Free Republic

Here is a quintet of random news stories from around the world: ~In America, the same people who spent four years loving the open-borders Biden regime and its legions of Haitian cat-eaters and MS-13 gangbangers have gone bananas over the arrival of fifty-nine white South Africans; ~In Britain, Sir Keir Starmer is pledging a super-butch crackdown on immigration lest the country become, in his words, "an island of strangers"; ~In Canada, an "edible crickets" farm that owes the sugar-daddy government over forty million bucks in unreimbursed federal start-up funding, has gone into receivership; ~In Turkey, a new study has found...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in Congress are moving with rapid speed to advance President Donald Trump’s big bill of tax breaks, spending cuts and beefed-up border security funding as leaders work to enact many of his campaign promises. House committees have been laboring for months to draft the legislation, which Republicans have labeled “THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,’’ a nod to Trump himself. Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing to approve the package and send it to the Senate by Memorial Day. Democrats say they will fight what House party leader Hakeem Jeffries calls “this extreme and toxic bill.”Here’s a look...

Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs—and by Mr. Trump’s own hand. Witness the agreement Monday morning to scale back his punitive tariffs on China—his second major retreat in less than a week. This is a win for economic reality, and for American prosperity. Make that a partial win for reality. The Administration agreed to scrap most of the 145% tariff Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods on April 2 and later. What remains is his new 10% global base-line tariff, plus the separate 20% levy putatively tied to...

Trump’s presidential blitz is realizing the dreams of conservative intellectuals in the Reagan-Bush era.Imagine a populist president who set out to create, “in the first weeks of his administration, a radically different perception of the presidency.” He could use “far-reaching executive orders” to “give various constituencies throughout the country the immediate conviction that this president, for a change, looks out for them.” The burst of presidential edicts would serve visceral as much as practical purposes: “The nation as a whole needs to be jarred by this newcomer’s determination to protect the country’s vital interests, perhaps by ordering, on national security...

Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) said Monday on CNN’s “The Lead” that “everything” President Donald Trump says is a lie. When discussing Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s arrest at the Delaney Hall Detention Center last week, McIver said, “Along with Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman and Congressman Rob Menendez from New Jersey, we decided to show up at this facility to conduct an oversight visit.” Host Jake Tapper said, “What do you say to the DHS spokesman’s claim of body slamming?”

The House Ways and Means Committee will soon release the GOP’s first draft of the party’s tax proposals, and the irony is that the bill may be getting worse even as a good bill becomes more urgent. President Trump has pitched a tax-rate increase that even Democrats failed to pass, and parochial demands are shrinking the pro-growth value of the bill. Republicans seem to have forgotten the principles of sound tax policy, even the lessons of the successful 2017 reform. Most of the 26 GOP Members of Ways and Means weren’t in Congress in 2017. The intellectual capital of previous...

For about 30 hours, the illusion of transatlantic unity over Ukraine was maintained. Europe and Ukraine had demanded a deal on the 30-day unconditional ceasefire the Trump administration proposed two months earlier. European leaders said US President Donald Trump had personally backed their plan – and threat of sanctions if Russia declined to sign up by Monday – in a Saturday phone call, a picture of which they posted online from Kyiv. Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, even joined a chorus of US allies demanding Russia adhere to the ceasefire demand. But then Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke,...

From secure borders to functioning cities, America is shedding the hard-won pillars of civilization—by choice, not chance—in a sweeping, top-down descent into disorder. Secure borders and stationary populations were considered the mark of emerging civilization by classical historians. In contrast to nomadism and constant strife over disputed territory, peoples who had clearly defined and protected borders ascended to statehood, maintained a distinct culture, and achieved greater prosperity and security. In contrast, what we suffered from 2021 to 2025 was unprecedented. It was an intentional administration effort to de-civilize the nation by destroying its borders—as if to return to the premodern...

In the run-up to the vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., knew her party had a problem — and its name was John Fetterman. Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, was open to confirming President Donald Trump’s embattled pick, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Murray wanted to speak with her colleague one-on-one. So she reached out to set up a time. But Fetterman refused, as the two people familiar with the episode told NBC News. “He figured that she wanted to yell at him about it,” one person familiar with the...

The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Poland headed to Kyiv on Saturday for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a show of unity a day after Russia's Vladimir Putin hosted his allies in a Victory Day parade on Red Square. The summit will discuss a U.S. and European proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in the Russian war in Ukraine that if refused by Moscow would see them jointly impose new sanctions, a French diplomatic source said, adding that the step had not yet been finalised. The visit by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German...

Long before she was a Fox News host who pushed pro-Trump election conspiracy theories, Jeanine Pirro was an ambitious New York politician whose career stalled after she was recorded plotting to bug her then-husband’s boat to catch him in an affair. The revelation rocked Pirro’s campaign for New York attorney general nearly 20 years ago, resulting in days of front-page headlines in the city’s tabloids (“BUG THIS LOVE BOAT!” blared the Daily News cover). The conversation took place in 2005 between Pirro and the former commissioner of the New York Police Department, Bernard Kerik, a close ally of Rudy Giuliani’s....

What's the latest federal agency drawing the scrutiny of the Trump administration for inefficiency, expense, and administrative bloat? It's the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a federal bureaucracy long infamous for intruding into Americans' lives and making it more difficult and expensive to do business. The EPA's own administrator, Lee Zeldin, says the agency is overdue for reform. If he's open to suggestions, people who have been working on the problem for years have good ideas to offer. "Under the previous administration, EPA's buildings stood largely empty, with headquarters attendance peaking at just over one-third occupancy as the record high attendance...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the “Hugh Hewitt Show,” President Donald Trump said that his administration will be “looking at” immigration reform that would regularize some of those who are in the country. Host Hugh Hewitt said, “Oh, the most impressive thing, Mr. President, the most impressive thing, the Democrats said they could not close the border unless you passed a bill, and you closed it in a month. And I don’t know how it happened, but I think I’ll be waving that flag in every election from now until I retire, because you did it in a month, and I’m...

Several theater performers have reportedly thrown a tantrum and plan to run away from their roles in “Les Misérables” for a night simply because Donald Trump may be in the crowd. Trump is expected to attend the June 11 show and that fact alone was enough to scare off a bunch of performers who had pledged their dedication to the production, sources told CNN. Insiders close to the situation said these artists apparently self-deported themselves from the Kennedy Performing Arts Center on June 11 despite rehearsals and the lead-up to the show scheduled in conjunction with a fundraiser to benefit...

The markets are responding positively to a vast shift in the direction of the Trump economic policy direction (a little change that I’ve been calling for since well before Liberation Day). I’m very happy about it as well. There’s a reason that’s vitally important: Right now, the Republicans have a lot of running room, and one of the reasons they have a lot of running room is because the Democrats continue to be insane. I don’t just mean they’re insane in terms of their policy preferences, although many of those policy preferences are quite crazy. I mean, culturally speaking, the...

President Donald Trump announced this week that he would end the Digital Equity Act, which provided $2.5 billion in grants to ensure everyone had equal access to the digital economy. "I have spoken with my wonderful Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, and we agree that the Biden/Harris so-called 'Digital Equity Act' is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL," Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social. "No more woke handouts based on race!" "The Digital Equity Program is a RACIST and ILLEGAL $2.5 BILLION DOLLAR giveaway. I am ending this IMMEDIATELY, and saving Taxpayers BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!" he added. The act, signed into law by former...

Ford Motor has hiked prices on three of its Mexico-produced models effective May 2, becoming one of the first major automakers to adjust sticker prices following U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs. Prices on the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV, Maverick pickup and Bronco Sport will increase by as much as $2,000 on some models, according to a notice sent to dealers, which was reviewed by Reuters. Ford earlier this week said Trump's trade war would add about $2.5 billion in costs for 2025, but it expects to reduce that exposure by around $1 billion. Rival General Motors said last week that...

Former President Joe Biden claimed Thursday on ABC’s “The View” that then-Vice President Kamala Harris had “six full months” to run for president after he dropped out of the race on July 21, 2024 just over three months before Election Day. Co-host Sonny Hostin said, “Well, Mr. President, some have even argued that leaving the race and endorsing your vice president, Vice President Harris, a hundred, over a hundred days before the election hampered her campaign. What do you say to those critics? Biden said, “I say, number one, that there were still six full months. She was in every...

The left broke norms, erased borders, and weaponized justice—not to govern, but to crush Trump and cling to power by any means necessary. Somewhere between 10 and 12 million illegal aliens were invited into the United States by the Biden administration. As far as logistics go, Biden could not flee Afghanistan without getting 13 Marines killed and abandoning to the terrorist Taliban $50 billion in munitions, a billion-dollar embassy, and a $300 million retrofitted huge airbase. But Biden and his handlers proved far more logistically capable when their target was fellow Americans. After all, they somehow managed to stop the...

Denmark's foreign minister says he will summon the US ambassador to address a report that Washington's spy agencies have been told to focus on Greenland amid Donald Trump's threats to take over the island. "It worries me greatly because we do not spy on friends," Lars Løkke Rasmussen said, responding to the report in The Wall Street Journal. According to the newspaper, US spy agencies were told to focus efforts on the semi-autonomous country's independence movement, and American goals to extract mineral resources there. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accused the Journal of attempts to "undermine" President Trump "by...