Free Republic

Abraham Lincoln is thought of by many as not only the greatest American statesman but as a great conservative. He was neither. Understanding this is a necessary condition for any genuinely American conservatism. When Lincoln took office, the American polity was regarded as a compact between sovereign states which had created a central government as their agent, hedging it in by a doctrine of enumerated powers. Since the compact between the states was voluntary, secession was considered an option by public leaders in every section of the Union during Hie antebellum period. Given this tradition—deeply rooted in the Declaration of...

Fox News host Mark Levin said it is safe to ignore anyone claiming President Donald Trump’s supporters are turning against him because of the war on Iran, with Levin saying on Saturday that only a handful of “nut jobs” and “neofascists” are trying to make that argument.Levin went off on reports, polls, and influencers — without naming anyone in particular – that have said the war is unpopular with Trump’s Make America Great Again base.“Polling? Seriously? Okay, I got a poll for ya,” he said on Life, Liberty, & Levin. “The latest poll shows 92% of MAGA supports the president...

New documents show the crew on board the United States' newest aircraft carrier are growing increasingly frustrated by design flaws that lead to regular failures in the ship's toilet system. The USS Gerald R. Ford has been deployed for seven months since it left Norfolk in June. On board the carrier, the crew is battling a toilet system that the General Accountability Office reported in 2020 was undersized and poorly designed. The system continues to fail during deployment, forcing the crew of 4,600 sailors to live with a system that randomly breaks down during their months at sea. NPR has...

A classified report by the US National Intelligence Council concluded that the Iranian regime was unlikely to be toppled even by a large-scale assault, the Washington Post reports. Three people familiar with the report tell the newspaper that the assessment, completed around a week before Israel and the US launched their assault on the Islamic Republic, outlined small- and large-scale assaults as scenarios for potential succession. The report concluded that protocols would be followed if supreme leader Ali Khamenei were to be killed to ensure the regime’s survival, with it “unlikely” that Iran’s opposition would take control. The Post says...

According to a Politico report citing an internal Pentagon notification, United States Central Command (CENTCOM) has requested additional military intelligence officers to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days and possibly through September. When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran last Saturday, the operation was framed as a swift military campaign. Donald Trump later described it as a limited effort expected to last roughly four to five weeks. ...

Donald Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles is demanding action to bring gas prices down as the war with Iran sends oil skyrocketing, sources have revealed. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other top officials, including a council led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, 'are getting screamed at to find some good news', industry executives said. Iran has shut the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil flows, sending prices soaring more than 10 percent in a single week, with Brent crude jumping from $72 to more than $82 a barrel. The average gas price jumped 11...

Israel’s determination to attack Iran and the certainty that US troops would be targeted in response forced the Trump administration to take pre-emptive strikes, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said, in a new explanation for Washington’s surprise entry into the conflict. The rationale drew divided reviews from top members of Congress who on Monday evening received the first briefing by the Trump administration since it ordered the air campaign to begin over the weekend. Rubio; the CIA director, John Ratcliffe; and joint chiefs of staff, chair Dan Caine; spoke to the lawmakers behind closed doors in the Capitol ahead...

In a Charlie Kirk Show segment from June 17, 2025, Kirk criticized Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, for pushing for regime change earlier that month in the buildup to the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Conservative podcasting titan Tucker Carlson torched Donald Trump for his 'evil' attack on Iran as the president's MAGA base fractures over the Middle East war. Carlson has levied a rare criticism against the president following the US military's joint attack with Israel on the Iranian regime on Saturday morning. 'Absolutely disgusting and evil,' Carlson said to journalist Jon Karl.

Donald Trump's immigration crackdown is fracturing his own party, with Republican governors openly defying the White House over detention expansion as political fallout from the carnage in Minneapolis threatens to cost him at the midterms. Kristi Noem was rebuffed this week when she tried to build a new illegal migrant camp in New Hampshire by the state's Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte. Merrimack residents were outraged when it emerged that the Homeland Security Secretary planned to use their town to expand Trump's mass deportation effort. Ayotte, a moderate Republican governing a blue state, informed Noem that she would not assist in...

The U.S. military shot down a Customs and Homeland Security drone on Thursday evening, which led to the abrupt closure of airspace over Fort Hancock, Texas, lawmakers said. At 6:30 p.m. local time, the Federal Aviation Administration closed the airspace, citing “special security reasons.” The FAA’s official notice of the closure currently says the closure will remain in effect until June 24. As it turns out, the “special security reasons” involved a friendly fire incident in which the U.S. military shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone using a laser-based anti-drone system. Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), the top Democrat...

Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Trump administration is pressing Kyiv to agree to painful territorial concessions as the price for peace. In a draft peace agreement first reported by Axios in November, the administration proposed that the entire regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk be recognized as de facto Russian territory and that Russia retain control of the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia its forces now occupy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing back, refusing to do anything that would violate his country’s territorial integrity. Yet the realities of the battlefield are not on his side....

On 21 November, at the end of the first shift at the Tyson Foods beef processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, all workers were called to the lunchroom and told they no longer had jobs.. And the move didn’t seem to make sense. Tyson is one of four beef producers – along with JBS, Cargill and National Beef, known collectively as “the Big Four” – that control 85% of the industry, and their profit margins are at their highest levels in years as consumer prices soar. Tyson had just announced that its profits were up 6.5% over the previous year. Why...

"This is the proportional response that Russia has the right to," the Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman stressedMOSCOW, February 24. /TASS/. A nuclear strike on targets in Ukraine, as well as in France and the United Kingdom, would be considered lawful and justified in the event that London and Paris provide Kiev with nuclear capabilities, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Max, commenting on Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) reports about such plans by the two European countries. According to Medvedev, this information "radically changes the situation." "This is a direct transfer of nuclear weapons to a...

Drug lords have been killed or captured, and cartels have splintered or collapsed, only to see more violent ones replace them and the illicit trade expand. So, 60years of war on drugs, what has actually worked? ...The Sinaloa Cartel, after all, did not go away after its chief, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the notorious drug lord known as El Chapo, was captured and extradited to the United States. ...Rather than simply going after kingpins like Mr. Oseguera, the authorities need to take a holistic approach to dismantle these groups more completely, analysts say. The Mexican government has to use a combination...

Trump appears on ads on Fox News flashing a "red beauty" watch.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee suggested in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson that, under a biblical interpretation, Israel could claim a right to territory spanning much of the Middle East. ''' Driving the news: In a "Tucker Carlson Show" interview released Friday, Carlson confronted Huckabee about his interpretation of biblical verse Genesis 15:18, which describes God promising Abram, later called Abraham, and his descendants land "from the Nile to the Euphrates." Supporting that verse, Carlson said, would suggest Israel could claim a right to land including "basically the entire Middle East," including countries like Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, as...

ZDNET's key takeaways Agentic AI technology is marked by a lack of disclosure about risks. Some systems are worse than others. AI developers need to step up and take responsibility. Agentic technology is moving fully into the mainstream of artificial intelligence with the announcement this week that OpenAI has hired Peter Steinberg, the creator of the open-source software framework OpenClaw. The OpenClaw software attracted heavy attention last month not only for its enabling of wild capabilities -- agents that can, for example, send and receive email on your behalf -- but also for its dramatic security flaws, including the ability...

President Donald Trump raged over some disappointing economic news shortly before his Commerce Department delivered it to the public on Friday morning. “The Democrat Shutdown cost the U.S.A. at least two points in GDP. That’s why they are doing it, in mini form, again. No Shutdowns!” declared the president in a 7:50 a.m. Truth Social post. “Also, LOWER INTEREST RATES. ‘Two Late’ Powell is the WORST!!!,” he added. Less than an hour later, his administration announced that the United States’ GDP grew at an annualized rate of 1.4% in the fourth quarter of 2025. The 43-day government shutdown last fall...

The husband of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has been barred from the department’s headquarters after at least two female staff members told officials that he had sexually assaulted them, according to people familiar with the decision and a police report obtained by The New York Times. The women said Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, had touched them inappropriately at the Labor Department’s building on Constitution Avenue. One of the incidents, during working hours on the morning of Dec. 18, was recorded on office security cameras, the people said. The video showed Dr. DeRemer giving one of the women an...