Free Republic

As the president tries to send in the National Guard, a phalanx of conservative influencers is working to support his claim that Portland is burning. PORTLAND, Ore. — During the four hours Nick Sortor sat in jail on the morning of Oct. 3, the conservative influencer wondered if anyone even knew he’d been arrested. He had no cellphone. He could make local calls, but he didn’t know anyone’s number in Portland. Outside, though, his online allies were blaring the news: A right-wing journalist — and not the leftists who assaulted him at an ICE protest — had been arrested by...

Government shutdowns are a familiar autumn rite of dysfunctional government. But this one is different from any that have come before. That makes it a harder test of both sides’ resolve and discipline. President Donald Trump is reveling in a legally shaky plan to employ the shutdown to punish his enemies — or more accurately, their constituents. The administration has put a halt on tens of billions of federal dollars that are going to blue states, including roughly $18 billion for New York’s subway and Hudson Tunnel projects. Not coincidentally, those are in the hometown of the Democratic leaders of...

After months of emergency rulings, the justices will be asked to render final verdicts on economic and immigration policies at the core of Trump’s presidency. The Supreme Court and President Donald Trump are headed for a reckoning. After months of terse emergency rulings that largely avoided major confrontations with the new administration, the justices will open their new term on Monday faced with the need to render full, final verdicts on policies at the core of Trump’s presidency. “It really is going to be a showdown,” said Jennifer Nou, a law professor at the University of Chicago. “So many of...

Four top prosecutors have been forced out of the Eastern District of Virginia amid Trump’s push to charge political opponents.Lawyers inside the high-profile U.S. attorney’s office prosecuting former FBI director James B. Comey are unnerved by what they see as an unprecedented push by President Donald Trump to inject politics into their staffing and charging decisions, according to three people familiar with the matter, a strategy they say could jeopardize national security investigations. The Justice Department in recent days fired two longtime prosecutors who had risen to leadership positions within the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia,...

The high court will also hear arguments about overturning a 90-year-old precedent that allowed Congress to create independent agencies.The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to fire the sole remaining Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission, the latest victory in his aggressive push to exert greater control over the federal bureaucracy. The justices overturned a lower-court injunction that reinstated Rebecca Slaughter to her position with the agency that oversees antitrust and consumer protection issues while litigation over her removal works its way through the courts. The ruling — while provisional — is significant because the...

Recently declassified documents indicate that people close to former FBI Director James Comey and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff were connected to leaks of classified information to prominent reporters designed to portray Donald Trump and his allies as being in league with Russia. Reporters from the New York Times and Washington Post shared a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for articles that used classified leaks to advance the Russigate hoax. Columbia University, Photo by Eileen BarrosoWritten in 2017, the FBI documents expose how selected Washington reporters, including Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post and Michael Schmidt of the New York Times, scored a...

The Supreme Court has already expanded President Donald Trump’s authority in a string of emergency rulings, but he’s signaling in his firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and other issues likely headed to the court that he continues to seek broader powers for the executive branch. The cases could serve as major tests of how much further the nation’s high court is willing to go to bless the president’s assertion of executive authority. They differ from previous showdowns because of the sheer magnitude of the authority Trump is seeking to wield and because he wants greater control over powers...

The result, legal experts say, is an escalation in the way Trump officials seek to penalize, remove or even jail adversaries.President Donald Trump’s move to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook on Monday was the latest illustration of his administration’s surprising new weapon against its enemies: their own mortgages.Trump and other officials raised allegations of mortgage fraud last week against Cook, a prominent economist put on the Fed board by President Joe Biden. The Justice Department is investigating the claims now, and Trump says the allegations alone are enough for him to push her out of her seat. Additionally, the...

President Donald Trump’s crusade against crime in the nation’s capital has resulted in more than 450 arrests since Aug. 7, the White House announced Tuesday morning. Those arrests, fueled by an increase in federal agents on city streets, run the gamut of charges, from murder and assault to driving under the influence. But a full picture about who has been arrested, where, for what and by whom is not yet clear. Every day, the White House issues a summary of the previous night’s operation, including the number of arrests and some examples of arresting causes. Numbers of illegal firearms seized...

Curiously, Brennan left no way for future investigators to confirm or deny its existence.In June 2017, well on their way to a Pulitzer for national reporting, the stenographers at the Washington Post published a lengthy, breathless article about an extraordinary message delivered to the White House in early August 2016. According to the Post, CIA Director John Brennan had sent an “intelligence bombshell” directly to President Barack Obama, an “eyes only” report. So sensitive was the report that Brennan kept it out of the President’s Daily Brief and insisted it “be returned immediately after it was read.” The report was...

Redistricting reform could die as it becomes another polarizing and partisan blood sport.David Daley is author of “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” and “Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections.”The 2026 midterms might not be decided by tariffs, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings or even Sydney Sweeney’s divisive American Eagle ad — but by gerrymandering. Just a handful of seats separate the two parties, and first Republicans and now Democrats are angling for more before votes are cast.Texas Republicans stand ready to adopt a new map that could award them as many as five additional...

Throughout President Donald Trump’s political career, Rupert Murdoch has played the role of a scold and a cheerleader. He has been a target, and frequent beneficiary, of Trump’s whims. But Trump’s recent lawsuit against the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal tests their mutually beneficial bond. On Friday, one day after the Journal published a story alleging that Trump wrote a “bawdy” birthday letter to financier and deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, Trump sued the Journal, the two authors of the story and a raft of corporate overseers including Murdoch, whose family trust controls the Journal’s parent company and that of its...

Widespread, abrupt terminations have left Justice Department and FBI employees wondering if they will be next, people familiar with the matter say.The Trump administration is firing and pushing out employees across the Justice Department and FBI, often with no explanation or warning, creating rampant speculation and fear within the workforce over who might be terminated next, according to multiple people with knowledge of the removals who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. Some people are simply fired, delivered a notice signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi that cites the broad powers afforded to the president in the...

The Director’s Initiative Group has expressed an interest in gaining access to emails and chat logs of the largest U.S. intelligence agencies to root out “weaponization,” according to multiple people familiar with the effort.A special team created by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has expressed a desire to gain access to emails and chat logs of the largest U.S. spy agencies with the aim of using AI tools to ferret out what the administration deems as efforts to undermine its agenda, according to several people familiar with the matter.The mission of the Director’s Initiative Group, or DIG, is to...

A new culture of secrecy in government is taking root – among career staffers and new political appointees alike.At the Department of Veterans Affairs, some employees had to sign nondisclosure agreements before reviewing plans for firings and organizational shake-ups. At the Administration for Children and Families, career staff were told not to respond in writing to panicky grant recipients whose funding had been shut off to avoid a “paper trail,” one employee said.And at the Environmental Protection Agency, several months after Elon Musk began requiring federal workers to submit weekly emails detailing five things they’d accomplished, some managers began calling...

Defying the anti-immigrant trend in the U.S., Spain is reaping economic benefits by granting citizenship to tens of thousands of newly-arrived workers.MADRID — When night falls on the other side of the Atlantic, her 32-year-old cousin, a house cleaner in New York, huddles inside a dim basement apartment, terrified of ICE raids. But in a burgeoning quarter of the Spanish capital, where immigrant-staffed restaurants tempt newcomers with Dominican chicharrones and Venezuelan empanadas, Edith Chimbo sat in the sunlight, musing about the Spanish Dream. “My cousin told me, ‘Go to Spain’” said Chimbo, 22, who landed in Madrid earlier this year...

Legal experts questioned the president’s response to unrest in Los Angeles, saying the military personnel involved will face strict limitations under the law.President Donald Trump’s order to deploy 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles is unprecedented, relying on an unorthodox use of a law aimed at quelling serious domestic unrest or an attack on the United States by a foreign power, some legal experts said Sunday.Trump invoked a section of the Armed Forces Act that allows the president to bypass a governor’s authority over the National Guard and call those troops into federal service when he considers it...

For decades, the federal government has used data analysis to ferret out race and sex discrimination, winning court cases and reaching settlements in housing, education, policing and across American life. Now the Trump administration is working to unwind those same cases.In recent weeks, the Justice Department backed out of an agreement with an Atlanta bank accused of systematically discouraging Black and Latino home buyers from applying for loans. The Education Department terminated an agreement with a South Dakota school district where Native American students were disciplined at higher rates than their White peers. And federal prosecutors have dropped several racial...

Moscow’s advantage on the Ukraine battlefield is waning, experts say. But President Donald Trump seems disinclined to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin to engage in ceasefire talks.Russia’s battlefield strength in Ukraine has started to wane and it could run into serious shortages of manpower and weaponry by next year, even as President Donald Trump retreats from pressure on Moscow to end the war, according to senior U.S. and European officials and military experts. In recent days, Trump appears to have abandoned the threat of harsh financial sanctions he repeated as recently as two weeks ago if Moscow doesn’t agree...

Critics say the administration is breaking the law and sidestepping the rulemaking process that presidents of both parties have routinely followed.At the Transportation Department, enforcement of pipeline safety rules has plunged to unprecedented lows since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.Trump recently ordered Energy Department staff to stop enforcing water conservation standards for showerheads and other household appliances. And at one Labor Department division, his appointees have instructed employees to halt most work related to antidiscrimination laws.Across the government, the Trump administration is trying a new tactic for gutting federal rules and policies that the president dislikes: simply stop enforcing them.“The conscious...