Free Republic

Some people are very worried about the coming Trump administration. Jeff Bezos is not one of them. Or, more accurately, the world's second-richest man says he's not worried about Trump 2.0, even though Trump has singled him out in the past. And Bezos says he could be a Trump ally because he wants to help the next president cut red tape. "I'm actually very optimistic this time around," he said at The New York Times's DealBook conference on Wednesday. "I'm very hopeful. He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view [is], if...

A Palestinian Arab source in the Gaza Strip told Kan News on Wednesday that Hamas has managed to locate the body of the head of Hamas's militant wing Mohammed Deif under the ruins from the strike that killed him in the al-Mawasi area in July. According to the source, the terror organization has already covertly buried the terrorist in a secret location without announcing it publicly. Hamas believes that if Israel learns of the location of Deif's grave, the IDF will exhume him and take his body as a bargaining chip in a hostage deal. Another reason for Hamas's secrecy,...

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s support for Pete Hegseth, who he announced as his nominee for defense secretary shortly after Election Day, is wobbling after a crush of controversy over a rape allegation and a 2018 email from Mr. Hegseth’s mother accusing him of a pattern of abuse toward women. How Mr. Hegseth fares through a series of tests on Wednesday will be critical for his chances. He is set to continue his meetings with key senators, including Joni Ernst of Iowa, a combat veteran who has spoken about being sexually assaulted herself, and his mother is expected to sit for...

An Idaho beauty salon is seeing customers “dropping like flies” after its owner called supporters of President-elect Donald Trump “racist, homophobic, and misogynistic” in a now-viral TikTok. “Trump basically gave small men the ability and the courage to be misogynistic and hateful and say s–t like ‘Your body, my choice’ and ‘You won’t have a choice’ and ‘You will bear my child whether you like it or not,’” Tiffney Prickett, the owner-operator of Voiage Salon in Coeur d’Alene, said in the video. “The comments are so gross. The things men say to women are so gross. And I don’t know...

Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump should “sit out” criticizing President Joe Biden for pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, disgraced Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) claimed Monday. Swalwell, who is accused of sleeping with a Chinese spy, tried to defend Joe Biden’s pardon by pointing to the weaponization of Biden’s Justice Department against Trump. Most of the cases and charges against Trump have been dropped after his victory in November, underscoring the political nature of the prosecutions. Swalwell’s defense of Biden’s pardon of his son, moreover, does not square with some other members of his party. “If you defended the 34x felon,...

Many transgender people in the US are scrambling to shore up their treatments out of fear the incoming Trump administration will follow through on threats to restrict their healthcare. “My goodness this subreddit has exploded ever since Emperor Trump’s ascendency. Literally overnight almost a thousand newcomers,” read a post just after the 5 November election in one Reddit forum dedicated to sharing advice on gender-affirming hormone therapy. A popular underground hormone manufacturer stopped taking new orders in order to get through a backlog.

For more than four decades before Donald Trump assumed the presidency, the FBI director was a position above politics. A new president might choose a political ally as attorney general, but the FBI director was different. An FBI director appointed by Richard Nixon also served under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Carter’s choice remained on the job deep into Reagan’s second term, when Reagan moved him to head the CIA. Reagan’s FBI appointee served through the George H. W. Bush presidency and into the Bill Clinton administration. Clinton fired the inherited official—the first time a president ever fired an...

Democratic strategist James Carville said that new audits are necessary to bring transparency to the Democratic Party’s fundraising efforts after Vice President Kamala Harris burned through a historic amount of money during her unsuccessful campaign. The vice president’s campaign raised at least $1.5 billion during her roughly three-month-long bid for the White House. After losing the election to President-elect Donald Trump earlier this month, Harris ended her campaign with a reported $20 million in debt. The news had Democrats reeling.

Former GOP Congressman David Jolly said Friday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that the media should not give President-elect Donald Trump “equity” by going to Mar-a-Lago like “Morning Joe“ hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski did. Jolly said, “What is really unsettling about it is coming off of the election, those who have tried to act responsibly, feel the pain of the loss. We didn’t wake up after the election and think, I’m upset because I was wrong. We’re upset because we know we’re right, but we’re on the losing side of this battle. And so what does that mean for a...

While polls of Democratic primary voters have been showing that they supposedly want Vice President Kamala Harris to run again, there's a new name out there, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a member of the far-left Squad. On Friday morning, The Hill put out an analysis of potential 2028 Democratic candidates, with Harris topping that list of seven candidates, and AOC closing it out. As their blurb on the congresswoman read:When Democrats talk about the future of the party, the 35-year-old New York congresswoman’s name always bubbles to the top.Democrats have long been impressed with Ocasio-Cortez’s ability to “cut through the...

Donald Trump loved to use tariffs on foreign goods during his first presidency. But their impact was barely noticeable in the overall economy, even if their aftershocks were clear in specific industries. The data show they never fully delivered on his promised factory jobs. Nor did they provoke the avalanche of inflation that critics feared. This time, though, his tariff threats might be different. The president-elect is talking about going much bigger — on a potential scale that creates more uncertainty about whether he'll do what he says and what the consequences could be. “There's going to be a lot...

A group of sad leftists gathered at Klode Park in Whitefish Bay to engage in a “primal scream,” releasing what was described as their “pain and frustration” after the election results saw President-elect Donald Trump romp to a decisive victory and Vice President Kamala Harris left far behind. Video shows the group of people standing at the shore line and screaming. One of the event’s attendees — identified as an organizer — also posted about the event on Facebook.

Former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio called on his party to "be more honest" after Americans felt "betrayed" over the Democratic Party keeping quiet on President Biden’s decline. De Blasio joined a panel on CNN’s "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer" to offer more commentary on what was behind Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party’s resounding losses in the 2024 election. He argued part of the problem was Harris being unwilling to separate herself from Biden, as well as the Democratic Party’s hesitation to criticize Biden until after he dropped out of the race. "Let‘s be...

The Biden administration’s “climate envoy,” John Kerry, claimed that the United States was “on the brink of needing to declare a climate emergency.” During a forum hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics last week, when asked what people who care about the climate and are concerned about the future “should be doing,” Kerry stated that people needed to “start focusing” on the arguments that went with President-elect Donald Trump’s transition. Kerry added that there were “seven million people” who were dying each year due to poor air quality.

Barack Obama and his wife Michelle have been slammed by his biographer for 'talking down' to voters in 'tone-deaf and clueless' preaching that harmed Kamala Harris' ill-fated presidential campaign. The effect was so bad that – combined with Donald Trump's victory – it is likely to reduce the 44th president's political relevance to 'Bill Clinton levels', David Garrow said in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com. 'People do not want to be talked down to, no matter who they are,' the 71-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner said.

PALM BEACH, FL — President-elect Donald Trump officially announced that he plans to impose a 25% tariff on all imports from California into the United States. While California Governor Gavin Newsom had publicly vowed to resist any attempts by Trump's administration to force policies promoting freedom on residents of the state, he warned that Trump's tariff could cripple California's already debt-ridden economy. "Trump, who promised to be a dictator on day one, is going to impose these tariffs as a way to punish the People's Republic of California," Newsom said. "We won't stand for it. I've already contacted my good...

A straphanger was slugged in the face by an irate seatmate on a Manhattan-bound subway, but he managed to wrestle the “little b–ch” to the floor — but that’s when fellow passengers jumped in to help his attacker. Alexander Rakitin, 42, was riding the N train to his Manhattan finance job Monday morning when he sat down next to 34-year-old Timothy Barbee. As the train took off, the car jolted, causing Rakitin’s knee to jostle Barbee’s — which set the alleged assailant off. “He was just very aggressive. I’m like, saying, ‘Dude, just chill, it’s like 8:30 in the morning....

The Wall Street Journal reports that Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the Kenyan who is the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, will not have her contract renewed after declaring that the war against Hamas does not meet the qualifications for genocide. The final say in her dismissal lies with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as he has the authority to renew or discontinue the contracts of UN employees. The UN has denied the report, saying that she is leaving only due to her contract expiring and specifically rejecting any connection to her determinations regarding genocide. A UN statement noted that “genocide is...

The right-wing media sphere flew into a frenzy on Thursday when several users on social media pointed out that U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York had removed her pronouns from her bio on X, formerly Twitter. The overarching sentiment was that Ocasio-Cortez's decision to remove her pronouns from her bio underscored President-elect Donald Trump's decisive victory in the 2024 election, and was an inflection point in "woke" ideology—a derisive term that many conservatives use to describe identity politics and progressive values.

Just weeks after Vice President Kamala Harris’ overwhelming loss to President-elect Trump in the 2024 presidential election, the White House released a memo that hailed the Biden-Harris administration as one of the most successful in history. The memo shared on Monday highlighted how President Biden and Harris took office during the COVID-19 pandemic and a "reeling" economy, before going on to call their administration "one of the most successful administrations in history" which "will be leaving behind the best economy in the world." "Under President Biden and Vice President Harris’ leadership, 16 million jobs have been created, and we’ve gotten...