Free Republic

WASHINGTON — For generations, official American documents have been meticulously preserved and protected — from the era of quills and parchment to boxes of paper to the cloud, safeguarding snapshots of the government and the nation for posterity. Now, the Trump administration has sought to expand the executive branch’s power to shield from public view key administration initiatives. Officials have used apps like Signal that can auto-delete messages containing sensitive information rather than retaining them for record-keeping. And they have shaken up the National Archives leadership. To historians and archivists, it points to the possibility that President Trump will leave...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine won’t enter peace talks with Russia until it has security guarantees against another offensive. Zelenskyy added Friday’s contentious spat with President Donald Trump was “not good for both sides.” But Zelenskyy said that Trump — who insists Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to end the three-year grinding war — needs to understand that Ukraine can’t change attitudes toward Russia on a dime.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump upended three years of U.S. policy toward Ukraine on Wednesday, saying that he and Russian leader Vladimir Putin had agreed to begin negotiations on ending the war following a sudden prisoner swap.Trump said in a social media post that he and Putin held a lengthy phone call and committed to “work together, very closely” to bring the conflict to an end and would meet in person, including perhaps in each other’s countries.Trump subsequently announced that he'd also spoken with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but only after his talk with Putin. After the calls, White...

President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration has already had “very serious” discussions with Russia about its war in Ukraine and that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin could soon take “significant” action toward ending the grinding conflict. “We will be speaking, and I think will perhaps do something that’ll be significant,” Trump said in exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. “We want to end that war. That war would have not started if I was president.” Trump did not say who from his administration has been in contact with the Russians but insisted the two sides were...

FLETCHER, N.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump has ended the federal security detail for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who advised him on the COVID-19 pandemic, a person familiar with the matter said Friday. ... A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues, said that Fauci’s federal security detail was ended on Thursday and that he has since hired private security. (Excerpt)

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday he’d like to see Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations increase the number of Palestinian refugees they are accepting from the Gaza Strip — potentially moving out enough of the population to “just clean out” the war-torn area to create a virtual clean slate.During a 20-minute question-and-answer session with reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump also said he’s ended his predecessor’s hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. That lifts a pressure point that had been meant to reduce civilian casualties during Israel’s war with Hamas in...

PHOENIX (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday will make her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee to confront head-on one of her biggest vulnerabilities ahead of the November election. She is scheduled to appear in Douglas, Arizona, as former President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans pound Harris relentlessly over the Biden administration’s record on migration and fault the vice president for spending little time visiting the border during her time in the White House Immigration and border security are top issues in Arizona, the only battleground state that borders Mexico and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — At the top of his first speech as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz turned to Vice President Kamala Harris and declared, “Thank you for bringing back the joy.” The next day, Harris took the theme a step further, branding the Democratic ticket “joyful warriors.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — At the top of his first speech as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz turned to Vice President Kamala Harris and declared, “Thank you for bringing back the joy.” The next day, Harris took the theme a step further, branding the Democratic ticket “joyful warriors.” Contrast that with former President Donald Trump, who opened a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida a few days later by saying, “We have a lot of bad things coming up,” and predicting the U.S. could fall into an economic depression unseen since the dark days of 1929 or...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The video shared by former President Donald Trump features horror movie music and footage of migrants purportedly entering the U.S. from countries including Cameroon, Afghanistan and China. Shots of men with tattoos and videos of violent crime are set against close-ups of people waving and wrapping themselves in American flags. “They’re coming by the thousands,” Trump says in the video, posted on his social media site. “We will secure our borders. And we will restore sovereignty.” In his speeches and online posts, Trump has ramped up anti-immigrant rhetoric as he seeks the White House a third time,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kevin McCarthy spent years raising mountains of Republican campaign cash, flying around the country to recruit top candidates in key districts and painstakingly building political relationships as he worked his way toward becoming speaker of the House. Now that he’s been ousted from the post after less than nine months, some in the GOP are wondering if anyone can take his place as a fundraising dynamo and party builder. snip “Nobody can raise money like him,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D. “And no matter who is the next speaker of the House, none of them can do...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The Democratic Party on Saturday approved reordering its 2024 presidential primary, replacing Iowa with South Carolina in the leadoff spot as part of a major shake-up meant to empower Black and other minority voters critical to its base of support. Although more changes are possible later this year, the formal endorsement by the Democratic National Committee during its meeting in Philadelphia is an acknowledgement that the start of the 2024 primary will look very different from the one in 2020. Hundreds of party stalwarts climbed to their feet and cheered after the easy passage by voice vote....

“Enough, enough,” President Joe Biden exclaimed over and over Thursday night, as he delivered an impassioned address to the nation imploring Congress to take action against gun violence after mass shootings he said had turned schools, supermarkets and other everyday places into “killing fields.” If legislators fail to act, he warned, voters should use their “outrage” to turn it into a central issue in November’s midterm elections. [Snip] “How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” Biden asked after last week’s shootings by an 18-year-old gunman, who killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tearfully embracing a history-making American moment, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said Friday her confirmation as the first Black woman to the Supreme Court showed the progress of America, declaring, ″We’ve made it — all of us.” Jackson delivered emotional remarks on the sunny White House South Lawn a day after the Senate approved her nomination, saying, it was a moment the entire country could be proud of. “We have come a long way toward perfecting our union,” she said. “In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rising gas prices pose a fresh election year challenge for President Joe Biden. He’s balancing concerns about costs at the pump in the U.S. against calls from both parties to step up penalties on Russian President Vladimir Putin following his invasion of Ukraine. In announcing a ban on U.S. imports of Russian oil on Tuesday, Biden was blunt in warning that while the move would hurt Putin, “there will be a cost as well here in the United States.” He sought to avoid being blamed for that by dubbing it “Putin’s price hike.” Later, while arriving on...

WASHINGTON - Tom Perez was a guest on a Spanish-language talk radio show in Las Vegas last year when a caller launched into baseless complaints about both parties, urging Latino listeners to not cast votes at all. The effort showed how social media and other technology can be leveraged to spread misinformation so quickly that those trying to stop it cannot keep up. There were signs that it worked as Donald Trump swung large numbers of Latino votes in the 2020 presidential race in some areas that had been Democratic strongholds. Videos and pictures were doctored. Quotes were taken out...

It doesn’t quite have the ring of “Morning in America” and “I Like Ike.” But the phrase “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” is getting an unlikely moment in the spotlight as President Donald Trump has taken a detour into the politics of dementia three months before the election. Trump, 74, attempted to demonstrate his mental fitness by reciting five words - in order, importantly - over and over in a television interview broadcast Wednesday night. The Republican president said that collection of nouns, or ones like them, was part of a cognitive test he had aced while declaring that his...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden said Friday night that he’s begun receiving intelligence briefings as he warned that Russia, China and other adversaries were attempting to undermine the upcoming U.S. election in November. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee wasn’t specific and offered no evidence while addressing a virtual fundraiser with more than 200 attendees. But, in the process, he confirmed receiving classified briefings after saying as recently as late last month that he wasn’t getting them but might request one about reports of Russian bounties being offered on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. “We know from before, and I guarantee you...

Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer on Friday unveiled an immigration proposal seeking to make immigrants fleeing the effects of climate change eligible for legal entry into the United States. Like a lot of his White House rivals, Steyer is promising to use executive action to reinstate Obama administration protections for people brought to the country illegally as children. He’d do the same to nullify President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban and end the separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border. The billionaire environmental activist from California also would seek to decriminalize illegal border crossings and work with Congress to approve...

Facing thousands of cheering supporters in the nation’s largest city, Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren on Monday decried President Donald Trump as “corruption in the flesh” and outlined her plans to root out corruption in the White House, Congress and courts. “Corruption has put our planet at risk. Corruption has broken our economy. And corruption is breaking our democracy,” said Warren, a Massachusetts senator who has emerged as a leading presidential contender. While aggressive, the message was a familiar one. Warren has embraced corruption as a central campaign theme from the beginning of her 2020 presidential bid. […] “Giant corporations...