Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, once a casino owner and always a man in search of his next deal, is fond of a poker analogy when sizing up partners and adversaries. … Seven months into his second term, he has accumulated presidential power that he has used against universities, media companies, law firms, and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized “deep state” is, in some ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents. And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren’t recoiling. They’re...

The iconic denim brand Levi Strauss has warned that growing international backlash against President Donald Trump could negatively affect its sales and those of other U.S. companies. In a recent filing with the United Kingdom's national business registry, the California-based company noted the risk of "rising anti-Americanism as a consequence of the Trump tariffs and governmental policies." Levi's warned that this could increasingly push consumers in the U.K. away from American goods and toward non-American alternatives.

Governor Walz over the weekend discussing the possibility of Trumps death and implying “There will be news.”

The chances of Donald Trump resigning have spiked over the last day on a cryptocurrency-based prediction market following speculation about the U.S. president's health and absence from public engagements over the last week. Polymarket increased the chances of a presidential resignation after the Trump administration said there would be an Oval Office news conference at 2 p.m. ET Tuesday without specifying the reason for the event. However, later White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Newsweek in a statement "the President will be making an exciting announcement related to the Department of Defense." The event follows days of speculation about Trump...

When Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, dispatched his National Guard troops to Washington to support President Trump’s crackdown on crime, Democrats and other critics wondered why he didn’t keep them within state lines. Memphis, after all, has long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a murder rate about twice as high as the nation’s capital, according to F.B.I. statistics. Nashville has a higher rate of violent crime than Washington as well. The same questions could be asked of other Republican governors like Greg Abbott in Texas, Mike DeWine in Ohio and Mike Kehoe in Missouri,...

The debate is not just about the power of prayer. In the United States — with both a large religious population and the most mass shootings in the world — it’s also a polarized debate about gun control. In other words, the episode set off rhetorical skirmishes along two of the biggest dividing lines in America’s cultural and political wars: God and guns. (That doesn’t even count the scrutiny over the motives and gender identity of the shooter, who died by suicide after the attack.) Frey tapped into the principle of “Tikkun Olam,” in his Jewish faith, which speaks about...

The Republican Party will find itself at a critical crossroads as the 2028 election approaches. Despite the doom and gloom narrative from Democrats, they are in a far stronger position than many in the GOP would care to admit. In fact, we believe Democrats are poised as favorites not only for 2028 but also for 2032. The reasons for this go beyond rhetoric — they are deeply rooted in history and strategic realities. The Democrats’ potential dream team could be Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) at the top of the ticket with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) as his running...

Less than 1 percent of Democrats say they are satisfied with the direction of the country, according to a new Gallup poll. Why It Matters This is the lowest level of satisfaction among Democrats in at least 25 years, according to Gallup's polling, and it comes at a time when Republican satisfaction is near record high levels. The polling shows that Democrats' satisfaction with the direction of the country quickly dropped after President Donald Trump, a Republican, returned to office in January, while GOP supporters' satisfaction spiked. According to Gallup, 31 percent of Americans currently say they are satisfied with...

... Mr. Moran, 44, is the pasha of a new power tribe in the capital: the gay men of the Trump administration. These are the A-Gays. They’re (mostly) out, they’re proud (to work for President Trump) and they have big jobs inside (or alongside) this administration. They wield influence all over town, from the Pentagon to the State Department to the White House to the Kennedy Center. “We’re like Visa,” Mr. Moran said. “Everywhere you want to be.” He sipped a dirty vodka martini and surveyed the room. Two Republican men waved at him from across the club. “Both gay,”...

This will come as a shock to at least three of you. Yep, apparently a bunch of the "based and redpilled" crowd in D.C. are actually sodomites with sexual fetishes. More from The New York Times: The most powerful out gay man in the Trump administration is [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent. There are a handful of others in the Treasury Department. Other A-Gays include Tony Fabrizio, the president's longtime pollster; Trent Morse, a departing deputy assistant to the president; Richard Grenell, who was put in charge of the Kennedy Center; and Jacob Helberg, an under secretary of state. These are...

The president in recent days is leaning even further into using the National Guard as a glorified police force, visiting the troops and allowing them to be armed. He’s suggested he’s eyeing Chicago and New York next for their next deployment. On Sunday, he needled Maryland Gov. Wes Moore for Baltimore’s notorious crime statistics, hinting he could send troops there as well. It's a sign that despite polling showing how unpopular Trump’s moves are in Washington, the president is playing to a national audience — and betting this is a battle he and the GOP can win. If his recent...

Just days into his federal takeover of Washington’s police force, President Trump declared the problem solved. “D.C. was a hellhole and now it’s safe,” he said. On Monday, he said he expected the same results in Chicago, the next city on his list for a federal crackdown on crime. “We will solve Chicago within one week, maybe less, but within one week, we will have no crime in Chicago,” Trump told reporters on Monday. Mr. Trump’s bold (and misleading) pronouncements expose a key strategy behind his tough-on-crime swagger. For the president, the idea of sending federal forces into American cities...

President Trump went on a late-night attack against NBC and ABC News on Sunday, deriding them for what, in his view, was "biased" coverage and said he would be in favor of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoking their licenses. The Republican president said the news outlets had given him negative coverage on "97%" of stories. It wasn’t clear from where Trump was citing the "97%" figure. A study released earlier this year by the conservative media watchdog group, Media Research Center (MRC), found that coverage of the president’s first 100 days in office was "92% negative." "IF THAT IS...

Despite a very high popularity and, according to many, among the greatest 8 months in Presidential History, ABC & NBC FAKE NEWS, two of the worst and most biased networks in history, give me 97% BAD STORIES. IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEY ARE SIMPLY AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND SHOULD, ACCORDING TO MANY, HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED BY THE FCC. I would be totally in favor of that because they are so biased and untruthful, an actual threat to our Democracy!!! MAGA

It’s not just you. It really is impossible to keep track of all the political news. But one thing is pretty reliable: When Donald Trump has a bad week, he will use social media to make a presidential announcement.Last week was one of those bad weeks. President Vladimir Putin of Russia landed in America as if he had V.I.P. tickets to a private Taylor Swift meet-and-greet. He made no concessions in Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Trump belatedly realized that he had been played. Plus, that Jeffrey Epstein thing just won’t go away.So, true to form, the president took to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump started the week declaring a diplomatic breakthrough in his bid to prod Moscow and Kyiv closer to peace, announcing he had begun arranging for direct talks between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Four days later, the Republican president’s optimism has diminished. Russia’s top diplomat made it clear Friday that Putin won’t meet with Zelenskyy until the Ukrainians agree to some of Moscow’s longstanding demands to end the conflict. It’s a stinging setback for Trump, who had been touting his diplomatic blitz as resulting in indisputable momentum for a deal to halt...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from U.S. strikes angered President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official. Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The firing is the latest upheaval in military leadership and in the country’s intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment...

Democratic friends, let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine you woke up one morning and all your media sources were produced by Christian nationalists. You sent your kids off to school and the teachers were espousing some version of Christian nationalism. You turned on your sports network and your late-night comedy, and everyone was preaching Christian nationalism.That’s a bit how it feels to be more conservative in the West today — to feel drenched by a constant downpour of progressive sermonizing. What would you do in such circumstances? Well, at least at first, you’d probably grit your teeth and take it...

“Virtually everything the administration is doing is pro-crime.” On August 3, someone was shot about five blocks from my house in Washington, DC. Just two nights before, we had called 911 because of gunfire nearby—not an unusual occurrence. A week later, someone was murdered six or seven blocks away, in broad daylight. My neighborhood also has the usual urban scourges: porch pirates, the CVS where everything is under lock and key, the ATV drivers who roar up and down the street doing wheelies and terrorizing motorists and pedestrians alike. President Donald Trump has recently decided he would save us from...

New details have emerged on the viral arrest of a man who attempted to flee from a group of federal agents not far from the National Mall on Wednesday afternoon, prompting a deleted X post from Fox News contributor Jessica Tarlov after she initially defended the suspect. Footage obtained by NBC Washington shows a group of federal agents and D.C. Metropolitan Police officers stopping a Hispanic man driving a blue SUV. Almost immediately after exiting the vehicle, the man attempted to flee and was subsequently tackled by one of the agents. As he was being restrained, the man yelled, in...