Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, once a casino owner and always a man in search of his next deal, is fond of a poker analogy when sizing up partners and adversaries. … Seven months into his second term, he has accumulated presidential power that he has used against universities, media companies, law firms, and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized “deep state” is, in some ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents. And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren’t recoiling. They’re...

Seven candidates for Germany's right-wing AfD party have died in a matter of weeks - with just nine days remaining until a crunch set of local elections. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's densely-populated western region which contains cities including Cologne and Dusseldorf, is preparing for polls on September 14. But a string of AfD candidates have died - sparking intense speculation and demands for an investigation. Stefan Homburg, a professor at the University of Hannover, has described the deaths as "statistically almost impossible". His warning, shared to social media platform X, was reposted by AfD leader Alice Weidel and...

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia, in a hearing on Wednesday, told the room: The notion that rights don't come from laws, and don't come from the government, but come from the Creator... That's what the Iranian government believes... So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to restore about $2.2 billion in federal funding for Harvard University, despite finding the Ivy League school was “plagued by antisemitism.” Regardless of antisemitism concerns, Boston-based District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled the federal grants awarded to Harvard were unlawfully terminated by President Trump. Burroughs, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, determined there was “more than sufficient” evidence indicating the Trump administration “impermissibly retaliated against Harvard for refusing to capitulate to the government’s demands.” The Trump administration “specifically and repeatedly linked the coordinated funding cuts to Harvard’s decision to ‘fight,’” Burroughs...

More than 1,000 current and former employees across the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) signed a letter on Wednesday morning calling for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s resignation.Addressed to Kennedy and members of Congress, the signatories accused the secretary of endangering the health of Americans. Save HHS, the group behind the letter, told ABC News it's been sent to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce as well as Majority and Minority leadership."We swore an oath to support and defend the United States...

Progressive darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is teaming up with Republicans on a rare issue they have in common - taking down their colleagues who may be cashing in on insider information. Outrage has been growing about members of Congress who have been unfairly profiting from trading the very stocks they regulate. Many lawmakers have become multi-millionaires after working in Washington despite making an annual salary of just $174,000. There's been heavy scrutiny on ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, after her net worth nearly doubled to $265 million since 2013. Though the former speaker never tried to ban congressional trading during her tenure, she...

Sir Keir Starmer admitted he was “frustrated” by his first year in power as he carried out a reshuffle of his top team in No 10. The Prime Minister accepted voters had a right to be angry with the Labour Government almost 14 months after he entered Downing Street. On Monday, Sir Keir hired a string of experienced economists for senior No 10 positions in a move he said marked the beginning of “phase two” of his premiership. It also threatens to undermine Rachel Reeves ahead of a challenging autumn Budget at which she is expected to have to announce...

Rosie O’Donell is quite possibly MAGA’s biggest critic, but today she was forced to issue a grovelling public apology after falsely claiming the suspect in the Minnesota school shooting tragedy was MAGA.

President Trump has cut hundreds of thousands of jobs from the federal work force, disproportionately affecting Black employees.When President Trump started dismantling federal agencies and dismissing rank-and-file civil servants, Peggy Carr, the chief statistician at the Education Department, immediately started to make a calculation. She was the first Black person and the first woman to hold the prestigious post of commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. As a political appointee, she knew there was a risk of becoming a target. But her 35-career at the department spanned a half dozen administrations, including Mr. Trump’s first term, and she...

Less than 1 percent of Democrats say they are satisfied with the direction of the country, according to a new Gallup poll. Why It Matters This is the lowest level of satisfaction among Democrats in at least 25 years, according to Gallup's polling, and it comes at a time when Republican satisfaction is near record high levels. The polling shows that Democrats' satisfaction with the direction of the country quickly dropped after President Donald Trump, a Republican, returned to office in January, while GOP supporters' satisfaction spiked. According to Gallup, 31 percent of Americans currently say they are satisfied with...

The deployment of federal agents and National Guard troops has caused some Black parents to return to the days of “the talk” about policing that they had hoped was no longer needed to keep their children safe.Days after President Trump ordered a surge of federal law enforcement agents in Washington, D.C., Charlene Golphin told her 17-year-old son that his curfew was being cut short by two hours. Ms. Golphin feared that as a Black boy, her son would be caught in the dragnet set up by officers tasked by the president with cracking down on the “roving mobs of wild...

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) has apologized for incorrectly stating on a White House application more than a decade ago that he was a Bronze Star recipient. Moore, a rising star in the Democratic Party, served in the Army Reserve between 1996 and 2014. He was deployed to Afghanistan in August 2005 through March 2006. Though he has won multiple awards for his service, including the National Defense Service Medal, he stated on a 2006 application for the White House Fellowship that his service won him the award of a Bronze Star. “For my work, the 82nd Airborne Division have...

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...

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,...

President Trump promised voters during his campaign for a second term that he had bigger things on his mind than retribution against opponents. But it is increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part, maybe the largest part, of how he will define success in his second term. His revenge campaign took an ominous turn Friday as FBI agents raided the home and office of Mr. Trump’s first-term national security adviser John Bolton. They brought two broad warrants to search the “premises.” Agents showed up unannounced at his Bethesda, Md., home at 7 a.m. They confiscated his wife Gretchen’s phone...

Covid vaccine mandates and a lack of transparency by public-health experts produced many unintended effects—or what scientists call “off target” responses. One is a political turn against mRNA technology that could damage U.S. innovation and pandemic preparedness. The Health and Human Services Department recently scrapped 22 mRNA-related vaccine investments. “These vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu,” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.” Let’s dissect these assertions. Start with his claim that mRNA vaccines fail to protect against...

It’s possible Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to “federalize” law enforcement in Washington, D.C., was just a one-off power grab, reflecting the federal government’s unique control of the capital city and Trump’s own obsession with Washington as a symbol of the American greatness he claims to be restoring. In other words, maybe he took over D.C. because he could. But the exotic and rather fascistic appearance of National Guard units on the streets of Washington absent a riot or some other historically relevant pretext makes you wonder if the 47th president has something far worse in store. Here are some possibilities...

The state’s new congressional lines have yet to be approved, but would-be candidates are jockeying behind the scenes. Supervisor Hilda Solis hasn’t publicly announced her candidacy, but she’s already lining up support for a potential new southeast L.A. County congressional seat. As Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to redraw California’s congressional maps plays out at the state Capitol and on the national stage, a quieter but no less bloody scramble is simultaneously underway. Newsom’s plan — a bid to counter President Trump’s drive for more GOP House seats with his own California show of force — still needs to be approved...

Summary Republican legislators undertake rare mid-decade redistricting New map would shift conservative voters into Democrat-held districts One Democrat calls redistricting plan "illegal and racially discriminatory" Aug 20 (Reuters) - Texas legislators on Wednesday took up a new state congressional map intended to flip five Democratic-held U.S. House seats in next year's midterm elections, after dozens of Democratic lawmakers ended a two-week walkout that had temporarily blocked passage. Republican legislators, who have dominated Texas politics for over two decades, have undertaken a rare mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump, who is seeking to improve his party's odds...

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...