Free Republic

“I’m very concerned for [the president's] life. And James Comey, in my view, should be held accountable and put behind bars for this." — DNI Tulsi Gabbard “Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Jim Comey, former FBI Director wrote on Instagram about the message “86 47” laid out in seashells on the sand that he came across, innocently. You’d have to ask yourself: what was “cool” about that, exactly? Especially if, as Mr. Comey claimed on X soon after, that he didn’t know what it meant. Are things that you don’t understand “cool”? Is it just “cool” to learn...

Honduras' deposed President Manuel Zelaya said on Sunday that he would stay in the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital for as long as Brasilia allowed him to and that he would be willing to talk to the new president-elect. Leftist Zelaya, who was ousted by the army in a coup on June 28, slipped back into Honduras in September and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, from where he has been demanding his reinstatement. The United States and Brazil have been pushing for Zelaya's return to power but his fate remains uncertain after the Honduran Congress voted...

The nephew of the interim President of Honduras Roberto Micheletti has been found dead in what the police are calling an execution style killing. Enzo Micheletti's body was discovered on Sunday in woodland near Choloma, 250 km north of the capital, Tegucigalpa. Police say his hands were tied behind his back and his body was riddled with bullets There is no indication that his death is connected to the coup that brought his uncle to power at the end of June.

A “stunned Anderson Cooper watched as 60 Minutes boss sobbed through a shocking resignation meeting,” according to the Daily Mail. “Anderson Cooper looked on as his 60 Minutes boss cried while resigning amid corporate pressure brought by Donald Trump’s recent lawsuit,” the report adds. Yep, just when you think this story cannot get any more delicious, we discover that the serial liar who destroyed the reputation of 60 Minutes like no one since Dan Rather, is a literal crybaby. Bill Owens, who took charge of 60 Minutes in 2019, and who has been with CBS for 37 years, announced his...

President Trump continues to walk back his original tariff assault, and markets are pleased. They rose again Wednesday after Mr. Trump said he won’t fire the Federal Reserve Chairman and is likely to retreat from his highest China tariffs. Is this Mr. Trump’s François Mitterrand moment? Readers of a certain age will recall how the French Socialist President swept into power in 1981 promising a far left agenda of government control over the private economy. The market reaction was brutal. Within a year he had put socialism on pause and by 1983 he had abandoned most of it. He went...

After Donald Trump’s victory in last year’s presidential election, .several MAGA influencers cheered the prospect of him trampling on women’s rights. And Republican lahttps://www.yahoo.com/news/house-gop-tramples-women-rights-225055817.htmlwmakers have acted on that ethos with startling speed.Democratic women sounded the alarm Thursday following the House’s passage of the so-called SAVE Act, which would require all states to obtain proof of citizenship from people registering to vote, as well as mandate that states have a program to remove undocumented immigrants from existing voter rolls and allow Americans to sue officials who don’t follow the proof-of-citizenship requirements. Voting rights activists have condemned the measure as a voter...

America is at risk of losing a generation of scientists. Amid sweeping cuts to federal research funding by the Trump administration, job opportunities for young scientists are being rescinded, postdoctoral positions eliminated and fellowships folded as labs struggle to afford new researchers. As countless scientific projects come to a halt, the researchers who will suffer the most are those just beginning their careers. Times Opinion has heard from more than 100 readers who have shared stories of how they’ve been affected. Kristen Gram is a 22-year-old graduate student researching the type of materials and hardware that might one day help...

Move over, Smoot and Hawley. President Trump has anointed himself America’s greatest protectionist, and he’s launching a global trade war to prove it. On Wednesday, Trump slapped a minimum 10 percent tariff on all imports, plus additional “reciprocal” tariffs on 60 other countries that have the temerity to sell us things we want to buy. He dubbed it “Liberation Day” to mark the freeing of Americans from the supposedly oppressive burden of trading with others.

Republicans are pulling out all the stops ahead of the special election in Florida’s 6th Congressional District as worries of a narrower-than-expected margin grow in the district President Trump won by more than 30 points in November. Trump called into two tele-town halls for state Sen. Randy Fine (R) in an effort to drive out the Republican base ahead of Tuesday. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s America PAC spent roughly $10,200 in the race earlier this week and dropped another $66,000 into the race on Thursday. The efforts come as Democratic candidate Josh Weil has outraised Fine, while an internal poll from...

What’s a good analogy for Signal, the commercial, publicly available encryption app?Have you ever watched a public hearing of the Senate or House Intelligence Committee? It happens almost every time: A witness from one of our intelligence agencies is asked a question that, whether the interrogating lawmaker realizes it or not, calls for an answer that includes national defense information — in the main, classified intelligence.... So what happens next is a commonplace: The agency official will tell the panel that he or she cannot answer the question in public, but may be willing to address the matter in the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As congressional lawmakers scramble to respond to President Donald Trump’s slashing of the federal government, one group is already taking a front and center role: military veterans. From layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs to a Pentagon purge of archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been acutely affected by Trump’s actions. And with the Republican president determined to continue slashing the federal government, the burden will only grow on veterans, who make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce and often tap government benefits they earned with their military service. “At a moment...

We are all undocumented now. We Americans no longer have undeniable legal status in this country. Our rights, our organizations, our jobs, our health, our schools, our laws, our Constitution — all are now provisional, subject to the whims of the self-proclaimed “King” in the White House.

From tariffs to Ukraine to cuts to the federal workforce, President Trump has invoked the idea of fairness.Experts said the focus is effective, tapping into the sense among many Americans that they have been left behind.In a sit-down interview with Fox News last month, President Trump and his billionaire “efficiency” advisor Elon Musk framed new tariffs on foreign trading partners as a simple matter of fairness.“I said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do: reciprocal. Whatever you charge, I’m charging,’” Trump said of a conversation he’d had with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I’m doing that with every country.”“It seems fair,”...

A Biden-era US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was found dead in her Alexandria, Virginia, home on Saturday morning. The cause and manner of death is unknown. Jessica Aber, 43, was found unresponsive on Saturday morning. Her death is under investigation. “This morning, at approximately 9:18 a.m., Alexandria Police responded to the 900 block of Beverley Drive for the report of an unresponsive woman. Officers located a deceased woman. Following notification of family members, the Alexandria Police Department can confirm the identity of the woman as Ms. Jessica Aber, age 43, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District...

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...