Free Republic

Current and former officials say the crackdown is creating a climate of fear and harming national security.National security agencies across the Trump administration are ramping up investigations into alleged leaks to the news media, in some cases using polygraph tests that current and former officials say are creating a climate of fear and intimidation.At FBI Director Kash Patel’s direction, the bureau in recent weeks has begun administering polygraphs to identify the source of information leaks, an FBI spokesperson said. The new use of polygraphs at the bureau, which are commonly known as “lie detector” tests, has not been previously reported.“The...

Democrats, after weeks of struggling to find a message that resonates with ordinary Americans while President Donald Trump dominates the news, are beginning to settle on one: the allegation that Trump and his allies are crippling Social Security. Former president Joe Biden used his first public comments since leaving office to criticize Trump’s handling of the popular program. Early Democratic ads are targeting Republican senators on Social Security. Democrats have visited Social Security offices around the country, sometimes getting turned away and going public. Senate Democrats have set up a “war room” to deliver the message...... Since Musk and DOGE...

The man behind the president’s tumultuous tariff policies has sought for decades to set off the ultimate trade war with China.One year ago, Peter Navarro sat in a federal prison in Miami, sending messages that he was a martyr for MAGA. He had begged for help paying legal bills that he said would reach $750,000.Now Navarro has a prime seat in the Oval Office, where he is an architect of President Donald Trump’s tariff policy — butting against the secretaries of treasury and commerce and Elon Musk, who called him a “moron.”Navarro’s journey to one of the most powerful positions...

PBS NEWSHOUR: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join William Brangham to discuss the week in politics, including President Trump's continued faceoff with the courts, if Republicans will begin pushing back against the president and Harvard rejecting Trump's demands. David Brooks, New York Times: What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal. "The core argument is that Trump is really about amassing power," Brooks said of his column. "And anything that might potentially restrain his power, he will destroy. And that includes the court systems and anything part...

Two weeks ago, the sharp-tongued comedian Bill Maher had dinner with Donald Trump. Maher emerged from the meeting thoroughly charmed. During the opening monologue on his show on Friday, he described Trump as engaged and even likable. Trump made him feel comfortable and listened to. In their conversation, which included “an amazing tour of the whole house,” Trump remained empathetic. “He didn’t get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public,” Maher recalled. “Why can’t we get the guy I met to be the public guy?” It’s unfortunate that Maher allowed himself to get played like this.In...

The Justice Department has removed top national security officials as part of a widespread purge of senior career leaders across the law enforcement agency, according to people familiar with the decisions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues. The transferring of at least three national security officials amounts to a complete gutting of leadership in the highly sensitive National Security Division, which is charged with working with the FBI and other intelligence agencies to protect the nation from threats. It is unclear if the national security officials were provided a reason for their removals. They were...

“$1.9 billion to recently-created decarbonization of homes committee, headed up, and we know she’s involved, just at the last moment the money was passed over, by a woman named Stacey Abrams. Have you ever heard of her?” — President Donald Trump, in an address to a joint session of Congress, March 4 We fact-checked 26 claims in Trump’s address on Tuesday night, but this one required more research to nail down. From Trump’s phrasing, it sounds like Stacey Abrams somehow got her hands on nearly $2 billion at the “last moment.” Abrams, of course, helped ensure Trump’s 2020 election loss...

At a mosque in the Bronx, African immigrants who had been regulars have stopped attending prayer services. At a church just outside Boston, where most congregants are of Haitian descent, roughly two-thirds of parishioners have vanished. At multiple Baptist congregations in the South, pastors are considering locking church doors once services begin.Their common fear: That immigration agents will bust in and arrest congregants mid-prayer.That’s because President Donald Trump recently gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement the go-ahead to conduct raids at houses of worship. That directive is now the target of two major lawsuits, the second of which was filed Tuesday...

Can President Donald Trump be stopped?More precisely, since the Republican-controlled Congress seems more willing to enable than to restrain, to what extent will the legal system be capable of halting his barrage of executive orders and other questionable actions? Can blue states and private plaintiffs fight back with lawsuits — or is the gusher of Trumpian excesses too overwhelming to mount an effective counterattack?And, most critically, are the courts — ultimately the Supreme Court — more inclined to accede to Trump’s inflated conception of presidential authority or to limit his overreach? If they dare to frustrate his will, will Trump...

No president in history has caused more damage to the nation more quickly. As we enter Week 3 of President Donald Trump’s second term, the chaos and disruption of his first look quaint by comparison. The country survived Trump 1. Now, it faces a real threat that the harm he inflicts during his second term will be irreparable. The United States’ standing in the world, its ability to keep the country safe, the federal government’s fundamental capacity to operate effectively — all of these will take years to repair, if that can be achieved at all.This column will concentrate on...

At least six senior FBI leaders have been ordered to retire, resign or be fired by Monday, according to sources briefed on the matter, extending a purge that began last week at the Justice Department across the street from the FBI headquarters. The senior officials are at the executive assistant director level or special agent in charge level and include those who oversee cyber, national security and criminal investigations, the sources told CNN. Some were notified while Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, sat answering questions from senators for his confirmation hearing Thursday. Trump transition officials...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 🚨BREAKING: CBS is in talks about settling President Trump's $10B lawsuit over election interference after editing Kamala Harris's 60 minutes interview.

Wow, that was quick. The Washington Post has already taken to blaming President Donald Trump for America’s economic woes, except the new data they’re using as the basis of their argument reflected the disastrous Biden economy, not Trump’s. GDP growth slowed in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 2.3 percent, which was noticeably slower than expected and put a dent into a lot of the media brouhaha surrounding how turbo-tastic Bidenomics supposedly was. But Post economic reporter Abha Bhattarai, desperate to spin this as somehow Trump’s fault, blamed the quirk on the economy getting the heebie-jeebies over his policies, before...

With a blizzard of executive orders, President Donald Trump has jump-started an extraordinary plan to transform the federal government into a leaner operation packed with his loyalists. The fine print of those directives reveals how shrewdly the new administration is maneuvering — and sometimes outright ignoring — the arcane laws, rules and regulations that have long protected the civil service of 2.3 million from a political takeover. Trump has skirted Biden-era rules by essentially declaring them unlawful, used probationary periods to place masses of civil servants in limbo and issued a memo lifting restrictions on hiring temporary political appointees to...

The Justice Department has ordered the civil rights division to halt much of its investigative activity dating from the Biden administration and not pursue new indictments, cases or settlements, according to a memo sent to the temporary head of the division that was obtained by The Washington Post. The letter instructs Kathleen Wolfe — designated by the Trump administration as supervisor of the division — to ensure that civil rights attorneys do not file “any new complaints, motions to intervene, agreed-upon remands, amicus briefs, or statements of interest.” Cases that have already been filed would be subject to the discretion...

Fanell Sawyer keeps replaying in her head the morning she learned Donald Trump had won the election. She was at home in Georgia, ready to start another day working remotely in customer service for an insurance company, when her teenage daughter turned to her and uttered seven words that felt like a gut punch. “Mom,” she said, “This country doesn’t care about women.” ... { scrolling down to the real story } ... This weekend, demonstrators will travel to D.C. and cities across the country for the People’s March, organized by leading civil rights, racial justice and reproductive health organizations....

The fact that #Trump's past and current comments to #GavinNewsom are true does not seem to be of concern to #TamaraKeith, #LeanneCaldwell, or #NiaMalikaHenderson.

Biden inherited a mess. He leaves the U.S. in far better shape, at home and abroad.It is easy to forget how desperate things were on Jan. 20, 2021, when Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. became the 46th president of the United States.Just two weeks earlier, thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters had stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to keep Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory. The nation was at the height of the coronavirus pandemic; in that month, 3,000 Americans died daily from covid-19. There were newly developed, lifesaving vaccines, thanks to the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed...

When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) met with key Democrats last month to make her case to help lead a committee that will be critical in countering President-elect Donald Trump, she faced sharp questions from members of her party. As Ocasio-Cortez lobbied the powerful Steering Committee that decides panel assignments, Rep. Linda T. Sánchez (D-California) pressed her on her past decisions to endorse primary challengers against Democratic incumbents. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), one of the incumbents Ocasio-Cortez tried to defeat, followed up by asking why Democrats should elevate her given her previous animosity toward her less-liberal colleagues, according to two...

Both Russia and Ukraine have been escalating their bloody conflict, now past the 1,000-day mark, seeking maximum advantage before Jan. 20, when President-elect Donald Trump will take office and probably bring a different U.S. policy toward the war. For Russia, escalation is about saving face — expelling Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk region — and grabbing as much Ukrainian territory it can. For Ukraine, it’s a matter of surviving with its sovereignty and as much of its preinvasion territory as possible. Escalation might be a hard concept to grasp in a savage struggle that has led to an estimated 1...