Free Republic

The Trump administration is open to arresting Supreme Court judges, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told it on Monday morning. “You guys arrested a Milwaukee County Circuit judge for allegedly helping illegal immigrants get away,” Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked Leavitt. “As you guys look at other judges, would you ever arrest somebody higher up on the judicial food chain, like a federal judge or even a Supreme Court justice?” “That’s a hypothetical question, again I defer you to the Department of Justice for individuals that they are looking at or individual cases. But let’s be clear about...

This week, Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs that the Associated Press called “a historic tax hike that could push the global order to a breaking point,” and what I want to know is this: Why are we still wondering what Trump voters want? He promised. He delivered. What’s the mystery? I ask, because our discourse seems to be invested in the idea that his supporters don’t really want this, and I don’t just mean his hardcore supporters. We tell ourselves that the last election was about inflation and the high cost of living, like the price of eggs, and...

As Wall Street heads into a new quarter, a flurry of President Donald Trump’s tariffs are set to go into effect. That has traders on edge and has helped put US stocks in their worst first-quarter slump in years.Wall Street has been rocked with volatility this year as Trump’s tariff proposals have kept investors in a cloud of uncertainty. The benchmark S&P 500 index is down 4.9% for the year, its worst start since 2022.US stocks were mixed Monday as traders tried to stage an afternoon rally. The Dow was up by around 430 points, or 1%, reversing course after...

Mike Benz, the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, recently joined Joe Rogan on his very popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience with over 19 million subscribers. The podcast was filmed several weeks ago but a clip from this discussion is making the rounds this week on social media. During their conversation, Mike Benz shared how Barack Obama was using money to USAID to pretend to send “aid” overseas. In actuality, Obama was laundering the taxpayer dollars and using it to train “rent-a-mobs” instead!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's drive to shake up the U.S. government drove out a rising star in conservative legal circles: A career federal prosecutor who once clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Danielle Sassoon, tapped to lead the Manhattan federal prosecutor's office on Trump's second day in office, quit on Thursday rather than go along with a Justice Department order to drop a criminal corruption case against Democratic New York Mayor Eric Adams. The department ordered the case dropped, citing the city's approaching November mayoral election and saying that prosecuting Adams could interfere with...

Watching the fires raze Los Angeles, a city I called home for years, has been devastating. Santa Ana winds, blowing through the mountains at speeds exceeding 80 mph, have caused catastrophic damage. The west side of the city is barely recognizable. The Pacific Coast Highway, one of the most iconic stretches of the American landscape, lies in ruins. The surrounding area, home to the equally renowned Sunset Boulevard — celebrated in countless dreams and a witness to innumerable Californian sunsets — has been reduced to ashes.The full scale of the devastation will be hard to tally for some time. What...

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...

The president-elect and his allies have spent four years reinventing the Capitol attack — spreading conspiracy theories and weaving a tale of martyrdom to their ultimate political gain. In two weeks, Donald J. Trump is to emerge from an arched portal of the United States Capitol to once again take the presidential oath of office. As the Inauguration Day ritual conveying the peaceful transfer of power unfolds, he will stand where the worst of the mayhem of Jan. 6, 2021, took place, largely in his name. Directly behind Mr. Trump will be the metal-and-glass doors where protesters, inflamed by his...

Chinese nationalists are calling for Russia to return land they claim was stolen by the Kremlin in the 19th century. A video on Chinese social media has called on Beijing to take advantage of Moscow's weakened position to seize large parts of Siberia and Russia's Far East. The clip has gone viral in China and has racked up millions of hits among viewers on TikTok. -snip- The Treaty of Aigun in 1858 forced China to cede much of Manchuria to the Russian Tsar Alexander II. The territory, comprising some 600,000 square kilometres, is part of Russia's Far East and includes...

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s support for Pete Hegseth, who he announced as his nominee for defense secretary shortly after Election Day, is wobbling after a crush of controversy over a rape allegation and a 2018 email from Mr. Hegseth’s mother accusing him of a pattern of abuse toward women. How Mr. Hegseth fares through a series of tests on Wednesday will be critical for his chances. He is set to continue his meetings with key senators, including Joni Ernst of Iowa, a combat veteran who has spoken about being sexually assaulted herself, and his mother is expected to sit for...

Just 20 years ago, New York City was racked with crime: murders, burglaries, drug deals, car thefts, thefts from cars. (Remember the signs in car windows advising no radio?) Unlike many cities’ crime problems, New York’s were not limited to a few inner-city neighborhoods that could be avoided. Bryant Park, in the heart of midtown and adjacent to the New York Public Library, was an open-air drug market; Grand Central Terminal, a gigantic flophouse; the Port Authority Bus Terminal, “a grim gauntlet for bus passengers dodging beggars, drunks, thieves, and destitute drug addicts,” as the New York Times put it...

Tech billionaire Elon Musk was handed a major win Tuesday evening when President-elect Donald Trump announced that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO would co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” with Vivek Ramaswamy. The announcement reinforces the closeness that Musk has managed to achieve with Trump, even after the election. But for some people in Trump’s orbit, Musk’s presence has felt overbearing. Musk has been so aggressive in pushing his views about Trump’s second term that he’s stepping on the toes of Trump’s transition team and may be overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago, according to two people familiar with the...

Donald Trump is stuck. He is a brutally transactional politician who represents a coalition of ideologues. His instinct is to promise the moon, and he’ll say anything to get a vote — or just to get out of a room. He also knows, however, that he has no choice but to dance with the date that brought him. He can’t abandon the groups, interested parties and constituencies that put him in the White House to execute their agenda — to exercise their will. The problem comes when most voters don’t want what your partners hope to do with the power...

New studies, which utilized AI to monitor the effects of climate change on Earth's spin, have shown that our days are getting increasingly longer and that our planet will get more wobbly in the future. These changes could have major implications for humanity's future. The length of Earth's days and the orientation of our planet are being thrown out of balance as human-caused climate change continuously alters Earth's spin, new research suggests.

Wind is quietly blowing away coal, when it comes to supplying electricity in the US.In April, wind power generated more electricity than coal for the second month in a row, according to the latest available data from the Energy Information Administration. Wind briefly surpassed coal once before in April last year, but this time it’s by a much larger margin and for two consecutive months. Renewable energy production has been ticking up for years but only recently have fuels like wind and solar approached the ballpark of fossil fuels and nuclear power. Last year renewables made up 21% of electricity...

Northern Gaza is experiencing a “full-blown famine”, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has said, and warned that it is “moving its way south”. In an interview with NBC News set to air on Sunday, Cindy McCain said that her remarks are based on what the WFP has seen and experienced on the ground. UN officials and aid agencies have for months warned of such a scenario. “It’s horror. It’s so hard to look at and it’s so hard to hear,” McCain told the US broadcaster’s Meet the Press programme. “What we are asking for and...

The world is losing the battle against electronic waste, a UN expert said on Wednesday (March 20), after a report found 62 million metric tons of mobile phones and devices were dumped on the planet in just one year — and this is expected to increase by a third by 2030. Electronic waste, also known as e-waste, consists of any discarded items containing an electric plug or a battery. It can contain toxic additives and hazardous substances such as mercury, and represents an environmental and health hazard. "These goods are often not easy to repair. They easily become waste and...

After a year of getting roundly humiliated by Donald Trump and failing to unseat him as the leader of the Republican Party, Ron DeSantis finally dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump’s bid to reclaim the White House. But while the former president publicly retired his “DeSanctimonious” nickname, Trump has privately made clear over the past two weeks that he’s not ready to let go of his grudge against the Florida governor and former ally. One of the sources, who has spoken to the ex-president about this topic recently, bluntly characterizes Trump’s attitude on DeSantis’ future as wanting to...

A spanking new national survey of registered voters out on Thursday shows embattled Joe Biden trailing each of the top three Republican presidential candidates, which is significant. Even more significant, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley bested Biden by the largest margin of the three.While there's quite a bit to unpack in the Marquette Law School national survey, there are also fundamental election factors at play that tend to hold in all elections. We'll hit those factors along the way.Of consequence, the survey found Haley leading Biden, 55 percent to 45 percent, with former President Donald Trump topping the inept...

@DanielLMcAdams Neocon DeSantis declares war on Iran. As I've long said, he is among the worst on foreign policy, which is one area where the president has broad Constitutional power. This aint Florida anymore. If you love war, you'll love President DeSantis. RE: With @RonDeSantis as president, “the days of appeasing Iran will be OVER.”