Free Republic

As President Donald Trump threatens legal action against his adversaries, particularly after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, he’s repeatedly talked about using one federal law: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. Trump wants to bring racketeering charges against left-wing groups he’s accused of promoting violence. Some influential Republicans agree with him and have been pushing to include rioting as one of the crimes that falls under the racketeering statute, a decades-old law once aimed at cracking down on organized crime. Kirk’s death and the resulting calls by influential conservatives to crack down on the left using the federal government’s...

Imagine that President Donald Trump actively wanted to encourage radical right-wing groups and “lone wolf” individuals to wage open violent warfare on anyone they deem a leftist anywhere in America. If Trump wanted to send that precise message, he could hardly do much better than the words he actually did deliver on Fox and Friends on Friday morning.“We have radicals on the right, as well—we have radicals on the left,” Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt said as Trump listened during a discussion about the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk. Earhardt continued: “How do we fix this country?”“I’ll tell you something that’s going to...

The shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has triggered a range of reactions, from mournful sympathy to religious conspiracy theories. Kirk spoke of what he called a “spiritual battle” being waged in the United States between Christians and Democrats. Experts on faith and far-right extremism say they are troubled by the religious glorification of Kirk in an era of increased political violence.

As editors and reporters in the Chicago Sun-Times/WBEZ newsroom geared up for President Trump’s proclamation earlier this month that he intended to send the National Guard to Chicago, we asked ourselves: How could we possibly cover the deployment of troops and more ICE agents if the operation was large and dispersed? One avenue? Engage the public. (As we published this story, Trump announced that he would be sending the National Guard to Memphis instead. The administration’s anti-immigration operation in Chicago continues.) So interactive developer Andjela Padejski and Chicago Public Media’s AI fellow Mark Chonofsky got to work on a...

A stew of hypertoxic rhetoric has surged through social media and American discourse after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, inflaming a political environment that was already deeply polarized. The most concerning messages, experts told NBC News, are proclamations from far-right activists, Republican politicians and conservative influencers about a coming civil war and the need for retribution or payback against the left for Kirk’s killing. The phrase “civil war” has spiked on social media and in Google searches. “The Left is the party of murder,” Elon Musk posted on X to his 226 million followers, shortly after the shooting...

Dozens of social media posts and messages about the murder of Charlie Kirk, including some that celebrated his death, are being spotlighted by conservative activists, Republican elected officials and a doxxing website as part of an online campaign to punish the posters behind the messages. Prominent far-right influencer Laura Loomer, a US senator, and a site called “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” have all drawn attention to people who have posted messages about Kirk’s Wednesday assassination. The campaigns show how social media posts or personal messages — even by accounts with few followers or from people who are not public figures —...

Rather than condemning violence and calling for unity, the president of the United States accused his political opposition of being accessories to murder. It is possible that, in the history of America’s radicalization spiral, the horrifying, cold-blooded assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk will be recorded as only the second-most-dangerous event of September 10, 2025. If so, the more significant development will instead have been the speech that evening by President Donald Trump. If you did not listen to Trump’s remarks, which have received only light attention from the media, you might have missed the chilling message they contained. Trump...

Donald Trump Jr. rebuked the transgender community during the anniversary of 9/11 by comparing them to Al-Qaeda terrorists. The president’s son made his remarks during a Thursday interview on the 'Megyn Kelly Show.' Trump Jr. also claimed transgender individuals are probably responsible for other ‘mass killings’ that the public is not aware of ‘because you’re not allowed to talk about the truth.’ ‘I can’t name, including probably like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, a group that is more violent per capita than the radical trans moment,’ Trump Jr. told Megyn Kelly. ‘I’m sure people are totally sane after jacking themselves up...

Visibly angry and upset, Donald Trump described Charlie Kirk as a martyr for truth and freedom, as he paid tribute to a man he considered to be not just a close friend, but also someone who played a significant role in his re-election and in shaping the MAGA movement. Trump directly blamed radical left-wing politics for contributing to this atrocity and other recent violent political attacks. He noticeably did not mention recent murders and violent attacks against Democrats. Often atrocities like this create an atmosphere of political unity. Many senior politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, have responded by saying this...

President Donald Trump threatened Illinois's biggest city with a 'Chipocalypse' ahead of expected Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Trump, 79, took to his social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday to post a meme about himself, where he wrote: 'I love the smell of deportations in the morning. 'Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR.' Trump rebranded the Pentagon to the Department of War this week. The White House reposted it on X with three helicopter emojis. Governor JB Pritzker responded to Trump's post on X, writing: 'The President of the United States is...

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...

King Charles and Queen Camilla will be hosting Donald Trump’s state visit later this month, and it's being said, the king has his concerns, but even so, he and Camilla will be gracious hosts, says one royal expert. Charles is reportedly nervous that Trump will speak out of turn during the visit, addressing immigration issues like he did with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which we inquired about when speaking to Brittani Barger, co-founder of Royal News. According to Barger, if Charles is concerned about Trump speaking out of turn, he has good reason, but no matter what, the monarch will...

President Donald Trump’s recent focus on urban crime presents a classic dilemma for Democrats. If they point out that his lurid portrait of a violent epidemic is inaccurate, they risk turning off voters who agree with him on an emotional level. But if they go along with it, they risk legitimizing his power grab. Trump and his Republican allies clearly hope to ride this issue all the way into next year’s midterms, so Democrats need to come up with a counteroffensive soon. Fortunately for them, there is a group of Democrats who know exactly how to run — and win...

President Trump has cut hundreds of thousands of jobs from the federal work force, disproportionately affecting Black employees.When President Trump started dismantling federal agencies and dismissing rank-and-file civil servants, Peggy Carr, the chief statistician at the Education Department, immediately started to make a calculation. She was the first Black person and the first woman to hold the prestigious post of commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. As a political appointee, she knew there was a risk of becoming a target. But her 35-career at the department spanned a half dozen administrations, including Mr. Trump’s first term, and she...

We’ve grown accustomed to corporate media lying to us. It’s the lazy lies that are perhaps most galling. The Wall Street Journal’s recent overheated piece on the Trump administration’s public revocation of an “undercover” senior CIA officer is ridiculously lazy. The CIA spook in question is a very overt member of the intelligence community. Just Google the name Julia Gurganus. ‘Zero Concerns’ Wall Street Journal national security reporter Brett Forrest on Wednesday reported that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s naming of Gurganus on a list of 37 current and former officials stripped of their national security clearances has “alarmed...

“We’ve also been going through it, and I can tell you there are crude diagrams of the church. There are also photos of the weapons, and they include all sorts of writings, the names of past mass shooters, criticism of Israel, the name of President Trump written on the guns,” Katersky added.

... Mr. Moran, 44, is the pasha of a new power tribe in the capital: the gay men of the Trump administration. These are the A-Gays. They’re (mostly) out, they’re proud (to work for President Trump) and they have big jobs inside (or alongside) this administration. They wield influence all over town, from the Pentagon to the State Department to the White House to the Kennedy Center. “We’re like Visa,” Mr. Moran said. “Everywhere you want to be.” He sipped a dirty vodka martini and surveyed the room. Two Republican men waved at him from across the club. “Both gay,”...

DC under Trump = Pyongyang on the Potomac! That was the absurd analogy that CNN This Morning host Audie Cornish tried to make on Tuesday's show. Reacting to the news that there have been no murders in the capital for 12 days running under Trump's crime-fighting moves there, Cornish said as she held up the New York Post: "Actually, there's probably no murders in North Korea, too."Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

WASHINGTON — A watchdog investigation into former special counsel Jack Smith over his prosecutions of President Trump is based on an “imaginary and unfounded” premise, Smith’s lawyers wrote in a letter obtained by the Associated Press on Tuesday. The letter marks the first response by Smith and his legal team to news that the Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog office, had launched an investigation into whether Smith engaged in improper political activity through his criminal inquiries into Trump. The attorneys told Jamieson Greer, the acting head of the office, that his investigation into Smith was “wholly without merit.”...

The result, legal experts say, is an escalation in the way Trump officials seek to penalize, remove or even jail adversaries.President Donald Trump’s move to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook on Monday was the latest illustration of his administration’s surprising new weapon against its enemies: their own mortgages.Trump and other officials raised allegations of mortgage fraud last week against Cook, a prominent economist put on the Fed board by President Joe Biden. The Justice Department is investigating the claims now, and Trump says the allegations alone are enough for him to push her out of her seat. Additionally, the...