Free Republic

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump denies that Israel dragged the US into war with Iran, insisting that if anything, the opposite could be true and that he felt Iran was going to attack first. Trump was asked by a reporter in the Oval Office, “Did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran? Did Netanyahu pull the United States into this war?” “No, I might have forced their hands. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they [the Iranians] were going to attack first,” Trump claims in response, during...

WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - Only one in four Americans approves of the U.S. strikes that killed Iran’s leader, while about half — including one in four Republicans — believe President Donald Trump is too willing to use military force, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Sunday. Some 27% of respondents said they approved of the strikes, while 43% disapproved and 29% were not sure. About nine in 10 respondents said they had heard at least a little about the strikes, which began early on Saturday. The poll was conducted during the strikes on Iran by the U.S....

Last year the U.S. experienced something that hasn’t definitively occurred since the Great Depression: More people moved out than moved in. The Trump administration has hailed the exodus—negative net migration—as the fulfillment of its promise to ramp up deportations and restrict new visas. Beneath the stormy optics of that immigration crackdown, however, lies a less-noticed reversal: America’s own citizens are leaving in record numbers, replanting themselves and their families in lands they find more affordable and safe.

The European Union’s executive arm requested “full clarity” from the United States and asked its trade partner to fulfill its commitments after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down some of President Donald Trump’s most sweeping tariffs. Trump has lashed out at the court decision and said Saturday that he wants a global tariff of 15%, up from the 10% he announced a day earlier. The European Commission said the current situation is not conducive to delivering “fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial” trans-Atlantic trade and investment, as agreed to by both sides and spelled out in the EU-U.S. Joint Statement of...

A 6-3 Supreme Court majority on Friday struck down President Trump’s sweeping emergency tariffs (Learning Resources v. Trump) in a monumental vindication of the Constitution’s separation of powers. You might call it the real tariff Liberation Day. It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Court’s decision for the law and the economy. Had Mr. Trump prevailed, future Presidents could have used emergency powers to bypass Congress and impose border taxes with little constraint. As Chief Justice John Roberts explains in the majority opinion, “Recognizing the taxing power’s unique importance, and having just fought a revolution motivated in large part...

Victor Schwartz, 67, became the face of the battle to strike down the president's controversial tariffs when he sued the government last April. Schwartz has owned VOS Selections in Manhattan since 1987 and feared the tariffs would devastate his small business. He argued that the US President lacked the authority to impose tariffs without congressional approval, becoming one of the few dissenting corporate voices to publicly oppose the fees

Tommy Robinson, Britain’s self-styled free speech warrior, has been allowed to enter the U.S. despite a long criminal rap sheet. On Thursday, Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, posted a video on social media from an airport in the U.S. announcing, “I’ve arrived!” He said the trip was “last-minute” after he’d been informed only hours earlier that he’d gotten a visa, and hinted at plans to throw himself into U.S. politics. That apparently included a meeting with Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a longtime peddler of MAGA election conspiracy theories. Sharing a photo of himself shaking...

Rep Ted Lieu has ignited a fresh political storm after alleging that Donald Trump is repeatedly named in the unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act in January 2026. Lieu claimed that members of Congress who reviewed the fuller set of documents encountered disturbing allegations tied to the former president. His remarks, delivered during a forceful exchange on Capitol Hill, have triggered sharp partisan reactions and renewed scrutiny of the Epstein records. According to Lieu, the unredacted files viewed by a select group of lawmakers mention Trump “thousands and thousands of times”. He further asserted that...

A ghost story falls in the category of fantasy. And former ABC reporter Tara Palmeri's Halloween-in-February hot take in Vanity Fair on Thursday, "Epstein’s Ghost Is Calling All the Shots in Trump’s White House," certainly falls within the realm of fantasy. She updates Banquo's ghost to the 21st century and engages in the fantasy that Epstein's ghost is somehow haunting Trump's every move.Since no incriminating facts in the Epstein files could be found about Trump, Palmeri performs the pretense of somehow channeling the president's soul and concluding that his every waking (and sleeping) moment is being haunted by Epstein's ghost....

It's NOT ENOUGH: Voters Say Trump WINS Aren't WORKING!

Over the course of 2025, the average tariff rate on U.S. imports increased from 2.6 to 13 percent. In this blog post, we ask how much of the tariffs were paid by the U.S., using import data through November 2025. We find that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers. [...] We highlight two main results. First, 94 percent of the tariff incidence was borne by the U.S. in the first eight months of 2025. This result means that a 10 percent tariff caused only a 0.6 percentage point decline in foreign export...

Oh, the horror! The sheer, unmitigated brutality! Vice President JD Vance's motorcade descended upon the Winter Olympics in Milan like a fleet of rogue armored personnel carriers, "wreaking havoc" in ways that would make even the most dramatic speed skating wipe-out look tame. At least, that's the breathless hysterical narrative spun by the Daily Beast in its latest masterpiece of journalistic gymnastics, headlined "Vance's Clunky Motorcade Wreaks Havoc at Winter Olympics." Penned by the intrepid "Breaking News Reporter" Vic Verbalaitis, this exposé reveals the true villain of the 2026 Games: not doping scandals or judging controversies, but a convoy of...

Olympic patriotism for Team USA just isn’t the same anymore.We had a schtick here at SB Nation circa 2014 with the Sochi Winter Olympics, or more aptly, a social media strategy that led us to posting endless, tongue-in-cheek, jingoistic patriotism during the games. There were the traditional medal counts and tracking the achievements of U.S. athletes that were earnest, but also intentionally cringy images of Ronald Regan riding a velociraptor, a muscled George Washington covered in bandoleers, and Abe Lincoln smoking cigars. It’s horrifically clichéd now, but it wasn’t back then. The intention was to juxtapose the honest, legitimate pride...

Less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in President Trump's first year back in the White House had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by CBS News. The official statistics contained in the DHS document, which had not been previously reported publicly, provide the most detailed look yet into who ICE has arrested during the Trump administration's far-reaching deportation operations across the U.S. The internal DHS figures undermine frequent assertions by the Trump administration that its crackdown on illegal immigration is primarily targeting...

Bad Bunny is expected to perform the Super Bowl half-time show on Sunday entirely in Spanish – which has inspired fans to quickly learn the language. In October, the Puerto Rican singer – born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – kicked off the 51st season of Saturday Night Live expressing pride over the achievement in Spanish, after which he said in English, “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn!” That declaration further stoked the anger of some conservatives who have vilified Bad Bunny for speaking out against US president Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies. The...

Having said that, the claim is going viral on the left, so you need to have your facts lined up to challenge your TDS-suffering friends and acquaintances. esterday, Donald Trump posted an interesting video on his social media about voting machine election fraud in 2020. This is obviously a topic dear to his heart. Moreover, as the investigations in Fulton County, Georgia, demonstrate, it’s still a very hot and important topic (making it all the more bizarre that Senate Republicans will not push the SAVE Act, which aligns with the bipartisan public desire for election integrity). That Trump would post...

An organization known as Leaving MAGA has made headlines by putting up signs across Pennsylvania urging MAGA voters to abandon the America First movement. The billboards have been placed in York, Hanover, and Mechanicsburg. Rich Logis, the founder of Leaving MAGA, claimed, “The billboards represent a growing number of people in the MAGA community who are starting to have doubts.” […] Charlie Gerow, a GOP strategist, said, “These types of political billboards pop up all over the place all the time… the good news is it simply isn’t working because Trump voters have swelled Republican ranks in recent days.” …

The death of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis man killed by federal agents, has been ruled a homicide, the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office said. Pretti was shot Jan. 24 during a chaotic encounter with federal immigration officers in Minneapolis. Citing government records, ProPublica identified Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez as the two officers who fired at Pretti. The news outlet reports that Ochoa has been a Border Patrol agent since 2018, while Guituerrez had been with CBP since 2014.

Donald Trump's second year of his second term began with a pursuit to conquer more foreign territory abroad as he attempts to calm unrest over his ruthless deportation campaign at home. He's navigating the the headwinds of year two of Trump 2.0 with most of his top team in intact. In his first year, the highest-level ouster came when National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was pushed aside due to his role in the infamous Signal-gate texting scandal. Former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino exited his role in December, after complaining about mounting stresses on his family life. One government insider...

Alex Pretti’s last words were, “Are you okay?” Renee Good’s were, “I’m not mad at you.” Both were fatally shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers this month. Neither was holding weapons. They were observers, present to record, witness and alert their communities. We all saw what happened to them. ICE brutality is not new. The agency has instituted inhumane conditions and separated families for decades. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025, but that was also true in 2004. What has changed is not the violence. The change is that we can no longer pretend we do...