Free Republic

Late on Wednesday night, CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Fox News Lakanwal had direct links to the CIA from his work alongside US Special Forces in Afghanistan. 'The Biden administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the U.S. government, including CIA,' Ratcliffe admitted. A close relative of Lakanwal was blindsided by Wednesday's allegations, telling NBC the Afghan national worked alongside US Special Forces while serving in the Afghan Army for 10 years.

For nearly a century, America’s military strength has come largely through self-reliance. We not only made the ships, airplanes and tanks, our country supplied the parts and materials for these complex systems. But a lot has changed in recent times.Unfortunately, our military has increasingly relied on sourcing parts globally -- including from possibly unreliable places like China. It’s a disastrous side effect of globalization.For example, while modern jet engines may typically include between 30,000 and 50,000 parts, ensuring they are “China-free” has proven to be incredibly difficult. We’ve already seen deliveries of F-35s delayed over this issue, revealing that supply...

Remarks, read as thinly veiled critique of government, come amid public spat with Defense Minister Israel Katz over latter's selective promotion of senior IDF officers. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen Eyal Zamir said Wednesday that Israel needs 'courageous, transformative' leadership that does not 'evade' responsibility, in remarks that seemed to be a thinly veiled criticism of the government. The comments came amid a public spat with Defense Minister Israel Katz over the military October 7 investigations and senior appointments in the Israel Defense Forces. They were delivered during a ceremony commemorating the 52nd anniversary of the death of Israel's...

President Donald Trump says the alleged shooter of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., entered the United States from Afghanistan in 2021 and asks for Americans to pray for the victims.

As the US Navy remains primed for action in the Southern Caribbean, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro prepares for what could be an American attempt to remove him. And as President Trump alternates between calling Maduro on the phone and authorizing air strikes, a bevy of misinformation is being peddled by public figures with an agenda. There are so many claims and counter-claims on the air waves right now that it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction. A sizable chunk of this disinformation is of course being sold by Maduro himself, a man who has learned from his predecessor and mentor,...

President Trump is standing behind his most trusted negotiator, Steve Witkoff, following the leak of a phone call with a senior Russian official, which Ukraine’s backers have criticized for what they see as the special envoy’s attempts to sabotage American support for Kyiv and broker a deal favorable to Moscow.It’s the latest twist over a chaotic week in which the Trump administration’s behind-the-scenes dealmaking between Russia and Ukraine has spurred both optimism and questions about progress toward peace.This includes the leak last week of a 28-point plan for ending Russia’s war that was heavily criticized as hewing to Moscow’s maximalist...

Two National Guard soldiers were shot in the head just yards from the White House during a possible terror attack by a lone gunman identified as an Afghan national. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, has been named as the alleged gunman in custody over the horror shoot-out at Farragut West metro station in the center of Washington, DC, which has left two soldiers in a critical condition. Law enforcement sources initially told NBC News the gunman has been identified as an Afghan national and the shooting is being investigated as a possible act of terror. He allegedly came to the United States...

CBS News: Multiple law enforcement officials say the suspect in the shooting of National Guard members in Washington, D.C. today is 29-year-old Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, noting he entered the U.S. in 2021

It has been dubbed “Witi-Leaks” – an explosive insight into Donald Trump’s peace negotiations that could blow the lid off the plan to end the war in Ukraine.Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s peace envoy, was caught red-handed coaching the Russian side on how to appeal to his boss’s better nature, according to the transcripts of several phone calls that were leaked on Tuesday evening. Mr Witkoff, a former New York real estate developer turned high-level diplomat, faced criticism for his lack of experience at the coalface of international affairs. In discussions with The Telegraph, European sources have called him names, such...

Pray for search and rescue authorities in Hong Kong today. At least 36 people have died and 279 people are unaccounted for, officials say. Residents remain trapped on higher floors of the buildings. https://t.co/iclSJYO8p1 pic.twitter.com/FtoFH3FyZ5— CNN (@CNN) November 26, 2025Officials said 279 people are 'uncontactable.' Meanwhile, 29 people remain hospitalized, with 7 in critical conditions, officials said. The fire, which tore through bamboo scaffolding ubiquitous in the city, appears to be the most deadly blaze in Hong Kong in nearly three decades. 900 other residents have managed to flee to shelters. Clips of the fire look apocalyptic: BREAKING: At least...

The future of cars could be up in the air... A #flyingcar may seem like the stuff of science fiction. But in China, it's on the cusp of going into mass production. In a huge leap toward the age of personal air travel, #XPeng has opened the world's first flying car factory. CGTN Jen Copestake reports.

How India Is Turning Silver Into Money. In a move that has stunned global markets and delighted advocates of hard assets, India has quietly detonated a monetary bombshell: the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is bringing silver back into the financial system. Beginning April 1, 2026, Indian banks will be authorized to accept silver as loan collateral. It’s the first modern recognition of silver as a monetary asset since the metal was gradually sidelined from global finance a century ago. But this is no symbolic gesture—it’s a calculated strategy that connects household wealth, national reserves, and geopolitical realignment under one...

Washington Times columnist Maochun "Miles" Yu (余茂春), one of the nation’s leading China experts, incurred the wrath of the Chinese Communist Party recently, highlighting the global reach of his reports. Mr. Yu appears to have hit a political nerve with his recent opinion article listing 10 reasons why Peking’s call for reunification with Taiwan is “a hoax.” His list includes the fact that Taiwan was never part of Communist China and that Taiwan’s current sovereignty is not an extension of the 1949 civil war between communists and nationalists. “China’s ‘reunification’ slogan,” Mr. Yu wrote Oct. 27, “is a hoax sustained...

Russia on Wednesday shot down President Trump’s claim that the Kremlin had already agreed to some concessions on ending the war in Ukraine — as Moscow blasted innocent Ukrainians with fresh drone strikes overnight. Multiple Russian officials insisted it was too premature to speak about accepting any peace plan and that Moscow wouldn’t agree to anything that didn’t fully meet its demands. “There can be no talk of any concessions or surrender of our approaches to the key aspects of resolving the problems facing us, including in the context of the special operation [in Ukraine],” said Sergei Ryabkov, a Russian...

HONG KONG, Nov 26 (Reuters) – A massive fire ripped through multiple high-rise residential blocks in Hong Kong’s northern Tai Po district on Wednesday, killing at least 14 people and injuring scores as authorities struggled to bring the blaze under control. Firefighters battled the orange flames into the night as thick black smoke billowed from the 32-story towers, which were sheathed in bamboo scaffolding – whose use the government began phasing out in March for safety reasons – and green construction mesh. The cause of the blaze was not immediately known.

In a significant shift in the Middle Eastern power dynamics, Iranian officials have admitted that their once-loyal proxy force, the Houthis in Yemen, is increasingly defying Tehran's orders. Reports indicate that the Houthis, who have long served as Iran's strategic arm in the ongoing conflicts against the United States and its allies, are now acting independently, much to the dismay of their former benefactors. A senior Iranian official disclosed that the Houthis have distanced themselves from Iran. “They have gone rogue for a while and are now really rebels,” the official stated, reflecting concerns within the Iranian regime as they...

In the latest episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies, sits down with Mahvash Siddiqui, a U.S. Foreign Service officer, to discuss systemic fraud in the H-1B visa program. Speaking in her private capacity, Ms. Siddiqui shares firsthand experiences from her time as a consular officer in Chennai (Madras), India – one of the world’s largest H-1B visa-processing posts – where U.S. officials adjudicated thousands of nonimmigrant visas, including 220,000 H-1Bs and 140,000 H-4 visas for their family members in 2024 alone. The episode highlights alarming patterns of fraud affecting the H-1B program, including forged degrees,...

In a meeting with Ukrainian officials in Kyiv last week, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll delivered a grim assessment. Driscoll told his counterparts their troops faced a dire situation on the battlefield and would suffer an imminent defeat against Russian forces, two sources with knowledge of the matter told NBC News. The Russians were ramping up the scale and pace of their aerial attacks, and they had the ability to fight on indefinitely, Driscoll told them, according to the sources. The situation for Ukraine would only get worse over time, he continued, and it was better to negotiate a peace...

For years, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., has regularly undertaken actions that undermine America’s national security.Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., has found himself in some pretty hot water — and for good reason.On Monday, the Department of War announced that Kelly, a retired Navy captain, could be “recall[ed] to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures” because of his participation in what has now been dubbed the “Seditious Six” video. As The Federalist’s Breccan Thies summarized, the video in question featured Kelly and other “Democrat lawmakers encourag[ing] military members to ignore orders from President Donald Trump, their commander-in-chief.”“In a spliced video...

Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is under serious pressure. A wave of protests over corruption in flood control projects has piled pressure on his government. Cabinet ministers have resigned. And further rallies, which the Catholic Church is throwing its weight behind, are planned for Nov. 30. The turmoil has sparked speculation about Marcos being unseated via impeachment or coup. For now, this possibility probably shouldn’t be taken too seriously. The military and leading politicians have denied considering such options. And there is barely a modern Filipino president who hasn’t at some time or other been subject to such rumors...