Free Republic

Jill Biden has detailed her "frosty" encounter with Melania Trump. In her new memoir, A View from the East Wing, the former First Lady, 75, detailed what occurred before the handover between her husband, Joe Biden, 83, and Donald Trump, 79, on January 20, 2025. On the bitterly cold winter's day, Dr. Biden initially struggled with her choice of outfit, wanting to appease the Trumps. Still, the meeting between the two couples was tense and awkward. Later, Biden and Melania shared an equally edgy ride from the White House to the Capitol to witness the 79-year-old Commander-in-Chief's swearing-in ceremony.

The oil industry is warning the Trump administration that a Hormuz-sized hole in the world’s petroleum market is steadily draining inventories to levels that are likely to send global energy prices surging in the next several weeks, according to four executives. Industry executives have flagged the issue to senior White House officials and Cabinet members in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing dialogue with the U.S. energy industry, the people said. The warnings came as recently as late last month as data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources began showing that fuel makers were...

Social Security’s finances may be in worse shape than thought. The Social Security Trustees — who release a report each year on the health of the program that supports about 70 million retirees and people with disabilities — have been relying on overly optimistic forecasts for future fertility rates, according to a blog report from the Cato Institute. Those forecasts are at odds with projections from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — the nonpartisan federal agency that provides Congress with independent analysis of budgetary and economic issues — which both have much more sober forecasts...

The remaining three correspondents at “60 Minutes” huddled this week to discuss their futures following the firing of Scott Pelley, according to a report, as former star Steve Kroft warned that the iconic newsmagazine “no longer exists” in the form viewers have known for decades. Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl and Jon Wertheim met on Wednesday for more than an hour amid growing turmoil at CBS News following Pelley’s ouster and the sweeping shakeup orchestrated by CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, the Status newsletter reported on Thursday. The meeting came just hours after The Post reported that CBS insiders believed Whitaker...

Saturday's episode of The Weekend: Primetime on MS NOW pretended to present a balanced discussion between a Republican and a Democrat strategist in cowboy hats about the Texas Senate race between James Talarico and Ken Paxton. Co-host Elise Jordan introduced one of the guests this way: “Joining us now is Mark McKinnon, former advisor to George W. Bush and John McCain… Mark, you have a long career advising Republicans in Texas.” In reality, McKinnon’s Republican credentials are extremely thin and dated. His last significant Republican work was on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, which he quit because he wanted Barack...

The world is getting more uptight about lending money to President Donald Trump’s government — causing interest rates to climb in ways that are worsening affordability pressures, hampering economic growth and creating a new risk for Republicans in November’s midterm elections. The energy price spike triggered by the Iran war has seeped into the price of bonds that help fund the U.S. government. Interest rates on a 10-year U.S. Treasury note are topping 4.44%, up from 3.95% before the war started at the end of February. Average mortgage rates have climbed to their highest levels in nine months, while auto...

President Trump likes his military and diplomatic victories quick, clean and decisive. (snip) But now, Mr. Trump has hit the stalemate phase of his presidency. The war with Iran is clearly at that stage. When he declared a cease-fire on April 7, Mr. Trump said on social media that the end of combat operations would be conditional on “the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz.” It wasn’t. Even if commerce now resumes across the strait under a memorandum of understanding still under negotiation, it will still leave the future of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs exactly...

In what could be viewed as the most brazen conflict-of-interest issue in President Trump’s second term, the Pentagon just awarded Dell Technologies a $9.7 billion contract to manage Microsoft software across the entire U.S. military. Trump bought Dell stock just months earlier, publicly urged Americans to buy Dell computers weeks before the announcement, and received a $6.25 billion pledge from the Dell family. That’s the conflict part. WHAT HAPPENED The Department of War awarded Dell Federal Systems, the government-focused subsidiary of Dell Technologies, a five-year, $9.7 billion contract to supply and manage Microsoft software licenses and subscriptions, across the U.S....

The Trump administration has quietly instructed federal prosecutors in Miami to avoid pursuing criminal investigations into Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez, a longtime target of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to current and former U.S. law enforcement officials, in the latest sign of warming relations between the White House and the oil-rich nation. It’s unclear whether prosecutors had implicated Rodríguez in any crimes or whether investigators were moving toward an indictment. A Justice Department spokesperson said in an email “there was never an investigation into her to shut down.” But DEA records obtained by The Associated Press earlier this...

The social media post by President Trump made it sound straightforward. The United States would orchestrate a deal to end the war with Iran and, in exchange, a slew of countries across the Middle East and South Asia would join an agreement, called the Abraham Accords, establishing relations with Israel. In fact, he said, that “should be mandatory.” But half of the countries he named — such as Egypt, Jordan and Turkey — already have relations with Israel. And the other half — including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan — have no interest in establishing them anytime soon. As a...

The negotiations between the United States and Iran to end their war are following President Trump’s familiar playbook for resolving a Middle East crisis: agree to a cease-fire and deal with the toughest problems later. Analysts say the approach has had mixed results in the Gaza Strip, where Mr. Trump brokered a truce last year between Israel and Hamas, the Iranian-backed militant group. Plans for a so-called Phase 2 agreement — under which Hamas was to lay down its arms and Israel would allow Gaza to be rebuilt after a devastating war — have stalled. A similar approach in U.S....

WASHINGTON—President Trump and Democrats rarely find themselves in alignment. Yet both sides wanted the same outcome in Tuesday’s Texas Senate primary runoff election. Ken Paxton’s trouncing of incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican runoff represents Trump’s latest triumph in maintaining his grip on his MAGA base after he similarly ousted rivals in Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky. But to the delight of Democrats, the president’s decision to make an 11th-hour endorsement of Paxton could put the Senate seat in play for James Talarico after decades of Democratic futility in the Lone Star State.

Donald Trump loves the words sleazebag and scumball, so much so that he’s surrounded himself with the very definition of those two offensive terms. And it’s hard to be more offensive than Texas GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton, unless you’re Donald Trump, of course. Last night, Paxton, impeached, indicted, accused of bribery, and credibly alleged to have used the Texas Attorney General’s office to benefit a donor who was simultaneously employing the woman he was having an affair with, won the Republican Senate primary in Texas by a landslide.

Any discussion of leadership change in Tehran appears to be out.CAIRO (AP) — A deal appears to be emerging between the United States and Iran to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz, and U.S. President Donald Trump over the weekend said it had been “largely negotiated.”It is not clear when or how the deal might be finalized and when its various parts will take effect. Trump spoke after calls with allies in the Middle East, including a separate call with Israel. Details come from two regional officials and a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity...

Many of us are mothers—or hope to be mothers one day. Some of us work outside of the home and then come home to our more important roles of being mothers and wives. Some of us devote our entire beings to our families as stay-at-home mothers. Regardless of our current situation, we care deeply about the health of our children and are increasingly skeptical of industrially-produced food and the harmful ingredients used in their production and to increase their shelf life. We’re crunchy (ish) conservative women in our late 20s, 30s, and early 40s. We know most people probably don’t...

Consumer sentiment has tumbled to a fresh record low in May as fears of higher prices grow due to the U.S.-Iran war and elevated oil prices, the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers said Friday. The index of consumer sentiment fell to 44.8 from a preliminary reading of 48.2. It’s also well below the 49.8 level seen at the end of April. “Consumer sentiment fell for the third straight month as supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz continue to boost gasoline prices. Sentiment is now just below the previous historical trough seen in June 2022,” Surveys of Consumers Director...

The Right won the 2024 election by successfully assembling a coalition capable of competing nationally. Whether it can consolidate that power into a lasting majority is far less certain. The coalition that returned Trump to the White House is beginning to fracture. While support for the agenda the president ran on remains strong, confidence that it will be secured is fading. And that perception, whether justified or not, is lethal. Voters in this coalition did not turn out for incremental change, executive orders, temporary regulatory reform, or procedural wins. They voted for a decisive shift in national direction—mass deportations, accountability...

In a Republican-led Congress defined by deference to President Donald Trump, there's a small but steadily growing cohort who have found themselves more willing to break with the White House. Although the president maintains a firm grip on Republican voters, the expanding club could hinder his agenda on everything from the Iran war to immigration funding at a moment when his party holds a tenuous majority on Capitol Hill. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is the newest member of the club. Just days after losing his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, Cassidy on Tuesday reversed himself on legislation involving the...

ALBANY - Activist and comedian Dick Gregory said yesterday he suspects CIA and FBI "thugs" had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Gregory told the New York State Black and Puerto Rican Legislators annual conference that bits of evidence overlooked by most of the mainstream media show some people in power had knowledge of the attacks beforehand. "You all sit around and really believe that some little snot-nosed punky Arabs could pull off something ... the Russians in their heyday ... didn't have the intelligence to come into the country and blow up a building like these...

Democrats still searching for a way out of the rubble of the 2024 election got a peek in Tuesday’s primaries of what their voters want for the future. The races spanned a mix of competitive and safe-blue seats across six states — including a pair of crucial swing states. The result: A slate of disparate candidates who won’t give them a much clearer sense of their future. State Rep. Chris Rabb, a progressive firebrand and self-styled “rabble-rouser,” won the open primary for the bluest House district in the country in Philadelphia. In a nearby Pennsylvania House battleground, Democrats nominated Bob...