Free Republic

President Donald Trump wants to bring the death penalty back to Washington for those convicted of murder amid his crime crackdown in the District — even though capital punishment has been outlawed there for decades. While Washington, D.C.’s Superior Court that handles local trial matters is barred from utilizing the death penalty, and any changes at that level likely would require intervention from the D.C. City Council or Congress, the death penalty is legal at the federal level. As a result, Trump would seek to capitalize on capital punishment in Washington for those convicted of federal crimes, according to Matthew...

Leaders of the MAGA movement have a new warning: Don’t let America become like Britain. That was the howling conclusion at a conference of MAGA-aligned policymakers and think tanks this week in Washington, where elite voices, many with close ties to President Donald Trump, painted a dystopian, misleading and anti-Muslim picture of England as a bastion for dangerous immigrants. Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former chief of staff who continues to be an influential adviser, decried the “threat of Islamism in the U.K.,” positioning Britain as a cautionary tale of how mass migration could affect the United States. Others called the...

Hours after claiming that the United States has "lost" India to China, US President Donald Trump toned down his rhetoric, saying that ties with New Delhi remained "special" and he continued to share a strong personal bond with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Shortly after, PM Modi tweeted that he "appreciates and fully reciprocates" Trump's sentiments and positive assessment of India-US ties. When asked whom he held responsible for "losing India" to China, the US President replied, "I don’t think we have. I have been very disappointed that India would be buying so much oil, as you know, from Russia. And...

In his book Empire of the Raj (2004), historian Robert Blyth argues, “The Persian Gulf was the heart of the Indian sphere.” Indeed, the Indian subcontinent had been connected to the Gulf region through trade and migration for centuries, a reality that was built upon by the British when they established their empire in India. Contrary to what modern maps of British India might make us believe, the territory of influence of the British Raj expanded far beyond the contours of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. As Sam Dalrymple points out in his book, The Shattered Lands (2025), “As recently...

Trump is enlisting tech titans to secure U.S. dominance in AI, biotech, and national security—reviving a modern-day War Production Board for the 21st century. The left weighs in on anything that Trump is against, which drives it to lionize criminals like Abrego Garcia, champion open borders, and oppose increased oil and natural gas production. And they are against anything Trump is for. So often, they did not care much about big-city crime rates, supported biological men’s usurpation of women’s sports, and opposed taking out the Iranian nuclear threat. However, recently, some former and, no doubt, current Trump opponents now seem...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, once a casino owner and always a man in search of his next deal, is fond of a poker analogy when sizing up partners and adversaries. … Seven months into his second term, he has accumulated presidential power that he has used against universities, media companies, law firms, and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized “deep state” is, in some ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents. And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren’t recoiling. They’re...

President Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner last month because he didn’t like the monthly jobs numbers. He claimed the numbers were “rigged.” But Friday’s monthly report for August confirms that job creation has stalled amid his tariff barrage. Employers added a mere 22,000 jobs last month while the numbers were revised down for the previous two by a combined 21,000. This means only 107,000 new jobs were created in the last four months—an average of 27,000. Monthly job gains averaged 167,000 last year. Nearly all of the new jobs last month were in social assistance and healthcare...

I regret the downfall of the soi-disant Ginger Growler. As corrupt and talentless as she was, the Deputy Prime Minister was, in a certain sense, real - in a way that Sir Keir never can be, except perhaps to favoured Ukrainian rent-boys. And her boast that she threw Boris Johnson off his stroke at Prime Minister's Questions by "flashing me ginger growler" was, by the standards of the age, a harmless jest that added to the gaiety of the nation. However, politicians only matter if politics matters. And the consistent message from the courts, the cops, the press and the...

Jeff had this earlier today, but it’s a long time coming for some groups. The Justice Department is mulling banning gun ownership for those who identify as transgender. It goes beyond the horrific mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis that occurred on August 27, where two kids were shot and killed, with another 17 injured. Since 2020, 40 percent of mass shooters, or would-be mass shooters, have been identified as transgender or suspected of being one. If those clamoring for government to “do something,” this is a good first step: A DOJ source told the Daily Wire that...

No matter what dictionary you consult, the definition of “emergency” is never “a chronic situation that the leader of a country would like to address using powers not otherwise available to him.” This, though, is how the Trump administration tends to define the term. A national emergency is British troops winning the Battle of Bladensburg and heading toward the White House in 1814. A national emergency is Iranian radicals breaching the US embassy in Tehran and taking 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage in 1979. A national emergency is a pandemic reaching our shores, killing the particularly vulnerable and sickening...

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia, in a hearing on Wednesday, told the room: The notion that rights don't come from laws, and don't come from the government, but come from the Creator... That's what the Iranian government believes... So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.

Seven months in, Trump has curbed illegal immigration, steadied the economy, and scored foreign policy wins—while Democrats flounder without a counteragenda. Trump’s greatest achievement within six months was simply ending illegal immigration as we had once known it—without “comprehensive immigration reform” or any other rhetorical trickery. It remains difficult to find, much less deport, the 10 to 12 million illegal aliens who entered in the last four years. Those who helped break the law, by design or indifference, now believe it was moral to destroy federal immigration law but immoral to uphold it. And it is still unclear whether Joe...

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to restore about $2.2 billion in federal funding for Harvard University, despite finding the Ivy League school was “plagued by antisemitism.” Regardless of antisemitism concerns, Boston-based District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled the federal grants awarded to Harvard were unlawfully terminated by President Trump. Burroughs, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, determined there was “more than sufficient” evidence indicating the Trump administration “impermissibly retaliated against Harvard for refusing to capitulate to the government’s demands.” The Trump administration “specifically and repeatedly linked the coordinated funding cuts to Harvard’s decision to ‘fight,’” Burroughs...

More than 1,000 current and former employees across the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) signed a letter on Wednesday morning calling for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s resignation.Addressed to Kennedy and members of Congress, the signatories accused the secretary of endangering the health of Americans. Save HHS, the group behind the letter, told ABC News it's been sent to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce as well as Majority and Minority leadership."We swore an oath to support and defend the United States...

Progressive darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is teaming up with Republicans on a rare issue they have in common - taking down their colleagues who may be cashing in on insider information. Outrage has been growing about members of Congress who have been unfairly profiting from trading the very stocks they regulate. Many lawmakers have become multi-millionaires after working in Washington despite making an annual salary of just $174,000. There's been heavy scrutiny on ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, after her net worth nearly doubled to $265 million since 2013. Though the former speaker never tried to ban congressional trading during her tenure, she...

President Trump is making many valid changes. A major one is doing away with politically deceptive Department of Education (which Reagan wanted to do), thus returning our children’s learning back to the states and counties – where it belongs. The President has also eliminated the Evolution centric UNESCO education. Now, if we are going to have any hope of finishing the job, of removing the Marxist dumbing-down of our children those states and counties should, next destroy every textbook on every subject and start again from scratch. If (most likely the case) they do not, Trump’s action will be worthless...

I hope our American and Canadian readers had a good Labor/Labour Day weekend. Herewith, a brisk survey of the passing scene: ~Today the 47th president appeared, finally, to break with the 45th president on what he had continued to insist was his great achievement - the Covid vaccines: This makes me want to cry. Thank you @POTUS. Finally. pic.twitter.com/eUPOLnZZQ0 — Mary Talley Bowden MD (@MdBreathe) September 1, 2025 As RFK Jr and I have discussed, Americans are the most medicated population on earth: it seems to be pretty lousy for, among others, life expectancy, childhood obesity, and ameliorating the homicidal...

Sir Keir Starmer admitted he was “frustrated” by his first year in power as he carried out a reshuffle of his top team in No 10. The Prime Minister accepted voters had a right to be angry with the Labour Government almost 14 months after he entered Downing Street. On Monday, Sir Keir hired a string of experienced economists for senior No 10 positions in a move he said marked the beginning of “phase two” of his premiership. It also threatens to undermine Rachel Reeves ahead of a challenging autumn Budget at which she is expected to have to announce...

America has a hard time building stuff. Roads. Trains. Light rail. Bridges. Housing. Everything takes seemingly forever, if it even happens at all. Meanwhile, there’s China. A country that builds much faster — high-speed trains, solar panels, electric cars, bridges, ports, drones — all churned out at breakneck speed. Why can China do this, and why does it seem like America can’t? There isn’t a single answer to the question about why China can move fast and why we can’t, but Wang offers one I haven’t heard before. He says one of the most important distinctions between the US and...

A Labour MP has said people flying the St George’s Cross outside a migrant hotel in his constituency are “extremists” trying to “mark territory”. Clive Lewis, who represents Norwich South, criticised Norfolk county council for not removing the flags after they were put up on lampposts around the Brook Hotel in Bowthorpe over a week ago. The hotel has been the scene of protests and counter-protests in recent weeks over its use to asylum seekers, with hundreds of people descending on the area. The Eastern Daily Press quoted Mr Lewis as saying that “most people say they fly the St...