Free Republic

“It is hard to think of another single event in the last decade that has had such far-reaching and sweeping and unintended global consequences as Jim Comey’s press conference,” said one historian.On the morning of July 5, 2016, the word went out to reporters on the Justice Department beat: Get down to FBI headquarters, the brutalist J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue.Across the street, at the main Justice Department building, officials first learned about the planned news conference by Director James Comey from a media inquiry. Comey later told investigators he made a conscious decision to “go at it...

Critics say the administration is weakening public safety. Proponents say regulations would be where they were before President Joseph R. Biden took office. The Trump administration is scrapping more than three dozen firearms regulations, abandoning a crackdown on illegal sales, restoring gun rights to some people with mental illness and loosening oversight of private weapons transactions. The drastic retrenchment at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the nation’s gun laws, was not entirely unexpected: President Trump campaigned as a champion of gun rights. In the view of critics and even some A.T.F....

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was the Trump administration’s frontman for waging war on Iran during weeks of kinetic operations aimed at decimating its nuclear threat. Since President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran to end the war, without securing significant concessions on its missile or nuclear stockpiles, Hegseth has said little about the shift in strategy — as Vice President Vance takes the spotlight in defending the tenuous diplomacy. The public positioning of the top Trump advisers reflects reporting on their private counsel to the commander in chief, with Trump saying in March that Hegseth was “the...

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s slain supreme leader, had seemed immovable for decades, a man whose authority had become so deeply woven into Iran’s political and religious life that imagining the country without him felt almost impossible. Now Tehran — the capital from which he ruled, where he was killed and which had shaped his life — is the center of his final journey, filled with mourners for funeral ceremonies taking place across several days, which are part farewell, part spectacle and part turning point. In the days leading up to the first public mourning, the city changed. First gradually, and...

A scathing report released on the Fourth of July says the National Museum of American History downplays the role of the founders while emphasizing social justice.In a broadside posted to its website just as Fourth of July fireworks were lighting up skies around the country on Saturday, the White House faulted the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for what it said was a failure to properly celebrate the nation’s heritage, arguing that it had become a tool of political activism intent on denigrating the American story.The 162-page report, by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, represents a sweeping attack...

China’s leader draws from autocrats’ playbook to expand power, oust potential rivals and lay groundwork to rule indefinitely Chinese leader Xi Jinping is employing the sort of autocratic tactics once wielded by Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong to stamp out opposition and stack the leadership with acolytes as he prepares to extend his reign. In a throwback to the most powerful Communist leaders of the 20th century, Xi has purged dozens of senior officials—even his own protégés—overseen the growth of a cult of personality and demanded absolute loyalty. His goal: dictate China’s destiny for years to come in order to...

Talking to LBC's Sunday with Lewis Goodall, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party called for more restrictions on social media usage around the date of elections, calling for rules to be aligned with current broadcasting restrictions. "We absolutely need to strengthen regulation in the social media place," she told LBC, adding that she already has some proposals to put forward, "especially when it’s election time,” as part of a current bill being looked at in Parliament. "We’ve got an elections bill going through the House of Commons at the moment; to strengthen that bill, so that social media comes...

Lukashenko said Caracas can always count on Minsk, calling bilateral ties ideologically resilient, as Maduro remains detained in New York since January 3.MINSK – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko marked Venezuela’s Independence Day on Sunday by congratulating Acting President Delcy Rodriguez and making explicit what Minsk’s position is on Nicolas Maduro’s detention: it wants the Venezuelan president home as soon as possible.“We welcome the consistent efforts of the government headed by you to preserve peace, constitutional order and the earliest possible return to the homeland of President Nicolas Maduro Moros and his wife Cilia Flores,” the congratulatory message read, as quoted...

BRUSSELS—When NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte took office in 2024, his biggest challenge was getting the alliance’s European members to spend more on defense. Now, with tens of billions of new dollars pouring into the continent’s militaries, the problem is how to quickly turn that money into potent weapons and more capable armed forces. “A year ago was all about promises” of additional spending, Rutte told The Wall Street Journal ahead of the planned North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week. This year “it’s about delivery,” he said. It is a high-stakes race, with the allies caught between...

WASHINGTON—A growing number of GOP lawmakers have little incentive to come to work or toe the party line, putting critical legislation in danger as Republicans lurch toward the midterms. Some are privately calling it the zombie Congress. GOP leaders are increasingly concerned that members will lose motivation to show up, or may break with the party if they do, potentially stalling or killing some bills, according to lawmakers and aides. While the Senate has been the main focus of GOP cracks, the House is also facing an uncertain summer and fall, with attendance issues and a renewed sense of independence...

On paper, the US constitution is a thing of beauty. But the would-be emperor in Washington has revealed its great weaknessAmerica’s big birthday has come at a bad time. On Saturday it will be a divided nation that marks 250 years since 13 North American colonies declared their independence from the Great Britain of George III. Many will be anxious that the republic they established that day is fragile – not least because of the would-be emperor in the White House.Some will console themselves that hope and angst have always been intertwined in the American story. From the very start,...

Juan Orlando Hernández was accused of receiving millions in bribes and partnering with cocaine traffickers. He was convicted in Manhattan in 2024 and sentenced to 45 years in prison.President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built...

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...