Free Republic

Clearly, the “Saturday Night Live” writing team had a lot of work to do on Saturday, as they opened the show with a sketch about President Trump’s early morning attack on Iran. In the Feb. 28 cold open, Trump (played by James Austin Johnson) gives a press conference about the military action. “It’s me, Donald Trump, FIFA Peace Prize winner and Nobel Peace Prize taker,” he began. “Remember that? I launched this attack after me and my board of peace…we were bored of peace. As we all know, Iran has been two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon for...

Norway’s foreign minister argues that the strikes on Iran broke international law, calling for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. “The attack is described by Israel as a pre-emptive strike, but it is not in accordance with international law. A pre-emptive attack would require the existence of an imminent threat,” Espen Barth Eide says in an email sent to AFP by his office. He does not mention US strikes.

Missiles streaked across the skies of the Middle East on Saturday morning as the United States and Israel began “Operation Epic Fury,” a joint operation targeting the Iranian regime—and one that President Donald Trump hopes will not only destroy the Iranian ballistic missile and nuclear program, but deliver regime change itself. After months of moving American military assets into the region, the Americans and Israelis began their attack by striking regime infrastructure. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Tehran palace was turned to rubble, killing the Supreme Leader, according to officials. Additional reports said that the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, had been targeted....

The United Nations chief condemned the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran on Saturday and called for an immediate return to negotiations “to pull the region, and our world, back from the brink.” Secretary-General António Guterres told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that everything must be done to prevent further escalation. “The alternative,” he warned, “is a potential wider conflict with grave consequences for civilians and regional stability.” Guterres said the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes violated international law, including the U.N. Charter. He also condemned Iran’s retaliatory attacks for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan,...

With the threat of a U.S. strike on Iran looming, the United States embassy in Jerusalem has told its workers that they may leave Israel and warned them that if they want to, it is vital that they do so immediately, according to an email from Ambassador Mike Huckabee sent to the U.S. mission Friday. The move followed meetings and phone calls through the night, Mr. Huckabee told embassy workers in the email, and resulted from “an abundance of caution” and conversations with the State Department in which officials agreed that the safety of embassy staff was a priority. Those...

A group of internal investigators at the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance made a series of startling discoveries last year. People in Iran had gained access to more than 1,500 accounts on the Binance platform over the previous year. About $1.7 billion had flowed from two Binance accounts to Iranian entities with links to terrorist groups, a possible violation of global sanctions. And one of those accounts belonged to a Binance vendor. After uncovering the transactions, the investigators reported them to top executives, according to company records and other documents reviewed by The New York Times. Within weeks, Binance fired or...

The Supreme Court tried to disarm Trump's tariff revolution. Treasury Sec. Bessent declared Hamilton's system the foundation of sovereignty. Meanwhile, 60 nations answered Trump's call at the Board of Peace. One system is dying. Another is born. Susan Kokinda argues Trump’s response to the Supreme Court tariff ruling points beyond China to “foreign interests” tied to British Empire's Adam Smith free-trade ideology, defended by the US Chamber of Commerce and Cato Institute. She cites Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ambassador Jamieson Greer framing the administration’s approach as Hamiltonian economic sovereignty, and says tariffs will continue under other laws, including a...

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger will deliver the official Democratic response to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on Feb. 24. The high-profile speaking slot has proved to be a mixed blessing in recent years, providing both a national platform for a rising star and the peril of being the follow-up act to a president who has just been wrapped in the trappings of a speech to a joint session of Congress. Most of the response speeches, whether given from a quiet television studio in Washington, a Lousiana living room or a Kentucky diner, have been largely forgettable —...

The Libertarian National Committee voted this month to hold the party’s 2028 national convention in El Paso, Texas, selecting the city over Richmond, Virginia, after two rounds of balloting. Vote totals shared on the committee’s public Business List show that the final vote was 9–8 in favor of El Paso. Members also had the option to select “None of the Above,” which would have prompted further research into additional potential venues. The site selection vote followed a special virtual meeting held February 10, during which committee members heard presentations from venue representatives in El Paso, Richmond, and Frisco, Texas. The...

"Restore Britain has been called ‘far-right’ and ‘racist’ by the Guardian, Reform and the whole host of soapless socialists over the last few days. I cannot be clearer in our official party response. We do not care. The illegals will go. The hotels will be emptied, the HMOs closed. Foreign sex pests, criminals and invaders will be rounded up, and they will be sent home. Far more legals will leave than enter. Those foreign nationals here already will pay their way, they will contribute, they will respect our culture. If they don’t do that? Fine. Their choice. They will leave...

The Super Bowl LX halftime show featuring Latin trap artist Bad Bunny was the subject of immense criticism from Americans on Sunday night. President Donald Trump called it "one of the worst ever." The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World," Trump wrote on...

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....

Bend skier Hunter Hess is feeling "mixed emotions" about representing the U.S. at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. Hess spoke during a news conference in Milan on Friday with the Team USA freeski halfpipe squad. He was reportedly asked what it means to wear Team USA gear and the American flag amid the Trump administration's immigration arrests. "It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now I think," Hess said. "It's a little hard. There's obviously a lot going on that I'm not the biggest fan of and I think a lot of people aren't. I think...

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...

A January survey from Harvard University and The Harris Poll found that a slight majority of respondents believe that former President Biden was more effective than President Trump. The poll, released Monday, found that 51 percent of respondents said Trump is doing a worse job than Biden, while 49 percent said the president is doing a better job than his predecessor. The same survey conducted in December found that 53 percent of respondents said Trump is faring better than Biden did. The latest results also mark a stark reversal from February 2025, when 58 percent of respondents to the Harvard-Harris...

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...

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says the city will file a temporary restraining order on Monday in an effort to halt Operation Metro Surge and get federal agents out of Minnesota. FOX 9's Mary McGuire has more.

A fresh MAGA civil war has erupted ahead of the midterm elections, with one of President Donald Trump’s most vocal allies lashing out at Vice President JD Vance over abortion and accusing him of being “friends with degenerates.” The scorched-earth tirade by MAGA acolyte Laura Loomer took place shortly after Vance appeared at the annual March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., where he touted Trump as the most pro-life president in history and encouraged anti-abortion activists to “take heart in how far we’ve come.” But Loomer questioned his presence at the event, asking her 1.8 million followers on X:...

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...