Free Republic

It is incredibly hard to deport 14 million people — the estimated number of immigrants in the United States unlawfully. First, the government has to find them. For many, it has to pry them from their lives, their jobs, their communities. That’s why the Trump administration has deported only a few thousand migrants so far, focusing mostly on those it says are criminals. To make a real change, as Trump has promised to do, millions of people would need to leave voluntarily. So the administration is urging them — in some cases, trying to scare them enough — to “self-deport.”...

What's next, MSNBC? Will you bring in Michael Avenatti, on a Zoom from his federal prison cell, as your expert on lawyer-client ethics? The question arises because, of all the 330 million people in the United States, Saturdays' edition of MSNBC's The Weekend chose Marc Elias to attack Pam Bondi -- Trump's AG nominee -- as a 2020 "election denier," and someone who had suggested the existence of "fake ballots." This is the same Marc Elias who is fresh from his failure to steal the Pennsylvania senatorial election for his client, Democrat Bob Casey. As the National Review described it,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to hold a large-scale exercise of the Kremlin’s nuclear forces on Tuesday, including practice missile launches, as tensions boil over the Ukraine war. Putin oversaw the drills in a video call with military leaders, as Russian soldiers simulated a nuclear attack using ballistic and cruise missiles. “Taking into account growing geopolitical tensions and emerging new threats and risks, it’s important for us to have modern strategic forces that are always ready for combat,” the Russian president said. Despite the show of force, Putin claimed his nation’s nuclear arsenal would only be deployed under...

Restrictions on long-range strikes within Russia by Western weapons supplied to Kyiv should be dropped following confirmation that Vladimir Putin is using North Korean troops to fight Ukraine, Lithuania's president has said. Pyongyang has been supplying Russia with munitions to fight Ukraine but Rutte said the deployment marks "a significant escalation" in its involvement and was "a dangerous expansion of Russia's war." On Monday, the Pentagon said that North Korea had sent 10,000 troops to Russia who could join Moscow's fight against Ukraine in the "next several weeks" amid concerns from South Korea and the U.S. that Moscow might offer...

EPA employees are shuffling to “safer” agencies. An Interior Department worker is putting off buying a new car and poring over Project 2025. And civil servants across the government are worried they might soon get fired. Federal employees throughout the executive branch are panicking at the thought of another Trump administration. Former President Donald Trump has pledged to “demolish the deep state.” His running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, has said Trump ought to fire “every civil servant in the administrative state.” It’s not just campaign-trail bluster. In the waning days of his first administration, Trump sought to make...

Kamala Harris has embarked on a desperate last ditch bid to keep her presidential bid alive amid sliding poll ratings little more than two weeks before polling day. The Democrat nominee is struggling to keep a lid on recriminations from colleagues infuriated at her high-handed approach as they see the key battleground state of Pennsylvania slip from their grasp. The VP has been forced to abandon her safety-first strategy of cozy sit downs with friendly outlets, in a high-stakes pivot towards finding unlikely recruits for her fraying electoral alliance. And hope has been replaced by fear as Donald Trump becomes...

Vice President Kamala Harris will hit the campaign trail next week alongside former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama in the battleground states of Georgia and Michigan. The Hill reports Obama and Harris will be together in Georgia on Thursday, and Michelle Obama and Harris will be together in Michigan on Oct. 26, according to a senior campaign official. Democrat insiders reportedly consider the events with old friends Harris and the Obamas are a way to harness voter enthusiasm and boost get out the vote efforts in the last days of the 2024 campaign.

It's incredible how quickly things can change in politics. In August, Vice President Kamala Harris was riding a surge of manufactured "joy," backed by a mountain of positive press and an avalanche of donor cash. Spilling into early September, the polling landscape was still pretty friendly to her, and she was on the verge of building an air of inevitability. Others warned, though, that the sugar high would soon fade. Harris' fortunes have completely reversed in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. At the same time, the national polling has tightened to the point where the Republican electoral college advantage could...

The United States will face "dangerous consequences" if it presses on with growing military aid to Ukraine rather than backing a proposed Russian settlement that would see Moscow take over swathes of territory, the man serving as Russian President Vladimir Putin's top diplomat for 20 years said in exclusive responses to Newsweek questions. Well over two and a half years after Putin ordered a "special military operation" against Ukraine, invading the country in what has become the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Kremlin offers a viable blueprint to end the...

Since it was launched in August, the Kamala Harris Twitch channel has broadcast rallies and speeches from Flint, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and other locations across the USA. It's about to go slightly further afield, with a Tim Walz rally being broadcast from Azeroth, as Wired reports. A live audio feed of Walz speaking in Arizona will be accompanied by Twitch streamer Preheat playing World of Warcraft and adding commentary. A guides writer for Wowhead, Preheat has more than 50,000 subscribers on Twitch. No, Walz won't be playing WoW with Preheat, so we won't find out if he's a druid main. So,...

Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted CNN’s invitation for an Oct. 23 presidential debate, with her campaign calling on former president Donald Trump to do the same. “Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said Saturday in a statement. “It is the same format and setup as the CNN debate he attended and said he won in June, when he praised CNN’s moderators, rules, and ratings.” Trump, who debated Harris on Sept. 10, has so far said he is not interested in another debate. Trump has claimed he won the debate...

VLADIMIR Putin has reportedly called in his ex-bodyguard to lead the desperate defence of Kursk as Russian casualties pile up on their own turf. Ukraine last week stormed into Russia and is said to have taken out so many enemy troops that they can't even be taken to morgues and identified. In response, a shocked Vlad has given the reins to his trusted old bodyguard, who once claimed he saved him from a rampaging brown bear. Alexei Dyumin, 51, is now coordinating the defence ministry, security agencies and regional authorities in the rush to save Russian regions from Kyiv's forces....

MSNBC contributor former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said Monday on “Deadline” that “it’s just crazy” there are educated people that don’t see how desperate and sick former President Donald Trump is. McCaskill said, “This split screen is phenomenal. On one side you have lying and name calling and dark, dark stuff—our country is in ruins, our country is a hell hole, our country sucks, isn’t everything terrible in our country, aren’t we awful, we are so awful—and, by the way, let me think of all the good names I can call the other people. Then the other side is smiles...

Russia has captured 162 square miles of the Ukrainian territory since June 14, the Interfax news agency said Tuesday, citing Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia's security council. Russian forces have captured the village of Tymofiivka in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, Interfax news agency quoted the defense ministry as saying Tuesday. Also, Russian forces have thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to penetrate the border in Russia's Kursk region, the interim governor of the region said Tuesday.

Leftists are desperate to have the Federal Reserve cut interest rates, believing that higher rates are hampering the “country’s ability to combat the climate crisis.” As the media increasingly speculates about the prospect of the Federal Reserve cutting rates in September, clean energy companies and their backers on Wall Street are hoping that the presumed rate cuts would alleviate the heavy borrowing costs for “Big Renewables” over the last two years. Charlie Gailliot, a global cohead of climate at the private equity firm KKR, said, “The energy transition is very capital-intense. In a lower rate environment, you’ll see a tailwind...

Russia will train its troops in Ukraine to use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield, Moscow has said.The training exercises will involve Iskander-M ballistic missiles and various aircraft, Moscow’s defence ministry said in a statement published on the Telegram messaging app.“During the exercise, issues of preparing units of the armed forces of the Russian Federation for the combat use of non-strategic nuclear weapons will be worked out,” it said.“As part of this exercise, the personnel of the missile formations of the Southern and Central military districts will work out combat training tasks of obtaining special training ammunition for the Iskander-M...

President Biden on call with staff just now: “Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running." "No one is pushing me out.” "I'm not leaving. I'm in this race to the end and we're going to win." ..... Snip..... In the same call, vice-president Kamala Harris – whose name has been increasingly floated around as Biden’s replacement – continued to voice her support for Biden, with reports of her saying: We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight and we will win....

Russian President Vladimir Putin's meeting with an ally of the Wagner Group signals his struggle to address setbacks in the Ukraine conflict. Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking decisive steps to address growing challenges as he seeks to regain control over his struggling military campaign in Ukraine. On May 2, Putin met with Alexei Dyumin, the governor of Russia's Tula Oblast, and a known associate of the Wagner Group, at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence in Moscow Oblast. The meeting has raised questions about the stability of Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu's position, signalling Putin's increasing desperation in the face of unmet...

“In fact, it shows Louis Tomlinson fans near Four Seasons Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina last week,” a fellow BBC fact-checker said of the 32-year-old singer and one-time Harry Styles bandmate in One Direction. The footage, also shared by numerous online influencers, was just one of a number aired by Iran’s state TV claiming to show scenes of devastation from the weekend’s air strikes, despite Israel shooting down around 99% of the drones and missiles fired at the Jewish state. Another that IRINN claimed to be the fiery aftermath of a missile strike was actually from a February forest fire...

John Dean, a White House counsel to former President Richard Nixon, used just two words to describe the raft of unsuccessful appeals that former President Donald Trump has filed in his futile attempts to delay the start of his criminal hush money trial. “I think these appeals now, everybody knows, are frivolous, they’re desperate,” Dean told CNN’s Boris Sanchez on Wednesday. The four-time-indicted presumptive GOP presidential nominee “doesn’t want this case to go on before he has to face the voters,” Dean added. “And it is not going to help his campaign contrary to any thoughts that he pretends that...