Free Republic

President's call to investigate Democrats' links to Epstein opens loophole to withhold materialDespite overwhelming votes in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate to pass a bill forcing the release of files about Jeffrey Epstein, some lawmakers believe President Donald Trump could still skirt the bill's intent and avoid disclosing material about the late sex trafficker's activities. Their concern is the Department of Justice (DOJ) may withhold key documents related to its investigations into Epstein's sexual abuse of underage girls through a legal loophole that Trump opened last Friday. The president ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation...

Zelensky has been hit with an ugly corruption scandal in which some of his closest allies stand accused of war profiteering. His reaction was to sign a letter of intent to buy 100 French Rafale jets and 150 Swedish Gripen fighters. Kyiv doesn’t have enough to fill its $60bn budget black hole, let alone to buy billions in jets. Ukraine is going to run out of money by February unless the EU agrees to raise a €140bn loan secured against Russian assets held mostly in Belgium. It has no hope of repaying that loan unless the Kremlin is compelled to...

States across the country have potentially illegally issued about 194,000 Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDLs) to foreign truck drivers who would not meet English language standards set by the Department of Transportation (DOT), Secretary Sean Duffy reveals. Duffy revealed the alarming statistic in an interview on Fox Business Channel, stating that some 200,000 CDLs have been issued to foreign nationals and that of those, 194,000 are suspected of having been issued illegally. “People can’t understand the English language, they can’t read signs, and they don’t know the rules of our road. That’s a problem,” Duffy said. “Americans aren’t safe.” Duffy also...

The Polish authorities accused two Ukrainians on Tuesday of working with Russia to sabotage train tracks, implicating Moscow in an attack that slightly damaged a crucial supply line from NATO countries to Ukraine on Saturday. Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the attacks “perhaps the most dangerous situation for the security of the Polish state today since the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine.” He raised the threat alert for certain critical rail lines to Poland’s second-highest level. Mr. Tusk told Parliament that the two Ukrainian men had been identified but that they fled into Belarus before they could be...

For all the talk about artificial intelligence and quantum supremacy, the fate of civilizations still depends on breakfast. ChatGPT can’t grow corn. Empires rise on stomachs as much as on silicon. And America’s food system – long dismissed as safe and self-sufficient – has quietly become a front line in the US-China rivalry. We act as if lunch is inevitable, but Beijing knows that food is power. A new report from the America First Policy Institute should wake us up. Washington long treated agriculture as a post-political space where globalization could do no harm, and was therefore happy to let...

A drone struck a Turkish-flagged tanker and set it ablaze on Monday in southern Ukraine’s Odesa region, officials said, a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a deal to import U.S. liquefied natural gas through the area. The MT Orinda was hit during the offloading of liquefied petroleum gas at Izmail port, Turkey’s Directorate for Maritime Affairs said. All 16 crew on board evacuated and no one was hurt, it said. Russia has used drones, missiles and artillery to repeatedly batter the Odesa region, especially its Black Sea ports... Ukrainian officials didn’t comment specifically on the tanker, although regional...

The truce broke down this week after a Thai soldier lost a leg to a landmine blast, prompting Thailand’s PM to say the peace deal was ‘now over’One person has been killed by gunfire along the Thai-Cambodia border as conflict heats up between the two nations days after a Trump-backed ceasefire agreement has broken down. Fighting erupted between Thai and Cambodian troops over five days in July, with 43 people killed and 300,000 displaced in the worst fighting along the border in a decade. Donald Trump oversaw the signing of a ceasefire agreement between the two nations in Malaysia this...

Netanyahu's office "thanked Mayor Adams for his great support of Israel and for being a true friend of the Jewish people" in a statement about the meeting. Adams' visit to Israel also included his participation in a Sunday Combating Antisemitism Movement (CAM) event, where he said, “If I were a Jewish New Yorker, I would be concerned about my children. People want to sugarcoat the moment. We cannot do that.” The outgoing mayor also met with former hostages at the Kfar Maccabiah Hotel in Ramat Gan on Sunday, where he expressed his continued commitment to fighting rising antisemitism and to...

President Donald Trump designated Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally on Tuesday, opening opportunities for more defense trade and security cooperation between the United States and its key partner in the Middle East. Trump made the announcement at a dinner for visiting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, after they held talks that included the signing of a strategic defense agreement “Tonight, I'm pleased to announce that we're taking our military cooperation to even greater heights by formally designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally," Trump said in a speech at the gathering. Saudi Arabia becomes the 20th major...

Polls now show a clear majority saying unvetted foreign nationals should never be behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler. Despite those worries, Bozorov was living and working freely in the U.S. His CDL was issued in Pennsylvania under Gov. Josh Shapiro, and the Biden administration granted him work authorization in January 2024.

President Trump on Tuesday called for ABC News to lose its license after one of its reporters peppered him with Oval Office questions — including whether his family’s business dealings with Saudi Arabia constituted a conflict of interest. ABC’s Mary Bruce used Trump’s meeting with the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to also ask about the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “People are wise to your hoax,” Trump said. “Your crappy company is one of the perpetrators. “And I’ll tell you something, I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and is...

President Trump is redefining the bargain between America and its allies by radically altering post-World War II Western security arrangements and the conditions that fostered market-driven globalization. He has successfully secured commitments from Europe and Japan to contribute their necessary shares to the common defense against Russia, China and their axis allies and imposed asymmetrical deals that raise U.S. tariffs. Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on the legality of those tariffs, the president’s new arrangements are inherently unstable. Among the accomplishments in creating the 1995 World Trade Organization was the extension of rules governing trade in services, similar...

The United States government has taken one of the most forceful steps in recent decades against Nicolás Maduro’s regime. The State Department announced the designation of the Cartel of the Suns, a criminal structure directly linked to the Chavista apparatus, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), a measure that will take effect on November 24. With this declaration, Washington formally places the Venezuelan regime in the category of a state enemy. Until now, the Cartel of the Suns was listed only as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), a classification primarily focused on enforcing financial sanctions. But the FTO designation...

Trump is willing to do whatever is necessary to keep drugs from flowing into the US. Mexico and Colombia have been added to Trump’s naughty list. US President Donald J. Trump made statements yesterday (17) to the effect that he supports military strikes on cartels in Mexico and Colombia, setting the tone for an anti-drug operation in Latin America that would be much larger than expected. By supporting kinetic action against narcotics production in Mexico and Colombia, Trump made it clear that the series of strikes on drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific is just the start. Reuters reported:...

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman committed his country to increasing his planned investment into the U.S. economy to nearly $1 trillion over the next year on Tuesday. MBS made the announcement while meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, saying the investments will take place across the U.S. economy. Trump initially stated that the investment would amount to "at least" $600 billion, but the Saudi leader confirmed the higher amount during his remarks. “Today and tomorrow, we are going to announce that we are going to increase that, that $600 billion to almost $1 trillion of investment,...

A cautionary tale from the New York governor's office.A big part of the Biden ‘autopen’ scandal is that we don’t really know who’s making decisions in parts of the government. A signature doesn’t really mean much these days and government has gotten so big and chaotic that there are really complicated chains of authority, yet a lot of the actual work, including even the signing, is down by junior personnelAs you read this story about events in the New York State governor’s office, consider it in line of the Biden administration, and how easy it would be for a foreign...

This address was delivered to the European Parliament in Brussels on November 11, 2025. Europe is in deep trouble today, mainly because of the Ukraine war, which has played a key role in undermining what had been a largely peaceful region. Unfortunately, the situation is not likely to improve in the years ahead. In fact, Europe is likely to be less stable moving forward than it is today. The present situation in Europe stands in marked contrast to the unprecedented stability that Europe enjoyed during the unipolar moment, which ran from roughly 1992, after the Soviet Union collapsed, until 2017,...

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit) called on Monday for targeted assassinations of Palestinian Authority officials, whom he called “terrorists,” if the United Nations Security Council approved the US-proposed Gaza international stabilization force resolution in its current form. Opposition MKs also slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the resolution’s potential advancement. The political storm among right-wing and left-wing ministers and MKs alike was centered around the fact that the resolution mentions a “path to Palestinian statehood.” Ben-Gvir said that if the resolution was advanced, “targeted assassinations of senior Palestinian Authority officials, who are terrorists for all intents and purposes,...

Nov 18 (Reuters) - Hamas rejected the United Nations Security Council passing a U.S.-drafted resolution endorsing U.S. President Donald Trump's Gaza plan, saying it fails to meet Palestinians' rights and demands and seeks to impose an international trusteeship on the enclave that Palestinians and resistance factions oppose. "Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation," the group added.

A short time ago the UN Security Council voted to adopt President Trump's peace plan for Gaza. This is being seen as a big win for the Trump administration.The United Nations Security Council on Monday approved President Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, a breakthrough that provides a legal U.N. mandate for the administration’s vision of how to move past the cease-fire and rebuild the war-ravaged Gaza Strip after two years of war.The Council’s vote was also a major diplomatic victory for the Trump administration. For the past two years, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas has raged, the United...