Free Republic

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...

It’s not just you. It really is impossible to keep track of all the political news. But one thing is pretty reliable: When Donald Trump has a bad week, he will use social media to make a presidential announcement.Last week was one of those bad weeks. President Vladimir Putin of Russia landed in America as if he had V.I.P. tickets to a private Taylor Swift meet-and-greet. He made no concessions in Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Trump belatedly realized that he had been played. Plus, that Jeffrey Epstein thing just won’t go away.So, true to form, the president took to...

President Trump has embraced an array of far-right views and talking points in ways that have delighted many right-wing activists who have long supported those ideas.During President Trump’s first turn in the White House, right-wing extremists like the Proud Boys were on the streets, weekend after weekend, raising their voices — and oftentimes their fists — about issues such as immigration, the squelching of conservative speech and the removal of Confederate-era statues. But in the first seven months of Mr. Trump’s second term, there has been a conspicuous absence of far-right demonstrations. And that, some leaders of the movement say,...

- snip - Satan has taken up residence in the White House. This isn’t a play-by-play of the current news cycle in America, although it surely sounds like it. This is, in fact, the latest episode of “South Park,” once again scathingly calling out the Trump administration’s absurd antics in real time, and the show isn’t pulling any punches. - snip - The most glaring plot, though, involved the return of a beloved character, Towelie, heading to a militarized Washington, D.C., just as Trump has deployed hundreds of National Guard troops in real life to address the city’s “crime emergency”...

Summary Abrego ordered released on bail after wrongful deportation Trump administration brought him back to face criminal charges Defense lawyers fear deportation to third country despite release Noem says U.S. will continue to seek his deportation Aug 22 (Reuters) - Kilmar Abrego, the migrant whose wrongful deportation in March to his native El Salvador made him a symbol of President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration policies, was released from criminal custody in Tennessee on Friday, his lawyer said.Abrego, 30, was deported to his native El Salvador in March despite a 2019 immigration court ruling that he not be sent there due...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s announcement this week that it would rescind the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials was hardly an isolated act.In ordering the revocation of the clearances, President Donald Trump was turning to a favored retributive tactic that he’s wielded — or at least tried to — against high-profile political figures, lawyers and intelligence officials.The latest targets include officials who have served in the government across a range of agencies and positions, including on former President Joe Biden’s national security team and at the CIA and National Security Agency. It’s not entirely...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s social media account mimicking Donald Trump’s all-caps online posts is getting under the skin of prominent conservatives on the right. The reaction to Newsom’s pitch-perfect parody of Trump — including his wild rants, name-calling, and use of AI-generated images — is shining a light on the absurd behavior of the president of the United States, who has largely gotten a pass from his party for doing the same thing. “You have to stop it with the Twitter thing,” Fox News host Dana Perino said Monday of the potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender. “If I were his...

Thousands gathered in cities across the country on Saturday to protest President Trump's plan to keep control of Congress after the 2026 midterms by pushing Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps in favor of Republicans. The president’s push for the rare and aggressively partisan redistricting, while centered on Texas so far, has set off a furious response among many Democratic state leaders and party activists. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Friday that he was moving forward with a plan to redraw his state’s lines, and allow voters to approve it in November. On Saturday, progressive activists, labor...

"You're not going to end a war between Russia and Ukraine without dealing with Putin."Secretary of State Marco Rubio unloaded on ABC News host Martha Raddatz over her claim that when President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Friday’s summit in Alaska, he had effectively “elevated” the Russian leader on the world stage.Raddatz brought up the summit, which Trump has touted as a success, and claimed that “people were saying” he had actually given Putin the upper hand by allowing him to walk the “red carpet” and be seen on the “world stage” meeting with the American...

Over the weekend, the US Department of Homeland Security’s X account appeared to reference an antisemitic dog whistle. And it wasn’t the first time that happened this summer. “Which way, American man?” the department’s official page posted Sunday, over a political cartoon from 1936 called “Uncle Sam at the Crossroads.” The post, a recruitment ad for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alluded to the phrase “Which way, Western man?” — the title of a 1978 book steeped in antisemitic conspiracy theories and explicit threats against Jews. As a social media meme, the phrase has been used to ridicule the “woke,” feminism...

JD Vance's fishing trip in England was technically illegal because British Foreign Secretary David Lammy did not have the required rod license. The Foreign Office said Lammy described the lapse as an "administrative error," that he had written to the British Environment Agency to notify them and that he had now purchased the relevant licenses. It is not yet clear whether Vance had a license—Newsweek has contacted his team, via email, for comment.

SummaryRaids at farms ensnare migrants who lived in the U.S. for decades One detained migrant said an agent in military garb hit him on the head, threatened him with gun DHS said 185,000 people have been deported from the U.S. this year Aug 12 (Reuters) - Yahir remembers growing up in Mexico without a bed or a stove. He didn’t own a pair of shoes until he was 10, and in the mid-1990s — when he was 13 — he crossed with a group illegally into the U.S. in search of work. He settled in California and worked on farms...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Some law enforcement officers are continuing to charge people under a Florida law that bans people living in the U.S. illegally from entering the state, even though a federal judge has halted enforcement of the law while it’s challenged in court. Two more people were arrested and charged under the law in July, according to a report Florida’s attorney general is required to file as punishment for defying the judge’s ruling.Both men were arrested by a sheriff’s officer in Sarasota County, located on the state’s southwest coast. The charges came months after U.S. District Judge Kathleen...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump took unprecedented steps toward federalizing Washington, D.C. on Monday, saying it’s needed to fight crime even as city leaders pointed to data showing violence is down. He took command of the police department and deployed the National Guard under laws and Constitutional powers that give the federal government more sway over the nation’s capital than other cities. Its historically majority Black population wasn’t electing its own city council and mayor until 1973, when Republican President Richard Nixon signed the Home Rule Act. The measure still left significant power to the president and Congress, though...

Alyx, a transgender woman who has served in the Air Force for 15 years, was approved in May for early retirement due to the Trump administration’s policy prohibiting trans people from serving and enlisting in the military. On Wednesday, that retirement was revoked under a new Air Force directive. She said she wasn’t provided any reason other than that her retirement was “prematurely" approved, according to documentation she provided to NBC News.

WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior FBI official who served as acting director in the first weeks of the Trump administration and resisted demands to turn over the names of agents who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, investigations is being forced out of the bureau, two people familiar with the matter said Thursday. The circumstances of Brian Driscoll’s ouster were not immediately clear, but his final day is Friday, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the personnel move by name and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Additional ousters were possible. Spokespeople for the FBI...

Redistricting reform could die as it becomes another polarizing and partisan blood sport.David Daley is author of “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” and “Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections.”The 2026 midterms might not be decided by tariffs, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings or even Sydney Sweeney’s divisive American Eagle ad — but by gerrymandering. Just a handful of seats separate the two parties, and first Republicans and now Democrats are angling for more before votes are cast.Texas Republicans stand ready to adopt a new map that could award them as many as five additional...

You can be excused for having flashbacks to October 2020 and 51 former intelligence officials claiming that the damning material (later revealed as true) on Hunter Biden's laptop have all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation if you had read the latest works of Rolling Stone.Why? Because they are rolling out that worn, sad trope again in a pathetic attempt to discredit the recent shocking Russiagate findings based on material in John Durham's annex. Without seeming to have any sense of shame or embarrassment, Rolling Stone published this story on Friday by Nikki McCann Ramirez, "MAGA’s New Russiagate ‘Evidence’ Was Likely...