Free Republic

WASHINGTON — For generations, official American documents have been meticulously preserved and protected — from the era of quills and parchment to boxes of paper to the cloud, safeguarding snapshots of the government and the nation for posterity. Now, the Trump administration has sought to expand the executive branch’s power to shield from public view key administration initiatives. Officials have used apps like Signal that can auto-delete messages containing sensitive information rather than retaining them for record-keeping. And they have shaken up the National Archives leadership. To historians and archivists, it points to the possibility that President Trump will leave...

Americans barely remember the Mexican-American War, but in Mexico memories of the war and other military quarrels with the United States remain deeply felt. Mexico lost half its territory, including California, in the war that broke out this week in 1846. President Claudia Sheinbaum, who often speaks of Mexico’s sovereignty, said, “We are neither a protectorate nor a colony of any foreign nation.” MEXICO CITY — At the entrance to Mexico City’s largest park lies a towering marble monument to six young military cadets killed in battle. The Niños Héroes — “boy heroes” — died while defending Mexico’s capital...

The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked the removal of Venezuelan detainees accused under a wartime law of being foreign gang members early Saturday morning, after the ACLU argued the men were at risk of imminent removal to an El Salvadoran prison .... Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

Kaile Shilling, a writer and former theology student, says she moved from Los Angeles to Canada during the first Trump administration to escape America’s toxic politics. She never saw herself as the kind of person to hang a giant flag on the front of her house. But after Donald Trump was reelected last fall and started threatening to turn America’s famously polite and peaceful northern neighbor into the “51st state,” Shilling’s dual-citizenship husband unfurled an enormous red and white maple leaf banner on their home in Vancouver for all the world to see. “When he did it, I went, ‘F—...

The EPA’s plan to roll back regulations and cut climate programs will increase the cost of living for millions of people and bring about hundreds of thousands of premature deathsRepealing key protections could erase $254 billion in annual benefits for public health and the environment, compared with $39 billion in savings for regulated industriesLooser rules around air and water quality could also lead to worsening asthma attacks, increased ER visits and other adverse health outcomes The Trump administration’s slash-and-burn approach to federal programs has delivered a considerable hit to the nation’s environment, but experts say its plans to repeal hard-won...

The Los Angeles Times has delivered another round of layoffs with the outlet’s business side slashed just weeks after 40 newsroom employees accepted buyouts. The Wrap reports the full count isn’t known, citing Oliver Darcy that dozens of employees across the company’s operations and communications sections were let go this week, including Vice President of Communications Hillary Manning. Representatives for the Los Angeles Times didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap.

From tariffs to Ukraine to cuts to the federal workforce, President Trump has invoked the idea of fairness.Experts said the focus is effective, tapping into the sense among many Americans that they have been left behind.In a sit-down interview with Fox News last month, President Trump and his billionaire “efficiency” advisor Elon Musk framed new tariffs on foreign trading partners as a simple matter of fairness.“I said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do: reciprocal. Whatever you charge, I’m charging,’” Trump said of a conversation he’d had with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I’m doing that with every country.”“It seems fair,”...

NEW YORK — As their party struggles to navigate the early days of Donald Trump’s second presidency, some Democrats are convinced that their road to recovery lies in the price of eggs. Instead of leaning into Trump’s teardown of the federal government or his alliance with billionaire lieutenant Elon Musk, they’re steering to what they perceive as the everyday concerns of Americans — none more important than grocery prices and eggs in particular. U.S. egg prices hit a record average of $4.95 per dozen in January, surpassing a previous record set in January 2023, according to federal data. In some...

Elon Musk and his deputies in the Department of Government Efficiency have gained access to Treasury Department systems and targeted a key foreign aid agency for closure, riling Democrats who say the billionaire has no such authority.The debate reflects growing tensions between long-standing government norms and laws, and President Trump’s vision for a new government order of his own making. The world’s richest man, acting as an unelected “efficiency” consultant to President Trump, has in recent days managed the rare feat of overshadowing his boss — presuming to storm into and begin closing out government agencies at will.After two weeks...

House Speaker Mike Johnson has thwarted the installation of a plaque, approved by Congress, honoring officers who protected the Capitol. It is vital that partisans aren’t allowed to whitewash history simply because it makes some people uncomfortable. On Monday, Donald Trump will visit the scene of a crime, laying his hand on a Bible and vowing to preserve and protect the Constitution as he swears a formal oath to become the nation’s 47th president.The bloodstains of the Jan. 6 insurrection have long ago washed away. The shattered windows of the Capitol are mended, the broken doors replaced. You’d never know...

As quickly as the Sunset fire started charring through Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday evening, an AI-generated photo of the Hollywood sign ablaze was rapidly circulating on social media. It was just one example of misinformation surrounding the Los Angeles-area fires spreading on social media, and experts warn that false information during natural disaster events disrupts recovery efforts and harms community trust. ** Misinformation can emotionally exploit a situation, hijack conversations from emergency information and, in some cases, lead to financial scams, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ** Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid...

NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday in his felony hush money case, but the judge declined to impose any punishment, an outcome that cements his conviction but frees him to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine.Trump’s sentence of an unconditional discharge caps a norm-smashing case that saw the former and future president charged with 34 felonies, put on trial for almost two months and convicted on every count. Yet, the legal detour — and sordid details aired in court of a plot to bury affair allegations —...

Talk of a mass exodus of residents was always overblown and more political than real.A population uptick will hopefully end all those premature death notices — at least for a bit California is growing again, news that comes as a relief, vindication or vexation, depending on where you stand in regard to the Golden State. Or, perhaps more aptly, where you reside.The state, which had its modern birth in a fever of money-lust and speculation, gained population in every assay going back to those Gold Rush days. Growth — heady, unrelenting — was not only the natural order of things,...

President-elect Donald Trump has made clear his intent to supercharge his “America First” approach to foreign policy in his second term — and Mexico looks set to be at the tip of the spear.While many of Trump’s predecessors have also followed a “realist” strategy — that is, one in which relative power is at the forefront of international relations and diplomatic success is viewed through how it benefits one’s own nation — the incoming president has displayed an apparent unwillingness to consider the pain that his plans would inflict on targeted countries or the responses this will engender.Trump’s proposed policies...

Soon-Shiong said he was specifically looking for influential conservative voices like Scott Jennings at CNN. Jennings has been a commentator on the left-leaning outlet since 2017. Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong on Thursday night said that he was looking to hire conservative voices to help balance out the editorial section of his newspaper. Soon-Shiong previously stated that he would be working to make the newspaper more fair moving forward, after deciding not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 elections. Several newspaper owners withheld endorsements in the 2024 elections, with Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos claiming it...

Six years ago in this newspaper, I coined the term “rancho libertarian” to describe a political ideology I was observing in many of the Latino men I knew. Proud of their family’s rural immigrant roots but fully of this country. Working class at heart, middle class in income. Skeptical of big government and woke politics yet committed to bettering their communities. Believers in the American Dream they had seen their parents achieve — and afraid it was slipping away. Proud of their family’s rural immigrant roots but fully of this country. Working class at heart, middle class in income....

With about six weeks remaining in this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, we’ve already experienced multiple historic storms, vividly illustrating that as humans have warmed the planet, we have also made it more dangerous.Beryl became a Category 5 hurricane in July, the earliest in the calendar year that any Atlantic hurricane on record has reached that magnitude; Helene yielded catastrophic flooding and damage from Florida to western North Carolina; Kirk traversed the Atlantic to bring damaging rain and winds to France; Milton — one of the fastest-intensifying storms on record — caused damage across Florida; and Oscar surprised forecasters this weekend...

Since the Tesla and Space X owner purchased Twitter (now X) in 2022 for $44 billion, he’s assumed the mantle of “free speech” warrior. I put free speech in quotations because we’re not talking about the kind of free speech people fight and die for under dictatorships or theocracies. Musk’s idea of “freedom” is amplifying hate speech, sowing misinformation, stoking conspiracies, propping up nationalists in places like India and Argentina, and complying with censorship requests from authoritarian regimes like Turkey's. As for our presidential race here at home, Musk's misleading election claims on X were viewed 1.2 billion times between...

Independent challenger Nathan Hochman is destroying incumbent, George Soros-backed George Gascón in the race for Los Angeles County District Attorney, leading by 30 points with less than four weeks to before Election Day. A Los Angeles Times/University of California Berkeley poll of likely voters this week showed that 51% would vote for Hochman, while only 21% would choose Gascon. The percentage of undecided voters, 28%, cannot make up the gap. Gascón ousted incumbent Jackie Lacey, the first black woman to hold the job, in 2020 — thanks to the endorsements of Democrats like Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Black Lives Matter...

Some right-leaning voters who oppose Donald Trump are thinking of voting neither for him nor Kamala Harris. I understand how they feel. In 2016, I published an article urging Never Trump conservatives to consider casting their ballot for a third-party candidate. In the election that year, I did just that. regret writing that column. I regret casting that vote. To people like me, Trump represented a repudiation of everything that Ronald Reagan stood for. But as a conservative and former GOP staffer who had never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, I harbored reservations about Hillary Clinton. Voting for neither...