Free Republic

Nathan’s Famous has found a foothold in Ukraine, a hot dog-loving country.The hot dog statue wore tennis shoes and held a Ukrainian flag in its left hand and an American flag in its right. (The hot dog had hands.) Standing outside the flagship store of the Ukrainian gas station chain Socar, the statue displayed a sign advertising “Nathan’s Famous” hot dogs in the same green curlicue script that promotes the chain at its original location in Brooklyn’s Coney Island and Nathan’s outlets everywhere. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Ivan Pozniak, a 35-year-old airline pilot, walked past the statue and into...

Moscow’s advantage on the Ukraine battlefield is waning, experts say. But President Donald Trump seems disinclined to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin to engage in ceasefire talks.Russia’s battlefield strength in Ukraine has started to wane and it could run into serious shortages of manpower and weaponry by next year, even as President Donald Trump retreats from pressure on Moscow to end the war, according to senior U.S. and European officials and military experts. In recent days, Trump appears to have abandoned the threat of harsh financial sanctions he repeated as recently as two weeks ago if Moscow doesn’t agree...

The Trump administration sees tariff talks as a chance to pressure a rival into concessions. E.U. officials have acted as though they were dealing with an ally. The European Union has been following tried-and-true rules of global commerce as it tries to negotiate with the Trump administration to avert painful tariffs on cars, pharmaceuticals and just about everything else.The problem? President Trump is ripping up that rule book.Mr. Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Friday morning that he is recommending a 50 percent tariff on European imports as of June 1, claiming that the bloc’s trade barriers, taxes,...

After a lull in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity on California’s Central Coast, a rash of raids has reportedly swept through San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties over the past week. One notable arrest over the weekend left two children unattended after a man was taken from a gas station by what appeared to be a group of ICE agents. 805 UndocuFund, a collaborative nonprofit group that brings together immigrant-serving Central Coast organizations, reported what appeared to be a planned ICE arrest at the Sinclair gas station at 1050 South Ventura Road in Oxnard. Juan Conches, a...

Ukrainian President Zelensky and the leaders of several NATO countries spoke on Saturday with President Trump and stressed they are ready for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire starting Monday, Ukraine's foreign minister said. -snip- Trump called for a 30-day ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war earlier this week. While Ukraine agreed, the Kremlin hasn't given a clear answer so far. -snip- The leaders of France, U.K., Germany and Poland visited Kyiv on Saturday and met with Zelensky to discuss the ceasefire plan. At the end of the meeting Zelensky and the European leaders called Trump and briefed him on their position. "Ukraine...

President Trump’s opponents sought to tie him to Project 2025, which he disavowed.During his first months in office, his policy agenda largely aligned with the conservative playbook.Whether Project 2025 was President Trump’s plan for his second presidency was a big point of contention during the presidential campaign.His opponents in the race — first President Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris — aggressively tried to tie him to the Heritage Foundation’s unpopular conservative playbook, which was unveiled in 2023. Trump vociferously denied it was his plan, and the White House still does.Now, several months into Trump’s second term, what is...

Iran is preparing to deliver in the near future launchers for short-range ballistic missiles that the U.S. said Tehran sent to Russia last year for use against Ukraine, according to two Western security officials and a regional official. The delivery of the Fath-360 launchers - if it occurs - would help support Russia's grinding assault on its neighbor and reaffirm the deepening security ties between Moscow and Tehran. With a 75-mile (120-km) range, the Fath-360 would give Moscow's forces a new weapon to fire at Ukrainian frontline troops, nearby military targets, and population centers close to the border with Russia,...

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Russia's Vladimir Putin on Thursday their two countries should be "friends of steel", as they pledged to raise cooperation to a new level and "decisively" counter the influence of the United States. At talks in the Kremlin, the two leaders cast themselves as defenders of a new world order no longer dominated by the U.S. In a lengthy joint statement, they said they would deepen relations in all areas, including military ties, and "strengthen coordination in order to decisively counter Washington's course of 'dual containment' of Russia and China". -snip- Xi, whose country is currently...

Melania Trump is a world-class snubber. She skipped almost every event of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, only returning to regular political spouse duties late last year, as she had a memoir to plug and a lucrative documentary project to film. Despite suggesting she would be a full-time First Lady in Trump’s second term, she has gone unseen for weeks at a time and even skipped her stepdaughter Tiffany’s baby shower (a People source explained, savagely, that Melania “has her own schedule, even on weekends” and didn’t see “any reason” to attend). Now Melania is getting a small taste of her...

After an unprecedented on-air hissy fit last week over the forced exit of a longtime editor, 60 Minutes's Scott Pelley decided to go all in on the Trump-hate, using his on-air time to praise and promote Marc Elias, the architect of the Russia hoax scandal and probably the world's sleaziest lawyer. According to Breitbart News's Joel Pollak: CBS News’ 60 Minutes portrayed Democrat election lawyer Marc Elias as a victim of President Donald Trump’s supposed retaliation against law firms — without once mentioning Elias’s sordid background. CBS’ Scott Pelley portrayed Elias as a hero, the only lawyer brave enough to...

Byron York @ByronYork I know the winner is enormously deserving, but I still find it hard to believe that this photo did *not* win the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography. 2:58 PM · May 5, 2025

For years, President Donald Trump blamed “communists” for his legal and political troubles. Now, the second Trump administration is deploying that same historically loaded label to cast his opponents — from judges to educators — as threats to American identity, culture and values.Why? Trump himself explained the strategy last year when he described how he planned to defeat his Democratic opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in the White House election.“All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country,” he told reporters at his New...

Australia’s Anthony Albanese claimed a historic second term as prime minister on Saturday in a dramatic comeback against once-resurgent conservatives that was powered by voters' concerns about the influence of U.S. President Donald Trump. Peter Dutton, leader of the conservative Liberal party, conceded defeat and the loss of his own seat - echoing the fate of Canada's conservatives and their leader whose election losses days earlier were also attributed to a Trump backlash. [snip] Albanese would be the first Australian prime minister to win a consecutive term in two decades. He said Australians had voted for fairness and "the strength...

It got “60 Minutes” sued by the man who became president of the United States. Now it’s up for a major award — for precisely the same aspect of it that so enraged Donald Trump. Last fall’s “60 Minutes” story on Kamala Harris — the subject of Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against CBS — was nominated for an Emmy Award Thursday for “outstanding edited interview.” Trump, in his lawsuit, complained that the interview was deceptively edited to make his Democratic election opponent look good. The annual News & Documentary Emmys will be awarded in late June. “60 Minutes” is competing...

...ending the war with Russia that has been raging for more than three years is only the first hurdle that will need to be overcome before the United States can realize any potential windfall. Maps showing trillions of dollars of mineral deposits scattered across Ukraine — including in areas occupied by Russian forces — are based largely on outdated studies, and proper surveys could take several years to complete, experts said. The deposits might not be easy to extract; investors will need to pump billions into Ukraine to pull the resources from the earth. And the nation’s energy infrastructure —...

The state requires voters to prove their citizenship. An error led to chaos, suspicion and confusion, signaling broader challenges for Republican-led efforts across the country.PHOENIX — For 30 years, no one questioned Danny Dobosz’s citizenship when the lifelong Republican cast his ballot. So when a letter arrived from a local election official last month asking him to send back a copy of his birth certificate to prove he was an American citizen who was eligible to vote, he tossed it in the trash at his home in Yuma, Arizona. Dobosz, an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump who was born...

Behind the scenes, a top department official pressed employees to gather a list of activists and investigate them, people familiar with the matter said.A top Trump appointee in the Justice Department ordered an aggressive investigation in the last several months of student protesters at Columbia University, raising anger and alarm among career prosecutors and investigators who saw the demand as politically motivated and lacking legal merit, people familiar with the episode said. The demand for the inquiry into students who protested Israel’s conduct of the conflict in Gaza also prompted pushback from a federal magistrate judge, who believed some of...

Former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was photographed checking his Signal chat the day before President Donald Trump announced he was stepping down from the role. Reuters published photos of Waltz during a Wednesday cabinet meeting checking his Signal account. Chats with newly-appointed National Security Advisor Marco Rubio and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard could be seen on his phone. U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is seen checking his mobile phone while attending a cabinet meeting held by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 30, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein pic.twitter.com/gQAvgypVFf — Idrees...

In a majority of states across the union, gas prices are now higher than they were on the day of Donald Trump's return to the White House on January 20, while in a handful they are exactly the same and only in a few they have fallen, according to AAA data. The numbers show that, after more than 100 days in office, the U.S. president is still struggling to keep his promise to lower prices at the pump for American drivers, especially as his administration's tariffs threaten further turmoil in the global markets. Gas prices surged under Joe Biden, driven...

Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) predicted Thursday on “MSNBC Reports” that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would be the next cabinet member ousted by President Donald Trump. Bennet said, “I think there’s more to it. I think it is an. extraordinary moment that even Donald Trump is admitting that he can’t sustain a national security advisers who had the wisdom of sharing Signal chain with Jeffrey Goldberg. I think it’s probably the case that what President Trump is maddest about is the fact that he shared it with the reporter from the Atlantic. The real problem is that Secretary Hegseth, the secretary...