Free Republic

The Postal Inspection Service recently joined a federal task force to locate undocumented immigrants using data from mail and packages, according to people familiar with the effort and records obtained by The Washington Post... The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has quietly begun cooperating with federal immigration officials to locate people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to two people familiar with the matter and documents obtained by The Washington Post — dramatically broadening the scope of the Trump administration’s government-wide mass deportation campaign...

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...

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...

A woman who fatally struck two children who were walking in a crosswalk to their elementary school in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in November 2023 has pleaded guilty to traffic misdemeanors with a maximum punishment of four months in jail. Olga Lugo Jiminez, 52, of Hyattsville, Maryland, was driving a van for an unlicensed school drop-off service when she hit the two children and one of their parents, according to court filings. …. In a statement, the Mbah family said they were pained by the result and felt it would send a message that negligent driving is not taken seriously,...

Washington Post employee Itai Ozderman, 35, was arrested after his Gaithersburg, MD home was raided by Montgomery County Police on February 22nd at around 6 a.m, according to court documents. Ozderman is charged with impersonating an ICE officer on several occasions throughout Falls Church, VA. When the warrant was served on Feb. 22 at Ozderman's home in the 100 block of Elmira Lane, court documents say 10 weapons, including handguns, assault rifles, and a shotgun, were recovered. Sources tell ABC7's Kevin Lewis that Ozderman impersonated an ICE officer throughout Falls Church, Va. on more than one occasion. According to sources,...

Four men accused of murder were executed by gunfire last Friday in crowded sports stadiums across Afghanistan. The Taliban leader defended these public killings as necessary under sharia law. That night, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem announced that the Trump administration would revoke temporary protected status (TPS) for Afghans who evacuated to the United States after their country fell to the Taliban in 2021. This sets the stage for more than 9,000 people to be deported, beginning May 20. A DHS spokeswoman says Noem made this decision based on a “review of the conditions in Afghanistan.” To claim...

Pete Buttigieg. Wes Moore. Gavin Newsom. Gretchen Whitmer. Stephen A. Smith!!!???!!??Since the November election, the ESPN commentator has been bashing Democratic leadership for losing to Donald Trump and floating himself as a potential 2028 candidate and savior for the party and the country. And Smith’s dalliance with politics isn’t one-sided. Pod Save America, Fox News, CNN, ABC News, the New Yorker and other major outlets have sought out Smith for his first takes on immigration, tariffs and other issues.President Stephen A. Smith? Has everyone gone crazy? Not completely. Many nonpartisan pundits and Democrats themselves think the party needs a leader...

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...

Barstool Sports founder and small business star Dave Portnoy has faced criticism from the Washington Post for his first-of-its-kind "One Bite" pizza festival, but, despite this strategic provocation and severe weather conditions, the celebration was a success. "It couldn't have gone better. It's our Woodstock moment with the rain. 5,000 people strong. Everyone had a great time. The vibes are actually probably higher because of the controversy surrounding it. So, yeah, it went great," Portnoy said during his Sunday appearance on "Fox & Friends Weekend." The "One Bite" pizza festival was a celebration planned by Portnoy himself to round up...

A senior executive who objected was marched out of his office and put on leave, while earlier warnings about the agency’s deaths database were ignored... Greg Pearre, who oversaw a staff of hundreds of technology experts, had pushed back on the Trump administration’s plan to move the migrants’ names into a Social Security death database, eliminating their ability to legally earn wages... ...on Thursday, the security guards in Pearre’s office told him it was time to leave.

Former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz sparked backlash Monday after she admitted a social media post that implied former President Joe Biden was dead “got her hopes up.”. The left-leaning firebrand has made her disdain for Biden clear, attacking his pro-Israel stance on the war in Gaza. A social media user seemingly shared her view, posting a black-and-white photo of Biden over the weekend and writing: “RIP Joe Biden 1942-2025…You were always a racist -–king monster, and will not be missed.” Lorenz shared the post on Sunday with a frowny face, adding: “This tweet got my hopes up.” Some social...

Somewhere on a grocery shelf, or in a restaurant, or on a food-factory floor in America, lurk bacteria that haven’t been detected yet. Perhaps E. coli, which is linked with food poisoning, or more of the cronobacter that led to infant illnesses, sparked a nationwide shortage of infant formula in 2022 and led to major reforms at the Food and Drug Administration.The task of finding those bacteria rests on FDA inspectors, whose jobs have been mostly preserved amid the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal government. But the people who help support those inspections haven’t fared so well. More...

Lee insists he's "famously" a very good Catholic. He's a moral person — his mother raised him right. And by his internal calculation, it's OK to shoplift from Whole Foods. Why? Because of Jeff Bezos.From about 2020 to 2022, Lee, a 20-something communications professional living in the Washington, DC, area, engaged in what he describes as "grand theft auto-ing" from his local Whole Foods store. He would cheat the scale at the hot bar, pocket spices, or take home four lemons in the self-checkout aisle while only declaring two. Lee has never shoplifted from anywhere else — not Safeway, not...

The president issued a new order Tuesday sanctioning yet another law firm, Jenner & Block. The result overall has been called an extraordinary threat to the constitutional rights of due process and legal representation, as well as a far weaker effort to challenge Trump’s actions in court than during his first term.President Donald Trump’s crackdown on lawyers is having a chilling effect on his opponents’ ability to defend themselves or challenge his actions in court, according to people who say they are struggling to find legal representation as a result of his challenges. Biden-era officials said they’re having trouble finding...

After a highly anticipated phone call in which Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to accept President Donald Trump’s offer for a full 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, the Kremlin on Wednesday extolled the trust between the two leaders as ushering in a “new world order.”Putin instead offered Trump a partial ceasefire — ending attacks on the Russian energy infrastructure being targeted by Ukraine’s long-range drones as well as Moscow’s strikes on Ukraine’s power grid — with the other issues delegated to working groups, creating the likelihood that peace efforts could become bogged down for months as Russia continues pushing into Ukraine.Trump’s...

The ruling paves the way for the discovery process, where Trump’s lawyers are seeking the board’s internal deliberations in its 2018 awards to the New York Times and Washington Post for Russia collusion coverage. A Florida circuit court judge has denied the Pulitzer Prize Board’s motion to delay President Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against them on presidential immunity grounds, opening the door for the discovery of internal deliberations. Trump sued the board in 2022 for defamation after it refused to retract prizes awarded in 2018 to The New York Times and The Washington Post staffs for their coverage of the...

A top political columnist for The Washington Post resigned today, accusing Post chief executive and publisher Will Lewis of killing her column that criticized owner Jeff Bezos's drive to overhaul the opinion pages to focus on his libertarian priorities. Post columnist and Associate Editor Ruth Marcus, who has worked at the paper for four decades, says she can no longer stay there. "Jeff's announcement that the opinion section will henceforth not publish views that deviate from the pillars of individual liberties and free markets threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what...

Soon after Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, acquired The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013, he assured its editors and reporters — myself included — that he would give us the freedom to do our jobs and “follow the story” without interference from him. At a 2016 Washington Post tech forum with Marty Baron, who was then executive editor, Bezos quoted a phrase he had heard from the legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward: “Democracy dies in darkness.” It was a perfect motto to advertise the mission of one of America’s most storied and respected news organizations — a...

Ukraine doesn’t actually have any commercial deposits of the rare earths that both Washington and Kyiv have hyped up. The country does not currently produce rare earths, which are a type of critical mineral, nor has it produced rare earths in recent decades. Kyiv only has Soviet-era rare-earth geological mapping, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war is certain to complicate any mining or processing efforts—all of which require years of hefty investments, even in countries that are not in war. “Mining is a long-term effort—so the United States may not yield benefits for another 20 years,” a report by the Center...

On the morning of March 10, I intend to take a shower, turn my face up to the spray and burble, “Thank God for the Guardian!” Not because I admire the left-wing politics of the British newspaper, where they seem to long for the days when the Brits’ income tax rate topped 90 percent and Nigel Farage hadn’t been born. No, March 10 will mark precisely one year since the Great Shower Debate ended. Or at least it ended for me when the Guardian published an article with the immortal headline “High shower pressure can help people save water, study...