Free Republic

Seattle's police union has hit out at city officials after mass arrests took place in a park when counter-protesters gathered to demonstrate against a rally being held there. The Seattle Police Officers Guild said it welcomed a mayoral review of the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department's decision to allow the rally to be held in Cal Anderson Park on Saturday. "What we are struggling to understand is, why was this park chosen and authorized, especially when this park is commonly known as the heart of ANTIFA land," the police union said in a statement on Sunday. The park and surrounding...

If you want to know who’s running the State Department these days, it helps to peruse the website of a relatively new, conservative-leaning organization called the Ben Franklin Fellowship.The group’s roster includes Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau, top officials in bureaus such as consular affairs, and even an acting undersecretary or two. The fellows include current and former members of the foreign service, as well as other international affairs specialists. And while the Fellowship describes itself as nonpartisan, its right-of-center views are obvious: It emphasizes goals such as border security; opposes typical diversity, equity and inclusion practices; and advocates...

Democratic Representative Shri Thanedar on Tuesday moved to force a House vote on his articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. Thanedar took to the House floor on Tuesday afternoon to notice his seven articles of impeachment as privileged. That means House Republican leaders have two legislative days to bring up the resolution. They are most likely to introduce a motion to table the resolution, which would effectively kill it. Why It Matters Thanedar introduced the articles of impeachment, which accuse Trump of offenses including obstruction of justice, bribery and corruption, and tyrannical overreach, last month. However, few Democrats have...

President Donald Trump on Thursday offered rare criticism of Vladimir Putin, urging the Russian leader to “STOP!” after a deadly barrage of attacks on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!”

President Donald Trump has called for the impeachment of a federal judge who ruled the administration overstepped its authority in deporting alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, but social media claims that Judge James Boasberg's orders are invalid because he filed an improper oath of office are false. The wording of the document matches that required by law and legal experts say it is not basis to challenge the legitimacy of the jurist who has been on the bench since 2002.

NASA has begun implementing its reduction in force (RIF) approach, closing three offices and laying off staff in compliance with executive orders by the new administration that target the federal workforce. NASA announced on Monday that it will be closing the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy; the Office of the Chief Scientist; and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Branch of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Twenty-three employees will be affected by the cuts, according to SpacePolicyOnline.com. The recent workforce cuts are in response to an executive order to end “radical and wasteful government DEI programs...

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is seeking access to troves of sensitive taxpayer data at the IRS, two people familiar with the inner workings of the plan who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly told The Associated Press on Monday. If successful, Musk and his group would have access to millions of tightly controlled files that include taxpayer information, bank records and other sensitive records. The people who spoke to the AP and requested anonymity said DOGE is specifically seeking to access the IRS’ Integrated Data Retrieval System, which enables employees “to have instantaneous visual access to...

PBS News Hour host Amna Nawaz, Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart, and New York Times columnist David Brooks came together on Friday to mourn the first month of Donald Trump 2.0. Together, the trio would lament the supposed lack of “guardrails” that is allowing Trump to run “roughshod” over the government in pursuit of “Ivy League right-wing nihilism.”Nawaz began with Capehart, “Can I just get both of you to briefly weigh in on this? Because we're nearing one month into the Trump presidency. Is it clear to you where the guardrails are, Jonathan?”Capehart was naturally a doomer, “No. No....

Billionaire Elon Musk has criticized the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a nonprofit organization established by the U.S. government during Republican Ronald Reagan's presidency. "NED is a SCAM," Musk wrote on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday, in response to a user who used Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok to identify "red flags of corruption or concerns" with NED. Why It Matters Musk ... is running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a Trump administration task force assigned to find ways to cut wasteful federal spending and "dismantle" government bureaucracy. Musk said in October that he could...

No, the headline does not deceive you. The New York Times got its pants in a bunch over President Donald Trump daring to refer to violent Mexican drug cartels as “terrorists” because it could supposedly harm the economy. “How Labeling Cartels ‘Terrorists’ Could Hurt the U.S. Economy,” read the asinine January 22 news item from Times correspondents Maria Abi-Habib and Simon Romero. The authors railed against Trump’s executive order designating the cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations” and claimed that it “could force some American companies to forgo doing business in Mexico rather than risk U.S. sanctions.” Yeah, how dare Trump...

Firefighters are battling multiple fast-growing wildfires in Los Angeles that have destroyed buildings and forced thousands of people to flee their homes. Almost 3,000 acres have burned in the city's Pacific Palisades neighborhood after a fire broke out on Tuesday morning. About 30,000 residents were ordered to evacuate. Fire photos show Palisades destruction—"Looks like Mars" Read more Fire photos show Palisades destruction—"Looks like Mars" Two more blazes broke out later on Tuesday. The Eaton Fire has since burned 1,000 acres in the hills above Altadena, prompting evacuation orders for parts of Altadena and Pasadena. The Hurst First has burned at...

President-elect Trump settled a defamation lawsuit with ABC News for $15 million. That suit followed a segment in which George Stephanopolous inaccurately said Trump had been found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carrol when in fact, he had been found liable in a civil case for sexual abuse. Amna Nawaz discussed more with New York Times reporter David Enrich. Amna Nawaz: Today, at his first news conference since winning the 2024 election, president-elect Donald Trump spoke about a number of his policy priorities and answered questions on a wide range of issues. Geoff Bennett: Despite the potential U.S. ban...

Attendees at a dance party in Boston cheered when pictures of Luigi Mangione, the man accused in the killing of UnitedHealthcare's CEO, appeared on screen, according to videos posted on social media. Bop to the Top Tours' Jingle Bop was being held at Big Night Live, a venue in Boston, on Friday night. During the show, a DJ played Miley Cyrus' "He Could Be The One" as several pictures of Mangione appeared on a big screen. The crowd can be heard cheering as photos of Mangione taken from his social media accounts appear on screen. The cheers appear to get...

During a campaign stop in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, former President Donald Trump visited a McDonald's and learned how to make fries at a branch in Feasterville-Trevose in Bucks County. On Sunday, the Republican presidential nominee held an impromptu press conference through the drive-thru's window. Trump, known for his love of fast food, used the opportunity to attack Harris over claims she never worked at a fast food chain during her college years. The vice president has previously said she worked at a McDonald's as a student at Howard University in Washington.However, rumors have been circulating on social...

hile Donald Trump made baseless, dangerous claims that immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets in front of millions of viewers at Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Johnson Salomon, a Haitian man who moved to Springfield in 2020, was watching cartoons with his kids before putting them to bed. He got a text from a friend telling him to turn on the debate. When he saw the headlines about what the former president and Republican nominee in November’s election had said, he was in total shock. “This was a false claim. I couldn’t believe that such a high official could make...

Kamala Harris. Donald Trump. Gish Gallop. All three are expected at Tuesday’s presidential debate, even if most of America is unfamiliar with one name in that lineup. GG, as I’ve now come to call it, is a shell game/debate tactic that takes its name from Duane Gish, a prominent figure in the creationist movement who deployed dubious arguments, selective factoids, and rapid-fire lies to overwhelm his opponents in public discussions about the theory of evolution. The disinformation technique, coined Gish Gallop in 1994 by the National Center for Science Education’s founding director Eugenie Scott, is essentially the art of burying...

In his new book, Donald Trump threatens billionaire and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with prison. Save America, set to be published next week, includes a photograph of Zuckerberg and Trump at the White House. Underneath the photo, Trump wrote that Zuckerberg “would come to the Oval Office to see me” and “bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.” Trump went on to pin some of his election conspiracies on Zuckerberg, and gave him a serious warning. “He told me...

In a nauseatingly melodramatic performance he choked back snot as he appeared to sob about how he feared for his life the day he shot and killed two people at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Defense attorney Mark Richards tried to paint Rittenhouse as a misunderstood honorable, patriotic Boy Scout who simply liked to shoot guns. Rittenhouse is anything but. In a dramatic turn, Prosecutor Thomas Binger was scolded by Judge Bruce Schroeder after trying to impeach Rittenhouse's contradictory testimony about what led to the events on the day of the killings. Regardless of how Rittenhouse tries...