Free Republic

GOP lawmakers are fleeing for the exit in droves, with many pointing to a Congress they argue has grown too dysfunctional and a demanding schedule that leaves little time for their families. More than 50 lawmakers in both parties have announced decisions to leave their seats, scrambling the calculus on both sides of the aisle ahead of next year’s high-stakes midterms. The wave of exits could be particularly ominous for Republicans in charge of the House and Senate. The number exiting is nearly on par with 2018, a dismal midterm year for the GOP. Some lawmakers frustrated with inaction on...

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday released the 255-page transcript and video of the deposition of former special counsel Jack Smith’s deposition before the committee that took place earlier in the month. During his opening statements, Smith said he and his team "developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents." He later added, "I made my decisions in the...

The Trump administration is freezing child care funding to the state of Minnesota in response to a viral video that purports to expose extensive fraud by federally funded day care centers. Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old self-described "independent YouTube journalist," posted the 42-minute video on X and YouTube the day after Christmas. In it, he and an older man — identified only as "David" — visit various seemingly empty day care centers, bombarding Somali employees with questions and accusing them of not providing services to any children despite receiving public funds. The pair claim to have exposed over $110 million in...

Gen Z right-wing influencers like Nick Fuentes have suggested they may not support Vice President JD Vance if he becomes the Republican presidential nominee in 2028 and have praised California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. Why It Matters The 2028 election is years away, but talk about who could run for higher office has already begun. Vance is viewed as the frontrunner on the Republican side. The Democratic primary is likely to be more competitive if current polling stands, and Newsom is viewed as a leading candidate. He has cast himself as a staunch rival of the Trump administration. The...

Elon Musk's much heralded chainsaw couldn't make the cut. Despite the Trump administration's efforts to slash government spending through the Department of Government Efficiency, federal expenditures actually increased in fiscal year 2025. A new investigative report from the New York Times released this week showcased that many of the contracts cut by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by tech billionaire Musk for the start of Trump's term, were already winding down, or were not on track to reach their maximum spending allotment. The findings were stark: Of the top 13 contract cancellations in DOGE's database all 13...

Katie Couric spoke out against "bothsidesism" in news coverage and insisted people don't want "just the facts" in the current media environment. (snip) "So what I try to do and what we try to do is help people stay abreast of everything that's happening, which is increasingly difficult given the velocity of things that are thrown at us primarily by this administration," Couric told host Dylan Byers. "But try to understand and give them some perspective and context and help explain in some cases why people need to be aware and concerned about some of the things that are happening...

Few things better illustrate why there has been a steep decline in the quality of writing at The New Yorker under the editorship of David Remnick than his absurd reaction to finding out that a letter supposedly written by Jeffrey Epstein to convicted serial sex offender Larry Nassar which implicated President Donald Trump in something bad has been determined to be fake.On Tuesday, Remnick revealed just how sadly his obsession over his Orange Whale has overwhelmed him to the extent that he has laughably lost whatever sense of rationality he might have left as you can see in "Trump, Epstein,...

FBI Director Kash Patel is facing withering criticism from an alliance of active-duty and retired agents and analysts, days after the White House denied media reports that the president is about to fire him. A troubling new report card on the first six months of Patel’s leadership concludes he is “in over his head” and his deputy, Dan Bongino, is “something of a clown,” according to the alliance, which in two previous reports warned about crippling DEI and politicization of the FBI during the Biden administration. The Patel-led FBI is described in the 115-page report as a “rudderless ship” and...

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Monday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the second, follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in September following a bombshell Washington Post report that claimed he ordered the military to “kill everybody.” Leavitt told reporters at the White House press briefing that Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank Bradley to carry out the second strike, which reportedly killed two people who were hanging onto the burning vessel after an initial strike. “President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing bipartisan scrutiny over his reported order to strike a boat in the Caribbean a second time, killing two survivors who were clinging to the ship’s wreckage on Sept. 2. The Washington Post reported Friday that Hegseth issued an order to “kill everybody” after the initial strike, the first of what is now more than 20 such attacks, did not immediately kill all 11 of the people on board the vessel, leading the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack to order a second strike. Some Democrats and a senior Republican said Sunday the strike was...

The White House has cut or paused billions in funding to Democratic-run cities and states since the federal government came to a halt.President Trump has embarked on a legally dubious campaign to weaponize the federal budget during a contentious government shutdown, halting more than $27 billion in approved funding in a bid to punish Democratic-led cities and states. Rather than broker a legislative truce or seek to ameliorate the fallout of a costly fiscal stalemate, the president has leveraged the crisis to exact revenge on rivals, slash federal spending and pressure Democrats into accepting his political demands. Since the shutdown...

President Donald Trump’s second term had already brought misery to the nation’s 2.1 million civilian federal workers: unprecedented mass layoffs, strict return-to-office requirements and more red tape regulating everything from travel to printer paper. Now, with the government shut down, 750,000 federal staffers have been furloughed and many others are working without pay, even as Trump and his top lieutenants vow to put more federal jobs on the chopping block. “When did we become the enemy?” said one National Institutes of Health employee who, like other workers interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of...

The Trump administration is planning to roll out the first tranche of bailout payments for farmers in the coming weeks, likely using billions of dollars in funding from an internal USDA account, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter. But it won’t be enough: USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation fund — which President Donald Trump previously tapped to provide $28 billion in farm aid during his first-term trade war with China — has just $4 billion left in the account. Trump officials, including those at the Treasury Department, are looking at how to tap tariff receipts or other...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has identified real problems, veteran officers say, but by looking back 35 years for policy cues, he risks hurting, not helping, military readiness.A ban on beards. A focus on physical fitness, and more protections for unapologetically aggressive leaders. In an unusual speech in front of hundreds of generals and admirals, and in a flurry of memorandums afterward, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined his vision of a tougher and more disciplined military, without what he called “woke garbage” getting in the way. But former military officers took issue with Mr. Hegseth’s list of policy changes, saying that...

The Trump administration has telegraphed that mass firings are coming, but officials have cautioned that such moves could violate appropriations law.Senior federal officials have quietly counseled several agencies against firing employees while the government is shut down — as President Donald Trump has suggested he will — warning the strategy may violate appropriations law, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. The officials cautioned that firings — known as RIFs, or reductions in force — could be vulnerable to legal challenges under statutes labor unions cited this...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech to top generals was supposed to serve as a rallying cry for military exceptionalism — but it didn’t land that way with many of the people it was targeting. Numerous defense officials — who watched senior brass scramble to Washington and then sit through a partisan speech from President Donald Trump and a return to old-school military standards by Hegseth — were left wondering why the event had occurred at all. “More like a press conference than briefing the generals,” said one defense official, who, like others, was granted anonymity due to fears of retribution....

Zohran Mamdani was not asking for an endorsement. This seemed wise. Because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not offering. But sitting last year, at Mr. Mamdani’s request, at a kebab house in Queens — where he shared that he would like to be mayor of New York City — the nominal very-long-shot hoped that the national very-big-shot might at least think well of the idea. “It all started in a similar way that my race had started,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez recalled at a joint rally many months later. “We don’t have an entire political establishment behind us. But we know that running is...

Ukrainian intelligence has once again intercepted communications of the Russian military, in which a commander orders fire on his own troops, according to a post by the Defense Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense on Telegram. Soldiers of the Defense Intelligence intercepted another conversation of the Russian military in the Donetsk region. The Russian commander orders the execution of subordinates who try to retreat from their positions.

While the world’s attention has been on the war in Gaza, the situation in the West Bank may have a longer-term impact on the future of a decades-long conflict that destabilises the entire Middle East. Western powers Australia, Britain, Canada and Portugal formally recognised a Palestinian state on September 21, a reaction to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Most of the U.N.’s 193 member states already recognised Palestine and several others now plan to do so, a shift criticized by Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States. Netanyahu says a Palestinian state would be a security threat to Israel.Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen...

Estonia has requested a consultation with other Nato members after Russian warplanes violated its airspace on Friday. Estonia's foreign ministry condemned the incursion as "brazen". It said three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets entered the Estonian skies "without permission and remained there for a total of 12 minutes" over the Gulf of Finland. A Nato spokesperson said the military alliance "responded immediately and intercepted the Russian aircraft", calling it "yet another example of reckless Russian behaviour and Nato's ability to respond". Italian jets responded to the incursion under Nato's mission to bolster its eastern flank, while Finland and Sweden also scrambled...