Free Republic

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...

President Donald Trump went off on Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) on Wednesday, branding him a “RINO” — Republican In Name Only — who got it all “WRONG” when he claimed the president was only inviting Republican governors to an upcoming annual meeting. Trump’s searing response came after the Associated Press reported the bipartisan meeting was “unraveling” on Monday. Stitt — who chairs the National Governors Association — said the group was ditching the annual meeting because Trump had not invited his Democratic colleagues, who are equal members of the group. Trump posted on Truth Social that he was only...

It’s known as “Don Colossus.” At 15 feet tall, the statue of President Trump, mounted on its 7,000-pound pedestal, is about the height of a two-story building — a giant effigy cast in bronze and finished with a thick layer of gold leaf. For more than a year, the golden statue has been at the center of one of the stranger moneymaking ventures of the Trump era. A group of cryptocurrency investors paid $300,000 to have a sculptor create it as a tribute to Mr. Trump, an outspoken crypto proponent. Then they used it to promote a memecoin called $PATRIOT....

President Donald Trump has deleted a controversial video that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. Thursday evening, Trump posted a video with baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that included a short clip at the end of the Obamas’ faces superimposed on apes’ bodies. The video was furiously criticized by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, members of the media, and other political commentators as racist. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the post as simply sharing an “Internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of...

Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT) publicly undercut President Donald Trump’s push to federalize America’s elections on Thursday, flatly warning he did not support the idea, which would require a constitutional amendment. The proposal, first floated by the president on Tuesday in a podcast interview with Dan Bongino, his former FBI deputy director, came alongside Trump’s familiar unsubstantiated claims that he won states where he was officially defeated in past presidential elections, which he again branded “crooked.” The president said Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least 15 jurisdictions. Trump repeated the claim on Wednesday night in an interview with...

The US Embassy in Copenhagen has angered Danish veterans by removing flags honoring soldiers killed in Afghanistan from an area outside the building. Video shared by Danish media outlet TV2 showed a security guard removing the flags honoring the 44 Danish soldiers who died in the conflict from planters located outside the embassy on Tuesday. The Danish Veteran Association slammed the move as “unnecessary and insensitive” in a statement on social media Wednesday. Carsten Rasmussen, national chairman of the association, said he understood the angry reaction but urged a measured response. “When they go low, we go high — and...

President Donald Trump declared that The New York Times must “pay a price” on Thursday after the Gray Lady and Siena University released a new poll suggesting that just 40% of registered voters approve of him. In a write-up about the survey, the Times’ chief political analyst Nate Cohn observed that “The major demographic shifts of the last election have snapped back. In today’s poll, Mr. Trump’s approval rating by demographic group looks almost exactly as it did in Times/Siena polling in the run-up to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. If anything, young and nonwhite voters are even...

President Donald Trump a week ago told the credit card industry it had until Jan. 20 to comply with his demand for a 10% cap on interest rates. With just days to go, consumer groups, politicians, and bankers alike remain unclear on what the White House has planned and whether Trump even remains serious about the idea. So far, the White House has not provided any detail about what will happen to credit card companies that don’t lower card rates. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president has “an expectation” that credit card companies will accede to his...

At least six career prosecutors in the Minneapolis U.S. Attorney's office — including Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson — have resigned as the office continues to face pressure to treat the investigation of the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE officer as an assault on a federal officer case. Thompson also previously served as the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota; he was appointed by President Trump in June and served in the position until October. He resigned from the attorney's office along with Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams, Thomas Calhoun-Lopez, Ruth Schneider and Tom Hollenhurst. Two sources familiar...

President Trump insisted Wednesday that the US “needs” to take control of Greenland “for the purpose of National Security,” warning that “[a]nything less than that is unacceptable” ahead of key meetings with Danish and Greenlandic officials. “NATO should be leading the way for us to get it,” Trump said on Truth Social in reference to the world’s largest island. “IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!" “Militarily, without the vast power of the United States, much of which I built during my first term, and am now bringing to a new and even...

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was reportedly in the dark about the Trump administration’s plan to invade Venezuela and depose President Nicolas Maduro. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the White House excluded the nation’s top intelligence from discussions about the planned ouster, which was carried out on Saturday. People familiar with the situation said that Gabbard had previously opposed U.S. intervention in the South American country. “The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” Gabbard, then a Democratic member of Congress, tweeted in 2019. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose...

President Trump referred to the late actor and director Rob Reiner as having “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME” in a social-media post Monday less than a day after authorities said the Democratic activist and donor and his wife were found dead in their Los Angeles home. Trump said Reiner, a critic of the president, was “tortured and struggling” and attributed the death “to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump,...

U.S. egg prices increased again last month to reach a new record-high of $6.23 per dozen despite President Donald Trump’s predictions, a drop in wholesale prices and no egg farms having bird flu outbreaks.... ....The farms that had fall outbreaks have been working to resume egg production after sanitizing their barns and raising new flocks, but chickens must be about six months old before they start laying eggs. Thompson said those farms did not come back online as quickly as anticipated. The increase reported Thursday in the Consumer Price Index means consumers and businesses that rely on eggs might not...

A new investigation by CNN’s KFile team reveals that Trump VP hopeful and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance liked tweets calling the man he hopes to serve under “douchey,” accusing him of “serial sexual assault,” and even expressing an interest in working under his then-rival, Hillary Clinton. Senator Vance is one of Donald Trump’s most effusive allies in Congress now, even earning himself a spot on Trump’s shortlist to be his running mate. But this alliance is still a relatively new one. Back in 2016, he called himself a “Never Trump guy” and called Trump “reprehensible” and an “idiot.” In text...