Free Republic

Readers of The Sacramento Bee's coverage of a rally for legislation pitched as protecting girls, women and parental rights at the California statehouse Friday would have no idea someone shot at the house of the volleyball coach who helped inspire the bills and spoke at the rally, or even that San Jose State University fired her for exposing a male on her women's team. The Capitol newspaper's omission of the shot fired through Melissa Batie-Smoose's window Monday while she was at home in a virtual meeting with a lawyer, confirmed by local police Thursday, and her unwilling departure from SJSU...

Legal services groups that offer representation and guidance to thousands of migrant children facing deportation said on Tuesday that they were abruptly directed by the Trump administration to halt their government-funded work. Affected organizations across the U.S. said the move would prevent them from offering critical legal services, including "know your rights" sessions, to migrant children who crossed the U.S. southern border without their parents or legal guardians. Under U.S. law, the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for housing unaccompanied migrant minors who enter the U.S. without legal authorization, until they turn 18 or can be placed...

Just caught some local Miami media saying Trump "falsely" accused Ukraine for starting the conflict with Russia. Don't know what comments they're talking about, but there was no context given...just a Democrat party talking point. Is this what the national news is doing too? Just happened on Tuesday night.

“60 Minutes” is quickly earning the reputation of being the most fake of all the fake news outlets.“60 Minutes” is already in court defending their organization after they were caught cutting and pasting Kamala Harris’s interview together to make he look like a normal thinking person.Now, this past weekend, “60 Minutes” was caught again, this time trying to pass a former speechwriter for USAID chief Samantha Power as a sad and distraught former USAID employee who the Trump administration recently fired.60 Minutes aired a segment about a sad young mother Kristina Drye who was fired from USAID in Washington DC...

WASHINGTON (AP) — His group spent nearly $1 million on ads opposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick to lead the nation’s health agencies. He’s delivering speeches urging the president to stand with longstanding foreign allies and lobbying members of Congress while aides write letters and opinion columns. This weekend, he posted an article he penned more than a decade ago on the limits of presidential power after Trump claimed that, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Mike Pence is emerging as one of the last Republicans in Washington willing to publicly criticize the new...

Among the hundreds of people chanting "Elon Musk has got to go!" and "No one elected Elon!" in front of the U.S. Capitol on Monday were recently fired federal workers left devastated and uncertain by their terminations. "Elon Musk doesn't even know my job exists, right? But like, we do a lot. I mean, I'm a public servant, and I do this job because I love it. So, yeah, I'm devastated, and my whole community lost their jobs. And I don't know what I'm going to do now, but I'm going to keep fighting. And you know, this stuff really...

Congress is struggling to strike a deal to keep the government funded as a looming deadline to prevent a shutdown next month gets closer. Lawmakers are less than a month away from a mid-March date to pass legislation to prevent a funding lapse — or risk the first shutdown in years. “We can’t have precisely the same kind of deal we had before, and we’re trying to work to find some common ground,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said shortly before the House left for a one-week recess this week. Negotiators on both sides have been working to strike...

Four top New York City officials are expected to resign in the coming days, after the outgoing U.S. attorney for Manhattan accused the mayor of trading cooperation with President Trump’s mass deportation agenda for a dismissal of his criminal indictment, according to three people with knowledge of their plans.The four officials — Maria Torres-Springer, the first deputy mayor, and Meera Joshi, Anne Williams-Isom and Chauncey Parker, all also deputy mayors — oversee much of New York City government, and their departure is poised to blow a devastating hole in the already wounded administration of Mayor Eric Adams.Mr. Adams, a Democrat,...

MUNICH — When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, the United States helped whip Europe into a staunchly unified response. Now U.S. leaders may be splitting Europe into pieces as President Donald Trump seeks to end the war, European leaders and policymakers say.Vice President JD Vance and other top administration officials made their European debut last week, slashing their way through a continent of allies as they embraced far-right leaders, demanded access to mineral wealth and offered sympathy to the views of Russian President Vladimir Putin.By the end of the week, European leaders found themselves potentially cut out of peace...

European leaders have planned an emergency summit on Ukraine, according to multiple outlets. The summit has been referred to as a “once in a generation” national security moment by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, CNN reported The BBC reported that French President Emmanuel Macron will pull together the Monday summit, which will happen in Paris. Last Wednesday, President Trump said he expects to meet face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin multiple times, with the president implying that they are probably going to meet first in Saudi Arabia. “We ultimately expect to meet,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “In fact,...

The Trump administration’s push for negotiations without Ukrainian involvement leaves European allies with no clear role.While American officials prepared on Sunday for the start of talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine, European leaders were moving to formulate a response to President Trump’s rapid push for a settlement that appeared to leave them and Ukrainian officials with no clear role in the process.The Russian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, where the talks are to take place this week, met Sunday with the kingdom’s foreign minister. Two senior Trump administration officials — Mike Waltz, and the Middle East envoy, Steve...

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that a bipartisan group of senators agrees with President Volodymyr Zelensky that “Ukraine absolutely must be part of any negotiations between Russia and the United States.”.. President Zelenskyy reiterated, nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. And I- he got reassurances from the bipartisan senators that he met with, that we agree, Ukraine absolutely must be part of any negotiations between Russia and the United States.

European leaders felt certain about one thing after a whirlwind tour by Trump officials — they were entering a new world where it was harder to depend on the United States.Many critical issues were left uncertain — including the fate of Ukraine — at the end of Europe’s first encounter with an angry and impatient Trump administration. But one thing was clear: An epochal breach appears to be opening in the Western alliance.After three years of war that forged a new unity within NATO, the Trump administration has made clear it is planning to focus its attention elsewhere: in Asia,...

In an interview with NBC News' Meet The Press, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told moderator Kristen Welker, “I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine, never." “This is the war in Ukraine, against us, and it’s our human losses," Zelenskyy stressed to Welker that the risk of Russia occupying Europe is 100%. "If the United States pulls out of NATO, Russia will occupy Europe," Welker repeated, to which the Ukrainian president clarified: "Not all of Europe at first; they will begin with small countries that have been in the USSR, the Soviet Union," adding...

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his country has intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to “wage war” against NATO countries. Zelensky said, “We see how he is preparing to train mostly on the territory of Belarus.” He continued, “We know for sure that he is preparing that from the territory of Belarus this year. It can happen in summer, maybe in the beginning, maybe in the end of summer. I do not know when he prepares it. But it will happen. And at that moment. knowing that he did not succeed in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pam Bondi had insisted at her Senate confirmation hearing that as attorney general, her Justice Department would not “play politics.” Yet in the month since the Trump administration took over the building, a succession of actions has raised concerns the department is doing exactly that. Top officials have demanded the names of thousands of FBI agents who investigated the Capitol riot, sued a state attorney general who had won a massive fraud verdict against Donald Trump before the 2024 election, and ordered the dismissal of a criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams by saying the...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's drive to shake up the U.S. government drove out a rising star in conservative legal circles: A career federal prosecutor who once clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Danielle Sassoon, tapped to lead the Manhattan federal prosecutor's office on Trump's second day in office, quit on Thursday rather than go along with a Justice Department order to drop a criminal corruption case against Democratic New York Mayor Eric Adams. The department ordered the case dropped, citing the city's approaching November mayoral election and saying that prosecuting Adams could interfere with...

The president’s swift moves underscore the confidence of an administration with a much firmer grip on the levers of government than during his first term.The last time President Trump held office, he tried to make deep cuts to foreign aid, but was blocked by Congress. He is finding little resistance from fellow Republicans this time to his move to freeze such funding.During a special counsel’s inquiry in his first term, Mr. Trump expressed a desire to fire the investigator, but White House lawyers stopped him. This term, Mr. Trump has swiftly forced out a slew of federal officials who had...

There have been increasing histrionics about the DOGE team gaining access to the U.S. Treasury payments system. For the last twelve years, I have noticed a pattern with the socialists/Democrats: deflect from the real issue by offering a bright, shiny object. I think that is happening with the Treasury histrionics right now. The screeching has been about DOGE having access to the Treasury payments system (the bright, shiny object), as if that were the only relevant system the Treasury operates. We learned about the Biden Crime Family in part from the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) generated by (you guessed it)...

Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons. An Energy Department spokesperson disputed the number of personnel affected, telling CNN that “less than 50 people” were “dismissed” from NNSA, and that the dismissed staffers “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.” The agency began rescinding the terminations Friday morning. Some...