Free Republic

Pete Hegseth’s Saturday begins with personal training. The Secretary of War, @SecWar on your socials, is very fond of working out with the troops – something most defense secretaries have done without someone dutifully filming the experience for Instagram. Then he heads off to the Reagan National Defense Forum, the annual gathering of war hawks, policy nerds and defense contractors in Simi Valley, California. Hegseth, the veteran of the Global War on Terror, is there to fulfill his mission of denouncing the neocons. “Out with idealistic utopianism, in with hard-nosed realism,” he declares, insisting the United States will no longer...

SummaryAnkush Khardori, a POLITICO Magazine senior writer and former federal prosecutor, provides guidance on navigating the Justice Department's release of Epstein investigation files, mandated by a law signed by President Trump with a Friday deadline. The release involves over 300 gigabytes of data, including electronic devices, documents, logs, financial records, FBI interview summaries (302s), and internal communications, excluding child pornography material. Full compliance may take weeks due to volume. Khardori warns the release is unlikely to end Epstein conspiracy theories. Five rules:Don’t Read the Files Directly: Avoid drawing conclusions from isolated items; rely on reputable journalists for context, as raw...

What a difference a year makes. After devastating defeats in 2024, Democrats are closing out 2025 with wind in their sails. They won double-digit victories in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races. And last week they got a stronger-than-expected showing in a Tennessee special election. Republicans and Democrats now talk openly of a likely tsunami of wins for Democrats in the 2026 midterms. If true, Democrats better get a surfboard and make plans to ride that big wave into the 2028 presidential election.That means creating their own version of the Republicans’ Project 2025.They will need Project 2027 for their...

Hispanic voters — crucial to Trump’s 2024 victory — are abandoning him in significant numbers. Sure, the Hispanic flight from the Trump camp is slower among Cuban Americans and Venezuelan Americans in Florida, but the cracks are already visible. In New Jersey, Trump won 46% of the Latino vote in 2024. But this time, Trump-backed Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli got only 31% of the Hispanic vote in the Nov. 4 election, CNN exit polls show. The Democratic winner, Mikie Sherrill, won by a landslide, thanks in part to the Latino vote. In heavily Hispanic Passaic County, where Trump won...

If the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrant truckers had a face, it would be Harjinder Singh. The Indian-born Singh was behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler in Fort Pierce, Fla. in August when he allegedly made an illegal U-turn, causing a crash that killed three people. A.J. Jenkins, a truck operations specialist, observes an autonomous truck operating in no vehicle operator (NVO) mode during a route in Ellis County, Texas. He is in the driver's seat but his hands are in his lap while the truck is driving on a road. The steering wheel has a sign labeled "NVO Mode."...

Infighting. Bad polls. Party divisions. Midterm fears. It’s all back. President Donald Trump’s administration has been embroiled in scandal and sloppiness. His own party has defied his political pressure. His senior staff has been beset by infighting. He has sparred with reporters and offered over-the-top praise to an authoritarian with a dire human-rights record. A signature hard-line immigration policy has polled poorly. And Republicans have begun to brace themselves for a disastrous midterm election. That was 2017. But it’s also 2025. Ten months into the president’s second term, Trump 2.0 is for the first time starting to resemble the chaotic...

NEW YORK (AP) — Zohran Mamdani wasted little time as mayor-elect of New York City before making clear that he sees part of his new role as standing up to the president of the United States, who had threatened not only to defund the city if he won but also to arrest and deport him. Mamdani, a Democrat, addressed the Republican president directly and at length from the stage at his victory party in Brooklyn on Tuesday night.

CNN's Harry Enten explained that the government shutdown is HELPING President Trump's approval ratings. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks. Do you agree with TYT's take?

WASHINGTON — Thousands gathered in the nation’s capital on Saturday, rallying and repeating one refrain: “No kings.” They joined thousands of other gatherings around the country organized by Democratic groups and activists to protest President Donald Trump and his administration with a second round of “No Kings” rallies following an initial nationwide day of protest in June. While many protesters spoke to NBC News about their dissatisfaction with Trump, a plethora of left-leaning and liberal protesters also made one more thing clear: They’re not happy with their Democratic leaders, either. “I don’t have a lot of faith in the Democrats...

Some Democrats skeptical about their leadership’s hard-line stance against reopening the federal government privately acknowledge that they fear getting “hammered” by their liberal base if they vote for a Republican funding bill. Grassroots Democrats frustrated with the Trump administration have been demanding a fight, and on Saturday millions showed up at “No Kings” demonstrations across the country to protest the president’s government. In that context, Democrats know they will get hit hard by a number of voices on the left if they do not get something for opening the government. “People are going to get hammered” if they vote for...

The analysis said the median estimate is that 5.2 million people took part, while the upper approximation is 8.2 million people. Newsweek has produced a map showing which states saw the highest turnout based on the crowdsourced estimates. It shows that New York had the highest estimated attendance, with almost 380,000 people estimated to have been at events in the state, followed by California and Illinois, where about 260,000 and 250,000 people are estimated to have attended events, respectively. States with the lowest turnout include Nebraska and South Dakota, with each of those two states estimated to have had only...

MSNBC contributor Jonathan Alter said while many people are "traumatized" by President Donald Trump, Saturday's anti-Trump protests show the Republicans are "not on the winning side." STEPHANIE RUHLE, MSNBC: I want to share how the White House spokesperson describes supporters of the Democratic Party right now. Watch this. KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE: The Democrat Party's main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals. That is who the Democrat Party is catering to, not the Trump administration and not the White House and not the Republican Party, who is standing up for law abiding Americans, not...

Before you add John Bolton’s indictment to the growing pile of specious prosecutions of Donald Trump’s enemies, stop and read the Justice Department’s allegations that the former national security adviser systematically shared classified information with people who weren’t authorized to read it, all in the service of writing a tell-all book. The 18-count criminal indictment, filed yesterday, was compiled by experienced prosecutors, not political lackeys. It is detailed and precise, and relies on Bolton’s own words to implicate him. You should question whether these charges would be brought if Trump weren’t president. Officials in Joe Biden’s administration passed on the...

WASHINGTON — In recent months, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has hosted private virtual briefings with social media influencers, equipping them with information on key policy issues and Democratic messaging to disseminate on their large global platforms. On these calls, dubbed “creator briefings,” the senator and her staff answer questions from content creators on how to craft strategic messages that reach people outside of the political sphere. (snip) Since July 2024, Warren has hosted six creator briefings as part of a long-term initiative to reach audiences who don’t regularly consume political news or follow elected Democrats, like Warren, on social media....

Zohran Mamdani was not asking for an endorsement. This seemed wise. Because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not offering. But sitting last year, at Mr. Mamdani’s request, at a kebab house in Queens — where he shared that he would like to be mayor of New York City — the nominal very-long-shot hoped that the national very-big-shot might at least think well of the idea. “It all started in a similar way that my race had started,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez recalled at a joint rally many months later. “We don’t have an entire political establishment behind us. But we know that running is...

Vendors were selling a variety of colorful national flags in downtown L.A. on Wednesday, but Axel Martinez settled on one with with Old Glory on one half and the Mexican flag on the other.

On Friday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “On Balance,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) stated that large tariffs won’t bring back steel or auto plants to his state “in less than five or ten years. And the costs of competing, of manufacturing here in the United States are still too high.” Coons said, “There was a 100-year-old steel mill in Claymont, Delaware. We worked hard to try and save it, but, ultimately, it closed. There were two auto plants in Delaware. Ultimately, they closed. High tariffs won’t bring those plants back in less than five or ten years. And the costs of competing,...

PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump is reportedly becoming fed up with his new pal Elon Musk with the tech mogul being too "clingy". Musk has spent the past few days going on fiery online tirades against the British government with UK politicians now even said to be urging Trump to ditch the Tesla chief. Billionaire Musk has been Trump's biggest fan over the past few months and even helped propel him into the White House. The pair have been inseparable since the Republicans swept to a landslide election win in November. Musk reportedly joined the future president on an important phone call...

Billionaire Trump surrogate Elon Musk endorsed a post on Thursday which suggested Americans were too “retarded” to be hired for skilled jobs. After the South Africa-born CEO of X, SpaceX, and Tesla found himself embroiled in an argument over H-1B visas and the importation of foreign labor over American workers, a pro-Musk account wrote: So basically the right split into two factions, tech right and right right, and the tech right is like “hey we need h-1b visa people to do the jobs,” and the right right was like “no you need to hire americans,” and the tech right is...

WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled House on Friday evening passed a short-term bill to avert a government shutdown, just hours ahead of a deadline that would force U.S. troops, border patrol agents, air traffic controllers and millions of other federal workers to work without pay during the holidays. The vote was 366-34, with one member voting present, capping a tumultuous week in the House that foreshadowed how the new Congress in January might deal with a mercurial Donald Trump back in the White House. A two-thirds vote was needed because the bill came to the floor under a fast-track process. The...