Free Republic

President Donald Trump said he was “very angry” and “pissed off” when Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized the credibility of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s leadership, adding that the comments were “not going in the right location.” Agence France-Presse reported that Putin on Friday called for a transitional government to be put in place in Ukraine, which could effectively push out Zelenskyy. “If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault — which it might not be — but if I think it was Russia’s fault,...

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...

Facing pressure from his right flank to take on judges who have ruled against President Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Tuesday floated the possibility of Congress eliminating some federal courts. It’s the latest attack from Republicans on the federal judiciary, as courts have blocked a series of actions taken by the Trump administration. In addition to funding threats, Trump and his conservative allies have called for the impeachment of certain federal judges who have ruled against him, most notably U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who attempted to halt Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan...

Trump's administration argued that Khalil's First Amendment claims are a "red herring " and that there's "an independent basis to justify removal sufficient to foreclose Khalil’s constitutional claim here." The Trump administration filed new allegations against Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student detained due to his pro-Palestinian activism on campus, while trying to dismiss his First Amendment violation claims as a "red herring." In a filing Sunday, the Justice Department said Khalil, who is a green-card holder, withheld information about his membership in certain organizations and failed to disclose his employment at the Syria Office in the British Embassy...

When asked if he agrees with scholars who say the U.S. is in a constitutional crisis, Schumer responded, “Yes, I do.” “And democracy is at risk. Look, Donald Trump is a lawless, angry man. He thinks he should be king. He thinks he should do whatever he wants, regardless of the law, and he thinks judges should just listen to him,” Schumer told moderator Kristen Welker. The full interview will air on “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

WASHINGTON — Foreign leaders have lined up to speak with him. He has rattled Mexico and Canada with threats of steep tariffs and warned there would be “hell to pay” for militants in Gaza unless they release the hostages by the time he’s sworn in.That won't happen for another 45 days, but Donald Trump, the president-in-waiting, isn't shying away from acting like the president-in-reality.Trump can't sign a bill or issue an executive order yet, but he is crowding out Joe Biden as the sitting president winds down his term and steadily recedes from public view. In two foreign trips since...

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is expected to discuss the future of his re-election campaign with family at Camp David on Sunday, following a nationally televised debate Thursday that left many fellow Democrats worried about his ability to beat former President Donald Trump in November, according to five people familiar with the matter. [Snip] So far, the party’s top leaders have offered public support for Biden, including in tweets posted by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Senior congressional Democrats, including Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Nancy Pelosi of California, have privately...

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. will count their blessings on Saturday as they mark a new anniversary of a program that has let them stay in the country, study and work and build lives. Millions more who arrived here as children and don't qualify for it are wishing they'd been so lucky. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program began 12 years ago Saturday. While its beneficiaries hope to have had a permanent legal status in the U.S. by now, they also are celebrating the educations, better paying jobs, families and homes they've been able...

Donald Trump wants to talk about revenge, and neither Sean Hannity nor Dr. Phil can stop him. Both have tried. Fresh off his historic guilty verdict in New York, Trump’s public comments, including in interviews with both men, have increasingly focused on the idea of “retribution” against his enemies if he returns to the White House. It’s rhetoric driven by Trump’s obsession that President Joe Biden and Democrats orchestrated a series of legal problems intended to derail his presidential campaign — a political persecution theory not supported by the facts. On May 30, a New York jury unanimously found Trump...

Sabreen Alrouh Joudeh was born an orphan. And her life, however hopeful, has proved brief. During a barrage of intense Israeli airstrikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah this weekend, one blast hit the family home into which Sabreen would have been welcomed, according to local health officials, hospital staff and family members. The blast killed her mother, Sabreen Sakani — who was 30 weeks pregnant with her at the time — as well as her father, Shukri Joudeh, and her 3-year-old sister she never got to meet, Malak. The family was declared dead at the city’s Kuwaiti Hospital...

Two senior Republican lawmakers, the chairs of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, say their colleagues are echoing Russian state propaganda against Ukraine. Researchers who study disinformation say Reps. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, are merely acknowledging what has been clear for some time: Russian propaganda aimed at undermining U.S. and European support for Ukraine has steadily seeped into America’s political conversation over the past decade, taking on a life of its own. McCaul, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Puck News he thinks “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately,...

Ken Paxton hit the campaign trail with a smile last week. Beaming in photos he posted of events in Collin County, Denton County, Grayson County and Tarrant County, the Texas Republican attorney general campaigned and promoted more than a dozen candidates on the ballot in this week’s primary election. Most are new faces to the Republican Party, because Paxton, the legally embattled but popular statewide official, isn’t seeking to shore up his party’s incumbents: Paxton is out for revenge. “It’s time for a whole new slate in Collin County,” he wrote in one post with a photo of him and...

For one day at least, Russia’s opposition came alive to mourn its lost leader. The funeral of Alexei Navalny on Friday almost did not happen at all. But thousands ultimately turned out — braving the snow, heavy security and weeks of Kremlin efforts to derail the event — so that they could pay their respects to the man who challenged President Vladimir Putin with a vision for a democratic Russia. Bearing flowers, candles and placards, the crowd chanted Navalny’s name as his body was first delivered to a church in southern Moscow for a brief funeral and then to a...

An NBC News review of available 2024 crime data from the cities targeted by Texas’ “Operation Lone Star,” which buses or flies migrants from the border to major cities in the interior — shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants. Overall crime is down year over year in Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, New York and Los Angeles. Crime has risen in Washington, D.C., but local officials do not attribute the spike to migrants.

The Supreme Court has announced it will consider Donald Trump’s appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar him from the state’s ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) tells MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart that the question the Justices have to answer is: “are we going to follow the Constitution?”

once-robust alliance of federal agencies, tech companies, election officials and researchers that worked together to thwart foreign propaganda and disinformation has fragmented after years of sustained Republican attacks. The GOP offensive started during the 2020 election as public critiques and has since escalated into lawsuits, governmental inquiries and public relations campaigns that have succeeded in stopping almost all coordination between the government and social media platforms.

TEL AVIV — Israel’s ferocious bombardment of the Gaza Strip will create an incubator for a new generation of terrorists, some extremism experts say, as thousands of young people who have lost families and homes risk being radicalized by the war and its likely chaotic aftermath. Israel says it wants to destroy Hamas, the terrorist group that carried out the massacre of more than 1,400 people and the kidnappings of 240 others on Oct. 7, according to official estimates. But Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign has killed thousands of civilians, many of them women and children; reduced swaths of the tiny,...

Epps entered Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 as a supporter of former President Donald Trump. He told the Jan. 6 committee that the conspiracy theories about him ruined his life. WASHINGTON — Ray Epps, a Jan. 6 participant whose removal from the FBI's Capitol Violence webpage sparked conspiracy theories that he was a federal informant, was charged in connection with the Capitol attack on Tuesday. Epps is charged with one misdemeanor count, disorderly or disruptive conduct on restricted grounds. He was charged by information, which suggests that he plans to enter a plea deal. The criminal information charges that...

Russian high school seniors will return to classrooms this week to find history rewritten in the image of President Vladimir Putin. A new textbook — churned out in just four months and touted as the first state effort to unify teaching of the subject since the Soviet era — echoes Kremlin propaganda justifying the war in Ukraine, the latest stage of a drive to shape the worldview of a new generation. The book will be used by history teachers across the country, including in Russian occupied Ukrainian territories, to teach students in their final year of high school about the...

A record number of bills aimed at restricting the rights of LGBTQ people have become law in the past three years, but the majority of those that have faced legal challenges haven’t held up in court, according to an NBC News analysis, legal experts and the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed legal challenges against some of the laws. Just this year, state representatives introduced 491 bills aimed at restricting LGBTQ rights, with 77 of them becoming law, according to the ACLU. The majority of bills proposed and passed focused on limiting the ability of transgender youth to receive...