Free Republic

President Trump said Friday he’s decertifying the Iranian nuclear deal forged under the Obama administration, but stopped short of ending the international agreement, instead giving Congress 60 days to take a tougher approach toward Tehran’s lawless behavior. “We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout,” Mr. Trump said. “Iran is not living up to the spirit of the deal.” In an address from the White House, the president also said he’s directing the Treasury Department to sanction Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps over its support...

It's tempting to give into doom and gloom when we think of North Korea policy. The rapid advances in Pyongyang's weapons technology, coupled with its provocative propaganda about the supposedly impending devastation of America, are enough to make many lose hope for any solution to the current crisis. President Trump, of course, plays a prominent role in that despair. Trump once offered a relatively optimistic view of how he'd deal with Kim Jong Un, whom he described as a “pretty smart cookie” he would be “honored” to meet. But Trump's sanguine mood about North Korea has apparently vanished. To him,...

In May, Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist preacher from Texas perhaps best known for attacking Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, stood among a host of Christian ministers in the White House Blue Room and addressed President Trump. “Mr. President, we’re going to be your most loyal friends,” Jeffress said then. That prediction was accurate. At some of Trump’s lowest moments over the past few months, conservative religious leaders have materialized at the White House to literally lay hands on him in prayer. The photos of these moments have a powerful resonance for many American Christians who are steeped in a fundamentalist...

arties don't descend into vicious civil wars when things are going well for them. So the fact that it's happening now to the GOP tells you a lot about what Republicans are facing, even though they control the White House, Congress, and a majority of state houses and governorships. They are beginning to tear themselves apart over the question of who is to blame for their current difficulties, with one side saying it's the fault of a feckless establishment that is insufficiently loyal to President Trump, and the other side saying — mostly sotto voce, but occasionally out loud —...

New tremors felt as EARTHQUAKE hits North Korea test site - Nuclear program AT RISK A SERIES of new tremors and landslides have hit North Korea after an earthquake was recorded last night which could cause the collapse of the hermit kingdom’s nuclear bomb test site. By VICKIIE OLIPHANT PUBLISHED: 07:56, Fri, Oct 13, 2017 | UPDATED: 11:01, Fri, Oct 13, 2017 Experts suggest the quake, which measured 2.9 on the Richter scale, could mean the region has be destabilised by the country’s September 3 hydrogen bomb test, which caused a 6.3 magnitude earthquake And they warned the Punggye-ri nuclear...

For Democrats, the warning shots are coming thick and fast. “More than half of Americans don’t think Donald Trump is fit to serve as president, yet he has a clear path to winning reelection,” Doug Sosnik, who served as President Bill Clinton’s political director, wrote in the Washington Post last week. “Are Democrats Headed for a McGovern Redux?” Alan Greenblatt asked in Politico on Oct. 9. On the same day, a New York Magazine headline declared: “No One Should Rule Out a Trump Re-election in 2020.” What can Democrats do? A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this month documented...

A top Democrat pollster warned Thursday that surveys showing President Donald Trump with low approval ratings make the same mistakes as those last year that predicted a massive victory for Hillary Clinton. "The polls that failed to detect the full strength of President Trump on Election Day continue to underestimate the president's support for the job he is doing, paying way too much attention to the Twitter wars and ignoring the public support for many of the actions he is undertaking," wrote Mark Penn, a pollster for former President Bill Clinton and chief strategist for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. "Polls...

The Department of Health and Human Services has published a draft of a new strategic plan that states in its introduction that life begins at conception. The personhood of the unborn child is central to the abortion debate — as even the justice who wrote the landmark Roe v. Wade opinion has acknowledged — because, if established in law, it would nullify a “right” to abortion. The largely overlooked HHS strategic plan for 2018-22 states the agency “accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life,...

In response to a Judicial Watch lawsuit, the State Department claims in a legal document that it has no records involving refugee travel loans that the agency gives foreigners overseas to buy plane tickets to fly to the United States. The program is operated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental group that assists refugees worldwide with hundreds of millions of dollars from Uncle Sam. The money is channeled through the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM). In fiscal year 2016 the State Department gave IOM  $477,257,564, according to the agency’s report on contributions to...

Congress was warned Thursday that North Korea is capable of attacking the U.S. today with a nuclear EMP bomb that could indefinitely shut down the electric power grid and kill 90 percent of "all Americans" within a year. At a House hearing, experts said that North Korea could easily employ the "doomsday scenario" to turn parts of the U.S. to ashes. In calling on the Pentagon and President Trump to move quickly to protect the grid, the experts testified that an explosion of a high-altitude nuclear bomb delivered by a missile or satellite "could be to shut down the U.S....

President Donald Trump said Saturday he will not go ahead with his campaign promise to move the American embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem, until after he pushes for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Saying” I wanna give it a shot before I even think about moving the embassy to Jerusalem. “ First, President Trump should know that there is exactly zero chance for any so-called "peace deal" to be forged while the Palestinian Authority monetarily compensates terrorists who kill Jews and names squares, streets, schools and summer camps after these so-called martyrs. Second, the Palestinian Arabs desire East Jerusalem, including the...

RUSH: There’s something I have to observe as a setup. I don’t know if you people have seen this or not. I’ve seen it twice now. Two different stories, one of them from a supposedly conservative columnist who never was and is now demonstrated that she isn’t. That would be Jennifer Rubin. People are beginning to invoke perhaps, they say, the necessity of the 25th Amendment. Do you know what the 25th Amendment is? The 25th Amendment basically is the cabinet gets together and votes on whether or not the president is competent to serve, and if not, they vote...

President Donald Trump is expected to announce Friday that he won’t certify that Iran is complying with the 2015 international nuclear agreement and will take Tehran to task more broadly for practices ranging from missile tests to support of violent groups, U.S. officials said. The refusal to certify Iran’s compliance doesn’t mean the U.S. will pull out of the deal, the officials added, and Mr. Trump isn’t expected to ask Congress to re-impose economic sanctions that had been lifted as part of the agreement. But it could send the U.S. down a road of trying to change a deal that...

Press Statement Heather Nauert Department Spokesperson Washington, DC October 12, 2017 On October 12, 2017, the Department of State notified UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova of the U.S. decision to withdraw from the organization and to seek to establish a permanent observer mission to UNESCO. This decision was not taken lightly, and reflects U.S. concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO. The United States indicated to the Director General its desire to remain engaged with UNESCO as a non-member observer state in order to contribute U.S. views, perspectives...

RUSH: Something dramatic, crucial, and extraordinary has just happened, ladies and gentlemen. It just happened mere moments before this program began. The timing certainly not coincidental. It happened at the White House. It involved the president of the United States and a pen. And what happened was a first serious slice taken out of Obamacare. Despite Senator John McCain’s best efforts to thwart President Trump and preserve this boondoggle, the president’s triumphs here at this stage. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: So let’s go to the audio sound bites, you tell me what you hear. This is the signing ceremony today, executive...

This may seem like an abstruse parliamentary maneuver -- and it is -- but Mitch McConnell just escalated the judicial wars in a minor but meaningful way. If frustrated conservatives want the GOP Senate majority to " start acting like one ," McConnell's decision eliminates a lever Democrats have been using to stymie some of President Trump's judicial picks. In that sense, he's very much acting like a majority leader; a Democratic one. Try not to let your eyes glaze over as you read the details of this move, which involves dramatically reducing the power of so-called "blue slips"...

The unemployment rate for African-Americans fell to a 17-year low in September, and the rates for all other major racial and ethnic groups also dropped.

President Donald Trump is triggering liberals and would-be warriors running the Hashtag Resistance grift. He’s obliquely floated the idea of using the IRS as a political tool against the National Football League because black athletes won’t give in to his bullying. He’s successfully cajoled ESPN into chastising and censoring Jemele Hill. His ranting has emboldened Jerry Jones into keeping his players upright for the national anthem–and the rest of the NFL may follow suit. *snip* But enough about Trump’s verbal barrages. His attacks only work because his enemies are cowards, stupid, or pretending. Oftentimes those attacks are the smooth-brained ravings...

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to weaken the Obamacare law and make it easier for Americans to buy bare-bones health insurance plans, but the action faces possible legal challenges. Stymied in Congress by the failure of Senate Republicans to pass legislation to dismantle Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, Trump’s order marks his administration’s latest effort to undermine the law without action by lawmakers. Trump’s order gives people more access to plans that do not cover essential health benefits such as maternity and newborn care, prescription drugs, and mental health and addiction treatment....

This event occurred in the area of the previous North Korean Nuclear tests. The event has earthquake like characteristics, however, we cannot conclusively confirm at this time the nature (natural or human-made) of the event. The depth is poorly constrained and has been held to 5 km by the seismologist. The Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) is the sole organization in the U.S. federal government whose mission is to detect and report technical data from foreign nuclear explosions.