Free Republic

President Trump was told aboard Air Force One in May en route to China that the United States had obtained sensitive intelligence showing that Nvidia’s chief executive was in a relationship with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy, people with knowledge of the matter said. The message was delivered by Marco Rubio, his secretary of state and national security adviser, shortly before the Nvidia leader, Jensen Huang, joined the presidential trip to Beijing at Mr. Trump’s invitation. It marked at least the second time in seven months that the president had been told of intelligence about Mr. Huang’s...

There is a lot of misunderstanding out there about Ross Douthat who interviewed President Donald Trump Sunday on 60 Minutes. He is repeatedly described as a "conservative" without any reference to the fact that less than six months into Trump's first term in May 2017 he wrote in his New York Times column that although there were no grounds to impeach Trump, he still wanted him removed from office via the 25th Amendment because Douthat's sensibilities were somehow offended by the "childishness" of Trump's demeanor.One typical example of emphasizing Douthat as being "conservative" sans any mention of his history of...

“. . . history and even corruption itself have a way of normalizing the unbearable.” —Naomi Wolf on Substack That 60-Minutes interview with the President Sunday night was a doozy: he allowed Ross Douthat (moonlighting from his New York Times column) to over-speak him so audaciously you had to wonder why Mr. Trump even bothered to show up. He barely levered a word in edgewise and looked rather glum in the process. Actually, you were watching an act of political ju-jitsu: the president pretending to take it like a whipped dog, so that his antagonists would think he was offering...

• Stevens defends switch: Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens told CNN her decision to back Republican Mike Rogers is “rock solid,” but refused to articulate why she changed her mind. Her surprise switch came after a deepening rift with Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed. Since her switch, El-Sayed has raised $1.2 million, his second-largest total in a single day. He’s leading Rogers by 11 points in a New York Times poll. • Swift fallout: Democrats have condemned Stevens’ move, including Rep. Debbie Dingell, who expressed concern for her. Top Republicans, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump, have...

*** “It’s just an environment of possible retribution,” Mr. Wood said. “It is that fear she instills.” Over nearly 30 years, Ms. Collins, a self-styled moderate in a familiar Maine mold, has cultivated a public persona as a workhorse and a fastidious maestro of constituent services and pork-barrel disbursements, using her Washington know-how to get her constituents what they need. But for just as long, her detractors say, she has managed to mostly mask another reality. “The gentlewoman from Maine,” as her colleagues say on the Senate floor, is a formidable power broker who can play a fierce brand of...

A central detail in James Talarico's political origin story has been questioned in the New York Times just days out from the midterm elections as he battles to become the first Democratic Texas senator since 1993. Talarico, a former educator who currently serves as a Texas State representative, launched his original bid for office after spending two years in a San Antonio classroom as a Teach For America fellow from 2011 to 2013, when he was in his early 20s. In his initial campaign, Talarico claimed that he taught as many as 45 students at a time and that classroom...

On Friday, The New York Times reported military review boards are defying orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to discharge transgender service members, with Navy and Marine Corps boards frequently voting to retain them.President Donald Trump's administration created three-person separation boards with narrow instructions mandating dismissal of the estimated 4,250 transgender personnel currently serving in the military.Navy and Marine Corps boards have voted to retain trans members in nine of 12 cases. Marine Staff Sgt. Damien Contreras saw board members cross out instructions regarding "a history of cross sex hormone therapy" and circle "remains qualified."The Army and Air Force have...

Who edits this stuff? A rant from the New York Times editorial board compares the Trump administration to some of history’s worst dictatorships:The revocation of a political opponent’s citizenship has long been a tool of authoritarian repression.The Soviet Union stripped Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the dissident author, of his citizenship in 1974 and deported him to West Germany. Czechoslovakia revoked the citizenship of Milan Kundera, another celebrated author, in 1979. East Germany and Romania, under Communist rule, took similar steps against critics, as did Chile under Augusto Pinochet, Greece under its military dictatorship, Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini. More recently,...

In a write-up of Wednesday night’s debate between Mike Rogers and Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed (aka Abdul-El-Sayed), the far-left New York Times referred to El-Sayed as a doctor a whopping 42 — 42! — times. Look for yourself. So to be clear, El-Sayed does not hold a license to practice medicine. He holds a Doctor of Medicine from Columbia University and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford. But he did not complete his residency after graduating from medical school. He is a doctor only by way of an academic degree. Still…DR. EL-SAYED a whopping 42 freaken times. So,...

We’re in the final weeks of the 2026 midterms, and some say a blue wave is coming. That’s just not happening. It won’t be like 2018 — a 25+ seat flip isn’t in the cards. Those days are over. Now, some top pollsters are skeptical of the latest tranche of surveys, including Frank Luntz, who admitted he got 2016 wrong and that Trump supporters don't respond to pollsters. Now, we have New York Times reporter and Michigan native Jeremy Peters noting that the thing we knew could happen — Jewish Democrats voting Republican — is a real thing in the...

On Tuesday, Oct. 20, FiftyPlusOne reached out to Wedgewood Polls, a self-professed polling firm, with a request for comment on an investigation we had conducted into their alleged survey research. They did not respond to our request, but instead posted a public statement on social media admitting that they had been fabricating data. They also reached out directly in social media DMs minutes before publishing their memo with an official comment: “**** you,” plus the name of an individual not affiliated with FiftyPlusOne. Their statement alleges that FiftyPlusOne, the New York Times, and other poll aggregators did not conduct appropriate...

In late August, during one of Karoline Leavitt’s final meetings with President Trump in the Oval Office, he pitched her on an idea in front of several senior aides. He told her to move reporters out of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, which would effectively remove news organizations from the White House. It would be, he told her, her “last legacy.” But the proposal never moved forward while she was there. The president had put the request to her several times over months, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions who were not authorized to speak...

Staying quiet is riskier than speaking up, Ukrainian officials say, as President Trump goes further than ever in prioritizing Russia’s interests.Ukraine has been here before with President Trump. But this time, as the American leader plays down Russian violence and makes it harder for Kyiv to respond, Ukrainian leaders have taken a different tack. They have punched back.A senior Ukrainian official likened it to a last chance to sound an alarm as a tsunami approaches. Even before the latest blowup with Mr. Trump, things were looking difficult for Ukraine. Daily strikes were ravaging its energy infrastructure and economy. Ukrainian air...

The transgender New York Times executive who was allegedly gunned down by his in-laws had previously threatened to hire a hitman to “get rid of” his mother-in-law, her defense attorney has claimed. Jonathan McKinsey was shot dead at Dublin Sports Grounds on Sept. 26, allegedly at the hands of his elderly in-laws, 77-year-old Shili Chen and 77-year-old Shouyong Zhang, who have been charged with murder. But their defense attorney has now revealed a potentially explosive twist in the case, claiming McKinsey previously said he was going to hire a gunman to take out Chen, according to KRON4. Curtis Briggs, who...

the 79-year old comic channels the satirist Jonathan Swift and offers a dozen “modest proposals” for the manifesto of the socialist organization “In our Socialist America, everyone will be so fulfilled spiritually and financially that the police department will be dramatically reduced to where an officer’s only job will be to adjudicate domestic disputes.” “Toward that end, stands will be set up at local farmers markets, where they will work to resolve marital issues in a folksy, farm-to-table manner,” he writes. He rapidly progresses to more outlandish ideas, including national paid leave for the death of pets, mandating that employers...

Senior defense officials Friday confirmed reports that al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan are distributing leaflets offering rewards of up to $100,000 for Americans captured alive. "I think it confirms what we've been saying and that is that Afghanistan remains a very, very dangerous place," Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S.-led coalition, told Pentagon reporters in a video link-up from U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla. U.S. forces found the leaflets last week in eastern Afghanistan, in a region where much fighting has taken place. The leaflets or pamphlets offer $50,000 for an American delivered dead...

The United States wants a reactor on the moon by 2030. A Russian-Chinese alliance is working on one for 2036. Some leading scientists say the danger is great.In late August, NASA asked contractors to prepare to build a nuclear reactor that could survive a space voyage and run without maintenance near the moon’s south pole. That may sound like science fiction, but the agency wants it ready to be launched by December 2030.There is a reason for the rush. Russia aims to have a lunar reactor running by 2036 as part of a secretive partnership with China. NASA has already...

A New York Times tech executive who was allegedly shot dead by his elderly in-laws in California was in a vicious war with them and his estranged wife for being transgender, according to court documents. Jonathan McKinsey’s wife, Candice Jang, filed for a restraining order against him in 2025, and he replied by filing a restraining order of his own.

A tech executive behind the popular New York Times games was allegedly shot dead by his elderly parents-in-law in a brazen broad daylight attack, police say. Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, allegedly fatally shot their son-in-law Jonathan McKinsey, 40, in the parking lot in California on Saturday. McKinsey, the head of engineering for games player experience at the New York Times since 2023, was raced to hospital with multiple gunshot wounds and died at the scene, police say. Witnesses reported seeing two masked shooters approach McKinsey in the parking lot and took turns unloading a barrage of shots...

On Tuesday, he signed a document that paves the way to expanding the U.S. military presence on the island, opening new bases. But it explicitly stops short of conveying any territory to the United States. And no one — especially Denmark, which governs the vast but mostly empty space — wanted to emphasize that point, for fear that Mr. Trump might renounce the agreement he had just hailed as “tremendous for Europe and for the US.” Mikkel Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, described the final document, which was released Tuesday, as only a moderate improvement...