Free Republic

The federal indictment of New York’s attorney general centers on a home she purchased for a relative. It is an act that rings deeply familiar to many.To some Black families, it was an intimately familiar arrangement.A woman whose parents fled a life of sharecropping in the South was among the first in her family to achieve a prestigious career. She extended her help to relatives who had less, even buying a home for a grandniece in need of stability.The house sits at the center of the indictment of Letitia James, the New York attorney general, by the Justice Department. She...

A growing number of Republicans on Capitol Hill have raised concerns about President Trump’s expanding war against drug cartels carried out without consultation or authorization by Congress, and are pressing for more information and involvement in a campaign whose legal basis remains murky. Most in the group have not expressed explicit opposition to the strikes that have been carried out so far against boats in the Caribbean Sea and, this week, expanded to the Pacific. The vast majority of Republicans have enthusiastically rallied behind them, and this month, all but two of them voted to block a measure that would...

On Tuesday, Leighton Woodhouse wrote for The New York Times that conservatives are “spinning” a “mythology” that is “historically delusional.” The delusional mythology Woodhouse is referring to? The belief that Americans are a “group of people with a shared history.”According to Woodhouse, “The founding fathers were an assortment of people from different histories and backgrounds who coexisted — often just barely.” These “different” histories, however, were all rooted in Christianity. But Woodhouse wants readers to believe that this type of variety in Christianity proves America was born out of a multicultural diversity experiment.Of course it wasn’t. The colonists shared a...

Was it only weeks ago in mid-September that I wrote a column about Democrats embracing the assassination culture that took the life of young Christian evangelist Charlie Kirk? And now in Virginia they’re doubling down. Virginia Democrats are endorsing the murderous candidacy of Jay Jones, who comes from a prominent black Virginia Democrat family. You see Jones in the photograph above, applauding the Democrat candidate for governor, former U.S. Rep Abigail Spanberger. You’ve heard of Jones and his dark fantasies over texts to a colleague, seeking the murders of his Republican opponents. And their children. Yes, their kids who he...

By the time the Pilsen Food Pantry opened on a recent morning, Ulysses Moreno had been there for two hours — with a line of people behind him that snaked around the corner. “This is a lifeline for me,” said Mr. Moreno, 39. He had lost his construction job a few days earlier, and with three teenagers at home, he wanted to make sure he could stock up. “Our food budget doesn’t stretch as far as it used to.” A few miles away, on Chicago’s glitzy Magnificent Mile, luxury hotels are bustling. Jewelry stores and designer boutiques do brisk business....

More than 2,700 “No Kings Day” demonstrations are scheduled nationwide Saturday, four months after the first protests drew five million people. Organizers say Trump’s actions have escalated since June, including expanded immigration raids, prosecutions of political opponents and pressure on universities. Trump allies brand them “anti-American” When millions of demonstrators took to the streets in June for “No Kings Day” — depicting President Trump as a wannabe monarch intent on violating American democratic norms — it was still fairly early in his administration. The immigration raids in Los Angeles were just getting under way and Trump had deployed military troops...

President Trump has repurposed money to fund military salaries during the government shutdown. He has pledged to find ways to make sure many in law enforcement get paid. He has used the fiscal impasse to halt funding to Democratic jurisdictions, and is trying to lay off thousands of federal workers.Government shutdowns are usually resolved only after the pain they inflict on everyday Americans forces elected officials in Washington to come to an agreement. But as the shutdown nears a fourth week, Mr. Trump’s actions have instead reduced the pressure for an immediate resolution and pushed his political opponents to further...

Ms. Machado’s efforts to reclaim a stolen election by any available means, including military intervention, has long galvanized her supporters. Her opponents say these hard-line policies have a political cost.Last year, María Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition, was forced into hiding by the country’s autocrat after he stole a presidential election Ms. Machado’s movement had won.Now, Ms. Machado is the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, U.S. warships are floating near the Venezuelan coast and the United States is calling President Nicolás Maduro a “narco-terrorist” and a fugitive from American justice.The Nobel award has galvanized Ms. Machado’s movement....

The CIA’s operations abroad are usually shrouded in secrecy, but President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he had authorized the spy agency to take unspecified action in Venezuela, an extraordinary and unprecedented acknowledgement from a commander in chief. “Why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela?” a reporter asked Trump at the White House. “I authorized for two reasons, really,” Trump said. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America." The second reason, the president said, was narcotics trafficking. “And the other thing are drugs. We have a lot of drugs coming in...

Since Beijing announced a new visa to attract young science and technology graduates, a backlash has erupted online, forcing the government to respond.When the Chinese government announced a new visa to attract young science and technology talent, it advertised the move as another step toward becoming the leading scientific power, one to which people from around the globe would flock.To many in China, it was a gross mistake.In the days before and since Oct. 1, when the visa was supposed to come into effect, commenters have accused the government of inviting foreigners to steal jobs from Chinese people, at a...

The New York Times scrambled to run cover for leftist billionaire George Soros after a groundbreaking report exposing his pro-terrorism funding served as the pretext for the Justice Department launching an investigation into his Open Society Foundations (OSF). The Times tried October 10 to attack the Capital Research Center’s investigative report showing that Soros had funneled at least $80 million into “groups tied to terrorism or extremist violence” both in the U.S. and abroad. The headline: "Report on Soros Cited by Justice Dept. Does Not Show Funding for Terrorism." One heavily Soros-funded group, Al-Haq, is “a nongovernmental organization (NGO) based...

The New York Times poll asked 1,313 registered respondents if they approve of Trump’s policy of “Deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally back to their home countries.”Fifty-four percent approved, including 38 percent who strongly approve.But just 24 percent — or one-in-four — strongly disapprove of the opportunity program. That bloc includes 25 percent of independents, one percent of Trump voters, and 43 percent of voters who backed Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024The New York Times poll was conducted September 22-27. Fifty-six percent of 2,413 registered voters support Trump’s policy of “Deporting all immigrants who are here illegally,”...

The Illinois governor, a potential presidential candidate, is fighting the presence of National Guard troops and the activities of ICE agents in Chicago.When President Trump ordered the National Guard to Chicago last week, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois became the latest Democrat to bear the brunt of managing an aggressive federal government. He has concluded it must be combated with a national campaign. Aside from instructing his attorney general to file a lawsuit to block troops from other states coming to Illinois, Mr. Pritzker has few formal options to resist what he described this week as an “unconstitutional invasion of...

If you’re old enough to have admired CBS in its heyday, watching its decline has been painful.Decades ago, it was dubbed the Tiffany Network – home of the great journalist Walter Cronkite (“the most trusted man in America”), and innovator of the top-flight magazine program, 60 Minutes.Even outside its news division, the network was a place where the variety-show host Ed Sullivan could break down racial exclusion by inviting outstanding Black entertainers to his Sunday night program; that was controversial in an era of intense racial turmoil. The CBS news department had some of the best journalists in the nation,...

President Trump has unleashed new weaponry in his war against Democrats, liberals and the left. Over the past four weeks, he has initiated what amounts to a unique form of partisan civil war designed to amass power in a nominal democracy and defang, decimate and defund the opposition. Trump’s assault on the left combines the use of the available tools of violent conflict — the military, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE in particular — with the prosecution of critics (and people he just doesn’t like), cuts of essential funds for liberal institutions, the use of regulation to threaten...

Hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal workers may not automatically receive back pay once the government reopens, the White House indicated in a draft memo, prompting broad fears that the Trump administration might try to circumvent federal law to maximize the pain of the shutdown. The memo, which was shared by a White House official, could presage a radical break from a policy adopted during President Trump’s first term. It appeared to contradict some of the administration’s own guidance, which by Tuesday still indicated that furloughed employees would receive retroactive pay shortly after Congress strikes a funding deal. Following the...

Once the darling of the alcohol industry, small-batch beer makers are shutting down because of increased competition and flagging interest.For more than two decades, pints of lagers and ales flowed from the taps at 21st Amendment Brewery. An early mover in craft brewing, the bar and restaurant flourished in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood, near the financial district and the Giants’ Oracle Park, serving its own specialties like Hell or High Watermelon beer. But after 25 years, 21st Amendment, named after the constitutional amendment that made alcohol legal after Prohibition, will say “last call” for the final time later this...

The White House has cut or paused billions in funding to Democratic-run cities and states since the federal government came to a halt.President Trump has embarked on a legally dubious campaign to weaponize the federal budget during a contentious government shutdown, halting more than $27 billion in approved funding in a bid to punish Democratic-led cities and states. Rather than broker a legislative truce or seek to ameliorate the fallout of a costly fiscal stalemate, the president has leveraged the crisis to exact revenge on rivals, slash federal spending and pressure Democrats into accepting his political demands. Since the shutdown...

Ms. Jong-Fast is the host of the “Fast Politics” podcast and the author of “How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir.”Nobody thinks the N.F.L. is run by a bunch of woke libs. Or for that matter, that most N.F.L. fans fit that description. In fact, the team owners, many of whom trend MAGA oligarch, donated $23 million to Republicans in the 2024 election, versus $2.5 million to Democrats. And of course there’s a reason Colin Kaepernick’s career was so resolutely benched. Many woke libs won’t even let their kids play football, not wanting to risk that their meritocratic brains...

Paramount Skydance is poised to name Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News in the coming days — giving the hard-charging journalist unusual clout to revamp the struggling network as it also acquires her scrappy news site the Free Press, The Post has learned. Weiss — a 41-year-old former New York Times opinion writer who has built the Free Press into a buzzworthy site with a contrarian bent — is expected to be named to the top post in a Monday announcement, although the talks are in flux and the timing could change, a source close to the...