Free Republic

In the nearly three weeks since President Donald Trump struck Iran, conventional wisdom has set in that his base is sticking with him on the war. It’s true that Trump’s base hasn’t ditched him in huge numbers — and an overwhelming number of MAGA supporters, especially, say they support the war. The opposition from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly and other influencers hasn’t translated to wide swaths of the GOP base itself. But Trump has alienated some significant portions of his base, and he’s risking alienating more. A fresh batch of polling in recent days...

Boy, it's been a struggle whipping up ugly racist sentiment since President Trump "closed" the border last year. No more stories about immigrant caravans marching ominously north to steal our jobs and rape our women. No more tall tales of Haitian gangs eating the cats, eating the dogs. Sure, immigrants might still be "poisoning the blood" of our country, as the president claimed numerous times during his 2024 campaign. But with so many violent deportations and the killing of two white American citizens protesting them, that rhetoric has lost some of its glow. What we need are some fresh scapegoats....

President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is not going well. He began the conflict with a promise to use an air campaign to initiate regime change in as little as “two or three days.” But about three weeks in, Iran’s government, military and security forces remain highly functional. No popular uprising has emerged. And Iran’s government has seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, sending global oil prices surging and Trump into a panic. Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, is one of the analysts who saw this situation coming a long way off. An expert...

Three weeks into a military engagement in Iran, a war Republicans will not call a war, the American and Israeli militaries have all but wiped out Iran's capacity to make war. We have killed their leadership, the replacement leaders, and militia members on the ground. We have destroyed their missile launchers and the factories in which they made the missiles. But Iran still has one of the most powerful weapons in the world on its side, and it is ruthlessly deploying it – the American press corps. "Families mourn as dead are laid to rest in Tehran," blared the front...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — In the two weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump increasingly has been knocked on his political heels. He’s grown more agitated with news coverage and has failed to find a way to explain why he started the war — or how he will end it — that resonates with a public concerned by American deaths in the conflict, surging oil prices and dropping financial markets. Even some of his supporters are questioning his plan and his overall poll numbers are declining. Meanwhile, Moscow is getting a boost...

In 1991, American officials flew to Israel to keep the country from retaliating against Scud missile attacks and joining the Gulf War. In 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned it would be “in Israel’s overwhelming best interests not to get involved” in the looming invasion of Iraq. In 2026, the United States went to war alongside Israel. “It’s the first time,” said Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, “that Israel is going to war together with a superpower.” The United States has been the Jewish state’s most important backer for decades, providing it with weaponry and working...

The scenario long-dreaded by Republican strategists looks increasingly plausible following Tuesday’s primary election in Texas: Democrat James Talarico may face Republican Ken Paxton for the state’s U.S. Senate seat in November. Paxton is heading for a runoff against Sen. John Cornyn where he is likely to be at least a slight favorite, though the final results from the first round of voting could shift expectations. Talarico defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary, according to Associated Press projections. Republicans fear the matchup could, at the very least, cost the party tens of millions of dollars to protect Paxton, the...

Every few years, Washington rediscovers fraud. A viral clip of someone misusing food stamps. A headline about child care providers in Minnesota. A politician promising to crack down on “fraud and abuse.” The ritual is familiar. And the response is always the same: more paperwork, more surveillance, more hoops to jump through for people who are already struggling.

President Donald Trump’s disdain for the Constitution is evident in his launching a war in Iran without any semblance of congressional approval. Congress must act quickly to protect its role in a Constitution that was meant to prevent such unilateral action by the president.

“The dominant reaction from the Left to Trump’s bombing of Iran has been to declare the action illegal, reckless, and unconstitutional.” Shortly after President Donald Trump ordered strikes on Iran, the Left locked into a single talking point: illegal war. Reckless. Idiotic. Betrayal. Forever war. Constitutional crisis. Pick your adjective. The speed and uniformity were almost impressive. Sen. Tim Kaine led the charge, and he did not ease into it. In a graphic posted to X, Kaine asked whether Trump was “too mentally incapacitated” to understand that the United States once had a diplomatic agreement with Iran. He declared the...

In the wake of Iranian Supreme Leader Aylatollah Khamenei coming down with a killer headache after getting a U.S. warhead on his forehead, on Saturday, The Washington Post published one of their infamous glowing remembrances of Islamic terrorists. The paper fondly remembered the brutal Islamic dictator as a “avuncular figure” with an “easy smile” and love for “Persian poetry.” Readers might remember when The Post fluffed up the former leader of ISIS as an “austere religious scholar”; well, they're back at it again with Khamenei in their obituary titled: “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is dead at 86.” The...

Less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in President Trump's first year back in the White House had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by CBS News. The official statistics contained in the DHS document, which had not been previously reported publicly, provide the most detailed look yet into who ICE has arrested during the Trump administration's far-reaching deportation operations across the U.S. The internal DHS figures undermine frequent assertions by the Trump administration that its crackdown on illegal immigration is primarily targeting...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In some ways, 10-year-old Giancarlo is one of the lucky ones. He still goes to school. Each morning, he and his family bundle up and leave their Minneapolis apartment to wait for his bus. His little brother hefts on his backpack, even though he stopped going to day care weeks ago because his mom is too afraid to take him. As they wait behind a wrought-iron fence, Giancarlo’s mother pulls the boys into the shadow of a tree to pray. It’s the only time she stops scanning the street for immigration agents. “God, please protect my son...

A January survey from Harvard University and The Harris Poll found that a slight majority of respondents believe that former President Biden was more effective than President Trump. The poll, released Monday, found that 51 percent of respondents said Trump is doing a worse job than Biden, while 49 percent said the president is doing a better job than his predecessor. The same survey conducted in December found that 53 percent of respondents said Trump is faring better than Biden did. The latest results also mark a stark reversal from February 2025, when 58 percent of respondents to the Harvard-Harris...

Paul addressed federal officials’ claims that Pretti posed a threat to ICE officers.... I saw no evidence of him assaulting the police,” Paul said. “The president’s advisor, Stephen Miller, called Pretti an assassin. That’s a lot of people–not telling the truth,” Pelley added. Paul shook his head at Miller’s statement and added, “It sounds like terrible judgment. I mean, terrible conclusions, incorrect conclusions, stating things that no one else believes.

Jeannine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, on Monday threatened jail time for anyone who enters the capital with a gun. In remarks on Fox News that could deepen a growing rift between gun owners and the Trump administration, Ms. Pirro declared that if anyone brings “a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail. I don’t care if you have a license in another district and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else.” Her remarks prompted swift pushback from the Republican Party’s pro-Second Amendment wing, which was thrown...

Rand Paul made his name as a gadfly preaching about the dangers of a tyrannical federal government. Now, after the killings of two Minnesota residents at the hands of Homeland Security agents, the Kentucky Republican has a chance to do something about it. The 63-year-old, who spent years on the outskirts of the party, is now at the center of the Senate’s response to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, which have sparked new criticism of the administration’s immigration enforcement policies and raised many of the same civil liberties questions Paul has long been asking. As chair of...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flooded Minneapolis, Shane Mantz dug his Choctaw Nation citizenship card out of a box on his dresser and slid it into his wallet. Some strangers mistake the pest-control company manager for Latino, he said, and he fears getting caught up in ICE raids. Like Mantz, many Native Americans are carrying tribal documents proving their U.S. citizenship in case they are stopped or questioned by federal immigration agents. This is why dozens of the 575 federally recognized Native nations are making it easier to get tribal IDs. They’re waiving fees, lowering the...

About 1.2 million Russian troops have been killed, wounded or are missing since its invasion of Ukraine almost four years ago, a rate of casualties for a major military power not seen since World War II, a new report from a prominent international think tank says. And the enormous human toll has secured relatively small territorial gains on the battlefield, with Russia increasing the amount of Ukrainian land under its control by just 12% since 2022, the report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) says. The report calls into question assumptions in many circles, including in the...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a bigger budget than any other U.S. law enforcement agency at $85 billion. That’s far greater than the budget for the U.S. Marines, yet it’s hard to see any of the same competence and professionalism in ICE operations. Donald Trump returned to the White House with a promise to slash government waste and inefficiency through a Department of Government Efficiency. Congress should now create a DOGE to rein in wasted taxpayer money, poor management, incompetent behavior and mission creep at ICE....