Free Republic

Friday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” chief political correspondent Dana Bash detailed her morning phone conversation with President Donald Trump. Co-host Wolf Blitzer asked, “You had a chance to speak with the president this morning. How did that go?” Bash said, “Well, look, the headline in our conversation about Elon Musk is that the president says that he has no plans to speak with Musk, and he said that he thinks that Musk has got a problem. So the reason why that is the question right now is maybe, perhaps very obvious but behind the scenes, the push is on...

President Donald Trump announced that he and First Lady Melania Trump would be attending Pope Francis’s funeral after the Vatican announced early Monday that the Pope had died at the age of 88. “Melania and I will be going to the funeral of Pope Francis, in Rome,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “We look forward to being there!” As Breitbart News previously reported, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had died on Easter Monday after leading the Catholic Church for 12 years. A papal conclave will gather in order to select a successor and a new Pontiff.

Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claimed Friday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are doing “immense damage to our economy.” Yellen said, “This is the worst self-inflicted policy wound I’ve ever seen in my career inflicted on our economy. The Trump tariff plans are doing immense damage to our economy. You can see that in the stock market, in the impact of these tariffs are expected to have on American households. And we’re even beginning to see what looks like a flight away from dollar-based assets in the financial markets, which is a really scary development.”...

Democrats quietly hatched contingency plans to prepare for former President Joe Biden dying in office or removing himself from consideration to be the party’s 2024 nominee more than a year before Election Day, a new book claims. While the White House, party officials and media members like MSNBC host Joe Scarborough publicly testified to Biden’s fitness for office, aides to Vice President Kamala Harris privately “strategized around the possibility that Biden might die in office,” according to Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’ upcoming book, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” which was previewed by the Guardian. Officials...

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shared her surprise Monday about a report from The Atlantic’s editor in chief, who said he was swept up in a text message chain with top Trump administration officials on plans for an attack on Houthi rebels. “You have got to be kidding me,” Clinton wrote on the social platform X, sharing the eyes emoji along with The Atlantic article. Clinton’s use of a private server for classified emails while she was former President Obama’s secretary of State was a major issue in the 2016 campaign. She was criticized by Trump and his supporters...

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is calling for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to be fired after The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he had accidentally been added to a Signal group chat with Trump administration officials in which military strikes against the Houthis were discussed days before the strikes occurred. In a letter addressed to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Jeffries described Hegseth as being “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense” in the history of the United States. Jeffries accused Hegseth of “recklessly and casually” disclosing “highly sensitive war plans” and added that he had “risked American lives and...

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said there’s “no doubt” that Russia and China were monitoring the U.S. officials’ devices used for a war plan text chat. “I will guarantee you, 99.99 percent with confidence, Russia and China are monitoring those two phones,” Bacon told CNN’s Manu Raju. “So I just think it’s a security violation, and there’s no doubt that Russia and China saw this stuff within hours of the actual attacks on Yemen or the Houthis.” National security adviser Mike Waltz reportedly invited The Atlantic’s top editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, into the Signal group, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared...

Sweden is planning gun bans and tighter gun control after the country’s stringent controls failed to a prevent a February 4, 2025 school shooting. On February 4, Breitbart News reported at least five people were killed in the shooting. On February 7, Reuters noted the reported number of deceased had increased to eleven. Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told Reuters they are looking to ban AR-15 rifles as a “preventative measure.” Strommer said this even though the specific type of firearm(s) used in the attack has not been reported. Authorities have only indicated that the attacker, a 35-year-old man, had rifles...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) will be standing on the tarmac with hand outstretched to greet President Donald Trump when his plane lands to begin a visit of the fire-ravaged Los Angeles area on Friday afternoon. “I look forward to being there on the tarmac to thank the president, welcome him, and we’re making sure that all the resources she needs for a successful briefing are provided to him,” Newsom said on Thursday, according to Politico. Newsom previously admitted while he had invited Trump to California, he had not had any contact with the president before his visit, but planned...

President Joe Biden ruled out the idea of pardoning himself, explaining he had not thought of pardoning himself because he “didn’t do anything wrong.” During a press conference at the White House, Biden was asked if he had “ruled out” issuing a pardon for himself or “any other additional members” of his family. In December, Biden issued a “full and unconditional pardon” of his son, Hunter Biden, regarding “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” “Have you ruled out...

Israel’s Army Radio reported Thursday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began preparing plans for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear sites after destroying nearly 90% of Syria’s air defense capabilities, which had formerly protected Iran. Army Radio military correspondent Doron Kadosh reported on air that Israel had destroyed 86% of Syria’s surface-to-air missile capability, among 500 other sites that the IDF had targeted since the fall of the Assad regime Sunday. Kadosh elaborated, in a post on X, that Israel had used 1800 munitions in the attack on Syrian weapons — munitions that had been intended for other purposes, but...

Days after announcing on social media that he planned to open a music store in Williamsburg, Virginia, John Hinckley Jr. told News4 that his plan had changed. Hinckley — who shot President Ronald Reagan in a 1981 assassination attempt outside the Washington Hilton — spent nearly 30 years in psychiatric care before his release. He has lived in the Williamsburg area since then. Hinckley announced his business plans on social media Monday, writing on X, "I’ll be opening a music store in Williamsburg, Va. The address is 455 Merrimack [sic] Trail. Grand opening is in a week or two!" The...

EMERGENCY‼️…….. EMERGENCY ‼️ Today, I have received multiple messages about upcoming security preparedness issues for Capitol Police led events in January. As we all know one of those events is the 2025 Presidential Inauguration. I’m told USCP Chief J Thomas Manger and USCP Assistant Chief Sean Gallagher are holding eleven (11) briefings with Department employees. I’m being told that Gallagher is leading these briefings and I’m hearing first hand that officers in attendance are being packed in rooms like sardines in a can and can barely hear Gallagher speaking. Additionally, they are holding these briefings at the beginning and end...

By hiring weak leaders with failed track records and prioritizing equity over merit, Michelle Reid destroyed Fairfax County schools.Last month, Ann Bonitatibus announced that she was resigning from her position as principal of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ), a magnet school located in Fairfax County, Virginia, the state’s largest school district.Before her leadership, TJ was the top-ranked high school in the nation for about a decade. Bonitatibus aided in the overhaul of TJ’s selection process in 2020 from merit to equity, thereby compromising the once highly prestigious school’s rigor, and sinking its ranking from first to...

President-elect Trump is expected to get to work immediately upon taking office enacting major changes on immigration, energy and foreign policy. Trump late last year suggested he would not rule as a dictator “except for day one,” a sign he intends to use executive authority aggressively to implement changes to immigration policy and energy policy in particular. Trump has also signaled he would move swiftly to roll back protections for transgender youth, and he would fire the man prosecuting a criminal case against him. Here’s a look at what Trump has said he will do “on day one.” **SNIP** Energy...

House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed deep concerns Sunday about an alleged major leak of US intelligence detailing Israel’s plans to retaliate against Iran and stressed that he’s following the situation “closely.” Johnson (R-La.), who is on the campaign trail in Michigan, talked with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said that he will receive a “classified-level” briefing on the leak later in the day. “The leak is very concerning. There’s some serious allegations being made there, an investigation underway, and I’ll get a briefing on that in a couple of hours,” Johnson told CNN’s “State of the Union. “We’re following...

U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday glibly ruled out any imminent Israeli strikes against Iran as the strife-torn region prepares for a response to the recent missile attack on the Jewish state. “First of all, we don’t ‘allow’ Israel, we advise Israel. And there is nothing going to happen today,” Biden told reporters at the White House when asked if he would allow Israel to retaliate against Iran. He made the remarks on the South Lawn before departing aboard Marine One without any further clarification or citing of a source for the military intelligence revelation.

On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) said that 2024 Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t implemented the economic proposals she’s promising now because “she’s been the Vice President and she’s been supporting a president who’s had 15 million jobs created under his presidency, more than any president in my lifetime, but that doesn’t mean that gas and groceries are as affordable as they need to be, and that doesn’t mean enough people who work hard have a home.” Co-host John Berman asked, “Congressman, what you hear from Republicans, though, is, look, if...

MILWAUKEE – The Secret Service will make no changes to security at the Republican National Convention in the aftermath of an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, the agency said Sunday. “We are confident in the plans that we have and are moving forward with those plans,” Audrey Gibson-Cicchino, the Secret Service’s RNC convention coordinator, told reporters. Trump, 78, will arrive in Milwaukee on Sunday ahead of the four-day convention during which he will be formally named the Republican nominee for president. Earlier in the day, President Biden announced that he had directed the Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle...

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has officially approved plans for an “offensive in Lebanon” against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terror group illegally occupying southern Lebanon that has been firing at northern Israel since October. In a statement, the IDF said: Today (Tuesday), the Commanding Officer of the Northern Command, MG Ori Gordin, and the Head of the Operations Directorate (J3), MG Oded Basiuk, approved operational plans and held a joint situational assessment in the Northern Command. As part of the situational assessment, operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved and validated, and decisions were taken on the continuation of...