Free Republic

Republicans attempting to oust Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in a bitter primary are deploying his opposition to the war in Iran. The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund on Thursday released an ad supporting Ed Gallrein, the candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump, that focuses on Massie’s opposition to the war. “America is at war with a fanatical regime that seeks nuclear weapons. American hero Ed Gallrein stands with President Trump, our country and our military,” a narrator says in the 30-second spot. “Thomas Massie, he stands with Iran and radical leftists in Congress,” the narrator says, “opposing Trump just like...

President Donald Trump is just incredibly lucky. He kept rolling the dice on the economy and somehow the doom-sayers keep losing. All the experts said his tariffs would drastically increase inflation; instead it went down. Democrats projected at the end of 2024 that "Mass Deportations Would Deliver a Catastrophic Blow to the U.S. Economy." It has not.This luck just has to stop at some point. Such is the weird attitude of Politico's economics correspondent, Victoria Guida. She thinks that the economic success of the Trump administration is based just on the sheer luck of making the correct gambles as reflected...

According to a Politico report citing an internal Pentagon notification, United States Central Command (CENTCOM) has requested additional military intelligence officers to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days and possibly through September. When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran last Saturday, the operation was framed as a swift military campaign. Donald Trump later described it as a limited effort expected to last roughly four to five weeks. ...

Donald Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles is demanding action to bring gas prices down as the war with Iran sends oil skyrocketing, sources have revealed. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other top officials, including a council led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, 'are getting screamed at to find some good news', industry executives said. Iran has shut the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil flows, sending prices soaring more than 10 percent in a single week, with Brent crude jumping from $72 to more than $82 a barrel. The average gas price jumped 11...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune urged President Donald Trump on Wednesday to deliver a swift endorsement of Texas Sen. John Cornyn to potentially forestall what is widely expected to be an expensive and nasty primary runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Thune told reporters he hasn’t yet spoken to Trump since the election returns from Tuesday’s primary came in but indicated he intends to personally redouble his efforts, saying Wednesday that “hopefully” the president will give Cornyn his influential nod. “[If] Trump endorses early, it saves everybody a lot of money, and … 10 weeks of a spirited campaign...

Has there ever been a period in American history in the memory of almost all living people in which there has been so much change in the year since Donald Trump returned to the presidency in 2025? The whirlwind of change, both national and worldwide, is almost beyond comprehension. And in the midst of writing about all that shock over the sudden changes initiated by Trump, it is possible to slip up and make stunning admissions.Such seemed to be the case with Politico senior executive editor Alexander Burns when he appeared to slip up on Monday in "Trump Buries the...

Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker said Tuesday that lawmakers are considering whether the Pentagon may need additional funding as questions grow over U.S. munitions supplies and the strain of ongoing U.S. strikes on Iran. The cost of the operations are likely to surface at the Trump administration’s briefing later in the day for both chambers of Congress. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine are expected to brief lawmakers amid widespread Democratic opposition. “Well, we’re talking about that, and that will undoubtedly be discussed at...

Donald Trump's immigration crackdown is fracturing his own party, with Republican governors openly defying the White House over detention expansion as political fallout from the carnage in Minneapolis threatens to cost him at the midterms. Kristi Noem was rebuffed this week when she tried to build a new illegal migrant camp in New Hampshire by the state's Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte. Merrimack residents were outraged when it emerged that the Homeland Security Secretary planned to use their town to expand Trump's mass deportation effort. Ayotte, a moderate Republican governing a blue state, informed Noem that she would not assist in...

Something appears to be laughably missing in Politico's Saturday story about the June nonpartisan gubernatorial primary in California. Namely the front runner is a Republican, Steve Hilton, and another Republican is very possibly the second place candidate, both of whom would be facing each other in the November general election for governor.Is it a mere coincidence that Politico writers Blake Jones and Lindsey Holden completely ignored them because they happen to have the taboo (R) by their names which are completely AWOL in "Why Swalwell and Steyer are surging in California governor’s race"?The focus of the story (to the complete...

U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday said he is going to dispatch a hospital ship to Greenland, autonomous Danish territory that Trump has said he wants to acquire. Danish officials responded by saying the health care systems in Denmark and Greenland are more than adequate. “Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there. It’s on the way!!!” Trump said in a post on social media alongside an illustration of the U.S....

New York City officials plan to reraise a pride flag at the federal monument at Stonewall in Manhattan, setting up a potential fight with the White House at the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement nearly 60 years ago. Federal officials quietly took the flag down after the Trump administration in January issued guidance drastically limiting the types of flags that could be displayed at sites managed by the National Park Service. But Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said in an interview Tuesday that he and other New York City-area politicians would reraise the flag at the federal monument...

Devotees of the health secretary’s Make America Healthy Again movement say they oppose the Louisiana senator’s reelection.Bill Cassidy seemed aware of the political peril when he decided, a year ago, to challenge Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s skeptical views about vaccines.“My phone blows up with people who really follow you and there are many who trust you more than they trust their own physician,” the Louisiana Republican told Kennedy during his confirmation hearing, before reluctantly voting to make him health secretary.Now, as Cassidy seeks a third term, Kennedy’s followers haven’t forgiven the senator for grilling Kennedy at that hearing or for...

"Trump, like Clinton, has not been implicated of wrongdoing, and the president has said he had a falling out with Epstein years ago."And with that brief observation by Politico on Friday by Hailey Fuchs in "DOJ announces full release of Epstein files," all their absurdly frenetic efforts last year to somehow implicate President Donald Trump via the Jeffrey Epstein files look like they came up empty. Millions of the Epstein files were released and as Politico sadly conceded, Trump was not implicated of wrongdoing (although for Clinton that might not be the case due to the Clintons refusing to testify...

The new lawsuit is part of a wave of litigation seeking fines for undocumented immigrants for failing to depart the country.The Trump administration sued a Virginia woman for almost $1 million as part of an escalating drive to get undocumented immigrants to leave the U.S. by levying court-imposed fines.The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Richmond, seeks $941,114 plus interest from Marta Alicia Ramirez Veliz for allegedly failing to leave the U.S. for more than three years after a Justice Department appeals panel ruled against her in an immigration case in 2022.Officials appear to have arrived at...

Few things better illustrate the laughably absurd levels of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has infected Politico than the accompanying screenshot (as of this writing) of three Politico magazine stories featured on the front page of that biased periodical.The screenshot reveals a trifecta of magazine stories reflecting negatively on President Donald Trump, "Trump’s Greenland Gambit Has Broken Brains Across Washington," "Europe Could Kick Trump Where It Hurts: The World Cup," and "‘They Have This Combination of Grandiosity, Narcissism and Sociopathy’."You don't have to go much further beyond the title of the first Politico Magazine story to see it is the work...

Most in the GOP are silent or backing the Trump administration, but a conspicuous few are speaking out. A small but growing number of Republicans are raising public concerns about the killing Saturday of a 37-year-old Minnesota man by federal agents.Hours after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street, one House GOP chair called for the top ICE leader and other Trump administration officials to publicly answer lawmakers’ questions. GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina called for independent probes into the shooting, with Cassidy arguing the integrity...

Politico, leaning entirely on the results of a focus group consisting of nine (count 'em, NINE) people has been able to somehow determine what they see as a big political trend out there reflected in the title of this story on Friday by Samuel Benson, "These Gen-Z Trump voters don’t want JD Vance in 2028."The subtitle reinforces what looks to be a dire (as projected by Politico based on the focus group NINE) political future for Vance: "A recent focus group of 18- to 24-year-old Trump voters suggests weaknesses for Vance among young Republicans."

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said he doesn’t like banks and will scrap interest payments British lenders receive through the Bank of England’s quantitative easing program. The Reform Party included the proposal to end the practice of the U.K. central bank paying interest on the reserves placed with it by banks in its 2024 manifesto, which it claimed would bring in up to £40 billion for taxpayers. “We are going to do it. Some of the banks won’t like it. Well, I don’t like the banks very much because they debanked me, didn’t they?” Farage said in an interview with...

The administration’s arguments that offshore wind farms present a national security risk failed to convince judges in three separate courts. President Donald Trump’s long-running quest to demolish the U.S. offshore wind sector is facing some serious blowback in federal court. Three different judges — including one appointed by Trump — last week allowed construction to resume on multi-billion-dollar offshore wind projects off the coasts of New England, New York and Virginia that the Interior Department was trying to idle. After Congress shredded incentives for wind last year and the administration imposed new permitting roadblocks, the industry’s streak of victories this...

Many of the troops and ships once at the president’s disposal have shifted to the Caribbean.The Trump administration has insisted it has numerous military options to deploy against Iran if the regime uses force against demonstrators. But that menu is far more limited than it was even a year ago. The U.S. troops and ships that were once at the president’s disposal have shifted to the Caribbean. A major American defense system sent to the Middle East last year has returned to South Korea. And administration officials say there are no plans for the movement of major assets. The president...