Free Republic

resident Joe Biden struggled in practice debates ahead of his disastrous showing against Donald Trump last year — leaving his advisers with little option but to cross their fingers and hope he would be a “game-day performer,” a new book about the collapse of the Democratic administration reveals. Biden’s advisers “blocked out substantial time to prep over several days” at the presidential retreat at Camp David in rural Maryland in June 2024. When the president turned up after a trip to Europe to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day and attend a G7 summit, he was “rusty and exhausted,” according...

You and I have to pay more taxes so elite universities that willfully break the law discriminating against Jews, whites and Asians can get tax exemptions. It's a slap in the face. Yet Harvard alum Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is trying to turn the tables, accusing the Trump administration of "weaponizing" the IRS to strip Harvard of its 501c3 tax exempt status. Truth is, Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status because it's guilty of illegally allowing the civil rights of Jewish students to be trashed. The case against Harvard is a slam dunk. Numerous other universities where Jewish students are...

A 28-year-old former college cheerleader and self-described honor student plowed into a Maryland police officer and nearly hit pedestrians at a street fair in Laurel Saturday, all because she couldn’t be late to work. Kai DeBerry-Bostick, a graduate of Bowie State University and a member of the Zeta Delta sorority, according to the New York Post, is now facing assault charges after brazenly ripping down police tape and driving into a closed festival zone Saturday morning, bodycam video released by police shows. “I need to get out, I need to get out,” DeBerry-Bostick can be heard saying, before informing the...

Better late than never? When Tennessee state police pulled over Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a car owned by a convicted human trafficker, carrying eight people without identification, the FBI and ICE couldn't be bothered to even ask the troopers to detain the group. The police knew Abrego Garcia was trafficking the group from Missouri to Maryland, but couldn't do anything about it.Of course, that took place under previous White House management. This administration's Department of Justice is far more interested ibn Abrego Garcia's midnight rides, ABC News reports this morning. Ibn fact, they have taken enough of an interest to...

The second criminal alien deported to El Salvador and ordered to be returned to the US by a federal judge has been unmasked. Last month a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump Administration to return a 20-year-old Venezuelan man from El Salvador. US District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, said the Trump Administration’s decision to deport the man violated a previous court settlement. The man currently held at El Salvador’s CECOT prison was originally identified as ‘Cristian’ in court documents. Menu New Exclusive Gateway Pundit Merch Now Available on Sticker Mule Stores! Shop Today to Support FREE...

Eighteen states sued the Trump administration Monday over its halting of permits for wind-energy projects, arguing that its actions posed an existential threat to the burgeoning industry.“This administration is devastating one of our nation’s fastest-growing sources of clean, reliable and affordable energy,” said Attorney General Letitia James of New York, which is one of the plaintiffs. She said the halt threatened “the loss of thousands of good-paying jobs and billions in investments” and was “delaying our transition away from the fossil fuels that harm our health and our planet.”The halt on federal permits for wind energy was first laid out...

A trio of House Democrats asked to be removed as co-sponsors of a resolution to impeach President Trump, a sign that many in the party do not want to go down the path of trying to remove the president from office — at least at the current moment. Reps. Kweisi Mfume (Md.), Robin Kelly (Ill.) and Jerry Nadler (N.Y.) had signed on as co-sponsors of Rep. Shri Thanedar’s (D-Mich.) impeachment resolution — which includes seven articles of impeachment — but Tuesday afternoon, they went to the House floor and asked for their names to be taken off the legislation. The...

When Charles Read went to renew his passport, he got a notification that there was a warrant out for his arrest. A woman named Katherine Jensen told police that Read (an ex boyfriend from 20 years ago) had kicked in her door and choked her out, trying to steal the keys to her truck, and when he was unsuccessful, he fled on foot. VIDEO AT LINK............. At first Charles Read thought someone was pulling his leg, but you can understand why he didn't notice -- because he's been paralyzed from the waist down for 25 years. But when Read tried...

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) claimed Friday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” that Trump administration officials could be arrested for “interfering with a legal proceeding” or “kidnapping.” Raskin said, “I regard it very much within the prism of what we’ve been dealing with over the last month, which is an intense assault on judicial independence. They have been disobeying federal court orders systematically. They have incurred criminal contempt findings in the courtroom of Judge Boasberg, a conservative Republican, a judge. They have been demanding the impeachment of judges who rule against the lawlessness of the Trump administration. There are now...

Any Democrat capable of redemption has already repented. Thus, those who know the truth and still remain Democrats surely must work for Satan. For instance, according to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement news release, earlier this month ICE agents arrested 23-year-old Guatemalan illegal immigrant Keycy Robinson Alexis Barrera-Rosa at the Charles County Sheriff’s Office in Maryland, then, on Friday, the CCSO charged Barrera-Rosa with murdering his 23-year-old girlfriend, Lesbia Mileth Ramirez-Guerra, mother of his two children. The charges came as Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland visited El Salvadorian prison, where he met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the...

Sen. Van Hollen took a highly publicized trip last week to El Salvador to advocate for Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return.. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Monday after he admitted that his trip to El Salvador to meet a deported illegal immigrant was paid for by taxpayers. Van Hollen took heat from Republicans and one of his constituents, Angel Mom Patty Morin, after he flew to El Salvador in an effort to bring home deported illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the White House maintains is an MS-13 gang member. On "Fox...

A woman who fatally struck two children who were walking in a crosswalk to their elementary school in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in November 2023 has pleaded guilty to traffic misdemeanors with a maximum punishment of four months in jail. Olga Lugo Jiminez, 52, of Hyattsville, Maryland, was driving a van for an unlicensed school drop-off service when she hit the two children and one of their parents, according to court filings. …. In a statement, the Mbah family said they were pained by the result and felt it would send a message that negligent driving is not taken seriously,...

Baltimore’s public school district is going on a hiring spree while student enrollment plummets and test scores remain in the basement. Baltimore City Public Schools inflated its number of employees by nearly 19% over the six years between 2018 and last year, according to Maryland State Department of Education data analyzed by Fox 45’s Project Baltimore, an investigative initiative on the city’s floundering schools. The school district hired 1,714 more staffers while the number of students plummeted by 4,781 or 6%, the data show. It wasn’t mostly teachers the district hired, either. Over those six years, the district hired 992...

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., set out to El Salvador this week to find Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man at the center of an erroneous deportation, and get answers about his condition. While he was relieved to get a chance to meet the Abrego Garcia face to face on Thursday, the senator slammed El Salvador President Nayib Bukele and President Donald Trump for what he said was a setup to defame him and the deportee. Van Hollen said Friday that what he called "margarita-gate" was manufactured by Bukele and his officials after they posted a photo of his meeting with...

After the 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Gracia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, made the first appearance since his arrest, US President Donald Trump took to social media to share an alleged altered photo of Kilmar's hand and linked it to the MS-13 gang, stating he is “not fine and innocent”. The photo of Abrego Garcia w/Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) from Thurs clearly shows no “MS-13” tattoo shop on either hand - nor in earlier photos”. Another said, ”Why did Donald Trump just lie to the American people even more about Kilmar Ábrego García being a gang member? Just...

Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-Md.) trip to El Salvador to visit a mistakenly deported constituent has thrust the mild-mannered lawmaker into a major battle with the Trump administration as it doubles down on its pledge to keep Kilmar Abrego Garcia imprisoned abroad. Van Hollen embarked for the Central American nation on Wednesday after saying he would travel there if Abrego Garcia had not been returned by mid-week. In doing so, Van Hollen traveled straight to the capital of a country whose government rebuffed his request to meet with President Nayib Bukele, and who has vowed not to release Abrego Garcia....

The feds suspected alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador in an error, was engaged in human and labor trafficking in 2022, according to an internal memo obtained by The Post. The DHS intelligence report noted that Abrego Garcia was pulled over by the Tennessee Highway Patrol on Dec. 1, 2022, after he was caught speeding. Officers found eight other individuals in the car with Abrego Garcia, who said he was driving “three days ago” from Houston, Texas, to Temple Hills, Maryland, “to bring in people to perform construction work,” according to the memo. The...

The Sting (1973) is a classic crime-comedy film directed by George Roy Hill. Set in 1930s Chicago, it follows con artist Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) and veteran grifter Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman) as they team up to pull off an elaborate con against a ruthless mob boss, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). After Lonnegan's men kill Hooker's partner, the duo orchestrates a fake betting parlor scheme to swindle him out of a fortune. With clever twists, period charm, and a ragtime soundtrack featuring Scott Joplin's music, the film builds to a satisfying, surprising climax. It won seven Oscars, including Best Picture....

Sen Chris Van Hollen says he was set up with a margarita by El Salvador president Nayib Bukele during his visit with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. "If you look at the [margarita] they put in front of Kilmar, it actually had a little less wet liquid than the one in front of me to try to make it look like you drank out of it." "Let me just be very clear. Neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us."

Representative Debbie Dingell (D-MI) claimed on Friday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that the Trump administration was attacking the freedoms of speech, religion and the press. Co-host Pamala Brown said, “You talk about due process, that brings me to the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen was able to finally get a face to face meeting with him. The administration admitted that he was wrongly deported to El Salvador. Where do you think this goes from here?” Dingell said, “You know, I don’t know where it goes. I’m glad that the senator was able to see...