Free Republic

Distressing footage showed a female migrant scream 'help me, I have my papers' as she was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at Salt Lake City airport. Marta Brizeyda Renderos Leiva, 39, was dragged away by plainclothes agents at the Utah travel hub on Wednesday. Footage emerged of her arrest, with Leiva seen being grabbed her by the arms as she was placed in cuffs, pulling her up from the floor as she kicked out her legs and stamped her feet. She let out bloodcurdling cries as they did, saying: 'Help me, help me, I have my papers. Help...

The only upside to living through this dark time is it pushes us to rethink and perhaps totally remake things we once thought immutable. Like the Democratic party. In case you hadn’t noticed, the current Democratic party is dysfunctional, if not dead. Better dysfunctional than a fascist cult like the Trump Republican party. But if there were ever a time when America needed a strong, vibrant Democratic party, it’s now. And we don’t have one. The brightest light in the Democratic party is Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old member of the New York state assembly who has a good chance of...

There are a few reasons to doubt the American government's stated aim of wiping out these so-called "narco terrorist" gangs threatening the US from Venezuela, even after one takes out of the equation the sort of equipment the military is deploying - which isn't what they would need for effective drug smuggling interdiction. While the president acknowledges that the synthetic opioid fentanyl is a huge killer in the US (which it is) and is supplied by drug gangs (which it is), to blame Venezuela for fentanyl production is simply incorrect.Mexican cartels produce fentanyl with precursors largely supplied from China, and...

America’s Founders made the presidential pardon power absolute, and they did so as a protection against injustice. But Hamilton and Madison might be having second thoughts as they watch President Trump dole out pardons as a form of political legal tender. In the latest example, Mr. Trump on Wednesday pardoned crypto kingpin Changpeng Zhao, who happens to be a Trump family business partner. “I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people,” Mr. Trump said. “A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything.” One of those people wasn’t Mr. Zhao, unless...

A blind man protesting in front of a South Portland ICE facility was brutally detained by federal agents who allegedly dropped him on his head as they hauled him away. Quinn Haberl wore a neon vest as he sat on the side of the building's driveway during a protest on Saturday. While he was right beside a thick blue line painted on the ground to indicate where federal property begins, suggesting he had not passed the boundary. Gut-wrenching footage from the incident showed officers swarming Haberl - who was seated on the ground, holding his walking stick. Agents grabbed each...

Sir Sadiq Khan has been called a “disgrace” after he suggested that protesters who chant “From the river to the sea” were not anti-Semitic. The slogan is frequently chanted at pro-Palestinian marches, despite claims that it envisages the destruction of the state of Israel. The Mayor of London said that whether the phrase was anti-Semitic or not depended on the context in which it was spoken. He made his comment during Mayor’s Question Time at City Hall on Thursday, a week after protests that took place on the evening of the Manchester synagogue attack. Susan Hall, the leader of the...

US stocks tumbled Friday after President Donald Trump threatened a massive increase in tariffs on Chinese imports. The threat is retaliation for China's new restrictions on rare earth exports — materials vital for AI, semiconductors, defense, and high-tech industries. The S&P 500 fell 1.7 percent, the Nasdaq dropped 2.5 percent, and the Dow Jones lost more than 500 points, as investors reacted to escalating trade tensions and uncertainty over US-China relations. 'Some very strange things are happening in China,' Trump wrote on Truth Social. 'They are becoming very hostile, and sending letters to countries throughout the world, that they want...

Donald Trump had a warning to Democrats. Soon he will decide what "Democrat agencies" he would cut and whether those reductions would be temporary or permanent. He said the government shutdown, which began on Tuesday, had afforded him an "unprecedented opportunity". "I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame," he posted on his Truth Social website on Thursday morning. Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, may not be a household name. But Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for governing put together primarily by former Trump officials like Vought when...

French president Emmanuel Macron has been seen laughing as the leaders of Albania and Azerbaijan mock US president Donald Trump for claiming to have ended wars involving their countries. At the European Political Community meeting in Copenhagen, Macron was seen chatting with Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama was seen storming over in mock fury, and telling Macron: 'You should make an apology … to us because you didn't congratulate us on the peace deal that President Trump made between Albania and Azerbaijan'. The comment referenced Trump's repeated confusion of Armenia and Albania when discussing the long-held...

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth were accused of 'condescending and insulting' America's top generals and admirals at a highly anticipated summit on Tuesday. The president and Secretary of War hosted hundreds of military chiefs at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday, for a meeting they hoped would inspire the nation and revolutionize America's fighting force. But ex-Pentagon chiefs warned that the political speeches, which meandered through various topics from fat soldiers to Joe Biden's autopen, risked alienating the top brass. A former national security official told the Daily Mail that he found it 'incredibly condescending ... and a highly inappropriate...

An ICE agent who was filmed brutally slamming a woman to the ground in front of her children has been 'relieved' of his duties, according to an official. Now-viral footage of the male officer showed him throwing her to the hard ground as he repeatedly told her 'adios'. The woman was heard pleading with the plain-clothes official at the New York City customs and immigration offices after her husband was detained and whisked away by ICE agents just moments earlier. Her young daughter cried as her mother was violently forced to the floor and witnesses rushed to surround her. Now,...

In their first home game since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Buffalo Bills honored the murdered far-right political commentator. Prior to kickoff of their game on Thursday Night Football, the Bills posted a graphic with his name and his birth and death dates while also cycling through images of the TurningPoint USA founder and his family. Somber music played out as reporters on the ground noted that a few people stood for the display.

When Shahnaz went into labour, her husband Abdul called a taxi to take them to the only medical facility accessible to them. "She was in a lot pain," he says. A 20-minute drive away, the clinic was in Shesh Pol village in Afghanistan's north-eastern Badakhshan province. It was where their two older children were born. Abdul sat next to Shahnaz comforting her as they drove over gravel tracks to reach help. "But when we reached the clinic, we saw that it was closed. I didn't know it had shut down," he said, his face crumpling with agony. The clinic in...

Donald Trump issued a stunning threat to NATO allies for holding up his negotiations to end the Russia - Ukraine war and warned against 'wasting my time' in a blistering social media post. Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday morning to rebuke NATO allies for buying oil from Russia despite their opposition to Vladimir Putin's invasion, saying it 'greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia'. 'I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM...

Visibly angry and upset, Donald Trump described Charlie Kirk as a martyr for truth and freedom, as he paid tribute to a man he considered to be not just a close friend, but also someone who played a significant role in his re-election and in shaping the MAGA movement. Trump directly blamed radical left-wing politics for contributing to this atrocity and other recent violent political attacks. He noticeably did not mention recent murders and violent attacks against Democrats. Often atrocities like this create an atmosphere of political unity. Many senior politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, have responded by saying this...

President Donald Trump threatened Illinois's biggest city with a 'Chipocalypse' ahead of expected Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Trump, 79, took to his social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday to post a meme about himself, where he wrote: 'I love the smell of deportations in the morning. 'Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR.' Trump rebranded the Pentagon to the Department of War this week. The White House reposted it on X with three helicopter emojis. Governor JB Pritzker responded to Trump's post on X, writing: 'The President of the United States is...

The ugly video clip from a Dundee housing estate in which a schoolgirl brandished a knife and an axe soon went viral, with rabble rousers such as Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson pitching in to claim the man filming the exchange was a 'migrant'. Others lauded the girl as a 'Braveheart' figure, defending her homeland from a predatory alien, with comparisons quickly cited about the Asian grooming gang scandals of Rotherham and Rochdale. Now we can reveal the man being threatened is a family man who has been living in the UK for four years – and who was accompanied...

Six months into Donald Trump's return to the White House Marjorie Taylor Greene has about had it with the Republican Party. The conservative firebrand who surged onto the political scene in 2021 and has been an ever-present figure in the House GOP and MAGA orbit ever since told the Daily Mail in a 45-minute call this week that it may be time for her to walk away. 'I don't know if the Republican Party is leaving me, or if I'm kind of not relating to Republican Party as much anymore,' she revealed. 'I don't know which one it is.' Her...

President Trump has now imposed his new tariff regime on the world, and the triumphalism is palpable in MAGA land. But maybe hold the euphoria, as this week’s reports on jobs and the economy suggest the new golden age may take a while to appear. Friday’s labor report arrived with a particular jolt, with a mere 73,000 net new jobs in July. Even more bearish were the downward revisions of 258,000 jobs in May and June. Job gains over the last three months are barely more than 100,000. The details in the report provide little solace. The jobless rate ticked...

Every day brings more devastation. But daily forms of rebellion can restore our sense of purpose. The exterminating force of Project 2025 is plowing through the culture, the government and people’s hearts and bodies like a drunk on a violent tear. We wake each morning, holding our breath to bear witness to the new devastation: PBS and NPR defunded, cuts to the fight against human trafficking, Medicaid gone for millions, Ice working to surveil critics, tons of food for the poor ordered burned and wasted. The momentum of cruelty always feels inevitable. Cruelty is by definition “a callous indifference to...