Johnson on The Benny Show. The senator, who sits on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, questioned the official explanation for the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 and echoed claims frequently raised by conspiracy theorists on the fringes of the internet. “Within these agencies, a lot of them are going to cover their tracks and cover things up and destroy a lot of evidence,” the senator said. “It’s gonna...

When Melissa G. Moore came home one afternoon in the spring of 1995, her mother Rose Hucke took her and her two younger siblings aside. The Shadle Park High School senior immediately knew something was very wrong: her parents never held family meetings. In the unfinished basement of Moore’s grandmother’s Spokane, Wash., home where the family lived at the time, Rose shared that the children’s father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, was in prison for murder. The news rocked Moore to the core. “I had a cot and a cellar area that I designated as my bedroom. I just remember going in...

Long Island Rep. Laura Gillen is urging the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to hold an emergency hearing on the nationwide “surge” in deadly traffic accidents — after an unsettling investigation revealed that a serious car crash occurs every seven minutes on Long Island. “The failure to secure our roads has led to thousands of lives being cut short, families being ripped apart, and a terrible void being left in too many communities,” Gillen wrote in her letter compelling the committee to take action. The Democratic lawmaker’s campaign comes after an investigation by Newsday revealed that Long Island drivers get...

HEGSETH ON DEFENSE: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is braced for further accusations of turmoil and dysfunction in his department today after a barrage of Easter weekend revelations sparked fresh calls for him to be fired. POLITICO last night published a damning op-ed by newly-departed Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot — who had served Donald Trump in various senior roles since 2016 — describing “total chaos” and “disarray” at the DOD under Hegseth’s leadership, and suggesting Hegseth’s departure is all but inevitable. That came less than two hours after the NYT revealed Hegseth had shared top secret battle plans for an imminent...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) met with Gov. Brian Kemp last Monday as the GOP lobbies the Georgia Republican to run for Senate in 2026. Why it matters: Georgia is a top pickup opportunity for Senate Republicans, and the popular Kemp is seen as the party's strongest potential candidate. Thune was joined at Monday's lunch in Atlanta by NRSC Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.), according to two people familiar with the meeting. Kemp's wife, Marty, also attended. The intrigue: Kemp has a complicated relationship with President Trump, who attacked the governor for not overturning his 2020 election defeat in Georgia.

Americans are scrambling to obtain a state-issued REAL ID in order to travel by plane ahead of a federal deadline next month, which comes after states from coast to coast changed their laws surrounding driver's licenses to permit illegal immigrants to drive. Americans will need to obtain a REAL ID, which is a federally-compliant driver's license or other identification that meets higher standards than state-issued licenses, in order to easily travel by air, the Department of Homeland Security explains on its website. Only legal U.S. citizens or residents can obtain the identification card, while valid U.S. passports can also still...