Free Republic

A core group of top US officials — including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State and interim national security adviser Marco Rubio, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — had been closely monitoring the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan when on Friday morning, the US received alarming intelligence, Trump administration officials told CNN. While they declined to describe the nature of the information, citing its sensitivity, they said it was critical in persuading the three officials that the US should increase its involvement. Vance himself would call Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The vice president briefed...

President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are seemingly at odds amid a U.S. truce with Houthis in Yemen and the President seeking to peacefully negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran without plunging the United States into another endless war. According to Axios, Trump met with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in private on Thursday to discuss upcoming nuclear talks with Iran and Israel’s Gaza campaign. Dremer also met with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and special envoy Steve Witkoff. Trump is expected to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates on...

Venezuelan lawmaker Freddy Superlano, a member of the opposition party, is in serious but stable condition after being poisoned in Colombia, his party says. His cousin has passed away. Voluntad Popular, the party of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, said late on Saturday that Superlano was poisoned at a restaurant in Cúcuta, a city near the border with Venezuela. His assistant and cousin, Carlos Salinas, died.

With four hats, including national security adviser, the former Trump rival is defying predictions he’d be a weak player. Marco Rubio is doing big things under President Donald Trump — way more than nearly anyone expected. The secretary of State was once thought of as one of the weakest players in the Trump orbit, a man who wouldn’t last long in the Cabinet because he faced many internal rivals and had major policy differences with Trump and the MAGA base. But Rubio has deftly earned the president’s trust, enough so that Trump this week gave him another powerful job as...

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “kowtowing” to President Donald Trump had been disappointing. Host Jake Tapper said, “Is Secretary Rubio able to do the two main jobs there?” Warner said, “I don’t know how anybody could do these two big jobs, and they’re frankly very different. One is actually trying to diplomatically work with friends and adversaries around the world. And unfortunately, the number of adversaries has gone up dramatically as Trump’s approach has been so awful to our allies. The other are our national security adviser...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday announced the closure of the Global Engagement Center as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the “censorship-industrial complex.”“Today, it is my pleasure to announce the State Department is taking a crucial step toward keeping the president’s promise to liberate American speech by abolishing forever the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC),” Rubio wrote in an op-ed for the Federalist, titled, “Rubio: To Protect Free Speech, The Censorship Industrial Complex Must Be Dismantled.”Rubio wrote that, in 2016, the Obama administration changed the GEC’s focus on combatting international terrorism cover...

The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was replaced Friday, only three days after assuming the role, as his appointment triggered a power struggle between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Elon Musk of the Department of Government Efficiency, the New York Times reported. Gary Shapley was replaced after Bessent complained to President Donald Trump that Musk circumvented Bessent’s office to secure the position for Shapley, the NYT reported. The outlet cited people who said they were familiar with the situation. Shapley was a longstanding IRS agent who accused the Biden administration’s Department of Justice of dragging out its...

As noted by Politico, within the ruling Boasberg goes on to say: …”if the administration doesn’t rectify the issue, the judge said he may require administration officials to testify under oath so that he can identify the specific individuals responsible for violating his order. He would then request that those individuals be prosecuted. The judge signaled he could appoint an outside lawyer to prosecute the contempt case if the Justice Department declines to do so.” (link) I think we all know the very select group of “beach friend” people whom Boasberg would lean toward in appointing someone to prosecute Pam...

Judge Paula Xinis is setting the stage to hold Trump officials in contempt. Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia demanded the Trump Administration ‘comply’ with the Supreme Court order and release the MS-13 gang member from the CECOT prison. In a new court filing on Tuesday Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said the Trump Administration has to at least request his release from the CECOT prison and help ‘facilitate’ his return from El Salvador. The attorneys said, “There is no evidence that anyone has requested the release of Abrego Garcia.”

President Donald Trump entered UFC 314 on Saturday night in Miami on Saturday night. President Trump walked out flanked by his two grandchildren at his side. He was followed by Dana White, Elon Musk, gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, and several more. Before President Trump reached his seats he greeted DNI Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel, HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr….. But NOT his wife Cheryl Hines who he skipped over. Ouch!

This week, Boasberg will issue an opinion related to his claims the Trump adm defied his court orders to "return" planes carrying illegal Venezuelans subject to the president's Alien Enemies Act proclamation on March 15. As I have reported for weeks, Boasberg from day one not only built but created a contempt trap for DOJ. During last week's heated contempt hearing, Boasberg crossed the line of executive privilege many times in interrogating the seemingly unprepared DOJ atty Drew Ensign and demanding to know the nature of internal comms in the executive branch and, more outrageously, who failed to "return" planes...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is assuring fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization member nations that the United States considers the defense alliance indispensable. Rubio made the comments during his address to the NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on Thursday. He dismissed panicked speculation that President Donald Trump was planning to pull out of the alliance. "As we speak right now, the United States is as active in NATO as it has ever been. And some of this hysteria and hyperbole that I see in the global media and some domestic media in the United States about NATO is...

The State Department has officially notified Congress that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been dissolved, and the remaining operations of the agency will be run by the State Department itself. According to United Press International, the State Department officially told Congress that USAID was dissolving on Friday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, "Today, the Department of State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have notified Congress on their intent to undertake a reorganization that would involve realigning certain USAID functions to the Department by July 1, 2025, and discontinuing the remaining...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday the State Department has revoked 300 or more student visas, as the White House increasingly targets foreign-born students whose main transgression seems to be activism. Rubio warned that the administration was looking out for “these lunatics.” Around the country, scholars have been picked up, in some cases by masked immigration agents, and held in detention centers, sometimes a thousand miles from their homes with little warning and often with few details about why they were being detained. “It might be more than 300 at this point. We do it every day. Every time...

The Trump administration is refusing to back down after far-left DC District Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee, blocked the deportation of dangerous Venezuelan gang members, handing a lifeline to criminals instead of protecting American citizens. Boasberg ordered an immediate halt on deportation flights of Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang members, who were being removed under the Alien Enemies Act (1798)—a wartime law explicitly designed to protect Americans from foreign threats. Even more outrageous, the judge went so far as to demand that planes already in the air turn around and bring these violent criminals back into the United States....

President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele mocked U.S. District Judge James Boasberg after two flights from the U.S. carrying nearly between 250 and 300 Venezuelan and other gang members landed in El Salvador despite Boasberg’s emergency order issued Saturday evening in a case brought by the ACLU to turn the planes around and return the gang members to the U.S. According to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a few MS-13 gang members and most wanted fugitives were among the over 250 Tren de Aragua Venezuelan gang members deported after President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Bukele posted,...

Hunter Biden fled last week to South Africa for a luxury vacation — with round-the-clock Secret Service protection — avoiding a grueling deposition scheduled for this week in a California lawsuit. California District Court Judge Herman Vera granted Hunter’s motion to dismiss the case Thursday after the former first son claimed he was too broke to continue suing former Trump staffer Garrett Ziegler and his nonprofit Marco Polo. But photographs show Hunter was already in Cape Town the day the case was dismissed, staying in a $500-a-night beachfront villa described on its website as an “ultra-luxurious designer home with spectacular...

The US is expelling South Africa's ambassador to Washington, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio describing him as a "race-baiting politician". In a post on X, Rubio accused Ebrahim Rasool of hating the US and President Donald Trump, and said the ambassador was "no longer welcome in our great country". The office for South Africa's president on Saturday called the decision "regrettable", adding that the country remained committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the US. The rare move by the US marks the latest development in rising tensions between the two countries. While lower-ranking diplomats are sometimes expelled,...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared South Africa's ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, persona non grata and ordered him expelled from the United States. This immediately deprived him of diplomatic immunity and required him to leave the US in just a matter of days.Using X as his medium to announce the defenestration of Rasool, Rubio was blunt.South Africa's Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country. Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS. We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.The...

The Trump administration has ejected South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool out of the country, declaring him persona non grata after he gave a lecture claiming that President Donald Trump is a white supremacist leader. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Rasool’s expulsion via X on Friday afternoon: