Free Republic

WASHINGTON — President Trump again said Tuesday he wanted Canada to be America’s 51st state — but was rebuffed by newly-elected Prime Minister Mark Carney in a tense exchange in the Oval Office. “I still believe that, but, you know, it takes two to tango,” Trump told reporters — saying too that Carney could offer nothing to change his mind about new tariffs on America’s northern neighbor. Trump later gave more extensive commentary on a possible North American political union, calling the US-Canada border an “artificial line” and saying it would lead to a “massive tax cut” for them. “When...

European Union talks tough game on tariffs but introduced its own at a lesser rate than the United States, while saying it was hoping to strike a deal. The European Commission called tariffs “unjustified and damaging” while introducing its own on American goods on Wednesday, the members of the European Union agreeing on a package of “retaliatory duties”. Only strong Trump ally Hungary, led by Viktor Orban, voted against the measure. While the announcement of tariffs worth €22 billion come amid swirling headlines of a trade war with China, Europe’s move appears to be anything but, with new tariffs billions...

France’s trade minister said the European Union’s response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs could be “extremely aggressive” amid increasingly heated rhetoric from Paris. Speaking ahead of crunch talks in Luxembourg, French Minister of Foreign Trade Laurent Saint-Martin said that Brussels must consider all options in the trade dispute with the United States. “We must not exclude any option, on goods, on (American) services and open the European toolbox, which is very complete, which can also be extremely aggressive in return,” the minister said per Le Figaro.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has long been considered one of the Senate’s budget hawks, recently gave advice that when the stock market tumbles, “it pays to listen.” “The stock market is comprised of millions of people who are simultaneously trading. The market indexes are a distillation of sentiment,” Paul posted Monday on social platform X. “When the markets tumble like this in response to tariffs, it pays to listen.” His remarks come as markets began to dip after President Trump declined to rule out the U.S. economy from sliding into a recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 890...

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., lit into President Donald Trump on Tuesday night, suggesting that President Ronald Reagan — whose “peace through strength” mantra Trump has adopted — would be appalled by his approach to Russia’s war against Ukraine. “After the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling in his grave,” Slotkin, referring to Trump’s unexpectedly contentious meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week, said in her response to the joint address to Congress. “As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s,”...

On Monday, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said that while there are changes that need to be made to FEMA, the agency has been fully cooperative with helping the state out with the recent flooding in Kentucky, the state’s disaster declaration for the floods was turned around by President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “in near record time”, and Trump, Noem, “and FEMA are doing a great job here with us right now.” On “CBS Mornings,” Beshear said, “[L]et me give credit to the Trump administration. We have seen FEMA operating just like they did in the...

UFC President Dana White shared President Donald Trump’s defiant response after the UFC chief begged the then-candidate to quit politics following the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. “Why are you doing this stuff? Stop,” White told Piers Morgan on a recent episode of Uncensored. “I told him to stop so many times. It’s just like, ‘You have such a good life, and you could do all these other things’. But the thing is, with President Trump is, he believes in God, and he’s very religious…He believes that, to his core, that God has spared his life...

Ambulance response times during life-threatening emergencies jumped in the last year, according to revealed data — as the FDNY blames ongoing staffing and recruiting troubles. Average ambulance response time to life-threatening emergencies jumped more than 34 seconds from eight minutes and 14-seconds in the 2024 fiscal year to eight minutes and 48 seconds for the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year running from July 1 through November, according to the mayor’s management report. The FDNY goal is to bring ambulance response times to such calls to under seven minutes, the report said. The response times have creeped up in...

OS ANGELES — It took LA firefighters at least 45 minutes to respond to the Pacific Palisades blaze when it broke out last week, according to records and local homeowners. And by that time, around 11 a.m. on Jan. 7, it was too late; what was at first a large plume of smoke had grown to a 10-acre blaze. By 11:30 a.m., firefighters were reporting the fire was 200 acres, aided by strong winds that carried embers as far as two miles. Firefighters battling the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Jan. 7, 2025. 10...

Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that an independent commission should investigate the local and state response to the wildfires in Southern California. Schiff said, “The governor’s called for an independent review of why we didn’t have enough water in places like the Palisades, there were also water pressure issues in Altadena. I support that independent review. I think we should go further and, frankly, do an independent commission review of all of this. What went right in our response? What went wrong in it.”

WATCH: California resident confronts Gov. Newsom over disastrous fire response & he pretends to be on the phone with the President.What a pathetic man.https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1877461815124185331

A few months after the temporary stewards of San Francisco’s struggling downtown mall attempted to rename the place, the San Francisco Centre is again the San Francisco Centre this week, they announced. It’s been just over a year since the mall’s previous owners, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Brookfield Properties, defaulted on a $558 million loan and chose to abandon the 800,000 square foot property. Now, it’s headed to a public auction on the steps of the Memorial Court on Van Ness Avenue on Nov. 14.

Israel is in a race against time to respond to Iran’s ballistic missile attack and maintain the momentum that began about a month ago in its war for survival. Meanwhile, all the usual suspects in the West are hellbent on reining in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's vision of a post Oct. 7 Middle East where the Jewish state keeps the upper hand. Will Jerusalem bend or will Netanyahu push forward towards victory against Iran and its proxies? JNS senior contributing editor Caroline Glick discusses all this and more on this episode of "In-Focus." Chapters 00:00 Israel's Strategic Dilemma Post-Iran Attack...

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” host and NBC News Chief Washington Correspondent and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell stated that 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris “especially” “wanted to be part of the crisis response” to Hurricane Milton. Mitchell said, “[T]his is a bit of a balancing act, because the president, the Vice President, responding to the hurricane, especially she wanted to be part of the crisis response, but also, [there] are very few days left, 26 days until Election Day. So, she’s got to balance what she does.”

VIDEOThe incompetence, corruption, and flat out venality of FEMA as has been revealed in the wake of the Hurricane Helene disaster. What has been discovered in the past few days is that FEMA is lacking funds due to spending its assets on aiding illegal aliens that have been allowed to cross the border by the Biden-Harris regime. And now they are not only unable to provide services and supplies to the hurricane victims but are also actively PREVENTING supply and rescue attempts by private and local governmental groups because FEMA does not want to be publicly embarrassed for its willful...

CNN anchor Dana Bash on Sunday pressed Republican National Committee co-Chair Lara Trump on former President Trump’s misleading claims about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) relief aid available to residents. In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Bash asked Lara Trump whether she was concerned for her fellow North Carolinians and specifically asked about Trump’s suggestion that the Biden administration is only offering $750 to Americans in recovery money when that sum is designated for immediate relief, per family, as the first step in their recovery.

FEMA's response to Hurricane Helene has been, in a word, terrible. And that's an understatement. The Biden-Harris regime has made DEI FEMA's top priority and wasted hundreds of millions of FEMA funds on illegal immigration. So while roads are washed out across the rural southeast U.S. and people are getting vital supplies delivered by drone and donkey, FEMA really doesn't want you to spread 'rumors' about how much they suck. There has been a lot of rumors spreading about the #Helene response. Rumors can create confusion & prevent people from getting assistance they need. Help us share accurate information: https://t.co/Z5vxuBTths...

Israel is currently preparing a crushing response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack against the Jewish State. However, is the IDF receiving unwelcome pushback from the United States over their battle plans? Will the Israeli Air Force use this opportunity to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities? Is a full-scale Middle East war inevitable? Watch now.

Regarding natural disasters, the Biden-Harris duo is one for the record books in either incompetence or gross indifference. Whenever disaster strikes, you can always count on these two not to be with it regarding some response. With Hurricane Helene, the Biden administration’s ‘Katrina’ moment has arrived, and what an ugly picture it is. Like incompetents that they are, this administration is committing fouls that an actual media establishment would have excoriated them for, and rightfully so. Alas, Biden-Harris find themselves engulfed in an oasis of calm because they know the press won’t attack them, even if they are doing nothing...

NOAA via AP Hurricane Helene dissipated over the weekend, but not before smashing into Florida’s Big Bend as a category four storm, inflicting “biblical” damage across the southern United States. After landfall, the heavy rains led to catastrophic flooding that’s killed almost 100 people so far. In the Newport area of Tennessee, about 60 miles outside Knoxville, residents were forced to scramble after the Waterville Dam failed. And where’s Biden and Harris throughout this crisis? It’s part of an unseemly pattern with this administration: when disaster strikes, everyone runs away. A train derails in East Palestine, Ohio—the Biden White House...