Free Republic

On paper, the US constitution is a thing of beauty. But the would-be emperor in Washington has revealed its great weaknessAmerica’s big birthday has come at a bad time. On Saturday it will be a divided nation that marks 250 years since 13 North American colonies declared their independence from the Great Britain of George III. Many will be anxious that the republic they established that day is fragile – not least because of the would-be emperor in the White House.Some will console themselves that hope and angst have always been intertwined in the American story. From the very start,...

Nearly 1 million people who bought President Trump’s memecoin have lost money through the end of June, according to a report by the cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen. Their losses total $3.81 billion. The analytics firm’s assessment was calculated this week after Mr. Trump signed an annual financial disclosure showing that he walked away with a $636 million payout on the same crypto bet, part of a haul of at least $2.2 billion from all of his business ventures in 2025. Once a crypto skeptic, Mr. Trump embraced the profit-making opportunity of digital currencies in 2024, while he was running for...

On Wednesday via X, Donald Trump Jr. alleged that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) — an ally of President Donald Trump — is “lying thru his teeth” with his recent comments on the administration’s memorandum of understanding with Iran. Speaking with The Daily Wire on Wednesday, Cruz said of the deal to end the conflict in the region: What has been released so far suggests that, unfortunately, the president is getting, I think, very poor advice when it comes to this deal. History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a bad idea....

President Trump’s scuttling of a hearing to review his pick for director of national intelligence has once again plunged Congress into chaos over who will lead the intelligence community and how lawmakers can renew the nation’s lapsed spy powers. The Senate spent the morning ping-ponging over whether members would even hear from nominee Jay Clayton, who serves as a U.S. attorney. Trump said the hearing was canceled, but Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an ally of the president, initially rebuffed him, saying the hearing would still go on. Cotton later backtracked and announced the “regrettable” decision that the...

Republican senators are growing tired of the White House throwing curveballs into things they want to get done. For example, many Republican senators want a now-lapsed surveillance law that allows intelligence agencies to spy on foreign threats to be reauthorized. The problem? They need Democratic support to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. President Trump has now twice thwarted efforts to win over that support. The first time he named Bill Pulte, the controversial head of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who had no intelligence experience, as acting director of national intelligence. Democrats and Republicans alike howled in protest. Trump...

President Donald Trump is making life almost impossible for Senate Republicans — and these days fewer of them are willing to just let it slide. Some lawmakers that were once happy to brush off impulsive and disruptive behavior by saying they hadn’t seen the president’s social media posts or that it was just “Trump being Trump” are increasingly willing to speak out against what they view as bad decisions that undermine their ability to deliver legislative wins as the midterms approach. The latest irritation was the early-morning Truth Social post Wednesday that upended GOP hopes of quickly confirming a new...

A visibly agitated President Trump stormed off his interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” after a testy exchange with a reporter who grilled him over his claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Trump lashed out at moderator Kristen Welker after she insisted he failed to provide a shred of evidence about his disputed accusations that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him or that the elections in California are subject to malfeasance.

Ukrainian drones on Wednesday attacked St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, on the opening day of an annual economic conference that President Vladimir V. Putin has tried to cultivate into a showcase of a modern and prosperous country. It was the second time in a month that Ukraine had struck a major Russian city before an event important to Mr. Putin, as Kyiv expands a campaign of long-range strikes aimed at inflicting economic damage on Russia and demonstrating its vulnerability to attacks. In early May, Ukrainian forces hit sites in Moscow, including a high-rise apartment building near the city center, days...

60 Minutes veteran correspondent Scott Pelley reportedly unleashed on CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss' job qualifications and claimed she's "murdering" the show in a heated meeting with his new boss, RadarOnline.com can reveal. Weiss, 42, was not present for the blowup between Pelley, 68, and the show's new executive producer, Nick Bilton – the hand-picked choice of the former Free Press boss to lead the storied newsmagazine into a new era. Nick Bilton Claims Bari Weiss 'Loves 60 Minutes' Bilton's hiring was announced on May 28, and he tried to lead a friendly meet-and-greet with staffers on June...

CAIRO (AP) — The standoff over the Strait of Hormuz escalated again Saturday as Iran reversed its reopening of the crucial waterway and fired on ships attempting to pass, in retaliation after the United States pressed ahead with its blockade of Iranian ports.The strait is closed until the U.S. blockade is lifted, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard navy said Saturday night, warning that “no vessel should make any movement from its anchorage in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, and approaching the Strait of Hormuz will be considered as cooperation with the enemy” and be targeted.New attacks on the strait,...

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and her top aides and family members routinely sent personal messages and requests to young staff members that are now under review by the department’s inspector general. Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and her former deputy chief of staff sent texts asking employees to bring wine to them during trips for the department. Sometimes the requests came in the middle of the workday. Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s husband exchanged text messages with young female staff members, as did her father. Some of the young women were instructed by Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and the former deputy chief of staff to “pay attention” to...

Hide the sharp objects—at least if you take Nicolle Wallace seriously. On Friday’s edition of Deadline White House, Wallace began by painting an apocalyptic picture of the situation in Iran. Grim enough to have Trump supporters reaching for the Lexapro—if they believed her. After laying out her bleak scenario, Wallace went a step further, warning of: “A full-scale global economic crisis that might actually be even worse than those headlines, and worse than we think.”Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture. “The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.” One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission,...

Megyn Kelly on "Piers Morgan Uncensored" discussed the damage sustained by the Trump political coalition, the global economy, and U.S. allies, after 40 days at war with Iran. “The question is now not, who has Trump lost. The question is who remains," she said about the MAGA coalition. "He’s underwater with men, including young men and young people. The young person coalition that Charlie Kirk delivered to the president is gone. They’ve abandoned Donald Trump." "These battles in the Middle East have been fought now for 20-plus years, and we continue to learn the same lesson over and over. It’s...

Donald Trump's dramatic climbdown from his chilling threat to wipe out Iran's civilization has exposed the limits - and the rising risks - of the U.S. president's typically unpredictable negotiating style. His decision on Tuesday to back down and agree to a two-week ceasefire – which critics mockingly called another example ​of “TACO,” or “Trump always chickens out” – marked the biggest step so far toward de-escalating a 40-day-old war that has shaken the Middle East and disrupted global energy markets. But Trump’s claims of victory over Iran overlooked questions about ‌the effectiveness of mixing maximalist demands, erratic rhetoric and...

This is not the run up to the midterm elections that Republicans wanted. A year and a half after winning the White House by promising to lower costs and end wars, Donald Trump is a wartime president overseeing surging energy costs and an escalating overseas conflict that many in his own party do not like. He offered little clarity to a nation eager for answers this week during a prime-time address from the White House, his first since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran more than a month ago, simultaneously suggesting that the war was ending and expanding. “Thanks to...

The Pentagon is sending ground forces to Iran. Trump administration officials gave a story to the Washington Post that is being repeated everywhere: The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of boots on the ground operations in Iran, a major escalation in President Trump’s goal to dismantle the remaining faction of the murderous Iranian regime, according to a report. Thousands of US Marines would be sent to the Middle East to conduct raids that include Special Operations forces and conventional infantry troops, the Washington Post reported, citing sources. Officials have been discussing plans for sending troops into Iran for weeks. ***...

Russia has quietly become Iran’s most consequential external partner. Public reporting shows Moscow feeding Tehran real time satellite imagery of U.S. and Israeli positions — a simple but powerful boost to Iranian targeting and battle damage assessment. Russia has also helped upgrade Iran’s Shahed drones with better navigation and communications systems. These aren’t glamorous contributions, but they matter: they force the United States to burn multimillion dollar interceptors on cheap, disposable threats. None of this changes the balance of power. But it absolutely changes the tempo of the war. China’s support looks different — quieter, but just as important. Beijing...

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....