Free Republic

Thomas Massie: "PSA: Bombing a country on the other side of the globe won't make the Epstein files go away, any more than the Dow going above 50,000 will."

Clearly, the “Saturday Night Live” writing team had a lot of work to do on Saturday, as they opened the show with a sketch about President Trump’s early morning attack on Iran. In the Feb. 28 cold open, Trump (played by James Austin Johnson) gives a press conference about the military action. “It’s me, Donald Trump, FIFA Peace Prize winner and Nobel Peace Prize taker,” he began. “Remember that? I launched this attack after me and my board of peace…we were bored of peace. As we all know, Iran has been two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon for...

You’ve heard of Optimist International, the global service organization. If there were a “Pessimist International,” MS NOW military analyst Barry McCaffrey could be kicked out of it — for being too darn negative. Caution is warranted when predicting U.S. success in foreign military operations. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq remain sobering reminders. But appearing on MS NOW’s continuing Iran coverage last night, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey — Bill Clinton’s former drug czar — took pessimism to new heights. In roughly two minutes, McCaffrey declared success in key American objectives in Iran “unlikely” four separate times — and added a “not likely”...

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...

The United Nations chief condemned the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran on Saturday and called for an immediate return to negotiations “to pull the region, and our world, back from the brink.” Secretary-General António Guterres told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that everything must be done to prevent further escalation. “The alternative,” he warned, “is a potential wider conflict with grave consequences for civilians and regional stability.” Guterres said the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes violated international law, including the U.N. Charter. He also condemned Iran’s retaliatory attacks for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan,...

Give me a phone and a list of registered Democrats, and I’ll find you one who thinks Donald Trump's the greatest thing since sliced bread — and Gavin Newsom is the devil incarnate. That’s essentially the level of polling rigor Audie Cornish brought to Tuesday’s edition of CNN This Morning. Discussing issues ahead of the State of the Union address, Cornish said: “We called up one of the people we polled, a Republican voter, Sean from New Mexico. He said: ‘I think people were expecting Trump to provide a bit of relief to their suffering. Grocery prices are just through...

Fulton County, Georgia, officials said Wednesday that the FBI seized original 2020 voting records while serving a search warrant at the county's Elections Hub and Operations Center. The FBI earlier Wednesday said they were conducting court-authorized activity at the facility. The development comes after President Donald Trump has repeatedly said there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss. Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election.

Tommy Robinson, Britain’s self-styled free speech warrior, has been allowed to enter the U.S. despite a long criminal rap sheet. On Thursday, Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, posted a video on social media from an airport in the U.S. announcing, “I’ve arrived!” He said the trip was “last-minute” after he’d been informed only hours earlier that he’d gotten a visa, and hinted at plans to throw himself into U.S. politics. That apparently included a meeting with Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a longtime peddler of MAGA election conspiracy theories. Sharing a photo of himself shaking...

Economic growth cooled near the end of 2025 while inflation held firm, according to data released Friday that could complicate the Federal Reserve’s interest rate path. Gross domestic produce rose at an annualized rate of just 1.4%, according to Commerce Department numbers adjusted for seasonality and inflation. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a 2.5% gain.

On Wednesday’s CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish and her panel managed to recast enforcement of federal civil rights law under Donald Trump as “enforcing ideology,” while a Democratic consultant insisted that DEI “was never a problem” until Trump took office. [snip] Cornish framed the issue this way: “What it means is the actual government now is involved in enforcing a different ideology, so to speak.”No. It means the federal government is enforcing the law. Democratic consultant Antjuan Seawright went further, claiming: “DEI was never a problem until Trump became President of the United States."Seawright also suggested that scaling back...

On Wednesday’s CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish and her panel managed to recast enforcement of federal civil rights law under Donald Trump as “enforcing ideology,” while a Democratic consultant insisted that DEI “was never a problem” until Trump took office. [snip] Host Audie Cornish framed the issue this way: “What it means is the actual government now is involved in enforcing a different ideology, so to speak.” No. It means the federal government is enforcing the law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race. Get the rest of the story and view the...

On Monday’s CNN This Morning, the “Group Chat” sounded less like analysis and more like a Democratic messaging session. Discussing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s claim that the SAVE Act is “Jim Crow 2.0,” CNN senior reporter Zach Wolf wasn’t troubled by the incendiary historical comparison. Instead, he fretted that Democratic Senator John Fetterman had gone “off message” by refusing to echo it. Is the CNN motto still "Facts First"? Or is it "Keeping the Democrats On Message"? Fetterman said: “I would never refer to the SAVE Act as Jim Crow 2.0 I don't call people names or imply that...

A ghost story falls in the category of fantasy. And former ABC reporter Tara Palmeri's Halloween-in-February hot take in Vanity Fair on Thursday, "Epstein’s Ghost Is Calling All the Shots in Trump’s White House," certainly falls within the realm of fantasy. She updates Banquo's ghost to the 21st century and engages in the fantasy that Epstein's ghost is somehow haunting Trump's every move.Since no incriminating facts in the Epstein files could be found about Trump, Palmeri performs the pretense of somehow channeling the president's soul and concluding that his every waking (and sleeping) moment is being haunted by Epstein's ghost....

Former ESPN personality Sarah Spain grumbled on her podcast recently that sitting near “demon” Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Winter Olympics in Italy made her feel “ill.” The “Good Game with Sarah Spain” host described her proximity to the top Trump administration officials – about 20 feet away, according to Spain – as one of the “low lights” of covering the US women’s hockey team as they demolished Czechia at the Milano Cortina games last week. “Twelve minutes into the first period, that area suddenly is awash with large men in suits with...

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” host Anderson Cooper said that, after the drawdown of immigration officers in Minnesota, there are “thousands” of officers “who probably couldn’t make it on a police force, probably couldn’t make it in the military. Some of them, obviously, have been serving for a long time, but some of them have 47 days of training because of the 47th president.”

Republican officials and candidates in Texas have shifted their rhetorical attack lines from the border fears that dominated recent elections to the state’s growing Muslim population, with language that echoes the aftermath of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric has unnerved many in the state’s Islamic community while sending signals to Republicans outside Texas who might be searching for rhetorical targets now that the nation’s southwestern border has grown quiet. Ads for Senator John Cornyn of Texas have touted his fight against “radical Islam.” Texas Republican lawmakers created a “Sharia-Free America Caucus” in Congress....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic leaders say a proposal from the White House is “incomplete and insufficient” as they are demanding new restrictions on President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and threatening a shutdown of the Homeland Security Department. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement late Monday that a White House counterproposal to the list of demands they transmitted over the weekend “included neither details nor legislative text” and does not address “the concerns Americans have about ICE’s lawless conduct.” The White House proposal was not released publicly. Schumer and Jeffries have said...

When asked whether Martin still served in the role, a Justice Department spokesman told NBC News that he continued on in a separate role, as pardon attorney. Trump loyalist Ed Martin is out as leader of the Justice Department’s “weaponization” effort that is investigating prosecutors who launched past probes into President Donald Trump and his allies, two people familiar with the discussions tell NBC News. When asked whether Martin still served in the role, a Justice Department spokesman told NBC News that Martin continued to serve in a separate role, as pardon attorney.“President Trump appointed Ed Martin as Pardon Attorney...

President Donald Trump marked his first year back in office by presiding over a meandering, nearly two-hour-long press briefing to recount his accomplishments, repeating many false claims he made throughout 2025. Among the topics about which he continued to spread falsehoods were the 2020 election, foreign policy, the economy and energy. Here’s a closer look at the facts. 2020 election TRUMP, referencing former President Joe Biden: “... a man that didn’t win the election, by the way, it’s a rigged election. Everybody knows that now. THE FACTS: This is a blatant falsehood that has been disproven many times over… International...

As 79-year-old US President Donald Trump enters the second year of his second term, questions about his physical and cognitive health are a recurring topic amid viral images, defiant responses from the White House and a lack of medical disclosure. The debate echoes earlier controversies around the health of US leaders – and raises uncomfortable questions about transparency and power. Let’s be clear: we have no idea what his health condition is. All we can really assess is what we see,” presidential historian Barbara Perry says. “And what we witness is an almost octogenarian man who keeps nodding off at...