Free Republic

Conservative activist Riley Gaines brushed off President Donald Trump's criticism of her on Monday, saying she does "nothing for the approval of man." Gaines, a former NCAA swimmer, was one of the many Trump supporters critical of an AI-generated image the president shared on social media on Sunday portraying himself as a Jesus-like figure. Trump has since deleted the post. "Seriously, I cannot understand why he'd post this. Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this?" she wrote on X on Monday, commenting on the image. "Either way, two things are true. 1) a little humility would...

Donald Trump has deleted a viral post comparing himself to Jesus Christ after it drew accusations of blasphemy from some of his most vocal right-wing supporters. The President's Truth Social account removed an AI generated image showing him draped in white with a red shawl, placing his hands, glowing with a divine light, on a sick patient in a hospital bed as a soldier, a nurse and others look on in adoration. The post was shared Sunday evening and, by the following morning, had sparked outrage among many of Trump's own supporters, who objected to his use of Christ's image...

WAHOO, Neb. (AP) — Strong winds whipped around Doug Bartek, a fifth-generation farmer, as he headed into a grain bin to shovel soybeans onto a conveyor chute. The 60-year-old was anxious at the onset of the spring planting season, rattling off the long list of issues affecting his family’s livelihood at their 2,000-acre farm near Wahoo, Nebraska. The high cost of fuel, equipment, and fertilizer — compounded by the Iran war — and also tariffs, perceived “price gouging” by suppliers, and low soybean prices driven by a global supply glut. All of it weighs on Bartek, who is chairman of...

Hide the sharp objects—at least if you take Nicolle Wallace seriously. On Friday’s edition of Deadline White House, Wallace began by painting an apocalyptic picture of the situation in Iran. Grim enough to have Trump supporters reaching for the Lexapro—if they believed her. After laying out her bleak scenario, Wallace went a step further, warning of: “A full-scale global economic crisis that might actually be even worse than those headlines, and worse than we think.”Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

The shooting of Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez by federal immigration agents on Tuesday is a sickening reminder. It is a sign of what’s to come if California doesn’t do more to protect its communities from government agents behaving like a lawless occupying force

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture. “The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.” One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission,...

Megyn Kelly on "Piers Morgan Uncensored" discussed the damage sustained by the Trump political coalition, the global economy, and U.S. allies, after 40 days at war with Iran. “The question is now not, who has Trump lost. The question is who remains," she said about the MAGA coalition. "He’s underwater with men, including young men and young people. The young person coalition that Charlie Kirk delivered to the president is gone. They’ve abandoned Donald Trump." "These battles in the Middle East have been fought now for 20-plus years, and we continue to learn the same lesson over and over. It’s...

Donald Trump's dramatic climbdown from his chilling threat to wipe out Iran's civilization has exposed the limits - and the rising risks - of the U.S. president's typically unpredictable negotiating style. His decision on Tuesday to back down and agree to a two-week ceasefire – which critics mockingly called another example ​of “TACO,” or “Trump always chickens out” – marked the biggest step so far toward de-escalating a 40-day-old war that has shaken the Middle East and disrupted global energy markets. But Trump’s claims of victory over Iran overlooked questions about ‌the effectiveness of mixing maximalist demands, erratic rhetoric and...

Sixty years ago, I first gazed out on the Strait of Hormuz from the Musandam peninsula of Oman. I was there as private secretary to my godfather, Selwyn Lloyd, who had been Britain’s foreign secretary during the Suez Crisis. The previous evening our host, Sultan Said bin Taimur, the ruler of Oman for nearly 40 years, commented gloomily: ‘When two fish are fighting in these waters, the British are behind it.’ I estimate that I must have made at least 250 visits to the Gulf states in the intervening six decades. The key question which would surely now be asked...

This is not the run up to the midterm elections that Republicans wanted. A year and a half after winning the White House by promising to lower costs and end wars, Donald Trump is a wartime president overseeing surging energy costs and an escalating overseas conflict that many in his own party do not like. He offered little clarity to a nation eager for answers this week during a prime-time address from the White House, his first since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran more than a month ago, simultaneously suggesting that the war was ending and expanding. “Thanks to...

Could the Iran war do what even Vladimir Putin couldn’t and blow up the North Atlantic Treaty alliance? That’s no longer an idle question as most of Europe refuses to help the U.S., and President Trump responds by threatening to leave NATO. This would be the dumbest alliance breakup in modern history. The immediate fault here lies with Europe. Spain and Italy are blocking U.S. military flights for Iran from their bases, and Mr. Trump says the Macron government has blocked flights over France. Add its reluctance to help clear the Strait of Hormuz, and Europe is playing into every...

The Pentagon is sending ground forces to Iran. Trump administration officials gave a story to the Washington Post that is being repeated everywhere: The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of boots on the ground operations in Iran, a major escalation in President Trump’s goal to dismantle the remaining faction of the murderous Iranian regime, according to a report. Thousands of US Marines would be sent to the Middle East to conduct raids that include Special Operations forces and conventional infantry troops, the Washington Post reported, citing sources. Officials have been discussing plans for sending troops into Iran for weeks. ***...

Russia has quietly become Iran’s most consequential external partner. Public reporting shows Moscow feeding Tehran real time satellite imagery of U.S. and Israeli positions — a simple but powerful boost to Iranian targeting and battle damage assessment. Russia has also helped upgrade Iran’s Shahed drones with better navigation and communications systems. These aren’t glamorous contributions, but they matter: they force the United States to burn multimillion dollar interceptors on cheap, disposable threats. None of this changes the balance of power. But it absolutely changes the tempo of the war. China’s support looks different — quieter, but just as important. Beijing...

In the nearly three weeks since President Donald Trump struck Iran, conventional wisdom has set in that his base is sticking with him on the war. It’s true that Trump’s base hasn’t ditched him in huge numbers — and an overwhelming number of MAGA supporters, especially, say they support the war. The opposition from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly and other influencers hasn’t translated to wide swaths of the GOP base itself. But Trump has alienated some significant portions of his base, and he’s risking alienating more. A fresh batch of polling in recent days...

Trump supporters who backed his promise to avoid new Middle East wars worry Iran’s attacks on shipping are pushing the U.S. toward escalation — and maybe even boots on the ground.When the U.S. started firing Tomahawk missiles at Iran late last month, many of President Donald Trump’s allies hoped it would be a quick, surgical operation, similar to last year’s strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities or the ouster of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January. Though uneasy, they were reassured by the belief that Trump’s open-ended objectives gave him the flexibility to declare victory whenever he saw fit. Now, more...

President Trump on Friday said he knows the U.S. military operation in Iran will come to an end when he can “feel it in my bones,” a remark that comes almost two weeks after joint U.S. and Israeli strikes on the Middle Eastern country began. Trump spoke with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on his podcast “The Brian Kilmeade Show” and told him, “When it’s over –– and I don’t think it’s going to be long –– when it’s over, this is going to bounce back so fast.” “When are you going to know when it’s over?” Kilmeade asked. “When...

Most in the GOP are silent or backing the Trump administration, but a conspicuous few are speaking out. A small but growing number of Republicans are raising public concerns about the killing Saturday of a 37-year-old Minnesota man by federal agents.Hours after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street, one House GOP chair called for the top ICE leader and other Trump administration officials to publicly answer lawmakers’ questions. GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina called for independent probes into the shooting, with Cassidy arguing the integrity...

A second high-profile killing by a federal agent in Minneapolis has jeopardized the chances of Congress averting a partial government shutdown as Democrats come out en masse against the funding measure for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Lawmakers had been on the verge of completing their funding work for fiscal 2026 this week after the House last week passed its final four appropriations bills. However, the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, 37, a nurse at the city’s Veterans Affairs hospital, by a Border Patrol agent has seemingly torpedoed the chances of those bills passing the Senate, with one key...

PARIS/OSLO, Jan 19 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump linked his drive to take control of Greenland to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize, saying he no longer thought "purely of Peace" as the row over the Arctic island on Monday threatened to reignite a trade war with Europe. Trump has intensified his push to wrest sovereignty over Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark, threatening punitive tariffs on countries which stand in his way and prompting the European Union to weigh hitting back with its own measures. The dispute is threatening to upend the NATO alliance that has...

We’ve been here before: congressional Democrats and Republicans sparring over the future of the Affordable Care Act. But this time there’s an extra complication. Though it’s the middle of open enrollment, lawmakers are still debating whether to extend the subsidies that have given consumers extra help paying their health insurance premiums in recent years. The circumstances have led to deep consumer concerns about higher costs and fears of political fallout among some Republican lawmakers.