Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is asking nine major universities to commit to President Donald Trump’s political priorities in exchange for more favorable access to federal money.Universities were asked to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” committing them to adopt the White House’s vision for America’s campuses. It asks the schools to accept the government’s priorities on admissions, women’s sports, free speech, student discipline and college affordability, among other topics.Signing on would give universities priority access to some federal grants, but government money would not be limited solely to those schools, according to a White House...

An immigration judge on Wednesday denied a motion filed by Kilmar Abrego Garcia's attorneys to reopen his immigration case, according to a copy of the decision obtained by ABC News. In the emergency motion filed in August to reopen the case, attorneys for the wrongly deported Abrego Garcia argued that because he was deported to El Salvador and then brought back to the United States, he is now eligible to apply for asylum within one year of his last entry into the U.S. But in the order filed on Wednesday, Regional Deputy Chief Immigration Judge Philip Taylor said that Abrego...

Tuesday on CNN’s “NewsCentral,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) claimed President Donald Trump was an “idiot” who “doesn’t actually understand how the military works.” Co-host Boris Sanchez said, “Senator, is there anything in place that would prevent the president from going about using certain cities in the United States as a training ground for the military, as he described it earlier today?” Gallego said, “Look, the president is an idiot. He doesn’t actually understand how the military works. The first thing it’s going to be is that most U.S. citizens will stand against that in civil protests, and you’ll have many...

If there is a path toward authoritarianism for the United States, this is it. The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey is just the latest outrage and effort to use the power of the federal government for the sake of retribution. As we enter just the ninth month of President Donald Trump’s second term, it is essential to recognize that what we have seen is unprecedented in American history.

Washington — A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Tuesday that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio violated the First Amendment by targeting pro-Palestinian students for deportation in order to strike fear into international students and curb lawful speech. In a 161-page decision, U.S. District Judge William Young delivered a blistering assessment of the Trump administration's efforts to pursue international students who expressed pro-Palestinian views on college campuses, which he said was constitutionally protected speech. The judge, appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, was unsparing not only in his views of Noem and Rubio's actions, but...

After targeting one former FBI director he forced out, Trump raised the prospect of an investigation into a different former FBI director he forced out.For more than four years, a wide variety of Republican conspiracy theorists clung to a ridiculous idea about the Jan. 6 attack: It was federal law enforcement, they’ve claimed, that secretly instigated the insurrectionist assault on the Capitol. The absurd claims grew so common that they were given a name: the “fedsurrection” narrative.Indeed, at the heart of the theory is the idea that insurrectionist rioters were actually the victims on Jan. 6: These poor, unsuspecting partisans...

During a panel discussion featuring world leaders and philanthropists in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, Alex Soros said the $23 billion philanthropic organization he leads would not cave to pressure from President Trump. Mr. Soros, the son of the billionaire investor and Democratic megadonor George Soros, defiantly told attendees that it had done nothing wrong and would back away from its human rights work “over my dead body,” according to two people who attended the panel who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it was an invitation-only event. The remarks came in response to a question about a report in...

WASHINGTON - The White House released a list of nearly 30 elected officials -- all of them Democrats -- who the Trump administration said incited violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents throughout the U.S. The White House named the following elected officials on the list, as well as quoted each of them: Gov. Tim Walz smeared ICE as the “modern-day Gestapo. Gov. Gavin Newsom likened ICE to “secret police,” calling them “authoritarian” and proclaiming a “right to push back.” Gov. JB Pritzker claimed the country is becoming “Nazi Germany” because ICE is “grabbing people off the street and...

Federal investigators have subpoenaed records related to travel they believe Fani Willis took around the time of last year’s election, but it was not immediately clear why.The Department of Justice has issued a subpoena for records related to the travel history of Fani T. Willis, the Georgia district attorney who charged President Trump in a sweeping election interference case, according to a federal grand jury subpoena reviewed by The New York Times. The scope of the investigation is not yet clear. Also unclear is whether Ms. Willis is the target of the inquiry and whether she will ultimately face charges....

An ICE agent who was filmed brutally slamming a woman to the ground in front of her children has been 'relieved' of his duties, according to an official. Now-viral footage of the male officer showed him throwing her to the hard ground as he repeatedly told her 'adios'. The woman was heard pleading with the plain-clothes official at the New York City customs and immigration offices after her husband was detained and whisked away by ICE agents just moments earlier. Her young daughter cried as her mother was violently forced to the floor and witnesses rushed to surround her. Now,...

Every living former chair of the Federal Reserve, as well as a slew of ex-Treasury secretaries and former White House economic advisors, urged the Supreme Court not to allow President Donald Trump to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook as her lawsuit challenging her removal is pending. Signers included ex-Fed chairs Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen; ex-Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Hank Paulson, Jack Lew, and Timothy Geithner; and ex-CEA chairs Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, Christina Romer, Cecilia Rouse, Jared Bernstein, and Jason Furman.

Jimmy Kimmel’s comment about the Charlie Kirk shooting suspect was a mess, and a miss, which gets less clear the more you look at it.Never has a snarky, clumsily worded and insensitive-sounding aside caused so much trouble. Jimmy Kimmel’s comment about Charlie Kirk shooting suspect Tyler Robinson has sparked a cascading series of dramatic (and chilling) events that have resulted Disney suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live! “indefinitely.” But many — if not most — are interpreting the comment in a way that its phrasing does not entirely support. Entirely being the operative word. Let’s look at his viral quote again:...

A Biden-appointed federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from terminating federal grants to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The Trump administration has terminated more than $500 million in federal funding from the school, claiming it failed to address antisemitism after allowing a “Jew Exclusion Zone” to persist on campus and is continuing to engage in racially discriminatory admissions practices. The preliminary injunction granted by Judge Rita F. Lin, an appointee of President Joe Biden, said the administration likely did not follow the proper procedure in canceling the grants. All grants that were terminated by the administration...

The high court will also hear arguments about overturning a 90-year-old precedent that allowed Congress to create independent agencies.The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to fire the sole remaining Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission, the latest victory in his aggressive push to exert greater control over the federal bureaucracy. The justices overturned a lower-court injunction that reinstated Rebecca Slaughter to her position with the agency that oversees antitrust and consumer protection issues while litigation over her removal works its way through the courts. The ruling — while provisional — is significant because the...

Heavy metal icons Gwar staged a mock beheading of Elon Musk and murdered President Trump during their performance at this weekend’s Riot Fest, with critics slamming the band for “normalizing violence.” Shocking video shows the chainsaw-wielding Musk mannequin, dressed in sunglasses, a baseball cap, a black “D.O.G.E.” t-shirt, matching black jeans and a jacket being decapitated by a member of the band mid-show at the Chicago rock festival. To cheers from the crowd, the mannequin’s head comes flying off with a slice of the costumed band member’s sword, sending a jet of fake blood spurting into the air. Gwar —...

President Trump's flurry of recent presidential pardons has cost crime victims and taxpayers approximately $1.3 billion in restitution and payments, according to a review by House Judiciary Democrats. The pardons absolved hundreds of convicted criminals from having to pay for damages and restitution caused by their crimes. Victims have not been made whole, the Democrats said — including U.S. taxpayers who must now foot the bill for the millions of dollars in repairs and cleanup from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.The Judiciary Committee Democrats' investigation, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, also cited several multi-million...

In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC. The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January, according...

Residents of Palmetto Bay, Fla., have demanded the resignation of Councilman Stephen Cody, who wrote a post mocking Charlie Kirk’s support for gun rights.One by one, the angry residents who had packed the council chambers on Monday night in Palmetto Bay, Fla., stepped to the podium to express their disgust over online comments that a councilman, Stephen Cody, had made about Charlie Kirk.One man called Mr. Cody’s comments “vile.” Another called them “abnormal and dangerous.” A third man said that the councilman’s Facebook post, which went up a few hours after Mr. Kirk was fatally shot in Utah, “smells like...

A strawberry delivery driver was arrested by Border Patrol near Gov. Newsom’s Little Tokyo news conference, becoming “collateral damage.” Angel Minguela Palacios endured six weeks of harsh detention conditions, watching fellow detainees give up and self-deport. Over more than a month in detention, the 48-year-old father prayed he’d get back to his family. The lights never dimmed and Angel Minguela Palacios couldn’t sleep. He pulled what felt like a large sheet of aluminum foil over his head, but couldn’t adjust to lying on a concrete floor and using his tennis shoes as a pillow. He could smell unwashed bodies in...

Already suing newspapers for billions over their reporting, president now cheers removal of late-show hostABC's decision to pull late-show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air marks what observers see as an escalation in a campaign by U.S. President Donald Trump and his allies to pressure media critics into silence. The network announced it was indefinitely pre-empting Jimmy Kimmel Live!, just as taping of the show's Wednesday night episode was about to begin, after Kimmel came under fire for a line in a monologue that referenced the man accused of killing prominent Trump supporter Charlie Kirk. This follows a series of...