Free Republic

The value of the U.S. dollar plunged Tuesday, after President Donald Trump said he was not concerned about the currency's recent drop. "I think it’s great," Trump said, speaking to reporters in Iowa, when asked if the dollar's value had declined too much. “The dollar’s doing great.” Before Trump's comments, the benchmark ICE U.S. Dollar Index was already on pace to record its worst three-day drop since Trump's April 2025 "Liberation Day" tariff rollout. After Trump’s comments, the value of the dollar as measured by the index sharply extended its slide to as much as 1.5%, putting it on track...

Eight additional Democrats signed on to an impeachment resolution against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in the wake of the killing of Alex Pretti, bringing the total number of co-sponsors to 120, according to a spokesperson for the office of Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois. Kelly’s impeachment resolution against Noem had garnered 100 co-sponsors as of Jan. 20, according to a press release, but the number spiked in recent days amid outcry over immigration enforcement practices as thousands of federal officers were deployed to Minnesota in what the administration has dubbed Operation Metro Surge. “IMPEACH KRISTI NOEM,” the Democratic Party...

PHOENIX — For a second day in a row, a long-brewing internal fight among MAGA influencers spilled onto the stage of Turning Point USA's first annual conference since the September slaying of Charlie Kirk, the organization's co-founder.Podcaster Ben Shapiro, speaking on the AmericaFest convention's opening night Thursday, ripped into right-wing broadcasters Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly, as well as white nationalist Nick Fuentes.At the core of his argument is a case that Owens has peddled conspiracy theories, without objection from Kelly and other prominent conservatives, about Kirk's assassination. Those theories include suggestions that foreign governments —...

Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan J. Pollard downplayed the controversy around his private meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, telling NBC News the visit was “personal” and “wasn’t done surreptitiously.” The “main point” of the meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in July, Pollard said, was to “thank” the ambassador for “his efforts on my behalf during my incarceration.” Pollard, a former American intelligence analyst, spent 30 years in prison on espionage charges after being found to have passed critical security documents to Israeli intelligence in the 1980s. Israel made Pollard a citizen during his lengthy prison term,...

The first video “Richard LA” posted to TikTok appeared on Aug. 21, 2024. “Accident at 27th and San Pedro,” he wrote in Spanish under video clips showing two damaged cars and paramedics pushing a man on a gurney into an ambulance. “2 people were taken to the hospital.” “Richard LA” was actually Carlitos Ricardo Parias, 44, a father of two living in southern Los Angeles. His TikTok feed soon filled with similar clips. A fire at a home on 36th and Trinity streets. A car crash on 29th Street and Maple Avenue. His audience grew steadily over the ensuing months....

Furloughed federal workers in Maryland stood in a food bank line Tuesday as the government shutdown continues and families try to figure out how to put food on the table. The Capital Area Food Bank began free food distributions for federal workers and contractors this week in Hyattsville. With an hour to go before food was handed out, a long line of people waited for help.

Smith, who resigned from the Justice Department in January shortly before Trump returned to office as president, warned that attacks on public servants would have an “incalculable” cost on the country. “I think the attacks on public servants, particularly nonpartisan public servants — I think it has a cost for our country that is incalculable, and I think that we — it’s hard to communicate to folks how much that is going to cost us,” Smith said in an interview last week with former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman at University College London Faculty of Laws, where Weissman is a visiting...

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance indicated in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday that President Donald Trump was not opposed to invoking the Insurrection Act. Asked by moderator Kristen Welker whether the White House was seriously considering invoking the 1807 statute, Vance said, “The president is looking at all his options.”

An Israeli minister has clashed with the U.K.’s leading Jewish organizations after lauding a leader of the English far right and inviting him to visit the country. Tommy Robinson, a convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record who is well known for inspiring rallies of mostly white, mostly male followers shouting soccer-style chants against Islam and immigration, accepted the invitation from Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister for the diaspora and combating antisemitism. Chikli called Robinson — whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — a “courageous leader on the front line against radical Islam.” Writing on X Friday, Chilki said he would...

The crackdown on small-dollar imports has left businesses and consumers scrambling. Postal services in Japan and Switzerland are the latest to pause shipments to the United States this week, days before an exemption for certain import taxes is about to expire. The loophole, known as “de minimis,” has allowed goods worth less than $800 to enter the United States duty-free since 2016. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month to abolish the practice. It is set to end Friday. The change has rocked small businesses and consumers, leaving many concerned about shipping backlogs and higher costs. Some business...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday disowned his supporters who have called for the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, chiding them as "weaklings" who "bought into this bulls---." The lengthy post on Truth Social represents the clearest split from the faction of his MAGA base that has questioned the Justice Department’s handling of the case. My "PAST supporters have bought into this “bulls---” hook, line, and sinker," he said in the post, adding, "Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their...

Israel says it first bombed Iran to stop it from being able to produce nuclear weapons and the “existential threat” they would represent. But the conflict may in the long run serve the opposite purpose: illustrating to Tehran and other nuclear-aspirant nations that nuclear weapons are essential in shielding them against attack. Countries such as North Korea already pointed to Libya, whose leader Moammar Gadhafi gave up his nascent weapons program but was toppled anyway in 2011 after a NATO intervention. That’s one of the reasons Pyongyang has developed its own arsenal — which is believed to have San Francisco...

New data shows that CO2 levels have broken through 430 parts per million, an indication that human-caused global warming will continue to warp the environment.Earth’s atmosphere now has more carbon dioxide in it than it has in millions — and possibly tens of millions — of years, according to data released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and scientists at the University of California San Diego.For the first time, global average concentrations of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas emitted as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, exceeded 430 parts per million (ppm) in May. The new readings were...

WASHINGTON — Kenny Capps is a cancer patient who has been battling multiple myeloma for a decade. A 53-year-old father of three children who lives in North Carolina, he was on the brink of losing his health insurance coverage due to rising costs — until Democrats passed an Obamacare funding boost four years ago. “Thanks to the enhanced premium tax credits, we were able to keep affording insurance,” Capps told NBC News during a recent visit to Washington to raise awareness about the issue. “It had almost doubled to the point of my mortgage at that time, so I was...

In the run-up to the vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., knew her party had a problem — and its name was John Fetterman. Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, was open to confirming President Donald Trump’s embattled pick, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Murray wanted to speak with her colleague one-on-one. So she reached out to set up a time. But Fetterman refused, as the two people familiar with the episode told NBC News. “He figured that she wanted to yell at him about it,” one person familiar with the...

Long before she was a Fox News host who pushed pro-Trump election conspiracy theories, Jeanine Pirro was an ambitious New York politician whose career stalled after she was recorded plotting to bug her then-husband’s boat to catch him in an affair. The revelation rocked Pirro’s campaign for New York attorney general nearly 20 years ago, resulting in days of front-page headlines in the city’s tabloids (“BUG THIS LOVE BOAT!” blared the Daily News cover). The conversation took place in 2005 between Pirro and the former commissioner of the New York Police Department, Bernard Kerik, a close ally of Rudy Giuliani’s....

WASHINGTON — Minutes before U.S. fighter jets took off to begin strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen last month, Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, who leads U.S. Central Command, used a secure U.S. government system to send detailed information about the operation to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The material Kurilla sent included details about when U.S. fighters would take off and when they would hit their targets — details that could, if they fell into the wrong hands, put the pilots of those fighters in grave danger. But he was doing exactly what he was supposed to: providing Hegseth,...

The nation’s LGBTQ research field is collapsing. In recent weeks, academics who focus on improving the health of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans have been subjected to waves of grant cancellations from the National Institutes of Health. More than 270 grants totaling at least $125 million of unspent funds have been eliminated, though the true sum is likely much greater, researchers told NBC News. Cancellation letters obtained by NBC News often vaguely state that the research in question no longer suits NIH priorities.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump did not rule out the possibility of seeking a third term in the White House, which is prohibited by the Constitution under the 22nd Amendment, saying in an exclusive interview with NBC News that there were methods for doing so and clarifying that he was “not joking.” “A lot of people want me to do it,” Trump said in a Sunday-morning phone call with NBC News, referring to his allies. “But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.” “I’m focused on...

AVONDALE, Pa. — In this sleepy, rural corner of southeastern Pennsylvania that produces 70% of the nation’s mushrooms, President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are threatening the American dream for a tight-knit community of generational mushroom farmers and the immigrant workers they have long employed. The year-round work of growing and picking the mushrooms that season the stews and stir-fries on American tables is the basis of the local economy in Avondale, a town of just over 1,200 people where more than 60% are Latino. In recent weeks, several immigrants in the area have already been arrested by federal immigration officials...