Free Republic

President Trump said he's proud the Olympics are coming back to the United States "for the first time in a generation" after the Los Angeles bid for the 2028 games was accepted Monday.

President Trump is already turning the world upside down in international diplomatic circles by taking a markedly different approach to global politics than his predecessor. It comes as no surprise that with each new American administration, a diplomatic chain reaction is felt the world over. The Bush years were marked by a heavy-handed, and sometimes ham-handed, forceful approach to American diplomacy. From NATO, to pan-Asia relationships, to the Middle East, Bush dealt from a position of cultural strength and a philosophy firmly rooted in Pax Americana. Was this approach successful? Historians certainly disagree.

Poland on Thursday welcomed several thousand U.S. troops along with tanks and heavy equipment under a planned NATO operation to beef up its Eastern European allies, vexing the Kremlin, which said the troops' presence is a threat to Russia. The largest U.S.military reinforcement of Europe in decades of around 2,700 troops, out of 3,500 planned, arrived as part of operation Atlantic Resolve, aimed at showing Moscow Washington's commitment to its allies. "The main goal of our mission is deterrence and prevention of threats," U.S. Army Colonel Christopher R. Norrie, commander of the 3rd Armoured Brigade Combat Team, said at a...

Don't know when or where it was posted. Obama doesn't appear to be much of a community organizer after all. Even Rodney Dangerfield got more respect than this.

Just 1% of Russians approved of U.S. leadership in 2015 -- the worst rating in the world last year and the lowest approval Gallup has measured for the U.S. in the past decade. Remarkably, this is even worse than their previous record-low 4% approval in 2014.

Over 50,000 civilians are reportedly trapped inside ISIS-controlled Fallujah as Iraqi forces surround the town and prepare for an all-out assault on one of the militant's last major strongholds in the country.The Iraqi forces have been backed by air power from the U.S.-led coalition. It is believed that between 500-700 ISIS fighters remain in the city. "Our troops are now in the process of surrounding the city from all (sides)," said Lt. General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, the head of the counterterrorism forces' Fallujah operation. "By doing so, we will besiege the city of Fallujah in full. And then we will start...

Years before more than a hundred media outlets around the world released stories Sunday exposing a massive network of global tax evasion detailed in the so-called Panama Papers, U.S. President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed for a Bush administration-negotiated free trade agreement that watchdogs warned would only make the situation worse. .... while Obama championed his commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy, he pursued and eventually signed the Panama agreement in 2011. Upon Congress ratifying the pact, Clinton issued a statement lauding the agreement.... Critics, however, said the pact would make it easier for rich...

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Gallup's analysis of political party affiliation at the state level in 2015 finds that 20 states are solidly Republican or leaning Republican, compared with 14 solidly Democratic or leaning Democratic states. The remaining 16 are competitive. This is the first time in Gallup's eight years of tracking partisanship by state that there have been more Republican than Democratic states. It also marks a dramatic shift from 2008, when Democratic strength nationally was its greatest in recent decades.

The share of Americans identifying as a Democrat dropped to a record low in 2015, according to the latest Gallup results published Monday, in the latest indication that Americans' attachment to either political party is at or nearing historical lows. Overall, 42 percent over the course of the last year identified as independents, a slight drop from the 43 percent who identified as such in 2014. While Democrats maintained a small advantage over Republicans — 29 percent to 26 percent — the Democratic share is at its lowest in Gallup history.

The main Western-backed Arab rebel group in Syria appears on the verge of collapse because of low morale, desertions, and distrust of its leaders by the rank and file, threatening U.S. efforts to put together a ground force capable of defeating the Islamic State and negotiating an end to the Syrian civil war. "After five years of this war, the people are just tired ... and so are our fighters," said Jaseen Salabeh, a volunteer in the Free Syrian Army, which was formed in September 2011 by defectors from the army of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Free Syrian Army,...

In a secret project tied to the overall U.S. campaign against the Islamic State, intelligence officials have spent months mapping out known physical locations of media safe houses where the extremist group’s operatives are compiling, editing and curating raw video and print materials into finished digital propaganda products for dissemination across the Internet. Most of the locations are embedded in heavily residential areas in Syria, Iraq and Libya and are not being targeted by U.S. airstrikes because of Obama administration concerns about civilian casualties, according to sources who spoke to The Washington Times only on the condition of anonymity.

President Barack Obama on Sunday night will deliver a rare Oval Office address about terror threats in the aftermath of the San Bernardino, California, shootings that claimed 14 lives. CNN and other networks will broadcast it live at 8 p.m. ET. The White House says the president will provide an update on the investigation. Federal authorities have said the attacks are being investigated as an act of terrorism. "The President will also discuss the broader threat of terrorism, including the nature of the threat, how it has evolved, and how we will defeat it," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest...

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is embarking on a $10-million-plus ad campaign to take on opponents of President Barack Obama's plan to reduce power-plant carbon emissions. Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC announced plans Friday to run TV spots aimed at the attorneys general of Florida, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin.

University of Missouri System President Timothy W. Wolfe resigned on Monday at an emergency Board of Curators meeting following weeks of protests over his leadership, a well-publicized hunger strike from a student and promises from football players that they would not participate in team activities until he stepped down. .....members of the group Concerned Students 1950 pumped their fists in the air, shouting: "They said we couldn't do this," and "I believe we have won." Concerned Students 1950 organized many recent protests. The group is named after the first year that black students were admitted to Mizzou. The group refused...

U.S. orders for long-lasting goods such as heavy machinery or airplanes fell in September for the second month in a row, offering little evidence that manufacturers are ready to rebound after a prolonged bout of softness. Durable-goods orders fell a fell a seasonally adjusted 1.2% in September following an even sharper 3% decline in the prior month, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Previously the government had said orders dropped 2.3% in August.

"President Obama responsibly ended the war in Iraq and will end the war in Afghanistan." That was the simple boast made by Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in the fall of 2012. Three years later, it lies in tatters. On Thursday, Obama announced a reversal of his pledge to pull all combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of next year, saying he’ll leave 5,500 troops in the country through the end of his presidency. Meanwhile the U.S. is back in Iraq, where 3,000 troops support a major air campaign against the Islamic State. Once again, a president who aspired to...

ISRAELI prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu today claimed the Middle East is “disintegrating” due to Islamist militants and the threat posed by Iran. Arriving in Downing Street for talks with Prime Minister David Cameron, Mr Netanyahu stated his belief that Israel and Britain can work together to “roll back the tide of militant Islam both in the Middle East and in Africa.” Discussions are set to be dominated by the question of how to combat the rise of the Islamic State, or ISIS, in Syria as well as the nuclear deal recently agreed between the UK, its Western allies and Iran....

Those are actually old numbers....

Leading into this year's Labor Day holiday, 52% of U.S. union members approve of President Barack Obama's job performance, down slightly from 56% in the first quarter of 2015 and one percentage point above his personal low among this group. At the same time, the average rating of the president among those who are not union members has been flat at 46%. .....Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted July 1-Aug. 30, 2015, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 25,795 working adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S....

Travel to Cuba could soon be nearly as easy as travel to any other part of the world. The Obama administration plans to unilaterally ease the travel restrictions to Cuba, sources told ABC News. The new measures would bypass limits on travel imposed by Congress by changing regulations at the executive level.