Free Republic

Former female lawmaker Zohreh Elahian has registered to run in Iran's June 28 snap presidential vote, potentially becoming the first woman ever allowed to stand if approved by the Guardian Council. Elahian, 57, is a physician and former member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee. She was elected to parliament twice on the hardliners’ slate. In her speech following registration, Elahian declared her motto: “Sound government, sound economy, sound society,” and pledged to combat corruption. Like other hardliners, Elahian supports compulsory hijab rules. In March, Canada imposed sanctions against her for endorsing the death penalty for protesters...

Donald Trump made his first public appearance since becoming a convicted felon at a high-profile UFC event – naturally. ... On Saturday night at UFC 302, Trump was escorted to his cageside seat in grand fashion by UFC CEO Dana White, with the crowd cheering him on at Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. ...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said he would “not attend” a speech given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Republican and Democrat lawmakers invited Netanyahu to speak before a “Joint Meeting of Congress.” Sanders issued a press release on Saturday describing Netanyahu as a “war criminal” and stating that he “should not be invited to address a joint meeting of Congress.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote a letter addressed to Netanyahu on Friday, inviting him to speak before a “Joint...

Every year ahead of the June 4 commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Chinese government tightens online censorship to suppress domestic discussion of the event. Critics, dissidents and international groups anticipate an uptick in cyber activity ranging from emails with malicious links to network attacks in the days and weeks leading up to the anniversary.Much of this cyber activity by Beijing is done covertly. But a recent restructuring of China’s cyberforce and a document leak exposing the activities of Chinese tech firm i-Soon have shed some light on how Beijing goes about the business of hacking.As a China expert...

Although Mr. Trump was convicted in New York, he’s a Florida resident residing at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.“Florida defers to other state laws when it comes to disenfranchising voters who are tried and convicted elsewhere. … [In New York], those convicted of felonies who do not go to prison never lose their voting rights,” said Blair Bowie, director of the Campaign Legal Center’s Restore Your Vote project.The only way Mr. Trump wouldn’t be able to vote is if New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan sends him to jail for his conviction. Sentencing is set for July 11.The former president...

Republican lawmakers are facing an internal battle over defense spending as prominent Republicans including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, are pushing for big increases while conservatives are raising alarms over the debt. The battle within the GOP over how much to increase defense spending to deter threats from Russia, China and Iran will burst into public next month when the Senate is set to debate the annual National Defense Authorization Act. McConnell and Wicker are laying the groundwork for that debate by calling for major...

The chairwoman of the Defence Committee in the German parliament, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, has called for the recruitment of 900,000 German reservists in light of Russia's belligerent stance under President Vladimir Putin. "Putin is training his people for war and positioning them against the West. We must therefore become capable of defence as quickly as possible," Strack-Zimmermann of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), a junior partner in Germany's governing coalition, told the Funke media group in remarks published on Saturday. Russian industry is focused on manufacturing weapons, the defence expert said. "School books are printed that portray Germany as an aggressor...

Former Commissioner of the Federal Elections Commission, Brad Smith, a preeminent expert on campaign finance law has taken to social media to lash out against the Manhattan trial that led to the conviction of former President Donald Trump. Judge Juan Merchan had prevented Trump’s defense team from seating Smith as a witness or even submitting his testimony to the jury. Smith had planned on testifying that Donald Trump’s filing of a “hush money” payment as a “legal expense” was not a crime against federal elections law. Indeed, federal prosecutors had passed up on the case prior to Alvin Bragg, the...

Labour has announced its plans to reduce net migration - with Sir Keir Starmer accusing the Conservatives of having "repeatedly broken their promises" to get the number down. It marks another attempt by the Labour Party to appeal to Conservative voters. Figures published after Rishi Sunak called the general election showed a net of 685,000 arrived in the UK last year - down from a record of 764,000 in 2022. The 2023 figure is still three times the number in 2019 when the last election took place. The Conservatives promised in their manifesto that year to get net migration down....

Reactions from parties in Israel’s governing coalition confirmed Saturday that U.S. President Joe Biden lied to the world when he claimed a proposal for a ceasefire and hostage deal had come from the Israeli government.As Breitbart News reported, Biden presented a three-part proposal on Friday and claimed, four times, that it was Israel’s proposal.Biden waited until the onset of the Jewish Sabbath to make his remarks, making it more difficult for the Israeli government to respond. Notably, the proposal did not call for the destruction or disarmament of Hamas, and Biden told Israelis in his speech that they could not...

ON A GOOD DAY Our worth is tested every day. We are given the choice of being nice to people or uncharitable. We are given the choice of doing our work as well as we can or of goofing off. Some days it seems the tests are harder than on others, but every day brings with it some kind of test. Even the really good days! To have everything go wonderfully for us, to feel like a million dollars, to have one of those days when nothing and nobody can upset us, they are days when we might think...

House Speaker Mike Johnson stopped Tuesday in the Lehigh Valley to campaign for Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie’s congressional run against [the] Democratic incumbent …. Johnson and Mackenzie stopped at Cetronia Ambulance Corps in South Whitehall Township as part of National EMS Week. Johnson’s visit is the first of what likely will be many from high-profile Republicans on behalf of Mackenzie in what is expected to be a close race. The seat is considered one of the most competitive in the United States, and has been deemed a “toss-up” by election forecaster the Cook Political Report. Speaking with reporters at the...

Oregon state Rep. Janelle Bynum won the high-profile Democratic primary to take on Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), setting the stage for what is considered to be one of the most competitive elections of the 2024 cycle. *** McLeod-Skinner’s primary defeat comes after she lost to Chavez-DeRemer in the 2022 midterm elections by just 2 percentage points. Bynum used that to her advantage throughout the primary cycle, positioning herself as a candidate who has previously defeated Chavez-DeRemer and could do so again. Bynum twice defeated Chavez-DeRemer in 2016 and 2018 for a state House seat, once by 2 points and then...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited to speak before the United States Congress and Senate in a joint meeting. Johnson announced on Friday that he was “honored” to invite Netanyahu to “address a joint meeting of Congress.” In a letter addressed to Netanyahu, Johnson wrote that “last year” Congress had proudly hosted Israeli President Isaac Herzog to visit Washington, D.C., and that Netanyahu was invited to speak before a “Joint Meeting of Congress.”

Colorado Democrats are once again running bogus ads to promote the Republican candidate they believe is least likely to win in a general election against their progressive candidate. This time it’s the 3rd Congressional District race and the GOP candidate that Democrat candidates are supporting is Ron Hanks. The TV ad and mailers deliver backhanded insults that really aims to suggest Hanks has been endorsed by Donald Trump (he has not), and claims Hanks is just too gosh darn Republican to represent the conservative district. One of the problems Hanks is already contending with, he doesn’t actually live in the...

The Department of Justice pushed back on the releasing of the audio tapes of special counsel Robert Hur's interview with President Joe Biden, citing "deep fake" concerns. The DOJ stated that if the audio tapes were released, they could potentially be altered by artificial intelligence and passed off as authentic. “The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files,” a Friday filing obtained by Politico states. “To be sure, other raw material to create a deepfake of President Biden’s voice is already available, but release of...

A New York jury on Thursday found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records after a weeks-long trial. Former President Donald Trump on Friday announced a sizeable fundraising haul in the wake of his guilty verdict in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's hush money case.A New York jury on Thursday found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records after a weeks-long trial. The verdict appears to have energized his supporters, however, as the campaign's donation page crashed, evidently due to the volume of traffic.The campaign on Friday initially announced it had brought in $34.8 million in...

Joe Biden couldn’t even wait 24 hours before publicly gloating about the history-making criminal conviction of former president Donald Trump. Under the guise of announcing a proposed ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Gaza war, Biden took to a podium in the White House state dining room at 1:30 p.m. on Friday. He began his statement not with details of the peace plan but rather with a lecture about how the “rule of law” prevailed in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump. “Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself,” Biden said of his 2024 Republican presidential rival. “And...

The military said on Wednesday that it now had full operational control of the Philadelphi Corridor, which runs along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. This effectively clamps down on any possible weapons flow to Hamas from the outside. Troops located 20 tunnels crossing into Egypt near the Philadelphi Corridor and 82 tunnel shafts. This information was passed on to Egypt. Egypt’s Al Qahera News denied the reports. “It doesn’t mean that we have boots on the ground across all of the corridors, but it means we can control and we have the ability to cut off the...

A white teacher in Sacramento County is suing his union for reserving one seat on its governing board for a non-white member — an issue of diversity versus discrimination that is percolating in courts across California. Isaac Newman, a high school social science teacher, said he wanted to run for a newly created position on the Elk Grove Education Association last December, but was barred from applying because the union created it last year as a “BIPOC seat,” available only to members who are Black, Indigenous or other people of color. “Union officials apparently believe that the best solution to...