Free Republic

The row between the BBC and Donald Trump has escalated further after it was revealed the broadcaster commissioned a fierce critic of the US President to deliver its flagship annual lectures.Dutch author Rutger Bregman used the high-profile events to draw parallels between Trump's America and the rise of fascism in the 1930s. In one talk, entitled A Time Of Monsters and due to air next week, he likened Mr Trump, Nigel Farage and tech billionaires such as Elon Musk to fascists, according to one audience member. He is said to have used the term 'a bit fashy' to describe them.The...

Inside Democrats’ effort to attack RFK Jr.’s vaccine moves without angering his base.Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, a former nurse and CDC epidemic intelligence service officer running for governor, has called on Kennedy to resign and told POLITICO she’s encountered a lot of voters who are worried about losing access to vaccines due to his policies. Amy Acton, the former head of the Ohio Health Department now running for governor, also cited conversations with voters “very, very scared of the reckless, chaotic health decisions being made” by Kennedy. And several Democrats said that even when they don’t proactively bring up...

For years, Democrats and pundits have rolled their eyes at Gavin Newsom. But he’s positioned better than anyone else for the future of politics.California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally with Harris County Democrats at the IBEW local 716 union hall on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025, in Houston. | Karen Warren/APJonathan Martin is POLITICO’s senior political columnist and politics bureau chief. He’s covered elections in every corner of America and co-authored a best-selling book about Donald Trump and Joe Biden. His reported column chronicles the inside conversations and major trends shaping U.S. politics.SAN FRANCISCO — No Democrat has had...

I will never forget the moment when I realized that President Trump had transformed the way we think about political scandals.It was in September 2019, right after Trump released the memorandum of his July 25, 2019, call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. There, in black and white, was one of the clearest examples of an improper quid pro quo in foreign affairs that I’d ever seen.Zelensky told Trump that he would like to purchase Javelin anti-tank missiles for Ukraine. Trump responded with his own request. “I would like you to do us a favor,” he said, and proceeded...

Zohran Mamdani is not a serious person. How do we know? Because, with just a few days to go before Election Day, he has not expressed his views on New York City ballot proposals two through four, which strike at the heart of the “affordability crisis” he pretends is central to his campaign. I say “pretends” because none of Mamdani’s signature campaign proposals, estimated to cost $7 billion per year, will actually reduce the cost of living in New York. He must know that, unless his pricey Bowdoin College education left him appallingly ignorant of how the real world works.You...

As politicians prepare to jet into Belém, Brazil, for the 30th annual UN climate meeting, philanthropist Bill Gates has provided a straightforward insight: climate summits like COP30 should prioritize what truly improves human lives, and not just chase reductions in emissions or temperatures. His point is both refreshingly overdue and, frankly, obvious common sense. I have long argued that policymakers should always ask: What’s the smartest way to do the most good with limited resources? For billions of people in the developing world, tackling immediate challenges like poverty and disease outweighs chasing distant temperature goals.In poor countries, parents are not...

Two of the biggest unions in the federal workforce — the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association — are demanding that Democrats reopen the government now. It’s not because they’ve turned MAGA or suddenly embraced the GOP budget: both unions are as progressive as ever. It’s because their members are working without pay. And the plight of these workers shows just how difficult it is for Democrats to wring concessions through shutdown tactics.Because it’s illegal for federal workers to strike, these employees don’t have much choice. They are subject to what could be called...

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts declined to distance the conservative organization from Tucker Carlson, in response to criticism that Tucker has become "anti-semitic." KEVIN ROBERTS: I'll have more to say on this in the coming days, but today I want to be clear about one thing. Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic. Of course, anti-Semitism should be condemned. My loyalty as a Christian is to Christ first and to America always. When it serves the interest of the United States to cooperate with other allies, we do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, technology. But when...

Trump’s trade war isn’t working, but neither did previous administrations’ policy of accommodation.As President Trump meets Xi Jinping in South Korea, I believe America’s China strategy needs a course correction—but not a knee-jerk reversion to a pre-Trump status quo. If we want to win the competition with China, we need to think well beyond the next election and even the next decade. We need to rebuild a durable bipartisan consensus over how to approach the world’s most consequential relationship. That will require a plan that avoids the big swings we’ve seen in our China strategy the past two decades. For...

Positive results continue to emerge from the Trump administration’s ongoing experiment in tightening the labor market for truck drivers. As we highlighted last week, trucking spot rates are rising for legal American drivers. Now, in an especially stunning turn of events (and an entertaining one, for industry watchers), the American Trucking Association is admitting that, actually, there never was a labor shortage. “What we have in the United States is a quality problem around drivers, much more so than an absolute number,” says one official. “There’s never been a lack of people with [licenses]... what we lack is the number...

As a young person deeply engaged in politics, I am often asked why my generation is elevating figures like Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist, in New York. People across the political spectrum want to understand how a candidate who openly advances antisemitic rhetoric has gained traction among young voters.To me, Mamdani’s popularity is unsurprising – it reflects how my generation has been raised, educated, and conditioned to think.The reality is that when teachers support Mamdani and when teachers unions endorse him – as they have – students are not far behind. The New York State United Teachers and the United...

The scandals engulfing the Democratic Senate hopeful expose a rift between the state’s provincial and national identities Since I moved to Maine half a decade ago, I’ve found that my friends in other places don’t really keep up with the comings and goings of Maine life. For me, that’s kind of the point of living here: It’s nice being out of the way, and to hear my friends muse wistfully, “I’ve always wanted to visit Maine.” These are attempts to solicit invitations to come stay with us in Vacationland, and they’re about as close as my friends to the west...

I do NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT. Therefore, I have instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible. It is already delayed enough due to the Democrats keeping the Government closed through the monthly payment date and, even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while States get the money out. If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the...

~3 minutesTurning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk predicted his own assassination in chilling text messages to friend and former colleague Candace Owens — years before he was assassinated in Utah.Owens posted screengrabs of a text exchange from April 6, 2018 on her podcast in which the person she identifies as Kirk predicted he would be killed because of his work with Turning Point USA.“If I tell you the true prophecy I know in my gut it’s really sad,” Kirk wrote, adding, “But I hope its wrong.”Candace Owens shared the sadly prophetic texts on an episode of her podcast on Monday,...

The lapse in benefits could be temporary if the Trump administration complies with a recent court order requiring them to use emergency money to fund SNAP. The impact of the food aid lapse will sweep across red and blue states alike: Just over half of all SNAP recipients live in states that backed Trump in last year’s election.More than two dozen Democratic state officials — including those in California, Massachusetts, Kansas and Kentucky — sued the Trump administration over the lapse in benefits in a separate lawsuit that is still pending a formal decision. Republican officials have pointed the blame...

GOP candidates for Tuesday’s elections are trapped between Trump’s demands for fealty and voters who want independence.HAMILTON, N.J. — The most revealing element of next week’s election is that President Donald Trump is all but ensuring defeat for Republicans, and his party is doing next to nothing about it.The mere fact of his election last year handed Democrats a powerful turnout lever in blue-leaning New Jersey and Virginia, but Trump has further undermined GOP hopes in the two states with his conduct and has seemingly abandoned California Republicans.There are his explicit actions: The DOGE layoffs and government shutdown reductions-in-force hit...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the defence of Pokrovsk is a "priority", as elite special forces were deployed to the embattled town on the eastern front line. Ukrainian army sources told the BBC that special forces from military intelligence and assault groups were being used as regular infantry to protect supply lines to troops holding the town in the Donbas region. There have been growing reports of Russian advances around the strategic town to the west of Donetsk. Ukraine has denied claims their forces were surrounded. Moscow wants Kyiv to cede the entire Donbas region as part of a...

The Trump administration plans to claw back more than $1 billion in federal funds being spent on Medicaid for illegal immigrants in blue states. A preliminary audit from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) found that California, Washington, D.C., Colorado, Washington, Illinois and Oregon had misused $1,351,204,127 on healthcare for illegal aliens during the past few years. While using federal Medicaid dollars for this purpose is prohibited, Democrat leaders are using loopholes in federal laws to use funds for emergency treatment of patients regardless of their immigration status. According to the CMS, California was responsible for a sizable...

Can the nation’s greatest city survive full-on socialism?It is still technically possible that self-declared democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani will not become the next mayor of the nation’s largest city and financial capital of the world. But those chances might best be described as a wing and a prayer. One would have thought that New Yorkers who voted for Mamdani in the Democratic primary months ago without knowing much about him would reconsider their support once they learned the details of his plan to turn the city into a socialist utopia. But the smooth-as-silk 34-year-old native of Uganda continues to hold...

You’re paying for them, in the name of climate aid. A £52m road through the Amazon jungle is being built using British aid that is intended to help the climate, The Telegraph can reveal. The road in Guyana goes nowhere other than a tiny village and has long been criticised by environmentalists, though it is celebrated by the oil industry. It is just one among hundreds of schemes funded by taxpayers through the International Climate Finance initiative (ICF). Few will have heard of the ICF outside Westminster circles. It is the result of the Government’s determination to push a green...