Free Republic

Critics say the administration is breaking the law and sidestepping the rulemaking process that presidents of both parties have routinely followed.At the Transportation Department, enforcement of pipeline safety rules has plunged to unprecedented lows since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.Trump recently ordered Energy Department staff to stop enforcing water conservation standards for showerheads and other household appliances. And at one Labor Department division, his appointees have instructed employees to halt most work related to antidiscrimination laws.Across the government, the Trump administration is trying a new tactic for gutting federal rules and policies that the president dislikes: simply stop enforcing them.“The conscious...

The Tijuana River stinks. So, what could be more fitting than renaming it in honor of Donald Trump?

Even before President Trump was re-elected, the Heritage Foundation, best known for Project 2025, set out to destroy pro-Palestinian activism in the United States.In late April, the Heritage Foundation dispatched a team to Israel to meet with power players in Israeli politics, including the country’s foreign and defense secretaries and the U.S. ambassador, Mike Huckabee.The conservative Washington-based think tank is best known for spearheading Project 2025, a proposed blueprint for President Trump’s second term that called for reshaping the federal government and an extreme expansion of presidential power.Now the Heritage contingent was in Israel, in part, to discuss another contentious...

A raid on Abby’s Bakery in Los Fresnos heralded the crackdown to come. Ahead of the owners’ trial for “harboring” undocumented workers, the community is seeing the impact of the president’s policies.Most mornings, Leonardo Baez, a father of seven, wakes up hours before sunrise to mix bread dough in the border city of Los Fresnos, Texas. Punishing and laborious work, yes, but owning a beloved bakery has been a lifelong dream of his, he said.It is now in jeopardy.In February, federal agents swooped down on his shop, Abby’s Bakery, detained workers they said were in the country illegally and pressed...

A prominent critic of President Donald Trump sends what would appear to be a coded message: They subtly display four digits: an “86” followed by the two digits that denote Trump’s presidency.But the year is not 2025 with former FBI director James B. Comey; it’s 2020 with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). While Comey on Thursday stoked controversy by posting a photo of seashells arranged in a formation of “86 47,” Whitmer engaged in a similar form of political protest five years ago. She appeared on television with a tiny “86 45” pin displayed on the table next to her.The...

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said Thursday on CNN’s “The Source” that former FBI Director James Comey’s social media post about President Donald Trump that featured a photo of seashells arranged to read, “86 47,” was not criminally chargeable. Kaitlan Collins said, “Listen to what the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard – just to give you a sense of what administration officials are saying – what she just said tonight.” Fox News host Jesse Watters said, “Do you believe Comey should be in jail?” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said, “I do. Any other person with a...

Much like its creator, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was preoccupied with South African racial politics on social media this week, posting unsolicited claims about the persecution and “genocide” of white people. The chatbot, made by Musk’s company xAI, kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X who asked it a variety of questions, most having nothing to do with South Africa. One exchange was about streaming service Max reviving the HBO name. Others were about video games or baseball but quickly veered into unrelated commentary on alleged calls to violence...

SummaryTrump order targeted children of certain immigrants Three judges issued orders blocking policy nationwide Administration challenges nationwide injunctions WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court wrestled on Thursday over Donald Trump's attempt to broadly enforce his executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, a move that would affect thousands of babies born each year as the Republican president seeks a major shift in how the U.S. Constitution has long been understood.The court's conservative justices, who hold a 6-3 majority, seemed willing to limit the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide, or "universal," injunctions, as federal judges in Maryland,...

At home, President Trump is ordering up investigations into his political opponents and finding creative ways to use his executive power to ruin the lives of even some of his milder critics.Abroad, Mr. Trump has sent a different message: Let bygones be bygones. Even if those bygones involved trying to assassinate him or working with Al Qaeda.In a series of speeches and off-the-cuff remarks during the first major foreign trip of his second term, Mr. Trump has told audiences in the Middle East that he is willing to set the past aside in the interests of peace and profit.“I have...

Rock megastar Bruce Springsteen has made a series of critical remarks about US President Donald Trump and the policies of his administration, calling the American leader “unfit” for office. “The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock n’ roll in dangerous times,” Springsteen said at the beginning of a concert in Manchester, northern England, on Wednesday. “In my home, the America I love — the America I’ve written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years — is currently in the hands of...

ISTANBUL—Diplomatic brinkmanship over U.S.-brokered efforts to efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine reached dizzying levels on Wednesday, with each side seeking to call the other’s bluff by demonstrating a desire for peace and casting the other as the obstacle to it. Ukraine’s president said he would be waiting in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Thursday for Vladimir Putin, but the Russian president is sending a team of negotiators to Istanbul, and the Kremlin won’t say if he will be there. President Trump hasn’t ruled out the possibility of joining any talks in Turkey, and senior U.S. officials are headed...

A magistrate judge warned US Attorney Alina Habba and ICE against ‘out-of-court’ statements about the case against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka during a hearing on Friday. Public statements made by Alina Habba and ICE spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin following Ras Baraka’s arrest are at issue. The Mayor of Newark was arrested for criminal trespass on Friday after storming the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility. ..... Snip..... On Friday, Alina Habba said Mayor Baraka was taken into custody after he ignored multiple warnings from DHS agents. “The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations...

Americans lambasted President George H. W. Bush for infamously vowing on stage at the 1988 Republican National Convention not to raise taxes on Americans, then supporting a tax hike as president two years later. History could repeat itself as President Donald Trump this week signaled his support for congressional Republicans raising taxes to accomplish the ambitious goals of his "big, beautiful bill," according to experts. "My opponent won't rule out raising taxes, but I will. And the Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I'll say no. And they'll push and I'll say no. And they'll push again, and...

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,...

In what may be the most valuable gift ever extended to the United States from a foreign government, the Trump administration is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar -- a gift that is to be available for use by President Donald Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation, sources familiar with the proposed arrangement told ABC News. The gift is expected to be announced next week, when Trump...

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...

A federal judge in Vermont on Friday released a Turkish Tufts University student detained in a Louisiana immigration center more than six weeks after she was arrested while walking along a street in a Boston suburb, allowing her to return to her studies. U.S. District Judge William Sessions in Burlington released Rumeysa Ozturk pending a final decision on her claim that she’s been illegally detained following an op-ed she co-wrote last year that criticized the school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza. Details of her release and travel plans were not immediately available, and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement...

The Trump administration has rolled out Project 2025-aligned policies on trade, immigration, the federal workforce, the media, diversity initiatives and voting and transgender rights.The White House said Trump’s policies are “based on the best interests of the American people, period.”Experts have questioned the legality or wisdom of some policies, and liberal activists have promised to resist. In his Project 2025 chapter on trade, economist Peter Navarro called on the next U.S. president to bring about a domestic manufacturing “renaissance” by adopting reciprocal tariffs against trading partners and taking a particularly hard line on China.Promptly after being elected, President Trump appointed...

For years, President Donald Trump blamed “communists” for his legal and political troubles. Now, the second Trump administration is deploying that same historically loaded label to cast his opponents — from judges to educators — as threats to American identity, culture and values.Why? Trump himself explained the strategy last year when he described how he planned to defeat his Democratic opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in the White House election.“All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country,” he told reporters at his New...

Minnesota beaches may never be the same, following a unanimous state Supreme Court ruling this week overturning a woman’s indecent exposure misdemeanor conviction on the grounds that men, transgender individuals and breast cancer survivors are not held to the same standard. “Criminalizing the exposure of female — but not male — breasts does not provide Minnesotans with adequate notice as to the conduct the indecent exposure statute prohibits,” Associate Justice Sarah Hennesy wrote of the court’s decision. “Because a binary approach to breasts fails to recognize the more nuanced physical realities of human bodies, whether they are intersex, transgender, nonbinary,...