Free Republic

The New York Times scrambled to run cover for leftist billionaire George Soros after a groundbreaking report exposing his pro-terrorism funding served as the pretext for the Justice Department launching an investigation into his Open Society Foundations (OSF). The Times tried October 10 to attack the Capital Research Center’s investigative report showing that Soros had funneled at least $80 million into “groups tied to terrorism or extremist violence” both in the U.S. and abroad. The headline: "Report on Soros Cited by Justice Dept. Does Not Show Funding for Terrorism." One heavily Soros-funded group, Al-Haq, is “a nongovernmental organization (NGO) based...

The New York Times poll asked 1,313 registered respondents if they approve of Trump’s policy of “Deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally back to their home countries.”Fifty-four percent approved, including 38 percent who strongly approve.But just 24 percent — or one-in-four — strongly disapprove of the opportunity program. That bloc includes 25 percent of independents, one percent of Trump voters, and 43 percent of voters who backed Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024The New York Times poll was conducted September 22-27. Fifty-six percent of 2,413 registered voters support Trump’s policy of “Deporting all immigrants who are here illegally,”...

The Illinois governor, a potential presidential candidate, is fighting the presence of National Guard troops and the activities of ICE agents in Chicago.When President Trump ordered the National Guard to Chicago last week, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois became the latest Democrat to bear the brunt of managing an aggressive federal government. He has concluded it must be combated with a national campaign. Aside from instructing his attorney general to file a lawsuit to block troops from other states coming to Illinois, Mr. Pritzker has few formal options to resist what he described this week as an “unconstitutional invasion of...

If you’re old enough to have admired CBS in its heyday, watching its decline has been painful.Decades ago, it was dubbed the Tiffany Network – home of the great journalist Walter Cronkite (“the most trusted man in America”), and innovator of the top-flight magazine program, 60 Minutes.Even outside its news division, the network was a place where the variety-show host Ed Sullivan could break down racial exclusion by inviting outstanding Black entertainers to his Sunday night program; that was controversial in an era of intense racial turmoil. The CBS news department had some of the best journalists in the nation,...

President Trump has unleashed new weaponry in his war against Democrats, liberals and the left. Over the past four weeks, he has initiated what amounts to a unique form of partisan civil war designed to amass power in a nominal democracy and defang, decimate and defund the opposition. Trump’s assault on the left combines the use of the available tools of violent conflict — the military, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE in particular — with the prosecution of critics (and people he just doesn’t like), cuts of essential funds for liberal institutions, the use of regulation to threaten...

Hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal workers may not automatically receive back pay once the government reopens, the White House indicated in a draft memo, prompting broad fears that the Trump administration might try to circumvent federal law to maximize the pain of the shutdown. The memo, which was shared by a White House official, could presage a radical break from a policy adopted during President Trump’s first term. It appeared to contradict some of the administration’s own guidance, which by Tuesday still indicated that furloughed employees would receive retroactive pay shortly after Congress strikes a funding deal. Following the...

Once the darling of the alcohol industry, small-batch beer makers are shutting down because of increased competition and flagging interest.For more than two decades, pints of lagers and ales flowed from the taps at 21st Amendment Brewery. An early mover in craft brewing, the bar and restaurant flourished in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood, near the financial district and the Giants’ Oracle Park, serving its own specialties like Hell or High Watermelon beer. But after 25 years, 21st Amendment, named after the constitutional amendment that made alcohol legal after Prohibition, will say “last call” for the final time later this...

The White House has cut or paused billions in funding to Democratic-run cities and states since the federal government came to a halt.President Trump has embarked on a legally dubious campaign to weaponize the federal budget during a contentious government shutdown, halting more than $27 billion in approved funding in a bid to punish Democratic-led cities and states. Rather than broker a legislative truce or seek to ameliorate the fallout of a costly fiscal stalemate, the president has leveraged the crisis to exact revenge on rivals, slash federal spending and pressure Democrats into accepting his political demands. Since the shutdown...

Ms. Jong-Fast is the host of the “Fast Politics” podcast and the author of “How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir.”Nobody thinks the N.F.L. is run by a bunch of woke libs. Or for that matter, that most N.F.L. fans fit that description. In fact, the team owners, many of whom trend MAGA oligarch, donated $23 million to Republicans in the 2024 election, versus $2.5 million to Democrats. And of course there’s a reason Colin Kaepernick’s career was so resolutely benched. Many woke libs won’t even let their kids play football, not wanting to risk that their meritocratic brains...

Paramount Skydance is poised to name Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News in the coming days — giving the hard-charging journalist unusual clout to revamp the struggling network as it also acquires her scrappy news site the Free Press, The Post has learned. Weiss — a 41-year-old former New York Times opinion writer who has built the Free Press into a buzzworthy site with a contrarian bent — is expected to be named to the top post in a Monday announcement, although the talks are in flux and the timing could change, a source close to the...

A notice calls the people the U.S. military recently killed on suspicion of drug smuggling in the Caribbean Sea “unlawful combatants.”President Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants,” the administration said in a confidential notice to Congress this week. The notice was sent to several congressional committees and obtained by The New York Times. It adds new detail to the administration’s thinly articulated legal rationale for why three U.S. military strikes the president ordered...

Tomorrow, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth brings hundreds of U.S. generals and admirals to Quantico for what amounts to a mass leadership formation. The agenda is opaque, the logistics unusual, and the stakes high. With President Trump now planning to attend, the gathering risks becoming as much a signal about civil-military relations as it is about readiness. What should Americans take from it — and what should our flag officers hear? First, let’s dispense with the novelty. Large, in-person convocations of nearly the entire general/flag officer corps are rare. Reporting indicates Hegseth intends to hammer “warrior ethos,” grooming and standards...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said that Medals of Honor for soldiers who took part in an 1890 massacre of Native Americans would not be revoked. More than 300 Lakota Sioux men, women and children were killed by U.S. Army soldiers on Dec. 29, 1890, in one of the deadliest attacks on Native Americans by the United States military. The Lakota people had gathered to resist government control in an area of South Dakota that is now part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation..... In 2019, Democratic lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, introduced legislation to revoke...

If Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey, Drew Barrymore and Gwyneth Paltrow are peddling a memoir from their billionaire investor pal, who has a mind-blowing tale of self-actualization — maybe just maybe, there’s a little more to the story. We learned just how much more this week, in a blockbuster New York Times piece that dug into the narrative behind Amy Griffin’s bestselling memoir, “The Tell.” And the article is far more compelling than the book itself. SNIP However, her memories were recovered during therapy sessions while under the influence of the drug MDMA — a practice that is illegal and was...

Would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh was declared guilty on Tuesday on all charges, but The New York Times accidentally published the wrong article. In journalism, outlets often pre-write obituaries, election outcomes and potential court verdicts of major cases before they occur, using the basic facts of the story and adding whatever key details are essential on the day of. However, a screenshot indicated that the New York Times accidentally published a headline, “Man Found Not Guilty of Trying to Assassinate Trump in Florida.” The lede of the now-scrubbed article added, “In a surprise verdict, a federal jury acquitted Ryan Routh...

Britain, Canada and Australia confirmed on Sunday that they now formally recognize Palestinian statehood, piling pressure on Israel to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and putting three major U.S. allies at odds with the Trump administration. The seemingly coordinated announcements came on the eve of the annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, at which France and Portugal are also expected to vote for recognition of Palestinian statehood. ...

President Donald Trump's $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times has been tossed, for now. Calling the president's 85-page lawsuit "decidedly improper and impermissible," a federal judge in Tampa threw it out on Friday and gave him 28 days to file a new complaint that had to be under 40 pages. U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday blasted the Trump suit for alleging only two acts of defamation, yet "Count I appears on page eighty, and Count II appears on page eighty-three." He also criticized the suit's flowery descriptions about Trump and overly political language, writing a complaint is...

Donald Trump has sued the New York Times and others for defamation, alleging damages of $15 billion. While the Times has smeared Trump in many ways over the years, this case focuses on a book written by two Times reporters, and related coverage in the newspaper. The book is Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. Defendants include the Times, Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, who wrote Lucky Loser, Peter Baker and Michael Schmidt, who authored anti-Trump columns in the Times, and Penguin Random House, which published Lucky Loser.Lucky Loser...

As Democrats search for their way out of the political wilderness, a new think tank, introduced on Wednesday, has some ideas about where the party went wrong. Among them: too much emphasis on issues like climate change and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and far too much deference to the powerful liberal organizations championing those causes at the expense, some argue, of appealing to voters in battleground states. The think tank, the Searchlight Institute, was started by Adam Jentleson, a veteran Democratic operative. He knows that his effort, intended to minimize the sway that left-leaning groups have over candidates before what is expected...

President-elect Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Friday, vowing to bring justice to his name after years of attacks from the mainstream media. The incoming 47th president announced he is suing several media outlets, including the New York Times, CBS News, Penguin Random House, and the Daily Beast, alleging widespread bias and defamation. Trump’s lawyer, Edward Andrew Paltzik, demands $10 billion in damages for publishing defamatory material. In the lawsuit, Trump accused the mainstream media of “defaming and disparaging” him during coverage of the election and making “false and defamatory statements.” The NYT was at the center of the lawsuit....