Free Republic

President Donald Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to remove the advanced system used to launch fighter jets from its newest type of aircraft carrier and return to using older steam catapults that he has long said he prefers, according to a directive issued Thursday. The new mandate would likely cost billions of dollars and revert the Navy’s most advanced ships to a system that takes more sailors to operate and is more difficult to maintain. The memo directs the Pentagon and the Navy to present Trump with plans to remove the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, also known as EMALS,...

The conflict may have slowed, but not stopped, Iran’s nuclear program, officials and experts said. Chief among President Trump’s reasons for launching the war in Iran was preventing it from building a nuclear weapon. More than five months in, officials and experts say, the conflict may have slowed Iran’s nuclear program but not stopped it. Because Iran has barred U.N. inspections of its most sensitive nuclear sites — a key part of any eventual peace deal — the precise fate of its highly enriched nuclear fuel is unknown. And despite strikes on three key nuclear sites in 2025 and 2026,...

Capital One says anti-money laundering review prompted closure of more than 300 Trump-affiliated accounts Trump Organization and Eric Trump sued in March 2025, alleging political debanking Miami federal court tossed two complaints but let plaintiffs file amended versions SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Capital One Financial (COF.N), opens new tab hit back on Friday against a lawsuit over its decision to close ‌the Trump Organization's bank accounts years ago, stating that it did so after a review by anti-money laundering experts. The disclosure marks the first time a bank has formally tied money laundering concerns to U.S. President Donald...

The war with Iran has been marked by collapsed ceasefires, expanding airstrikes and mounting American and Iranian casualties. In recent days the U.S. military announced the deaths of three more servicemembers, two of whom died in an Iranian missile strike. The U.S. is pressing on with a fight that has no end in sight — or even a clear definition of what an acceptable end would be. BEIRUT — President Trump long railed against forever wars. For years, whether as president or candidate, he flayed electoral opponents and previous presidents with his signature barbs, calling their entanglements a “complete waste...

Trump says noncitizen voting is a widespread Democratic plot to influence elections. A Reuters data analysis reveals a far different picture: a small number of often inadvertent violations. The finding comes amid an expanding federal crackdown that has ensnared hundreds of people, many of whom never cast a ballot. According to U.S. President Donald Trump, America is a hotbed of voting fraud – and foreigners are major culprits. He has portrayed noncitizen voting as part of a broad Democratic Party conspiracy to dilute Republican power. He has claimed on social media that “Crazed” Democrats allow unvetted migrants to enter the...

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Why would I build a military — Now, I didn’t want to use this, but I’m doing you and everybody else a big favor. In the midst of the greatest stock market in history, in the midst of the most successful country because, as you know, in the last term, we were a dead country, Kristen. I know you, you’re a big liberal, a big progressive. KRISTEN WELKER: No. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: But we were — KRISTEN WELKER: I’m just a journalist.

A visibly agitated President Trump stormed off his interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” after a testy exchange with a reporter who grilled him over his claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Trump lashed out at moderator Kristen Welker after she insisted he failed to provide a shred of evidence about his disputed accusations that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him or that the elections in California are subject to malfeasance.

60 Minutes veteran correspondent Scott Pelley reportedly unleashed on CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss' job qualifications and claimed she's "murdering" the show in a heated meeting with his new boss, RadarOnline.com can reveal. Weiss, 42, was not present for the blowup between Pelley, 68, and the show's new executive producer, Nick Bilton – the hand-picked choice of the former Free Press boss to lead the storied newsmagazine into a new era. Nick Bilton Claims Bari Weiss 'Loves 60 Minutes' Bilton's hiring was announced on May 28, and he tried to lead a friendly meet-and-greet with staffers on June...

Scroll through any social media platform long enough and you’ll notice something that doesn’t quite add up. The same talking points, phrasing, and sudden outrage cycles are appearing across completely different audiences at the same time. It feels coordinated. And that’s because it often is. Foreign adversaries have turned modern technology into a new kind of warfare, one the United States hasn’t fully named, hasn’t clearly assigned ownership of, and isn’t yet equipped to fight at the speed it’s being waged. This is something more insidious than traditional espionage: the deliberate, systematic manipulation of how millions of Americans perceive reality—their...

Iran can’t have a nuclear bomb, says Donald Trump, so it can’t be allowed to enrich uranium—not now, not ever. Accordingly, former Barack Obama aides responded favorably to news that Vice President JD Vance told the Iranian delegation he met with in Pakistan last weekend that he was willing to erase his boss’s red line and offer Iran a deal that allows it to enrich after 20 years. “If they could get Iran to suspend for even a few years, that is superior to what we got,” said Robert Malley, the former Obama official who negotiated the 2015 Iran deal,...

What better way for Morning Joe to mark the Iran ceasefire than by once again tying President Trump to the “monsters of history”? On consecutive days, co-host Jonathan Lemire reached for the same loaded line. He first used it yesterday, reacting to Trump’s bellicose Truth Social post warning Iran of severe consequences. He rolled it out again today—clearly deciding it was too good not to reuse. This time, he escalated further, suggesting Trump’s rhetoric would leave a lasting “stain” not just on his presidency, but on the United States itself. On Tuesday’s show, Lemire cited Trump’s threat-laden language—of the sort...

The White House has cut or paused billions in funding to Democratic-run cities and states since the federal government came to a halt.President Trump has embarked on a legally dubious campaign to weaponize the federal budget during a contentious government shutdown, halting more than $27 billion in approved funding in a bid to punish Democratic-led cities and states. Rather than broker a legislative truce or seek to ameliorate the fallout of a costly fiscal stalemate, the president has leveraged the crisis to exact revenge on rivals, slash federal spending and pressure Democrats into accepting his political demands. Since the shutdown...

President Donald Trump’s second term had already brought misery to the nation’s 2.1 million civilian federal workers: unprecedented mass layoffs, strict return-to-office requirements and more red tape regulating everything from travel to printer paper. Now, with the government shut down, 750,000 federal staffers have been furloughed and many others are working without pay, even as Trump and his top lieutenants vow to put more federal jobs on the chopping block. “When did we become the enemy?” said one National Institutes of Health employee who, like other workers interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of...

The Trump administration is planning to roll out the first tranche of bailout payments for farmers in the coming weeks, likely using billions of dollars in funding from an internal USDA account, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter. But it won’t be enough: USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation fund — which President Donald Trump previously tapped to provide $28 billion in farm aid during his first-term trade war with China — has just $4 billion left in the account. Trump officials, including those at the Treasury Department, are looking at how to tap tariff receipts or other...

The Trump administration has telegraphed that mass firings are coming, but officials have cautioned that such moves could violate appropriations law.Senior federal officials have quietly counseled several agencies against firing employees while the government is shut down — as President Donald Trump has suggested he will — warning the strategy may violate appropriations law, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. The officials cautioned that firings — known as RIFs, or reductions in force — could be vulnerable to legal challenges under statutes labor unions cited this...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech to top generals was supposed to serve as a rallying cry for military exceptionalism — but it didn’t land that way with many of the people it was targeting. Numerous defense officials — who watched senior brass scramble to Washington and then sit through a partisan speech from President Donald Trump and a return to old-school military standards by Hegseth — were left wondering why the event had occurred at all. “More like a press conference than briefing the generals,” said one defense official, who, like others, was granted anonymity due to fears of retribution....

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered 135,000 men to be conscripted into the army, the largest autumn draft held by the Kremlin in nine years. “From Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025, conscript 135,000 Russian citizens aged 18 to 30 who are not in the reserve and are subject to enlistment into military service,” the decree states, according to the TASS state-owned news agency. Vladimir Tsimlyansky, head of the Russian General Staff’s mobilization department, has also insisted that the conscripted soldiers will not be deployed to the forces currently invading Ukraine, a promise Moscow has been previously accused of breaking.

A half-year ago in the Oval Office, President Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that “you don’t have the cards” in the war with Russia. On Tuesday at the United Nations, Trump lauded the performance of Ukraine’s army and poured scorn on Russia’s military efforts. “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump said on Truth Social after meeting with Zelensky. “Why not?” U.S. officials said that Trump issued the statement in part to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to make...

In the spring of 1968 I was a college senior about to graduate. It was a troubled but hopeful moment to be coming into adulthood. The civil rights movement and the peace movement were converging in the nonviolent fight for racial justice and to end the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King Jr. was the most charismatic leader on both fronts, the poetic prose of his speeches soaring with critical idealism, his pacifism increasingly militant as he made the connections between domestic deprivation and foreign intervention. On April 4 King was murdered in Memphis. It was a brutal blow to the...

While the world’s attention has been on the war in Gaza, the situation in the West Bank may have a longer-term impact on the future of a decades-long conflict that destabilises the entire Middle East. Western powers Australia, Britain, Canada and Portugal formally recognised a Palestinian state on September 21, a reaction to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Most of the U.N.’s 193 member states already recognised Palestine and several others now plan to do so, a shift criticized by Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States. Netanyahu says a Palestinian state would be a security threat to Israel.Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen...