Free Republic

Right-wing activist Laura Loomer warned that President Donald Trump’s handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein threatens to “consume his presidency” in an interview on Wednesday, a dramatic rebuke from a presidential confidante that illustrates the growing rupture in the MAGA coalition. She likened it to the intense media interest in ties between Trump’s first White House campaign and Russia, saying “I don’t want it to consume his presidency.” “Obviously, this is not a complete hoax given the fact that Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving 20 years in prison in Florida for her crimes and activities with Jeffrey Epstein, who...

Speaker Mike Johnson is calling for the Department of Justice to release all of its information on Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in jail after being charged with sex trafficking, and wants Attorney General Pam Bondi to explain previous statements on the matter. The Trump administration this month declined to release additional information regarding Epstein’s death, with the Justice Department and FBI concluding there’s no evidence that Epstein had a list of clients or was murdered in his jail cell. Republicans blocked a House vote on Tuesday afternoon that Democrats tried to cast as a referendum to force...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he would hold off on advancing a closely watched package of sanctions targeting Russia’s trading partners after President Donald Trump said he was prepared to act himself later this summer if Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t move toward a peace deal with Ukraine. “It sounds like right now the president is going to attempt to do some of this on his own,” Thune told reporters. “If at some point the president concludes that it makes sense and adds value and leverage that he needs in those negotiations to move the bill, then we’ll...

As Elon Musk moves to create a third party to upend America’s political system, he’s spoken with one-time Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang about the nascent effort. Yang, the 2020 White House contender and founder of the independent Forward Party, said in an interview that he has been “in touch” with Musk and his team. “I’m excited for anyone who wants to move on from the duopoly,” Yang said. “And I’m happy to help give someone a sense of what the path looks like.” He did not respond to follow-up questions about when they spoke and what else they discussed....

Biden bombshell: Here’s one for the history books. This morning, Playbook readers can read the actual six-page memo that convinced President Joe Biden to push for an early debate with Donald Trump last June. And a quick trigger warning: Dems may prefer to read it through their fingers. With friends like these: In the ill-fated briefing document, dated April 15, 2024, Biden’s senior advisers told him not to wait for the autumn dates proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates — the first of which, they noted, was scheduled after mail-in ballots would start going out — but instead to...

A federal judge in New York has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to strip immigration protections from Haitians fleeing instability in their country. The ruling Friday from U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan preserves, for now, the Biden administration’s 2024 extension of the protections, known as “temporary protected status,” for up to 500,000 Haitians living in the United States. Cogan’s 23-page decision is the latest legal development in the administration’s efforts to roll back TPS designations and other immigration programs that allow immigrants from countries facing humanitarian crises to live and work here legally. In a separate case, the Supreme Court...

Driven by a desire to help ex-servicemembers with mental illness, GOP lawmakers led a failed campaign last year to persuade the Biden administration to approve psychedelic drugs. Now they may have found the ally they need in President Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A longtime believer in psychedelics’ potential to help people with illnesses like post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, despite the lack of supportive evidence Biden officials found, Kennedy is ramping up government-run clinical studies and telling the disappointed lawmakers doctors will be prescribing the drugs soon. “These are people who badly need some kind of...

Democrats warned the decision paves the way for “a vile betrayal of our Constitution.” Democratic members of Congress sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling that limited district courts’ use of nationwide injunctions in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. The court did not rule on whether the Trump administration has legal standing to revoke birthright citizenship for the children of some immigrants. Yet Democrats warned the decision paves the way for “a vile betrayal of our Constitution,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in a social media post. “The Supreme Court’s decision...

The White House is close to clinching an agreement on the state and local tax deduction after a last-ditch flurry of negotiations with blue-state House GOP holdouts and Senate Republicans, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the talks. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is brokering the politically complex deal that is key to unlocking the GOP megabill, will attend Senate Republicans lunch later today, according to a another person with direct knowledge of the matter. LaLota said he has been told the prospective deal would maintain the House-passed cap of $40,000 for five years before reverting to the...

Senate Republicans are facing major new issues with their domestic policy megabill after the chamber’s parliamentarian advised senators that several provisions they are counting on to reap hundreds of billions of dollars in budget savings won’t be able to pass along party lines. Those include major pieces of Medicaid policy, including a politically explosive plan to hold down Medicaid costs by cracking down on a state provider tax — a provision that is expected to have a nine-figure impact on the bill. Republicans now will have to try to rewrite major sections of their Finance bill or potentially leave out...

The White House lashed out at a House Democrat who wrote on X that Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — who is Jewish — should “go back to 1930’s Germany.” “What an absolutely disgusting comment from a Congressman to a Jewish WH official,” Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly wrote on X on Thursday, quoting Rep. Mark Pocan’s (D-Wis.) post. “Pocan must apologize — not just to Stephen, but to his constituents — and then seek professional help. This crazed antisemitic hatred from Dems emboldens radicals to target Jewish Americans.” Pocan’s Wednesday post was a response to one by Miller...

..... Members of Kentucky’s congressional delegation say Massie’s sprawling district, which runs along the northern border along Ohio and Indiana and stretches from the southern Cincinnati suburbs to the outer bands of the Louisville metro area, is a unique cross-section of the state that appears to relish Massie’s independent streak. It’s home to some of the most prominent members of the “liberty faction” of the Kentucky Republican Party, a group that embraces Trump while also gravitating toward libertarian-leaning Republicans like Massie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. The senator has weathered his own barrage of attacks from Trump for voicing opposition...

The #NeverTrump movement just got another backer. Conservative radio host Mark Levin threatened on Friday that he will not support Donald Trump in the general election, should he be the nominee. Levin, a strong supporter of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, said that Trump’s allies had made the billionaire Republican front-runner toxic. …“If they piss me off one more time, I’m going to urge millions and millions of you, should he get the nomination, not to vote for him either,” he said.

BOSTON — Federal authorities say they deported a Lebanese doctor holding an American visa last week after finding “sympathetic photos and videos” of prominent Hezbollah figures in a deleted items folder on her cell phone.Rasha Alawieh, a physician specializing in kidney transplants and professor at Brown University, also told Customs and Border Protection agents that while visiting Lebanon last month she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and followed his teachings “from a religious perspective” but not a political one, according to an official report on her interrogation by an immigration officer.“CBP questioned Dr. Alawieh and determined that...

As President Donald Trump privately mulled joining Israel’s campaign against Iran this month, one member of his Cabinet sent what he viewed as an audacious attempt to steer him in the opposite direction. At 5:30 a.m. on June 10, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard tweeted a cryptic, three-minute video warning that “political elite and warmongers” are “carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers” — and that the world is “on the brink of nuclear annihilation.” Trump saw the unauthorized video and became incensed, complaining to associates at the White House that she had spoken out of turn, according...

Zohran Mamdani, the young democratic socialist who has been rising in the mayor’s race, is now ahead of Andrew Cuomo with just two weeks until the Democratic primary, a new poll reviewed in full by POLITICO found. The survey, conducted by Public Policy Polling for Democrat Justin Brannan’s city comptroller campaign, found Mamdani beating Cuomo 35 percent to 31 percent — a difference that is narrowly within the 4.1 percent margin of error. Cuomo has been the constant frontrunner since his March 1 entrance into the race to oust Mayor Eric Adams, with most publicly released polls showing him with...

An influential group of GOP hawks has launched a behind-the-scenes lobbying offensive pressing President Donald Trump to not only back off his administration’s quest for a nuclear deal with Iran, but greenlight an attack on Tehran by Israel. The campaign is raising alarms among Trump and his allies, who have launched a counteroffensive to keep the president’s diplomacy on track. During a private lunch with the president at the White House last Wednesday, conservative talk show host Mark Levin told Trump that Iran was days away from building a nuclear weapon, an argument Trump’s own intelligence team has told the...

Joe Biden looked lost at a Waffle House after his bad debate with Trump on June 27, 2024. A man in a beige suit signaled Jill Biden and helped get Joe out fast. That man was Anthony Bernal, 52 years old. He works closely with Jill Biden as her top helper and also helps the president. People now wonder if he had more power than anyone knew, especially as Joe's health got worse. A former Biden aide said Bernal had “the most power inside the White House.” A book named Original Sin said Bernal was rude, strict, and tried hard...

On Sunday, Politico published a story titled "2 states, 1 tepid view of Kamala Harris and her political future." A much more accurate title of the story by Melanie Mason and Brakkton Booker would be "2 states, 2 tepid views of Kamala Harris and her political future."Although Mason and Booker tossed cold water on the idea of Harris running for president again via the South Carolina primary they were also much less than enthusiastic about her running for governor of California. If they didn't quite toss cold water on that campaign they seemed to throw much less than even lukewarm...

Assassin was apparently named "Sophie" and made the wrong choice.