Free Republic

President Donald Trump’s call for House Republicans to support releasing Jeffrey Epstein-related documents was a stunning capitulation after a months-long campaign to block the vote. It was also a specific defeat for Trump at the hands of a despised GOP opponent: Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. “He got tired of me winning,” Massie said of Trump’s U-turn in an interview Monday morning. Insisting “I DON’T CARE!” in a late-night Truth Social post, Trump was bowing to the inevitable — a broad House Republican mutiny on a vote that was only scheduled because Massie forced it. It was the result of...

Syrian President Ahmed Sharaa has arrived in Washington for an official visit, just two days after the US formally revoked his status as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. The former Islamist militant will meet US President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, 11 months after his rebel alliance ousted Bashar al-Assad. Hours before his arrival in the US capital it was announced that Syrian security services had detained dozens of suspected members of the so-called Islamic State group. Joint efforts to tackle what remains of the group in Syria are expected to be high on the agenda during...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the only Republican who broke with his party and voted no on the test vote to break a filibuster on the deal to reopen the government. Paul voted nay because he wanted a guarantee of a change in the bill regarding hemp.

Senator Rand Paul is tired of being the only Republican senator willing to stand up to President Trump. The libertarian spoke with Politico’s Dasha Burns just days after being deliberately left out of Trump’s gathering of GOP senators in the Rose Garden. “We have everybody but one person here,” Trump said Wednesday. “We’re just missing one person. You’ll never guess who that is. Let me give you—he automatically votes no on everything. He thinks it’s good politics. It’s really not good politics.”

🚨 JUST IN: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accuses President Trump of doing what CHINA and IRAN do when he "executes" narco-terrorists "I would call them extrajudicial killings. This is akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers -- they summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it's WRONG."

@RandPaul Like I told @cherylcasone on @MorningsMaria, Republicans ran against Biden’s reckless spending… then adopted his spending levels. I won’t. $38 trillion in debt isn’t sustainable. It’s a threat to our economy and our dollar. I’ll keep voting no until Washington gets serious about balancing the budget.

“What do you expect when you sue the president?” Hearing that comment, some people may guess the comment was made by someone addressing one of President Trump’s political opponents who has been targeted for federal prosecution. That quote, though, is much older. It is from an IRS agent addressing officials of a conservative organization that was being audited during Bill Clinton’s presidency. This illustrates that the use of federal agencies to punish presidents’ enemies did not start with President Trump. The administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used tax investigations against political opponents. Targeted individuals included publishers of newspapers that...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pledged to support his colleague Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) as he faces a Trump-backed primary challenge in 2026. In an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for “The Conversation,” Paul said threats lobbed at Massie from President Donald Trump and others close to the president should raise alarms for any lawmaker, and vowed to help his Kentucky colleague maintain his seat. “Thomas Massie is going to win,” Paul said. “I’m going to help him. I’m going to be with him every step of the way.”

@RandPaul On @MeetThePress, I made it clear: America needs diplomacy over endless war, real debate before military action, and fiscal sanity, not $2–3 trillion deficits from either party. I’ll stand with President Trump when he’s right and stand up to government overreach when he’s not.

@RandPaul Washington’s spending addiction is out of control. I refused to support the $2T GOP deficit or the $3T Democrat deficit. I don’t want a shutdown, and I’ll support legislation to ensure our troops are paid, but I won’t rubber-stamp reckless budgets from either party.

@RonPaul In an hysterical rant over the weekend, President Trump has blasted Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) as a couple of "wackos" who refuse to vote with the Republican Party. Meanwhile, President Trump has just announced that his first in-person fundraiser of the election cycle will be for...Lindsey Graham! Also today, Israel breaks ceasefire and kills dozens more Palestinians in Gaza.

Amid a wave of U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean and plans for covert operations in Venezuela, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., is leading a bipartisan effort to force a vote to stop President Trump from unilaterally declaring war on the South American nation. Kaine, a longtime proponent of Congress' powers to declare war, filed the resolution late Thursday, a move that will force the Senate to take up the legislation after a 10-day waiting period. Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., co-sponsored the plan. Kaine said concerns about war in the Latin American region are growing. "The pace...

Jeffrey Epstein regularly boasted he could blackmail a powerful network of men using videos showing them abusing young women, according to Virginia Giuffre. The bombshell claim is made in her posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl, A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice. The Telegraph has obtained a copy of the 367-page book which will be published next week by Alfred A. Knopf. It will reignite questions about whether the late paedophile maintained a “client list” after the federal authorities concluded in July that there was no blackmail operation. Giuffre finished writing the book six months before she took her...

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he spoke with Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) last week to tell her Republicans are “working around the clock” to bring healthcare prices down, after she vocally criticized Republicans throughout the week for the government shutdown and split from her party in deploring rising costs. “I had a thoughtful conversation with her on the phone the other night,” Johnson told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” Johnson said Republicans on the committees of jurisdiction were the ones leading discussions on the shutdown and healthcare subsidies — committees he said Greene isn’t a part of but...

Sir Tony Blair met with Jeffrey Epstein in Downing Street while still prime minister, following lobbying by Lord Peter Mandelson, the BBC has confirmed. A memo written by senior civil servant Matthew Rycroft, dated 14 May 2002, briefs Sir Tony about "super-rich" financial adviser Epstein ahead of a meeting scheduled at 17.00 GMT that day. The meeting was six years before Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in June 2008. A spokesperson for Sir Tony said: "As far as he can remember, Mr Blair met with him for less than 30 minutes in Downing Street in 2002,...

When challenged that killing citizens without due process is a war crime, the vice president responded that he "didn't give a sh*t." Sometimes in fits of anger, loud voices will say they don't care about niceties such as due process—they just want to kill bad guys. For a brief moment, all of us may share that anger and may even embrace revenge or retribution. But over 20,000 people are murdered in the U.S. each year, and yet somehow we find a way to a dispassionate dispensation of justice that includes legal representation for the accused and jury trial. Why? Because...

@SenRandPaul This continuing resolution keeps spending at Biden’s reckless levels: no real cuts, no debt reduction. It’s the same old Washington game of borrowing more and ignoring fiscal responsibility. We need to stop the spending spree and get government under control.

@MassieforKY Because I fight for transparency, the Swamp has pledged "unlimited money" to defeat me and silence my voice in Congress. With your help, they won’t win.

Donald Trump had a warning to Democrats. Soon he will decide what "Democrat agencies" he would cut and whether those reductions would be temporary or permanent. He said the government shutdown, which began on Tuesday, had afforded him an "unprecedented opportunity". "I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame," he posted on his Truth Social website on Thursday morning. Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, may not be a household name. But Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for governing put together primarily by former Trump officials like Vought when...

@RupertLowe10 We must stop importing those who hate Britain and wish to do us harm. We must start deporting those foreign nationals who hate Britain and wish to do us harm. If that means revoking citizenships from dual nationals on an industrial scale, then that is what must happen. We must stop tolerating the intolerable. This has gone on for too long, with too much harm, death and suffering inflicted along the way. We have welcomed in, and continue to welcome in, foreigners who hate everything that we stand for - almost every day, unvetted men from backward cultures are...