Free Republic

Summary BLS loses senior leaders as Trump targets agency's integrity About 12 of 35 senior leaders have left amid Trump's criticism Modernizing data collection suggested to improve response rates WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's unwarranted attacks on the integrity of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics were undermining trust in economic data and had accelerated retirements of key personnel at the agency, former BLS commissioners said on Wednesday. During a discussion at the libertarian Cato Institute, Erica Groshen and William Beach, who headed the agency under presidents of both parties, said the BLS had lost 12...

Republican senators are increasingly uneasy about President Trump’s standoff with Democratic governors over deploying National Guard troops from other states to Portland, Ore., and Chicago. The conflict between federal and state authorities escalated dramatically over the weekend when Trump moved to send National Guard soldiers to Oregon and Illinois despite opposition from their respective governors, Tina Kotek and JB Pritzker. Trump’s use of military forces was all the more controversial because a Trump-appointed federal judge for the District of Oregon ruled Saturday that the administration could not federalize Oregon’s National Guard to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in...

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...

Legacy media have spent years perpetuating some of the biggest hoaxes in modern history — and it appears the American public is continuing to notice.On Thursday, Gallup released the results of its annual survey of Americans’ confidence in media. The poll’s baseline finding is that trust in the country’s “Democracy dies in darkness!” crowd is at the lowest point ever recorded.According to the survey, just 28 percent of Americans expressed having a “‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.” That figure, Gallup noted, “is down from 31%...

“That is, unfortunately, the cancer known as white supremacy,” said the Texas congresswoman after learning about Kirk’s comments about her and the Democratic Party. A month before his shooting death, conservative activist Charlie Kirk attacked U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, blaming her and Democrats for being part of a “sinister” plan to replace white people in America. While discussing the issue of redistricting congressional maps, which played out dramatically in Texas last month, Kirk said on his Aug. 4 podcast show, “The great replacement of white people is far more sinister than any redistricting project.” “That is at the core...

George Soros has been the go-to bogeyman for the American right — and right-wing leaders around the world — for years. The 95-year-old billionaire has funneled money into causes around the globe, supporting democratic endeavors, immigration efforts and criminal justice reform through his Open Society Foundations, which he founded in 1979. In the intervening decades, Soros, with his large network of progressive causes and opposition to strong-arm governments, has become the target of conspiracy theories in areas that range from Malaysia to his birth country of Hungary, where a so-called “Stop Soros” law made it illegal to aid undocumented immigrants...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, once a casino owner and always a man in search of his next deal, is fond of a poker analogy when sizing up partners and adversaries. … Seven months into his second term, he has accumulated presidential power that he has used against universities, media companies, law firms, and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized “deep state” is, in some ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents. And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren’t recoiling. They’re...

When Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, dispatched his National Guard troops to Washington to support President Trump’s crackdown on crime, Democrats and other critics wondered why he didn’t keep them within state lines. Memphis, after all, has long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a murder rate about twice as high as the nation’s capital, according to F.B.I. statistics. Nashville has a higher rate of violent crime than Washington as well. The same questions could be asked of other Republican governors like Greg Abbott in Texas, Mike DeWine in Ohio and Mike Kehoe in Missouri,...

Less than 1 percent of Democrats say they are satisfied with the direction of the country, according to a new Gallup poll. Why It Matters This is the lowest level of satisfaction among Democrats in at least 25 years, according to Gallup's polling, and it comes at a time when Republican satisfaction is near record high levels. The polling shows that Democrats' satisfaction with the direction of the country quickly dropped after President Donald Trump, a Republican, returned to office in January, while GOP supporters' satisfaction spiked. According to Gallup, 31 percent of Americans currently say they are satisfied with...

“We’ve also been going through it, and I can tell you there are crude diagrams of the church. There are also photos of the weapons, and they include all sorts of writings, the names of past mass shooters, criticism of Israel, the name of President Trump written on the guns,” Katersky added.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem temporarily relocated her personal residence as she’s facing an increase in threats against her and “vicious doxxing,” a department spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Friday. “Following the media’s publishing of the location of Secretary Noem’s Washington D.C. apartment, she has faced vicious doxxing on the dark web and a surge in death threats, including from the terrorist organizations, cartels, and criminal gangs that DHS targets. Due to threats and security concerns, she has been forced to temporarily stay in secure military housing,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “Secretary Noem continues to pay rent for...

JD Vance, the vice president, sat down with Nigel Farage, a longtime supporter of President Trump whose party, Reform U.K., is leading in British polls.Vice President JD Vance began his family vacation in England last Friday with a lightning round of carp fishing. He hasn’t slowed down since, taking part in conference calls about Ukraine, huddling with Britain’s foreign minister, David Lammy, and meeting fellow right-wing political figures.On Wednesday morning, it was the turn of Nigel Farage, the leader of the insurgent, anti-immigrant party Reform U.K. He sat down with Mr. Vance, according to an official familiar with the vice...

“First, conquer the organs of propaganda,” wrote Karl Marx, who was a genius mob agitator and nothing else. Mob agitators were already a kind of specialty in Prussia, Poland, Russia, and Eastern Europe, but Marx wrote the instruction manual, just as Saul Alinsky did in his Rules for Radicals, which became Barack Obama’s manual for political agitators. SNIP About ten years ago, Tucker Carlson helped to expose a radical propaganda internet list called JournoList, a secret Google group of media influencers who made up the headlines for the next day’s news, in places like the New York Times, the Washington...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Eric Hildenbrand has noticed prices continue to rise this year, even with President Donald Trump in the White House. He doesn’t blame Trump, his choice for president in 2024, but says Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats who control his home state, California, are at fault.“You can’t compare California with the rest of the country,” said Hildenbrand, who is 76 and lives in San Diego. “I don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the country. It seems like prices are dropping. Things are getting better, but I don’t necessarily see it here.”Voters like Hildenbrand, whose...

The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance. The decision suggested that the scale of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign — an issue that is at the heart of his presidency — is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose. The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, including at farms...

[snip] To begin CNN This Morning's discussion of the anti-ICE riots, host Audie Cornish called on Karen Attiah, the creator and leader of the Resistance Summer School. As per its website, the school is: A "structure for radical learning . . . Students will explore how colonial legacies and racial hierarchies shape global politics, diplomacy, conflict, and coverage —and how media systems often reinforce (or resist) these power structures." Take a look below at the school's insignia featuring a clenched fist, a traditional socialist symbol. And it adopts as its motto, "A Luta Continua" [The Struggle Continues.] That was the...

As images of protests in Southern California have flooded television and social media in recent days, a key question has emerged: Why are so many protesters carrying Mexican flags at an American political protest? The sea of red, white and green Mexican flags at anti-deportation protests this week in Los Angeles has been seized upon by conservatives who argue that the demonstrations are inherently un-American, causing some protesters to consider leaving them at home. Photos of masked provocateurs waving Mexican flags atop burning Waymo taxis spread instantly across conservative social media this weekend. Republicans pointed to them as a prime...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson ABC News says the riots in LA are just people burning cars for fun: “Could turn volatile if you move law enforcement in the wrong way and turn what is people having fun watching cars burn into a massive confrontation and altercation.” From Steve Guest 7:43 AM · Jun 9, 2025

Pelosi, Schiff, and Biden have politicized a career intelligence community position by demanding the removal of a national security professional.Hours after President Joe Biden delivered his inaugural address promising to bring unity and healing to the country, his administration began a politically charged attack on a highly respected, newly appointed career intelligence official over fears he would be insufficiently loyal to Democratic partisans. The attempted purge has thus far followed the playbook publicly laid out by top Democrats and their left-wing media enablers. In a stunning violation of precedent, Biden’s National Security Agency (NSA) placed General Counsel Michael J. Ellis...

“I’m very concerned for [the president's] life. And James Comey, in my view, should be held accountable and put behind bars for this." — DNI Tulsi Gabbard “Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Jim Comey, former FBI Director wrote on Instagram about the message “86 47” laid out in seashells on the sand that he came across, innocently. You’d have to ask yourself: what was “cool” about that, exactly? Especially if, as Mr. Comey claimed on X soon after, that he didn’t know what it meant. Are things that you don’t understand “cool”? Is it just “cool” to learn...