Free Republic

Former President George W. Bush says he can’t remember if he said “that was some weird s***” after President Trump’s inauguration speech in January. He was asked about the alleged remark in an interview that aired on NPR’s “Morning Edition” Thursday. He does, however, clearly remember his awkward response to rain that day. “I wish I got the rain poncho on a little more cleanly,” Bush joked, referring to his struggle to put on a transparent poncho during the ceremony as it began to rain. “My daughters were aghast. ‘Dad, you’re a national tweet sensation. You’re trending,’ or whatever the...

President Donald Trump has won the first major battle in his war on illegal immigration, and he did it without building his wall. The victory was announced last week by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which released figures showing a 93 percent drop since December of parents and children caught trying to cross the Mexico border illegally. In December, 16,000 parents and children were apprehended; in March, a month in which immigration typically increases because of temperate weather, the number was just over 1,100. It was a remarkable decline - steeper than the 72 percent drop in overall apprehensions...

MIAMI - Uruguay’s banking crisis had already claimed Rosana Araujo’s savings when she and her family, tourist visas in hand, boarded a Miami-bound plane in Montevideo. She stayed in Miami after her visa expired, supporting herself on random jobs, cleaning homes or babysitting. “I feel lucky because I got here in a plane,” she said. “I feel lucky because I didn’t have to cross a desert.” While the national discussion on immigration focuses on securing the U.S.-Mexico border with a multibillion dollar wall, travelers such as Araujo who overstay their visits have become the main source of illegal immigration in...

Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because she was unpopular, not because she's a woman. Last week, at the 8th annual Women in the World Summit, Hillary Clinton linked her election loss to her success and ambition. She claimed, "the more successful and therefore ambitious a woman is, the less likable she becomes." Clinton certainly had a likability problem during her presidential campaign, but it was due to her untrustworthiness, which she never overcame in the polls with the American public. With her email scandal looming large over her campaign, she saw her support drop. The email scandal and the ensuing...

The body of a man, who witnesses said was tossed from a plane, landed on a hospital roof in Mexico’s northern Sinaloa state on Wednesday, according to a public health service official in the region which is home to notorious drug traffickers. Sinaloa’s deputy attorney general, Jesus Martin Robles, said a body found on the hospital roof showed injuries that appeared to be related to a strong impact. The public health service official said two more bodies were reported to have been found in the town, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) south of Culiacán, the state capital. Local media reported...

PHOENIX -Marco Tulio Coss learned heartbreaking news for his family Wednesday afternoon. He walked out of ICE headquarters in downtown Phoenix knowing his days in the United States were numbered. Thirty to be exact. "I don't have a criminal record,” he said. “I'm clean." His story is like many others: He has been here for 18 years, he has no criminal history other than a minor traffic stop, and he works on a permit issued by the same department that has now decided to kick him out of the country. His scheduled deportation date is May 12 at 10 a.m....

WADI ABADAHBA, Oman – Deep in the jagged red mountains of Oman, geologists are drilling in search of the holy grail of reversing climate change: an efficient and cheap way to remove carbon dioxide from the air and oceans. They are coring samples from one of the world's only exposed sections of the Earth's mantle to uncover how a spontaneous natural process millions of years ago transformed CO2 into limestone and marble. As the world mobilizes to confront climate change, the main focus has been on reducing emissions through fuel efficient cars and cleaner power plants. But some researchers are...

As President Donald Trump looks to curb the government's enforcement of climate regulations, experts are concerned about how the action might impact public health. "The current federal political climate in the United States bodes ill for the future of the world's climate and by extension for the health of people around the world, Americans included," said Dr. Mona Soofaty, director of the program on climate and health at George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication. Soofaty helped prepare a report, released last month by the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, that mapped how climate change threatens the...

A conservation group and an Arizona congressman have filed what they say is the first federal lawsuit against the proposed border wall. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Tucson by the Center for Biological Diversity and U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a southern Arizona Democrat. Wildlife conservationists say the wall would be detrimental to rare animals such as jaguars and ocelots that are known to traverse the international line. The lawsuit seeks to require the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to put together a report on construction of the wall and the environmental impact of expanded operations on the U.S.-Mexico border.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan's tax reform blueprint appears to be losing its status as the likely framework for the first major tax overhaul since 1986, with rival approaches emerging from the White House, Senate and other quarters in Congress. Congressional aides, lobbyists and analysts say the changing focus could delay passage of a tax bill until late 2017 or 2018, potentially foiling Republican efforts to score a legislative victory for President Donald Trump by August, following last month's failed bill to repeal and replace Obamacare health insurance. Like the healthcare bill, the House Republican tax blueprint stems from Ryan's...

Marie Harf, a Fox News contributor and former spokeswoman for Secretary of State John Kerry, scrambled on Wednesday to defend the Obama-era Syria deal from 2013, admitting it was not "perfect." Fox News host Bill Hemmer asked Harf whether she agreed with President Trump's decision to order a military strike against Syria last week. "I did. I thought it was a good response to President Assad's use of chemical weapons," Harf said. "What I'm more focused on now quite frankly is the strategy going forward and what happens next in Syria." Harf said that Congress did not give the Obama...

The FBI announced Wednesday it added an alleged gang member and illegal immigrant wanted in connection with a gruesome killing in New Jersey to its “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list. Walter Yovany Gomez and another man murdered fellow MS-13 gang member Julio Matute inside a Plainfield home in 2011, striking him in the head with a baseball bat, stabbing him 17 times in the back and slitting his throat with a screwdriver, law enforcement officials said. The killers may have suspected Matute was getting too close with a rival gang. When police tried to arrest Gomez, a Honduran national, he...

Jose Morales, a 23-year-old from Guatemala, allegedly shot and killed 20-year-old Mariano Gonzalez-Lopez after a fight outside the OK Corral night club, with two more men involved in the incident. Investigators say that the four men first started fighting over parking spaces, with Morales and others in his car leaving the parking lot while Gonzalez-Lopez and individuals in his car followed them. While the two cars full of men drove away, they each started throwing bottles and other objects at each other, before pulling over and physically fighting. That is when investigators say Gonzalez-Lopez hit beat Morales’ vehicle with a...

A 40-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico who had been deported from the U.S. was arrested Friday in Virginia on sex abuse charges involving a 12-year-old girl. Oscar Perez-Rangel faces charges including felony aggravated sexual battery. The abuse allegedly occurred between October and December 2016, Fox 5 reported. The girl was abused while at a daycare center operated by Perez-Rangel’s girlfriend, investigators said. “Perez-Rangel was previously removed from the U.S., and has felony convictions for attempted robbery, use of a firearm during the commission of a felony and illegal re-entry after removal,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement to...

The past eight years have not been kind to people who dispute that the climate is changing. Leading scientists strengthened the case that the earth is warming and humans are at fault, while the Obama administration prioritized fighting its effects. As with so much else, the election of President Trump has ushered in a new day. Since taking office, Trump has moved to gut Obama's signature climate change regulations, signed executive orders to aid the fossil fuel industry and installed a critic of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as its head. And yet to some of the strongest opponents of...

Major medical groups kept up the pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday to maintain funding Obamacare subsidies that are paid directly to insurers, warning that not doing so would destabilize the individual insurance markets that millions of people use to buy health insurance. House of Representatives Republicans sued the Obama administration for funding the subsidies, which they argue have to be appropriated by Congress. A federal judge in May 2016 ruled in favor of the Republicans, prompting an appeal by the Obama administration. The case is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia...

The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said. The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials. This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe...

Hillary Clinton will receive a consolation prize from one of her top supporters, Planned Parenthood, in May. The abortion chain announced Thursday that it chose the failed presidential candidate to receive its “Champion of the Century” award for “her 40 years of service to women and girls in this country.” The award will be given to her during Planned Parenthood’s 100th anniversary gala in May. Clinton lost the presidential election, despite strong support and expectations from the abortion chain. Planned Parenthood spent more than $30 million to help Clinton and other pro-abortion candidates get elected. Most of the candidates lost...

NaVorro Bowman is confident “someone” will sign former 49ers teammate Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick has been a free agent since March 3 without being publicly connected to any potential suitor. Should Kaepernick be on a roster, even if it’s not the 49ers’ as coach Kyle Shanahan forges ahead with free agent acquisitions Brian Hoyer and Matt Barkley? “I think he should,” Bowman replied Monday at the start of the 49ers’ offseason program. “He’s proven he can play at this level. You know, he’s made a choice that’s kind of had a little backlash from it. Running back Carlos Hyde also expressed...

Thousands of students marched in Chilean cities on Tuesday to demand improvements to the nation's higher education system, as lawmakers prepared to debate planned reforms. Student protesters argue that attempts by center-left President Michelle Bachelet to improve quality and access to higher education have been insufficient. Reforms by her government to date do not provide enough Chileans with free university education, they say. They also complain that the government did not seek their advice when drafting legislation. "I don't know if the government is playing stupid. You can't legislate without listening to the social movements," Daniel Andrade, head of the...