Free Republic

Two teenage girls from Germany were detained, arrested, and deported at an airport in Hawaii after immigration officials said it was suspicious they had not booked a hotel room. Backpackers Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, arrived in Honolulu from Auckland while undergoing a round-the-world trip. The duo planned to spend five weeks in Hawaii before moving onto California and Costa Rica for the next legs of their journey. But despite having ESTA travel authorization, immigration officials accused them of attempting to enter the U.S. to work illegally, and they were placed in handcuffs and taken to a nearby...

A veteran FBI agent who blew the whistle on what he saw as political meddling in the bureau’s work was arrested this week by federal authorities while attempting to board an international flight at New York City’s JFK Airport. Jonathan Buma, who had worked for the bureau for 15 years, stands accused of illegally disclosing classified records in his upcoming tell-all book about his career. He drew scrutiny during Trump’s first term for reportedly saying during a presentation that he believed Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised by a Russian counter-influence operation—concerns that were immediately shut down by his superiors....

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have refashioned the United States into “Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots,” the VP’s cousin alleged in the wake of the Trump administration’s recent abandonment of military and intelligence support for Ukraine. Nate Vance, a Texan who said he volunteered for three years fighting on the front lines against Russia’s Putin-ordered invasion of its neighbor, told Le Figaro in an interview published Sunday that he is “disappointed” in his “good” and “intelligent” cousin over the administration’s sudden and abrasive turn away from supporting America’s war-torn ally. JD Vance was widely seen as the instigator...

<p>Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration considered making a deal that would have lined Melania Trump’s pockets in order to curry favor with the new president, according to a report.</p><p>As part of a desperate scramble to make inroads with Donald Trump, the Ukrainian president’s aides floated brokering the purchase of the Ukrainian language rights to the first lady’s memoir, unnamed Ukrainian officials told The New York Times.</p>

CNN journalists avoided mentioning the most sordid elements of President Donald Trump’s past—including his felony conviction and two impeachments—during inauguration day broadcasts after the network’s top boss told them to show some deference to the most powerful person on earth.That’s according to a report in media news publication Status, authored by the well-sourced erstwhile CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy.During a routine editorial meeting on Sunday, meant to plan the extensive logistics of an inauguration, CNN CEO Mark Thompson told journalists to avoid “pre-judging Trump,” Status reported.In addition to instructing them to keep an open mind about Trump’s second term—three days...

Following in the footsteps of his Canada- and Greenland-coveting pal Donald Trump, MAGA billionaire Elon Musk is asking whether the United States should “liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government."The Tesla CEO posed the question in an early Monday morning tweet, the latest in a multi-day social media bender aimed at the U.K. that has seen him advocate for a jailed right-wing activist, call for the head of a right-wing party leader, and demand that a junior minister of the new Labour government be thrown in prison.Musk has, in recent days, lambasted the British government over its handling...

President-elect Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Friday, vowing to bring justice to his name after years of attacks from the mainstream media. The incoming 47th president announced he is suing several media outlets, including the New York Times, CBS News, Penguin Random House, and the Daily Beast, alleging widespread bias and defamation. Trump’s lawyer, Edward Andrew Paltzik, demands $10 billion in damages for publishing defamatory material. In the lawsuit, Trump accused the mainstream media of “defaming and disparaging” him during coverage of the election and making “false and defamatory statements.” The NYT was at the center of the lawsuit....

Since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, a vocal subset of his supporters have been shouting online about the specter of voter fraud. On Tuesday night, however, as Trump’s 2024 victory came into focus, the noise died down. According to reports by The New York Times and Washington Post, social media accounts associated with election denial decided that, actually, everything was in working order. Thanks to their efforts, of course. “Shoutout to you all for keeping this election from being stolen this year, you are all heroes!“ one member of X’s “Election Integrity Committee” wrote. Speaking to the Times, Cleta...

George Clooney is facing a backlash from demoralized Democrats for demanding that Joe Biden step down from the White House race. The Ocean’s Eleven star urged Biden to quit in July, writing in the New York Times: “We are not going to win in November with this president.” Now embittered Democrats have blasted the 63-year-old actor for interfering in the botched 2024 presidential election campaign as the shattered party seeks explanations for how it all went so wrong. “Thank you George Clooney,” wrote journalist Joshua Hartley on X, with a pinned link to the Times op-ed titled, “George Clooney: I...

Welp. I thought we were past this. I really did. I was wrong. For the last years, my Twitter feed has been filled with MAGA trolls telling me that people like me “are the problem.” I never believed them. At least I didn’t until last night, when my nation confirmed it. Turns out, people like me really are the problem, and I must admit, as Donald Trump begins the process of assuming his second presidency, that I don’t know what to do about it. The thing is, people like me don’t want to believe that half of my countrymen support...

America has voted for a lunatic, boundary-breaking authoritarian–nastier, more ruthless and better organized than before.

The editorial board of The New York Times just eviscerated Donald Trump in a single paragraph. The piece, published on Saturday, was only the Times’ latest attack on the former president during the run-up to the election, but the searing indictment was all the more brutal for its brevity. Rhetorically matter-of-fact, the piece succinctly lays out many of the reasons Trump’s critics think his second term would be disastrous for the country—the implicit point being that nobody really needs a lengthy review of all Trump’s actions; everyone already knows what he’s about. Here it is in full, with its original...

Two of former president Donald Trump’s most prominent backers in the right wing influencer sphere fretted Wednesday after early voting numbers showed massive early turnout among women that could imperil their candidate’s path to victory. “Male turnout in Pennsylvania for Trump has been a disaster,” tweeted Mike Cernovich on Wednesday. “Unless this changes, Kamala Harris takes PA and it’s over.” Cernovich is a longtime far right gadfly and commentator with a massive online following. He’s been around long enough to have played a role in the anti-feminist Gamergate harassment campaign and to have helped spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, though...

Harris is the future. Trump is the past. And on Election Day, American voters will embrace that change. Kamala Harris is going to be the next president of the United States. On January 20, 2025, she will become America’s first woman president, America’s first woman of color to be commander-in-chief and America’s first person of Asian heritage to become the country’s chief executive. Born in late 1964, she will bring the perspective of a new generation to the presidency. Whereas Joe Biden brought the experiences of growing up middle class in the industrial heartland of America, Harris will bring the...

Republicans supporting Kamala Harris say that there's a 'silent majority' of Americans that will give her the edge over Trump. The former lawmakers say that pollsters may have overlooked these Americans as they collect data. Polls show that Trump and Harris are neck-and-neck in nearly every battleground state heading into the last few weeks of the campaign. Former GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock told the Daily Beast: I think there’s a silent majority. I think there’s a silent group of women who will crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump and who will quietly vote for Harris. Comstock is joining...

Blogger Taylor Lorenz has left the Washington Post several weeks after she posted an Instagram story that showed her attending a Joe Biden speech at the White House with the caption “war criminal :(.”Lorenz’s departure is being billed as her opportunity to become an internet “content creator” more than a traditional news reporter. She is starting a Substack called “User Magazine,” where she says she will discuss social media from a user perspective. Lorenz is a 40+-year-old New Yorker who often attempts to ingratiate herself within the culture of much younger, often sub-20-year-olds online. She gained notoriety by doxxing the...

When Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to become the Democratic nominee, Donald Trump confidently claimed she’d be even easier to defeat in November than Biden would have been. In reality, the vice president’s arrival in the race on a tidal wave of support from her colleagues and party donors creates a major headache for the Republican’s campaign, which, until Sunday, had been enjoying mutinous disarray among its Democratic opponents. Beyoncé Gives Her Approval for Kamala to Use ‘Freedom’ as Campaign Anthem Now, with Harris already claiming to have enough support to become her party’s nominee, reports suggest the Trump campaign...

Idon’t care what you think of his politics—former President Donald Trump just struck one of the most iconic poses in U.S. history. His fist-raised salute of defiance is surely enough to win him re-election to the White House. Especially if the American people have to choose between a doddering incumbent and the man who got to his feet seconds after an assassination attempt and punched the air with blood trickling down his face.

Barron Trump looked born for the role. Which, of course, he was. Earlier this week he made his first appearance at one of his father’s political rallies. And he looked anything but an 18-year-old novice. Barron was sitting at the front of the crowd but as soon as Donald Trump pointed at him and began to introduce him, the 18-year-old moved like a practiced veteran. He raised his 6-foot-7-inch frame upwards, waved his right hand to all sides and acknowledged the applause. This looked easy. Towering over those around him he then held a clenched left fist above his head...

The tables have turned. Had everything gone according to plan, Donald Trump would be on trial right now in South Florida for hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago ocean estate after leaving the White House. The politician, still licking his wounds from his New York conviction, would be desperately fighting to stave off a humiliating distinction: becoming the first former president to be branded a two-time felon. Instead, a very different trial of sorts will be underway this Friday at a tiny federal courthouse in the sunny beach city of Fort Pierce—one that will awkwardly put the Department of Justice...