Free Republic

A federal judge on Wednesday barred the Trump administration from continuing to detain Mahmoud Khalil under a rarely cited law invoked by the secretary of state — and suggested that Mr. Khalil could be released as early as Friday. However, the judge, Michael E. Farbiarz, paused his own order to give the administration a chance to appeal, saying it would not go into effect until 9:30 a.m. on Friday. And he left a pathway for the government to continue to detain Mr. Khalil for other reasons, though he suggested he would be skeptical were authorities to do so. ***Though Judge...

As images of protests in Southern California have flooded television and social media in recent days, a key question has emerged: Why are so many protesters carrying Mexican flags at an American political protest? The sea of red, white and green Mexican flags at anti-deportation protests this week in Los Angeles has been seized upon by conservatives who argue that the demonstrations are inherently un-American, causing some protesters to consider leaving them at home. Photos of masked provocateurs waving Mexican flags atop burning Waymo taxis spread instantly across conservative social media this weekend. Republicans pointed to them as a prime...

Ms. Bass struggled amid criticism of her initial response to the Los Angeles fires in January. The opposition over President Trump’s immigration raids have offered her an opportunity. For the past three days, Mayor Karen Bass has been a high-profile figure across Los Angeles. She turned up at parking lots where federal officials had conducted immigration sweeps. She posted updates on social media seeking to reassure embattled immigrants that the city would fight for them. She held a news conference at City Hall to rally her constituents and assail President Trump for deploying the National Guard. “It’s the last thing...

China produces the entire world’s supply of samarium, a rare earth metal that the United States and its allies need to rebuild inventories of fighter jets, missiles and other hardware.China’s strict controls on the export of heat-resistant magnets made with rare earth minerals have exposed a major vulnerability in the U.S. military supply chain.Without these magnets, the United States and its allies in Europe will struggle to refill recently depleted inventories of military hardware.For more than a decade, the United States has failed to develop an alternative to China’s supply of a specific kind of rare earth crucial for the...

President Trump has long mused about using troops to crush violent protests or riots in blue-state cities. He is now moving to do so in Los Angeles.Setting up a rare use of military force on domestic soil, President Trump ordered the Pentagon on Saturday night to send at least 2,000 National Guard troops to respond to protests in Los Angeles set off by his immigration crackdown.Mr. Trump has long mused about using military force on domestic soil to crush violent protests or riots, fight crime and hunt for undocumented migrants — a move that his aides talked him out of...

Elon Musk’s blowup with President Trump may have doomed Washington’s most potent partnership, but the billionaire’s signature cost-cutting project has become deeply embedded in Mr. Trump’s administration and could be there to stay.At the Department of Energy, for example, a former member of the Department of Government Efficiency is now serving as the chief of staff.At the Interior Department, DOGE members have been converted into federal employees and embedded into the agency, said a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. And at the Environmental Protection Agency, where a spokeswoman said...

European nations are increasingly optimistic that they can support Ukraine financially and militarily against Russia even if President Trump decides to wash his hands of the conflict, as he often threatens, and instead focuses on normalizing relations with Moscow. But even with their best efforts, the Europeans cannot replace all of what the United States provides Ukraine — most important, real-time intelligence about Russian forces, incoming missiles and how and where to target the enemy. Ukraine’s ability to fight effectively relies largely on that American intelligence. “The Ukrainians don’t want this to be cut off no matter what,” said Camille...

“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday in an Oval Office news conference. “They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled. Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart.” “And I gave that analogy to Putin yesterday,”“I said, ‘President, maybe you have to keep fighting and suffering a lot, because both sides are suffering, before you pull them apart, before they’re able to be pulled apart.’” Merz had come to Washington...

Stephen K. Bannon, one of Elon Musk’s most vocal critics, said he was advising the president to cancel all of the tech billionaire’s contracts and launch several investigations into the world’s richest man. “They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status, because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately,” Mr. Bannon, the former top aide to President Trump who is now an influential ally and informal adviser, said in an interview. ...Mr. Bannon said the Trump administration should also investigate Mr. Musk’s drug use,...

The open acrimony between the two men comes after the billionaire denounced President Trump’s signature domestic policy bill as an “abomination.” President Trump and Elon Musk’s alliance dissolved into open acrimony on Thursday, as the two men hurled personal attacks at each other after the billionaire had unleashed broadsides against the president’s signature domestic policy bill. While meeting with Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor, in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump broke days of uncharacteristic silence and unloaded on Mr. Musk, who until last week was a top presidential adviser. “I’m very disappointed in Elon,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve helped Elon...

In May, an American investor tried to sell top German economic officials on an audacious plan to buy a Russian undersea pipeline. Despite years of international friction over the pipeline, he proposed to eventually activate it and deliver natural gas to Germany. The investor, Stephen P. Lynch, had already made the pitch to the Trump administration, which he was betting would want U.S. control over a pivotal piece of energy infrastructure. Now the Germans wanted to hear for themselves about Mr. Lynch’s proposal to lead a takeover of the much-criticized pipeline on the floor of the Baltic Sea, called Nord...

Nearly one million Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the country’s war against Ukraine, according to a new study, a staggering toll as Russia’s three-year assault on its neighbor grinds on. The study, published on Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that close to 400,000 Ukrainian troops have also been killed or wounded since the war began. That would put the overall casualty figure, for Russian and Ukrainian troops combined, at almost 1.4 million. Officials cautioned that casualty figures were difficult to estimate because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war...

On Monday, Eric Coomer, former Director of Product Strategy and Security for Dominion Voting Systems, will face off against Mike Lindell, MyPillow, and FrankSpeech (consolidated as “Lindell”) in a lawsuit brought in federal court in Colorado. Coomer is suing Lindell for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy, claiming that Lindell’s conduct provoked “an onslaught of harassment and credible death threats issued against him.” The lawsuit centers around alleged false claims and defamatory statements made by Mike Lindell as a result of accusations made by Joe Oltmann on The Conservative Daily Podcast (now Untamed) following the 2020 election....

DAVID BROOKS, NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, I'm not sure it was wreckage. There was wreckage if you're at NIH. There are wreckage at certain agencies, but the guy only saved $65 billion out of a multitrillion-dollar budget. So, as a budget matter, you would not say he had a big effect, but he did manage to destroy NIH and USAID. And the USAID one is the one I haven't gotten over. And so there's folks at Boston University who count, how many people have died because of what DOGE did at USAID? And USAID was a very ill-managed organization. That's...

Last year’s Democratic vice-presidential nominee has thrown himself into a robust atonement-and-explanation tour, though aides insist there is no grand strategy.Nearly seven months since his ticket lost the 2024 presidential election, Tim Walz is trying all at once to make amends for everything he thinks went wrong.He is going to Republican areas where Democrats lost ground. He is sitting for countless interviews after former Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign limited his media exposure. And as his party engages in collective finger-pointing, he is among the few Democrats admitting that they themselves made mistakes.“I know my job and I didn’t get...

With the welcome mat withdrawn for promising researchers from around the world, America is at risk of losing its longstanding pre-eminence in the sciences.For decades, Bangalore, India, has been an incubator for scientific talent, sending newly minted Ph.D.s around the world to do groundbreaking research. In an ordinary year, many aim their sights at labs in the United States. “These are our students, and we want them to go and do something amazing,” said a professor at the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, Raj Ladher. But this is not an ordinary year. When Professor Ladher queried some 30...

The brazen anti-Americanism replete within The New York Times has become so in-your-face you can smell it like someone with a halitosis condition yawning within a few centimeters of your nose at a bus stop. How the trash newspaper tried to give new meaning to the idea of Memorial Day in its print edition is no exception. The May 26 print edition of The Times featured no mention of Memorial Day or the numerous U.S. service men and women who died in the armed forces at all on its front page. In fact, one of the top so-called stories it...

The New York Times published a hard-hitting report, Sunday, laying out the ways in which President Donald Trump has monetized his office. But the Gray Lady didn’t exactly let Democrats off the hook Sunday — as they also ran a devastating feature on the party’s efforts to win back young male voters. In the piece — written by national political correspondent Shane Goldmacher — some brutal details were reported about the Democratic party’s efforts to bring young men back into the fold. “Democratic donors and strategists have been gathering at luxury hotels to discuss how to win back working-class voters,...

Top Democratic operatives and donors have been hobnobbing in “luxury hotels” while trying to figure out why the party is shedding men and the working class — moves that have liberals have slammed as out of touch. In one instance, liberal super PAC Future Forward hosted a gathering in the Ritz-Carlton resort in wealthy Half Moon Bay, California, to apprise donors on what went wrong in 2024. Prominent figures such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) were reported in attendance. Some of the elite gatherings featured appetizers like short-rib tostones, mini lobster rolls, beef...

A Manhattan prosecutor allegedly weaponized her powerful position by enlisting allies within the NYPD and the District Attorney's Office to have her estranged husband, a respected New York Times reporter, arrested.Assistant District Attorney Amanda Goun masterminded a scheme to have award-winning health care journalist Joseph Goldstein arrested in a bitter custody war over their two young children, according to a federal lawsuit that reads like the plot of a legal thriller.According to the searing 62-page federal complaint filed earlier this month, ADA Goun allegedly had Goldstein, her husband of seven years, falsely arrested on trumped-up felony assault and child endangerment...