Free Republic

When President Trump threatened tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China in January, saying those countries needed to do more to stop the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States, Canadian and Mexican officials raced to Washington, bearing charts and videos detailing their efforts to toughen their borders. Canada created a “fentanyl czar” and committed fresh resources to combating organized crime, while Mexico dispatched troops to the border and delivered cartel operatives into U.S. custody. As a result, Mr. Trump paused tariffs on America’s North American neighbors for 30 days. China never made these kinds of overtures and, in...

France's far-right leader Jordan Bardella Friday said he had cancelled his speech at a right-wing meeting in Washington after a "gesture alluding to Nazi ideology" by conservative firebrand Steve Bannon. The president of France's National Rally party, who is in the US capital, said he was not present when Bannon, one of the masterminds behind Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, made a gesture that has been described as a Nazi salute on Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

...to their faces

this is a fight most Americans didn’t want—and it’s over a wall most Americans don’t want, either. Americans are largely pro-immigration; three-quarters of us believe that immigration is a good thing. And two out of three Americans think that immigration should either stay at its current level, or increase. More importantly, one survey found that more than half of Americans don’t want a new wall, or any broad security barrier at the border. In another survey, 40% of Americans polled chose the president backing down and accepting the $1.6 billion Democrats have already offered for border security as the most...

Lefty journos are still trying to score cheap shots against President Trump and showing why they’ve lost all public trust in the process. Take CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. A deranged Resistance freak from way back, she proved true to form when she shrilled out “Do you trust President Putin?” while Trump was talking about the prospects for peace in Ukraine. Nothing of substance. Nothing actually advancing journalism around a potentially huge world event, i.e. an end to Putin’s war. Just a cheap play for seal-claps and social-media dopamine. Collins clearly still believes it’s January 2017, when the hottest ticket in TV...

President Donald Trump loves to take a phrase and drain it of all meaning. In his first term, he transformed the term "fake news" from describing a specific problem with a type of misinformation into an attack on any journalist he didn't like or a piece of journalism that made him look bad. Now he's doing the same to the word "lawfare," and the stakes are even higher — including, potentially, the guardrails of our democracy. Coined in 2001, "lawfare" refers to the use of courts and other legal systems to damage or delegitimize a political opponent. After Trump left...

Blocking reporters from covering news events at the Oval Office. Ousting journalists from their working spaces in the Pentagon. Investigating public media companies that are often the targets of conservative attacks. In the three weeks since he returned to the White House, President Donald Trump and his administration have moved beyond his usual anti-news media rhetoric to take a variety of actions that have limited some outlets’ access while hitting others with lawsuits and directives that critics say are naked attempts to bend news coverage to his will. “I don’t know if Trump himself has a ‘game plan’ per se,...

BRUSSELS — Dozens of American students at a U.S. military installation in Germany walked out of their middle school on Tuesday as part of protests aimed at an official visit by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, underscoring the scope of disillusionment with the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.The students attend Patch Middle School in Stuttgart, Germany, and peacefully walked out of class for nearly an hour, according to three people familiar with the matter and a letter sent to parents by a school administrator. Separately, a small group of adults dressed in civilian clothing — likely...

“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”

This is Abe Greenwald, in the Commentary magazine email. I don’t think there is a link, so I will quote extensively: Here’s a current-events quiz aimed at regular news consumers: Why did Los Angeles officials ignore dozens of warnings about the county’s failing water system in the run-up to this year’s wildfires? What caused the Dali cargo ship to crash into the Francis Scott Key Bridge almost a year ago? Who was the captain of that ship? Why were security bollards not in place on Bourbon Street when a terrorist attacked New Orleans on New Year’s Day? What was the...

Twitter users scorched Newsweek after it fact-checked Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for condemning "Antifa riots. "An episode of The View posted Monday featured Cruz debating The View’s hosts on the existence of left-wing political violence. After Cruz called out the "Antifa riots" from 2020, host Whoopi Goldberg replied "I don't know what an Antifa riot is." While the piece acknowledged that over a thousand businesses were damaged in Minneapolis and there were "reports of fires after Floyd protests" in places such as Washington D.C., St. Louis, Seattle, and more, it took issue with the senator’s wording. "While many businesses were...

In the recent frenzy of commentary seeking to interpret U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s increasingly adamant comments about territorial expansion to Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, too much of the discussion has focused on matters of secondary importance. These range from assessing whether Trump is merely engaging in a game of showmanship or distraction, to deciphering how those regions’ inhabitants feel about ceding territorial control to the United States, to determining how much it would cost to purchase their acquiescence. From a policy perspective, though, more fundamental matters have gone surprisingly unaddressed, beginning with the question of whether any of...

President Donald Trump's sweeping executive orders have drawn comparisons to Project 2025, a conservative policy blueprint aimed at reshaping the federal government under a Republican administration. Newsweek examines the similarities. Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment via email. Why It Matters Project 2025, a 900-page document spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, set out plans to expand executive authority, replace civil servants with ideologically aligned appointees, limit abortion rights and impose much tougher restrictions on immigration. Democrats have painted the initiative as a road map for Trump's second term in an attempt to portray him as ideologically extreme. Trump...

In a bold statement that has captured international attention, Greenland's Prime Minister, Múte Egede, declared that the Arctic island territory has no desire to become part of the United States. Amid ongoing discussions about Greenland’s strategic importance and resources, Egede made it clear that despite offers in the past—most notably from President-elect Donald Trump, who expressed interest in purchasing Greenland—the nation's people have no interest in becoming Americans. I reported more on the potential purchase here.During an interview with Fox News this week, Egede said that his country's residents do not “want to be Danes,” Americans, or part of the...

Ben Rhodes, the president’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, recently told the New York Times Magazine that newspapers no longer have foreign bureaus, so “they call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo.” The average reporter Rhodes encounters is 27 years old and “their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” One of the things they know nothing about is the major movement of modern times, Marxism-Leninism, also known as Communism, which first appeared nearly 100 years ago in the Union of Soviet Socialist...

Trump and his MAGA allies are already targeting the four major pillars of resistance to Trump during his first term. As we prepare for Trump’s second regime — which promises to be far worse than the first — it’s important to do what we can to protect and fortify these four centers of opposition. 1. Universities University faculties are dedicated to finding and exposing the truth — which has often meant calling out Trump’s lies. But Trump has warned that he’ll change the criteria for university accrediting in order to force university faculties into line...... 2. Nonprofits America’s nonprofits have...

When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) met with key Democrats last month to make her case to help lead a committee that will be critical in countering President-elect Donald Trump, she faced sharp questions from members of her party. As Ocasio-Cortez lobbied the powerful Steering Committee that decides panel assignments, Rep. Linda T. Sánchez (D-California) pressed her on her past decisions to endorse primary challengers against Democratic incumbents. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), one of the incumbents Ocasio-Cortez tried to defeat, followed up by asking why Democrats should elevate her given her previous animosity toward her less-liberal colleagues, according to two...

PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump is reportedly becoming fed up with his new pal Elon Musk with the tech mogul being too "clingy". Musk has spent the past few days going on fiery online tirades against the British government with UK politicians now even said to be urging Trump to ditch the Tesla chief. Billionaire Musk has been Trump's biggest fan over the past few months and even helped propel him into the White House. The pair have been inseparable since the Republicans swept to a landslide election win in November. Musk reportedly joined the future president on an important phone call...

LONDON (AP) — Fresh from pouring his money and energies into helping Donald Trump win reelection, Elon Musk has trained his sights on Europe, setting off alarm bells among politicians across the continent. The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive has endorsed the far-right Alternative for Germany, demanded the release of jailed U.K. anti-Islam extremist Tommy Robinson and called British Prime Minister Keir Starmer an evil tyrant who should be in prison. Many European politicians have been left concerned by the attention. Musk’s feed on his social network X is dotted with abusive language — labeling politicians “stupid cretin” and “sniveling...

President-elect Trump told The Post Saturday he supports immigration visas for highly skilled workers, appearing to side with Elon Musk in the roiling intra-MAGA debate on the issue. “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said by phone, referring to the H-1B program, which permits companies to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” added Trump, who restricted access to foreign worker visas in...