Free Republic

The administration’s claims are overblown, but newly declassified information provides some messy details about a January 2017 intelligence assessment of Moscow’s election interference.The Trump administration in recent weeks has released a series of reports intended to undermine the conclusion reached by intelligence agencies before President Trump’s first term that Russia had favored his candidacy in 2016 and sought to improve his chances of winning.That assessment, an unclassified version of which was made public in January 2017, has long infuriated Mr. Trump. In disclosing the reports, he and his team are proclaiming that President Barack Obama and his team torqued the...

The director of national intelligence gave the Justice Department little warning before she demanded an investigation. President Trump made clear this week that Tulsi Gabbard was back in his good graces. A few weeks ago, Mr. Trump excoriated Ms. Gabbard, one of his top intelligence officials, over a video she filmed during a trip to Asia that he saw as self-promotional, and she was left out of some meetings in the lead-up to the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, according to two people with knowledge of what happened. But on Tuesday...

The artist said that she made the decision after she said she learned that her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty might be removed to avoid provoking President Trump.... ...Ms. Sherald said that Mr. Bunch on Monday had proposed replacing the painting with a video of people reacting to the painting and discussing transgender issues, an idea she rejected because she said it would have included anti-trans views. “When I understood a video would replace the painting, I decided to cancel,” she said. “The video would have opened up for debate the value of trans visibility and I was...

More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups, including Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders, warned on Wednesday that “mass starvation” was spreading across Gaza, adding to calls for Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave. The joint statement is the latest attempt to draw attention to a growing hunger crisis in Gaza. It was released after the European Union and at least 28 governments, including Israeli allies like Britain, France and Canada, on Monday condemned the “drip feeding of aid” and said that civilian suffering had “reached new depths.” Doctors Without Borders in Gaza...

Attorney General Pam Bondi informed President Trump in the spring that his name appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files, according to three people with knowledge of the exchange. The disclosure came as part of a broader briefing on the re-examination of the case against Mr. Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, by F.B.I. agents and prosecutors. It was made by Ms. Bondi during a meeting that also included the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, and covered a variety of topics. Ms. Bondi frequently meets with Mr. Trump to brief him on various matters, officials...

On Sunday, our thoughtful and reserved president reposted on his Truth Social site a video generated by artificial intelligence that falsely showed former President Obama being arrested and imprisoned. There are those among you who think this is high humor; those among you who who find it as tiresome as it is offensive; and those among you blissfully unaware of the mental morass that is Truth Social. Whatever camp you fall into, the video crosses all demographics by being expected — just another crazy Trump stunt in a repetitive cycle of division and diversion so frequent it makes Groundhog Day...

Descriptions and displays at scores of parks and historic sites have been flagged for review in connection with an executive order from President Trump.At Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, the Trump administration is set to review, and possibly remove or alter, signs about how climate change is causing sea levels to rise.At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the administration will soon decide whether to take down exhibits on the brutality of slavery.And at Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida, Trump officials are scrutinizing language about the imprisonment of Native Americans inside the Spanish stone fortress.According...

Democratic strategist James Carville ripped Democrats for their lack of unity and warned that the party is “steamrolling toward a civilized civil war” in a new essay. “Constipated. Leaderless. Confused. A cracked-out clown car. Divided,” Carville wrote in a Monday guest essay published in The New York Times. “These are the words I hear my fellow Democrats using to describe our party as of late. The truth is they’re not wrong: The Democratic Party is in shambles.” Carville said that New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s win in the city’s primary “represents an undeniable fissure in our political soul.”...

SACRAMENTO — For nearly 20 years, Maria would call her sister — a nurse in Mexico — for advice on how to manage her asthma and control her husband’s diabetes instead of going to the doctor in California. She didn’t have legal status, so she couldn’t get health insurance and skipped routine exams, relying instead on home remedies and, at times, getting inhalers from Mexico. She insisted on using only her first name for fear of deportation. Things changed for Maria and many others in recent years when some Democratic-led states opened up their health insurance programs to low-income immigrants...

This week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Trump gave Mr. Epstein a note for his 50th birthday in 2003 that included a sketch of a naked woman and a cryptic reference to a “secret” the two men shared.In the swirl of money and sun-tanned women that was their Palm Beach-and-Manhattan set, Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein spent nearly 15 years mingling side-by-side as public friends. There were lavish dinners with boldface names at Mr. Epstein’s mansion on the Upper East Side and raucous parties with cheerleaders and models at Mr. Trump’s private club and residence at Mar-a-Lago....

The New York Times famously sparred with the Biden White House over the refusal to grant interviews with its journalists during his presidency, but former President Joe Biden finally ran to the paper this month as President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers put a harsh spotlight on his use of an autopen. The interview was widely panned, with many suggesting the Times buried the most crucial part of its own story, and it had essentially done more harm than good for Biden. Now, the Gray Lady faces widespread criticism and the Trump administration will investigate the legality of Biden's pardons...

The New York Times leadership actually attempted to sell readers on the dimwitted notion that stripping tax dollars from leftist public media is just as nutty as defunding police departments. This is the same newspaper that largely rationalized nixing police funding across a number of stories over the past few years. The Times editorial board went to bat for lefty outlets NPR and PBS, which are on the verge of possibly getting $1.1 billion cut from their mothership Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The newspaper had the utter audacity to argue in a June 16 editorial that continuing literal government-funded...

Frustrated that prominent Democrats have not fought harder, former President Barack Obama said in a speech that his party’s leaders needed to step up.Former President Barack Obama has a stern critique for members of his party: Too many have been cowed into silence.In private remarks to party donors on Friday night, Mr. Obama scolded Democrats for failing to speak out against President Trump and his policies, suggesting they were shrinking from the challenge out of fear of retribution.“It’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to...

On a patch of dirt in the vast wilderness in Alaska, a long-range drone roared like a lawn mower as it shot into the sky. It scanned the ground for a target it had been programmed to recognize, and then dived, attempting to destroy it by crashing into it. But it missed, landing about 80 feet away. On another attempt, a drone nose-dived at launch. On a subsequent try, a drone crashed into a mountain. These drones weren’t flown by amateur hobbyists. They were launched by drone manufacturers paid by a special unit of the Department of Defense as part...

Donald J. Trump and his allies have begun investigations to support their claims that Joseph R. Biden Jr. was incapacitated and his staff conspired to take presidential actions in his name. Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is escalating his battle against Republican claims that he might not have been in control of high-profile clemency decisions issued under his name at the end of his term and, more generally, that his cognitive state impaired his functioning in office. In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Biden said that he had orally granted all the pardons and commutations issued...

The New York Times reports many of Biden’s pardons including Dr. Fauci’s were signed by autopen and approved late at night by a White House aide.

The Biden Autopen Scandal just got worse. The Oversight Project broke the story about the Biden autopen scandal wide open after they discovered thousands of acts of clemency and executive actions were signed with an autopen rather than a wet signature. Earlier this year, the Oversight Project revealed six criminals were pardoned by Biden’s autopen on December 30, 2022, while Joe Biden was vacationing and golfing in St. Croix. You were White House Staff Secretary when Biden autopenned pardons from the golf course in USVI. This you? https://t.co/26z9C6cE7m pic.twitter.com/7btD2RTX0N — Oversight Project (@ItsYourGov) March 17, 2025 Joe Biden defended the...

...South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung, sent special envoys to Australia and Germany to discuss defense and trade issues, and plans on dispatching delegations to several others. Brazil and India announced plans to increase their bilateral trade by 70 percent, to $20 billion. Indonesia says it is nearing a treaty with the European Union that would drop most tariffs on both sides to zero. And in Vietnam, which Mr. Trump said had accepted 20 percent tariffs on its goods headed to the United States before last week’s letters, the deputy trade minister emphasized efforts to reduce her country’s reliance...

As a warming planet delivers more extreme weather, experts warn that the Trump administration is dismantling the government’s disaster capabilities.In an effort to shrink the federal government, President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps that are diluting the country’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather events, disaster experts say. Staff reductions, budget cuts and other changes made by the administration since January have already created holes at the National Weather Service, which forecasts and warns of dangerous weather. Mr. Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year would close 10 laboratories...

When President Trump announced tariffs in April, officials in Kazakhstan were surprised to see their country on the list. Kazakhstan, a resource-rich country that borders Russia and China, does a minimal amount of trade with the United States. And based on how Kazakh government officials interpreted Mr. Trump’s new policies, more than 90 percent of its exports to the United States would be exempt from the tariff. American officials have spent much of the last decade promising money and support to prod the country to open up its economy, especially mining. "Many in the region saw the U.S. as a...