Free Republic

The U.S. economy added more jobs than expected in May, posting strong payroll gains for the third month in a row, a sign the U.S. labor market is steadily recovering from a weak patch last fall and winter. The U.S. added 172,000 jobs in May, the Labor Department said Friday, beating expectations.

Federal agents, in a daring predawn raid Wednesday, pounced on the opulent, $35 million Newport Beach mansion of an Iranian tech boss charged with supplying US computer hardware to Iran’s military and nuclear programs. The California Post was there as the FBI arrested Jamshid Ghomi, 63, of Newport Coast, who was charged with conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and is expected to appear Wednesday afternoon in Santa Ana federal court. The businessman, who is a dual citizen of Iran and the US, is accused of selling computer hardware to the Iranian government for use in its...

President Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel's escalation in Lebanon in an expletive-laden call on Monday, two U.S. officials and a third source briefed on the call told Axios. Why it matters: Earlier on Monday, Iran threatened to abandon the negotiations with the U.S. over Israel's actions in Lebanon. On the call, Trump called Netanyahu "crazy" and accused him of ingratitude, according to two of the sources. He also put the brakes on Israel's plan to strike Beirut. Behind the scenes: One U.S. official said Trump told Netanyahu that following through on his threats to...

Jill Biden conceded Monday that if she had to do it all over again, she would not advise husband Joe Biden to seek re-election. “Would I want to put Joe through the hurt and the pain that we felt during that time? Never, never. I mean, it was so hurtful,” she told NBC’s “Today” show ahead of the Tuesday release of her memoir, “View from the East Wing.” But, the former first lady added, the decision about whether to run again “had to be his decision alone” and “the doctors said he was healthy” enough to serve four more years.

WASHINGTON — A massive 300-foot-wide, 150-foot-tall American flag has been draped over the Hoover Dam in Nevada as part of the celebration for America's 250th anniversary.The installation went up on Memorial Day to honor the men and women who gave their lives in service to the country, and will light up each night until July 4. The display uses more than 550 automated LED lights and is completely powered by the dam's hydroelectricity.

Iran has agreed to surrender its stockpile of highly enriched uranium as part of a “largely negotiated” deal to end the war, according to US sources.The deal includes an “apparent commitment” to giving up the uranium, but a concrete plan of how this would be done is expected to be established in further rounds of talks, two US officials told The New York Times.Iran’s nuclear programme has been a sticking point in negotiations since the US and Tehran agreed to a ceasefire in April, and agreeing to give up its uranium would represent a major concession from the Islamic Republic.However,...

Iran's Supreme Leader has issued a directive that the country's near-weapons-grade uranium should not be sent abroad, two senior Iranian sources said, hardening Tehran's stance on one of the main U.S. demands at peace talks.Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei's order could further frustrate U.S. President Donald Trump and complicate talks on ending the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Israeli officials have told Reuters that Trump has assured Israel that Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, needed to make an atomic weapon, will be sent out of Iran and that any peace deal must include a clause on this. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...

A Las Vegas school district is being sued for allegedly violating a student’s First Amendment rights after he was expelled for placing pro-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signs on campus.Fox News reports that the lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for Nevada last week alleging that a minor, identified as N.C., was disciplined after placing six pro-law enforcement emblems around East Career and Technical Academy (CTA) in January.The 2-by-2-inch emblems were posted a day after students were allowed to walk out of class to protest ICE and included messages such as “ICE Immigration Enforcement,” “Border Security Academy Deportation...

Senate Republicans on Tuesday vented their frustration and disappointment over President Trump’s decision to endorse state Attorney General Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn (R) in the Texas Senate Republican primary, a move that deals a crushing blow to Cornyn’s hopes of winning the May 26 runoff. “I don’t understand. He is an ethically challenged individual,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said of Paxton, who was charged with defrauding investors in a Dallas-area tech startup before he completed a pretrial diversion program. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she was “supremely disappointed” in Trump’s endorsement of Paxton over Cornyn. “I don’t understand...

President Donald Trump endorsed Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Tuesday over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn ahead of the Senate runoff. Cornyn and Paxton competed in a tight matchup as they both campaigned to run against Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. Trump made endorsements for over two dozen Republican candidates across the country, but waited until early voting to make an endorsement in the Texas Senate race. “The Highly Respected Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, an America First Patriot, and someone who has always been extremely loyal to me and our AMAZING MAGA MOVEMENT, is running for the...

“When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct,” [ snip ] Trump did not point to a specific comment made by Xi. But the post comes after his Chinese counterpart, in opening remarks at a U.S.-China bilateral meeting, questioned if the two nations could overcome the “Thucydides Trap” — a theory suggesting that when a rising power threatens to displace an established one,...

President Donald Trump has defended Chinese nationals purchasing U.S. farmland, while conceding he does not “love it,” in comments that underscore a central tension in his China policy: balancing national or food security concerns with economic realities. [ snip ] On the campaign trail, Trump was already warning against Chinese acquisitions in the U.S. At a Smithton farm event in Pennsylvania in September 2024, he said that the U.S. should block Chinese purchases of farmland, adding: “we don’t want you buying our land.”

About 1.2 million international students studied in the U.S. last year, of which about 266,000 are Chinese, according to the Institute of International Education's (IIE) data. "I frankly think it's good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture, and many of them want to stay here, I think it's good," Trump said in the interview which aired Thursday evening. "Not everybody agrees with me, and it doesn't sound like a very conservative position and I'm a conservative guy; I'm more of a common sense guy."

Donald Trump has revealed that Xi Jinping offered to help the US break Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. 'President Xi would like to see a deal made,' Trump told Fox News. 'He said, 'If I can be of any help at all, I would like to be of help.' Anybody that buys that much oil has obviously got some kind of relationship, but he'd like to see the Hormuz Strait open.' Trump did not say what Xi would want in return for China's assistance, but there have been reports that Beijing is seeking tariff relief and access to...

Lake Tahoe doesn’t know where its power will come from after next ski season—and it’s a major problem for the 49,000 residents who call the region home. The Sierra Nevada tourist hub—home to ski resorts, lakeside casinos, and roughly 25 to 28 million annual visitors—is facing an energy crisis with a familiar culprit: the data centers powering the AI boom. NV Energy, the Nevada utility that has supplied the bulk of Lake Tahoe’s electricity for decades, told Liberty Utilities—the small California company that services the region—that it will stop providing power after May 2027. The reason? NV Energy needs the...

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned Wednesday that Iran is “frighteningly close” to developing weapons-grade enriched uranium.Speaking to lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Wright stressed that Iran’s enriched uranium, which President Trump is deadset on confiscating, puts the regime just weeks away from the threshold needed to get a nuke.“They are a small number of weeks away to enrich that to weapons-grade uranium. There’s still a weaponization process that happens after that, but they’re quite close,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s White House counterterrorism director Sebastian Gorka told The Post that he believes China intentionally flooded the United States with fentanyl in a present-day “Opium War” designed to weaken America through the “targeted killing” of its citizens. Gorka unloaded the blistering assessment Monday in a “Pod Force One” interview with The Post’s Miranda Devine — before Trump departed Tuesday afternoon for a state visit to Beijing that is expected to focus on trade relations. “They see our city on a hill as the newest version of the British Empire, and it is now payback time for the...

<p>The CIA then failed to comply with the DNI DIG’s oversight investigation, refusing to provide necessary information for investigators to understand why analytical standards at the CIA were violated. The CIA also illegally spied on the computer and phones belonging to DIG personnel, along with their investigations and contact with whistleblowers, Erdman alleges.</p>

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals this week temporarily blocked an $83 million dollar payment that President Donald Trump owed to E. Jean Carroll in her defamation case while the Supreme Court mulls intervening. The court order granted Trump's request for a stay, provided he increase his bond by nearly $7.5 million. Carroll, in 2019, accused Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman's dressing room some time in the 1990s. She brought separate legal claims for defamation over his denials while in office and after leaving.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated the liability order in Mississippi’s state Supreme Court judicial redistricting case. The move comes after the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais where the nation’s highest court struck down Louisiana’s congressional redistricting that added a new majority-minority district, saying that lawmakers relied too heavily on race. The high court’s 6-3 ruling deemed racial gerrymandering unconstitutional as it had been practiced under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 was being used as the justification for U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock’s order that mandated the redrawing of Mississippi’s...