Free Republic

Hostility toward the US president is somewhat lower in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and PortugalPARIS, December 4. /TASS/. Almost one in two EU citizens surveyed perceive US President Donald Trump as "Europe’s enemy," according to the results of a poll of 9,500 residents in nine EU countries conducted in late November and published in the French magazine Le Grand Continent. "According to the latest figures, Trump is largely perceived as Europe’s enemy. On average, 48% of EU citizens surveyed see him this way, while 10% consider him a friend [of Europe] and 40% view him as ‘neither friend nor foe,’"...

Newsom readies a presidential run while presiding over a state buckling under sky-high costs, mass exodus, and crumbling basics—leaving little to brag about beyond attacking Trump. As California Governor Gavin Newsom gears up to run for president, what in the world will he run on? Californians know that Newsom will not boast, “I will do for America what I have done to California!” Why not? Count the reasons. California’s astronomical gas prices and taxes remain the highest in the continental U.S. Ditto the state’s trifecta of the highest electricity rates, the costliest home prices, and the fourth-highest home insurance costs....

Tuesday is a big day for Tennessee, and for the closely divided US House of Representatives. Democrats have been vowing to turn red states blue, and last month’s elections gave them some hopeful signs, thanks largely to revved-up urban voters. This week a special election in Tennessee’s 7th District, pitting GOP military veteran Matt Van Epps against far-left candidate Aftyn Behn, will show them just how far their base can take them. Going by conventional wisdom, this should be a walkover for Van Epps: The district leans Republican by 10 percentage points, and Van Epps’ policy positions echo those of...

US President Donald Trump warned Israel via social media on Monday against destabilizing Syria and its new leadership, shortly before holding a phone conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It is very important that Israel maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria, and that nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, days after a deadly operation by Israeli forces in the south of the country. Trump said he was “very satisfied” with Syria’s current performance under former Islamist rebel President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who made a historic...

Putin gambled on Western hesitation, and now a war born of miscalculation grinds on because neither Moscow nor NATO is willing—or able—to force a decisive end. Why did the war in Ukraine start in 2021?As in 2008 and 2012, but unlike 2017 to 2021, Vladimir Putin sensed an American president would not or could not deter him, so he invaded a former Soviet republic. Under past presidents, Putin saw no downside to grabbing Ossetia, the Donbas, and Crimea. Putin was also led to believe the West or Joe Biden would not challenge him following the recent humiliating U.S. withdrawal from...

I absolutely love seeing the left-wingers and corporate media squirm and whine about deportations, I really do. Every little story about how someone who “never did nothing to nobody” that ends with someone here unlawfully makes me smile. “No one is above the law,” Democrats routinely say without irony, which is fighting harder than they fight for anyone other than child genital mutilation to keep gang members, wife beaters and any other kind of illegal alien from being subjected to our laws. They hate you, they hate us, they hate everything and want to see whatever they can’t control be...

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett says he will support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for a pardon if it is conditioned on the premier’s retirement from politics. “In recent years, the State of Israel has been led into chaos and to the brink of a civil war that threatens the very existence of the state,” Bennett writes on X. “In order to rescue Israel from the chaos, I will support a binding arrangement that includes a respectful retirement from political life alongside the end of the trial,” he says. “That way, we can let it go, unite, and rebuild the...

Whatever happened to Britain, or the UK, or England, or whatever they’re calling it? We can’t even agree on what it’s called. But what happened to England, the England that, if you’re over 50, you grew up learning about, the England that controlled the world, the England that ran the largest empire in human history at the end of the first world war? Britain, which is an island in a pretty inhospitable climate, controlled something like a quarter of the Earth’s surface – and not controlled in the way the United States controls the rest of the world with an...

...In the wake of the shooting, the mainstream media rushed to defend Afghans in the U.S., saying we shouldn’t “condemn” an entire population based on one man’s criminal actions...

When it comes to talking to Gen Z men the right is beginning to sound a bit like the left: You can’t get ahead. The whole world is stacked against you. You’re the real victim here. Podcaster Ben Shapiro recently said as much at a recent event, when he called out conservatives for inculcating young men with a “nihilistic” worldview rather than giving them the “tough talk” they need. “I think that the right is actually weirdly feminizing young men by giving them a victimology to buy into,” Shapiro said at the Jewish Leadership Conference. “This notion that you, as...

Americans should know we already gave socialism a chance. The only reason we get to celebrate Thanksgiving with lots of food is because the Pilgrims learned (the hard way) that socialism doesn’t work. When they came to America, they first tried sharing land. Gov. William Bradford decreed that each family would get an equal share of food, no matter how much they worked. The results were disastrous. Few Pilgrims worked hard, claiming “weakness and inability,” wrote Bradford. “Much was stolen.” The same plan in Jamestown led to starvation, the death of half the population, even cannibalism. Learning from their mistakes,...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump says he wants to “permanently pause migration” from poorer nations and is promising to seek to expel millions of immigrants from the United States by revoking their legal status. He is blaming immigrants for problems from crime to housing shortages as part of “social dysfunction” in America and demanding “REVERSE MIGRATION.”His most severe social media post against immigration since returning to the Oval Office in January came after the shooting Wednesday of two National Guard members who were patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital under his orders. One died and...

The shooting of two National Guard members the day before in Washington hung over President Trump’s Thanksgiving events at Mar-a-Lago, where he held a call with members of the military to thank them for their service on the holiday. At the beginning of the call, he revealed that one of the Guard members, Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, had died. “It’s just happened,” Mr. Trump said. “She was savagely attacked. She’s dead. Not with us.” The other victim, he said, was “fighting for his life.” Later, a White House official said that the president had spoken with the family of the...

A generation sidelined by debt, ideology, and stalled adulthood is drifting—but it won’t stay lost if society restores real opportunity, accountability, and purpose. TA generation sidelined by debt, ideology, and stalled adulthood is drifting—but it won’t stay lost if society restores real opportunity, accountability, and purpose. Zoomers rarely date, supposedly out of fear that they would have to grow up, take charge, and head a household. Yet the opposite, sympathetic generalization of Gen Z seems more accurate. All through K-12, young men, particularly white males, have been demonized for their “toxic masculinity” that draws accusations of sexism, racism, and homophobia....

The EU’s new plan to regulate speech, media, and elections.The European Union has just unveiled the so-called European Democracy Shield. The name, while promising, claims to “protect” democracy on the basis of two pillars which, on principle, should raise concerns: combating “disinformation” and “foreign interference.”To that end, the EU will create a new European Centre for Democratic Resilience, intended to collect data from Member States on information manipulation; foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI); and phenomena classified as disinformation. The same package also includes a European network of independent fact-checkers and a European Digital Media Observatory, which will be endowed...

The United States has designated the Cartel de los Soles (Spanish for Cartel of the Suns) - a group it alleges is headed by Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, and senior figures in his government - as a foreign terrorist organisation. Labelling an organisation as a terrorist group gives US law enforcement and military agencies broader powers to target and dismantle it. In recent months, the US has been ramping up pressure on Maduro, saying his government is illegitimate following last year's election, which was widely dismissed as rigged. The designation gives it another way to turn up the heat. But...

The organizers and volunteers have 96 days to gather the needed one million signatures A California Voter ID initiative looks likely to appear on the 2026 ballot with over 600,000 signatures, just short of the million signatures needed to qualify. The organizers and volunteers have 96 days to gather the remaining signatures for the initiative to appear before the voters and have expressed confidence they will gather the million signatures within the next few months. According to Assemblyman Carl DeMaio’s Reform California, the organization spearheading the effort, “the ballot initiative is a state constitutional amendment to impose a Voter ID...

IRS Study shows California is losing a taxpayer every minute to states like Florida, Texas, and North Carolina California Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing a retroactive billionaire tax targeting the roughly 220 billionaires residing in California in 2025, ignoring that these individuals are the most financially mobile and can live anywhere. Expecting them to remain in the state as if they will happily and willingly hand over even more of their wealth surely must be facetious. SEIU is sponsoring the “2026 Billionaires Tax Act.” The measure, recently listed on the Attorney General’s website, would impose a one-time 5% tax on...

Summary For a serving president, Trump is unusually engaged in midterm strategy Trump tries to pivot to affordability, urging Republicans to highlight tax cuts Democratic control of the House could re-open risk of impeachment proceedings WASHINGTON, Nov 24 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump isn't on the ballot in next November's midterm elections, but he’s plunging into them with his own presidency at stake. He's calling candidates, making early endorsements, shaping strategy and pushing economic messaging to try to keep Congress in Republican hands, according to nine Republicans involved in election strategy. As early as this summer, 18 months before Election...

Democrats now celebrate the very nullificationist tactics they once decried, embracing a neo-Confederate defiance of federal authority to undermine a president they despise. Is Jeff Davis the Model?Who is the real, or fictional, inspiration for the new insurrectionary wing of the Democrat Party? The fictitious Hollywood insurrectionist, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “James Mattoon Scott” (Burt Lancaster), who in the 1964 film Seven Days in May attempted to overthrow the presidency? Or perhaps Jefferson Davis? He ultimately ordered the attack by South Carolina state forces against the federal garrison at Fort Sumter, which ignited the Civil War. Or...