Free Republic

Vice President JD Vance was reportedly the anonymous White House source behind a story that President Donald Trump’s administration is now pointing to as evidence for why Politico deserved to lose its White House access. The revelation, first reported Wednesday by Oliver Darcy’s Status, adds a striking wrinkle to the administration’s defense of its Friday decision to boot Politico from the White House grounds alongside CNN and MS NOW. The Washington Post reported just minutes earlier that the White House had identified six Politico stories in a Tuesday letter laying out its case against the outlet, accusing it of reporting...

Polls continue to dole out depressing numbers for Republicans, with several Senate races defying earlier predictions and Democrats radically outperforming how then-Vice President Kamala Harris fared against President Donald Trump in 2024. The polling numbers for Trump and the GOP have been brutal as his second term has progressed, with Americans’ views on his handling of the economy and immigration — topics on which he had previously outpolled Democrats — taking a dive. The president’s war in Iran has been another issue dragging down his polling, specifically because of its impact on gas prices. Several recent polls have had shocking...

Israel is treating the new documentary “NAZA,” by the Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, less like bad publicity than a national security crisis. Eyal Zamir, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, pledged to use “every tool at our disposal” against the documentary, which features anonymous interviews with 24 intelligence officers and soldiers, most involved in remote strikes in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for legislation that would let the state strip Abraham and Szor of their citizenship. Israel’s culture minister has asked the Interior Ministry to investigate them for treason. Activists and staff members...

... So he flew to Venezuela, one of the few countries where he could enter as an Iranian without advance permission, and embarked on a weeks-long trek northward to the U.S. Near San Diego, he crossed the border illegally and presented himself to ask for asylum on Feb. 2, 2025, he said. Saleh Fard never walked freely again inside the borders of the United States, but its government would soon dictate where in the world he could live. He arrived the same day that the Trump administration signed a deal with Panama to “repatriate foreigners that enter [U.S.] territory without...

Rep. Lauren Boebert gave a simple response to a viral claim that she had affairs with three staff members — including two women: she’s straight. Boebert (R-Col.), who famously pondered in April, “why is everybody so horny” in Congress after a slew of sex scandals, faces a sworn ethics complaint from a political action committee that has targeted her for years and is led by a political activist who has peddled dubious claims about her in the past.

President Trump said on Sunday that he has agreed to convert plans for a massive triumphal arch into a "top grade Military Complex," equipped with snipers and drone storage. "At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch," Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social. Work on the 250-foot-tall arch was expected to begin this month, with plans to...

Even Ohio and Iowa, after trending Republican for years, are battlegrounds in the midterm elections. An old saying suggests that the road to the White House runs through Ohio. For more than 125 years, the Buckeye State has served as the nation’s bellwether. More recently many Midwestern states—not only Ohio, but also Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Minnesota—have turned either ruby red or navy blue. That polarization has hit a tipping point. The heartland is set again to become the nation’s pre-eminent battleground, and Democrats need to appreciate what that means for the future. The history is dramatic. Barack Obama won...

President Donald Trump baselessly claimed on Tuesday that the July 2024 assassination attempt against him was a plot by Democrats, including then-President Joe Biden and FBI Director Chris Wray, to push him out of the election. The president posted on Truth Social that Biden's FBI "didn't do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA," referring to gunman Thomas Crooks, who was 20 years old when he shot at Trump during a campaign rally, grazing his ear, killing a bystander and injuring two others before the Secret Service fatally shot him. Politics: Trump...

When a political player starts drawing personal insults from President Trump and his people, it is a pretty good sign that his star is on the rise. For Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, that moment arrived this summer. In July, Mr. Trump dubbed the fresh-faced lawmaker “Pee-wee Herman.” The next month, upset over Mr. Ossoff’s criticism of the president, one aide called Mr. Ossoff a “feminine theater kid” and a “lightweight loser,” and another derided him as “a miserable person” and “the biggest cuck loser in politics,” while deploying a sexually explicit moniker unfit for a family-friendly publication. Mr. Ossoff...

In recent weeks, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has visited firehouses around New York City as part of an effort to direct the public’s attention toward the victims, and away from himself. Three days before the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, conservative politicians stood with victims’ relatives on the steps of City Hall to repeat their demand that Mayor Zohran Mamdani not participate in the formal ceremony on Friday memorializing the tragedy. But in truth, Mr. Mamdani has been commemorating the anniversary for weeks. He met with firefighters at firehouses that suffered grave losses on that day, including Ladder 118 in Brooklyn...

President Trump pledged a $5,000 payout to U.S. adults on Wednesday, but only if Republicans hold onto their majority in Congress come November. “Here is my promise: if the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them … because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” he said at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, Texas. The legality of this disbursal is unclear. There are about 270 million adults in the U.S. Trump told attendees Wednesday that...

President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November. The dubious promise would likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation. “If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”

According to Politico Playbook on Wednesday, things are really, really bad for the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Texas. To support their claim of disaster for that convention, the Politico team of Adam Wren, Dasha Burns, Will Steakin, and Megan Messerly cited — wait for it —conveniently unnamed sources to back up their premise of doom and gloom.The unnamed sources made their invisible cameos in “‘The vibes are very bad’ in Texas,’” only to immediately disappear into the political ether to avoid anything resembling a fact check of their whispered claims:

To make matters worse, the convention is scheduled on the same nights as the season openers of the NFL, perhaps the one American institution that commands a more loyal following from Trump voters than does Trump himself.

The construction of a massive White House ballroom is moving full steam ahead after the Supreme Court found a historic preservation group likely had no right to stop it. "We have a lot of very happy construction workers," President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday. The $400 million project on the site of the former East Wing, he said, was "under budget and ahead of schedule." * * * The Supreme Court's majority held in the ballroom case that one member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's "mere offense, disagreement, or distaste" was not enough to...

When Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins announced his candidacy for Senate last year, his official “war room” account on X posted a short campaign video that ended with the on-screen slogan: “Georiga, Let’s Ride.” From that widely mocked spelling mistake on day one to a House ethics probe to revelations that his son-in-law made white nationalist posts on social media, Collins has suffered a series of setbacks that have hobbled his campaign. Meanwhile, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has developed a national profile by blasting President Trump and surged in state polls. The latest polls show Ossoff, 39 years old,...

With midterms rapidly approaching, Republicans had appeared to catch a break on the economy. After a year in which the war with Iran sent gas prices soaring and pushed inflation to multi-year highs, both June and July’s Consumer Price Index came in tame. Even grocery prices slipped for the first time in months. But then President Trump returned to his longtime obsession: tariffs. Indeed, last weekend, talks between the White House and Canada collapsed, and Trump immediately slapped 50 percent tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods, reviving what the Wall Street Journal called “The Dumbest Trade War...

The Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s stay of President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to commandeer state vote-by-mail systems in a 6-3 vote on Monday night. Its explanation for the decision began with a lie. “About five months ago, President Trump issued an Executive Order designed to maintain public confidence in federal elections,” the court claimed in an unsigned order. In reality, Trump has no interest in maintaining public confidence in federal elections. He has spent the last 14 years publicly undermining confidence in election results, even in ones that he won. His executive order was intended to sow...

The monument is called Thunderhead. The cylindrical shell is broken open by a thundercloud. Visible from the inside are thousands of tiny mirrors. And when no longer hidden, they sparkle with light. For Wayne Davis, and the other Canadians purged from the military, RCMP and civil service for their sexuality between the Cold War-era and 1990s, the monument sheds light on the discrimination of 2SLGBTQ+ people during Canada's history. "The visibility of the monument I love. People are not going to forget the glitter," Davis said, shortly after it was officially unveiled in Ottawa on Friday. Davis says he also...

President Donald Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to remove the advanced system used to launch fighter jets from its newest type of aircraft carrier and return to using older steam catapults that he has long said he prefers, according to a directive issued Thursday. The new mandate would likely cost billions of dollars and revert the Navy’s most advanced ships to a system that takes more sailors to operate and is more difficult to maintain. The memo directs the Pentagon and the Navy to present Trump with plans to remove the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, also known as EMALS,...