Free Republic

This could be awkward. The New York State Attorney General is bouncing from one hot seat to the next, and darn if that isn't an unpleasant mental picture. But she brought it all on herself. Already under fire for her creative accounting tricks and faulty memories while juggling paperwork for out-of-state properties while looking as if she was trying to avoid more city interference and fees on her Brooklyn residence - and who hasn't mistakenly said they married a parent on official documents? 🚨BREAKING: Letitia James is facing 30 years in federal prison and a 1 million dollar fine. She...

Reality check: Trump has singled out ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform, for federal scrutiny of possible illegal foreign contributions. ActBlue has admitted to more than 200 such questionable donations. Democrats fear that they’re being targeted for political retaliation, and that a probe could force ActBlue to shut down. But AP’s Brian Slodysko and Steve Peoples sifted through Trump’s records and found that he got 1,600 similarly maybe-problematic contributions since 2020 — many through WinRed, Republicans’ answer to ActBlue. The response: The White House didn’t specifically address the AP’s findings, but said House Republicans had “uncovered specific evidence of potentially unlawful...

NEW YORK — There is one dominant force in the race for New York City mayor. And it’s not the incumbent, Eric Adams, whose embrace of President Donald Trump doomed his already difficult shot at the Democratic primary. It’s Andrew Cuomo. The former governor of New York is emerging from the shadows of his past, four years after he resigned his governorship amid sexual harassment allegations he has vehemently denied. Many Democrats in the five boroughs seem willing to forgive and forget. Cuomo has led every poll by wide margins — and he has more money behind his bid than...

In the surreal dance Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin have been engaged in for months, both want Donald Trump to see the other as the obstacle to peace. For now, the Ukrainian leader is winning. The latest evidence comes from the peace talks in Istanbul that Trump had promoted ― the first direct negotiation between the two sides since the start of the war. Zelenskyy had the courtesy to show up while his Russian counterpart was a no-show, sending instead a relatively low-level delegation, described by Zelenskyy as merely “decorative.” Could this be the moment Trump finally concedes that Putin...

With four hats, including national security adviser, the former Trump rival is defying predictions he’d be a weak player. Marco Rubio is doing big things under President Donald Trump — way more than nearly anyone expected. The secretary of State was once thought of as one of the weakest players in the Trump orbit, a man who wouldn’t last long in the Cabinet because he faced many internal rivals and had major policy differences with Trump and the MAGA base. But Rubio has deftly earned the president’s trust, enough so that Trump this week gave him another powerful job as...

In less than two weeks, two extraordinary elements of the Donald Trump legal saga will collide — the battle to bring down Trump’s tariffs, and the Trump administration’s fight to prevent judges from blocking his policies across the country. The Court of International Trade is set to hold oral argument on May 13 in one of the growing number of cases that challenge the bulk of the Trump tariff regime. The lawsuits, which are strong on the merits, argue that the tariffs are not legally authorized under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, the law that Trump has invoked.At issue...

The Supreme Court justice said it was time to address “the elephant in the room": the “threats and harassment” that judges have received from Trump and his allies. RIO GRANDE, Puerto Rico — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson forcefully condemned attacks by President Donald Trump and his allies on judges who have blocked Trump administration policies, warning Thursday that the increasingly hostile rhetoric poses a dire threat to the country’s political fabric. “The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity,” Jackson told a judges’ conference in Puerto Rico. “The threats...

The Washington Examiner reports that the suit was filed on behalf of Babbitt’s estate and her husband, Aaron Babbitt, and claims the officer who shot Babbitt was “incompetent” and “dangerous” and should have recognized Babbitt posed no threat to Congress when she entered the House speaker’s lobby. Kyle Cheney from Politico posted the news on X this Friday afternoon. UPDATE: The radical leftist judge on the case, Ana Reyes, is SCREAMING at both sides in the courtroom. Insane! Via Julie Kelly:

Video from politico

The United States has already struck 200 trade deals, President Donald Trump said in an interview this week — but he refused to say with whom. Trump’s comments come just two weeks after he announced a 90-day pause on most of the sweeping global tariffs he imposed earlier this month to allow time for trade negotiations with hundreds of countries slugged by the punishing levies. Only China was exempted from the 90-day pause. “I’ve made 200 deals,” Trump told Time Magazine in a wide-ranging interview published Friday, “100%.” Pressed on which countries he had made deals with, Trump refused to...

Sen. Ron Johnson is actively investigating 9/11. A day after the Wisconsin Republican went on a far-right podcast promoting conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, a spokesperson for Johnson said the lawmaker is currently seeking information and documentation in order to hold hearings on the event nearly 25 years later. He would do so in his capacity as chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, one of Congress’s most storied and powerful panels with far-reaching jurisdiction that gives its chair wide latitude to probe a diverse array of matters. It has...

SAN FRANCISCO — Former Vice President Al Gore on Monday compared President Donald Trump’s administration to Nazi Germany and issued a dire warning about Trump’s use of power in a speech devoted to climate change. Speaking at an event at the start of San Francisco’s Climate Week, Gore said the Trump administration was “trying to create their own preferred version of reality” to achieve their sweeping objectives similar to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in the 1930s and ‘40s. “I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement,” Gore said to an...

Giorgia Meloni’s interpreter has apologized for faltering during a high-stakes meeting with Donald Trump earlier this week, prompting the Italian prime minister to jump in and translate her own comments about NATO and defense spending. Valentina Maiolini-Rothbacher, who was interrupted by Meloni when providing a translation at the White House meeting on Thursday, said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that the mishap was the “worst thing that can happen to an interpreter, a terrible setback.” Footage of the meeting shows President Trump asking Maiolini-Rothbacher for a translation of Meloni’s response to a question from an Italian...

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett made clear on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s 10 percent baseline tariff on imports is not going anywhere, despite ongoing negotiations with foreign nations to roll back the steeper tariffs Trump put in place last week.

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pledged a first ever $1 trillion defense budget proposal on Monday, a record sum for the military. Trump, during a press event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the upcoming budget would be “in the vicinity” of $1 trillion Hegseth went further in an X post on Monday evening, saying Trump “is rebuilding our military — and FAST.” “COMING SOON: the first TRILLION dollar @DeptofDefense budget,” Hegseth posted from his personal account. “(PS: we intend to spend every taxpayer dollar wisely — on lethality and readiness).” The number would be a...

President Donald Trump has told his inner circle, including members of his Cabinet, that Elon Musk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role as governing partner, ubiquitous cheerleader and Washington hatchet man. The president remains pleased with Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency initiative but both men have decided in recent days that it will soon be time for Musk to return to his businesses and take on a supporting role, according to three Trump insiders who were granted anonymity to describe the evolving relationship. Musk’s looming retreat comes as some Trump administration insiders...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis escalated his attacks against Randy Fine on Wednesday, blaming the representative-elect’s “unique problems” for a special election victory he said should have been won by a higher margin. Appearing at a press conference in Ocala, Florida, the day after the election, DeSantis argued that President Donald Trump’s involvement in the 6th District race pushed Fine over the line. He added voters had not wanted to support Fine, who Trump had endorsed, and that the president “really had to bail him out in the end.”

Inside the White House, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been perhaps the biggest proponent of ”Liberation Day,” President Donald Trump’s promised unveiling of sweeping new tariffs on Wednesday. But as the day nears, the potential fallout from those tariffs may well liberate Lutnick from his role in the administration, according to half dozen people close to the White House. While Americans and much of the world brace for a possible season of pain following the imposition of the new tranche of tariffs, Trump’s orbit is ready to play the blame game should things go poorly for the White House. And...

U.S. presidential adviser Elon Musk has lambasted the French court verdict that blocked Marine Le Pen from a 2027 presidential run after the far-right figurehead was found guilty of embezzlement. “When the radical left can’t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents,” Musk said Monday. “This is their standard playbook throughout the world.”Musk, a tech billionaire turned close aide to U.S. President Donald Trump, has backed far-right causes across Europe in recent months, while the White House has become increasingly critical of democracy in Europe.“This will backfire, like the legal attacks against President Trump,”...

House Republicans don’t have the votes to impeach any federal judges. But a growing number of hard-liners is discussing several other legislative options as GOP leaders search for a release valve for the MAGA fury building over recent court rulings checking President Donald Trump. Top Republicans are likely to put at least one bill, California Rep. Darrell Issa’s “No Rogue Rulings Act,” on the floor in early April, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss scheduling plans. The legislation would crack down on the ability of lower-court judges to issue far-reaching injunctions. That is seen by Speaker Mike Johnson...