Free Republic

Oval Office 3:47 P.M. EDTTHE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the gravest dangers it has faced in American history, frankly.  And you know what’s going as well as anybody.  It’s not good.A small handful of powerful social media monopolies controls a vast portion of all public and private communications in the United States.  And we know what they are; we don’t have to name them.  We’re going to give you a complete listing.  We’re going to give you a signed copy of what I’m going to be signing in...

Nidal Sakr soaks in rays, while his criminal history calls for justice. Joe Kaufman, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is Chairman of the Joe Kaufman Security Initiative and the 2014, 2016 and 2018 Republican Nominee for U.S. House of Representatives (Florida-CD23). Beachgoers enjoyed a warm day in Huntington Beach, California to kick off the 2020 Memorial Day weekend. They included a smiling Nidal Sakr and what appeared to be members of his immediate family. However, Sakr should not be lounging out at any beach. Instead, he should either be behind prison bars for threatening President...

Will Biden disavow his decades of support for China’s rise and follow Trump’s lead? Communist China poses a greater threat to America and our interests abroad than any other nation in the world. If it wasn’t clear prior to the spread of the Chinese coronavirus, resulting largely from the Chinese Communist Party’s Chernobyl-like response, the subsequent threats should crystallize this point. It has acted malevolently toward the U.S., our European and Anglosphere allies, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and India, and across the South China Sea. Countering the CCP is essential to preserving American life, limb, and liberty. The public deserves to...

A possible clash between Hong Kong protesters and local police is in the offing as the city’s government pushes ahead with legislative debates on a controversial national anthem bill. Hong Kong’s legislature, the Legislative Council (LegCo), will convene at 11 a.m. local time on May 27 for a second reading of the national anthem bill, according to a press release, which stipulates that anyone in Hong Kong found guilty of actions such as “singing the [Chinese] national anthem in a distorted or disrespectful way” could face fines of up to HK$50,000 ($6,440) and three years in prison. The city, a...

While police in New York have been enforcing social distancing and stay-at-home orders in the last few weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, the state effectively worked to “criminalize” part of their jobs. A U.S. Attorney in New York accused Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of “legislating obstruction” with a law that bans police from sharing Department of Motor Vehicles information with federal immigration agencies. New York’s Green Light Law was passed last year allowing a driver’s license to anyone without legal immigration status, and now the approved 2020 budget has added an eyebrow-raising amendment. While the Green Light Law prohibited the...

Since the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) established diplomatic relations in 1979, United States policy toward the PRC was largely premised on a hope that deepening engagement would spur fundamental economic and political opening in the PRC and lead to its emergence as a constructive and responsible global stakeholder, with a more open society. More than 40 years later, it has become evident that this approach underestimated the will of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to constrain the scope of economic and political reform in China. Over the past two decades, reforms have slowed, stalled, or...

“Come not between the dragon and his wrath,” King Lear enjoined, but this we must do to upend the wrath that has emanated from the most powerful foe America has faced. As terrible as the coronavirus crisis is, we must imagine a world ten or 20 years from now, in which the People’s Republic of China’s nominal gross domestic product is 50 percent larger than that of the United States.What power would an unconstrained China wield? What force of arms would they muster to intimidate and to control?If China’s actions in the coronavirus catastrophe offer any window into this...

The F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security are preparing to issue a warning that China’s most skilled hackers and spies are working to steal American research in the crash effort to develop vaccines and treatments for the coronavirus. The efforts are part of a surge in cybertheft and attacks by nations seeking advantage in the pandemic. A draft of the forthcoming public warning, which officials say is likely to be issued in the days to come, says China is seeking “valuable intellectual property and public health data through illicit means related to vaccines, treatments and testing.” It focuses on...

Mexico's president asked the United States for answers and an apology for the Obama-era gun-running operation known as "Fast and Furious." On Friday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called for an investigation into Operation Fast and Furious to prevent it from happening again. "What seems serious to me is that a violation of our sovereignty was carried out, a secret operation, and that Mexicans were killed with these weapons," Lopez Obrador said during a press conference in Mexico City on Friday. "How could this be? A government that invades in this way, that flagrantly violates sovereignty, international laws," Lopez...

It seems a number of major US media outlets have financial ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and it shows in their coverage. Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) record of oppression, corporate media outlets are parroting the authoritarian government’s propaganda, even in the midst of an outbreak the CCP worsened through a cover-up. Many of those media outlets have financial ties to Chinese companies with intense oversight from the CCP.“You often see representatives from American companies with financial ties to China naturally become defenders of the CCP’s policies and spreading the CCP’s propaganda,” said Helen Raleigh, an author and...

... The acting director of national intelligence (Richard Grenell) has decided that it's time for America to stop sharing information with countries who aren't as pro-LGBT as he is -- a view that's eerily similar to Hillary Clinton's State Department, where ideological blackmail was the order of every day. Instead, reverting to the cultural imperialism of the Obama years, he'd rather strong-arm countries -- putting national security on the line in the process... ..."I am not a seat warmer," Grenell warned. "The president asked me to do a job, and I am going to do the job to the best...

Foreign powers test US defenses amid coronavirus pandemic BY ELLEN MITCHELL - 04/19/20 08:00 AM EDT U.S. adversaries are probing America's defenses as the world is preoccupied with the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. In the past two weeks, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have all moved to test Washington in the sea, in the air and on land as U.S. forces have become more restricted in movement amid concerns over the spread of COVID-19. “Exactly how distracted is the U.S. military? They want to know,” said Susanna Blume, the director of the defense program at the Center for...

Western democracies, especially the United States, just heaved a huge sigh of relief after getting word that United Kingdom PM Boris Johnson is dropping the controversial Chinese tech company, Huawei, as the nation's provider of 5G infrastructure. Although Johnson was in support of the Chinese tech giant laying the non-sensitive portions of 5G infrastructure, he said China's lack of transparency about coronavirus made the communist-run country untrustworthy. President Trump, Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and members of the so-called "Five-Eyes" countries that share intelligence information, brought huge pressure on the Brits to dump Huawei. The U.S....

President Trump said Monday he is “going to get involved” in settling a heated dispute between Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly and former USS Theodore Roosevelt Capt. Brett Crozier, who was fired last week after writing a letter about a worsening coronavirus outbreak aboard his ship that was later published by the San Francisco Chronicle.During a press conference at the White House, the president praised both men and said he doesn’t want Capt. Crozier’s career to be ruined because of a “bad day.”“I’ve heard very good things about the gentleman, both gentlemen,” Mr. Trump said. “I may just get involved … you have two good people and they’re arguing. And...

The Trump administration is set to pare desk jobs at the top of the intelligence community, invoking the argument that its staffs are too large and duplicative, knowledgeable sources say. One of the first targets is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany and a favorite of President Trump, arrived as acting director in February. Mr. Grenell has brought in Kash Patel, once a close aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican. Mr. Patel principally wrote the 2018 Nunes memo that exposed the FBI’s reliance on the discredited Christopher Steele...

Dear Madam Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, within 90 days before the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date.  In accordance with this provision, I have sent to the Federal Register for publication the enclosed notice stating that the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13694 of April 1, 2015, is to continue in effect beyond April...

Six terrorists who carried out attacks were on the FBI's radar previously. The Justice Department's internal government watchdog released a report Wednesday identifying what it described as significant issues with how the FBI handled investigations of extremists based in the U.S. who either sought or successfully carried out attacks against Americans. The report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz scrutinized how agents investigated so-called 'homegrown violent extremists,' or HVE, and found several instances where individuals who went on to carry out attacks had been previously identified by the FBI but had their cases closed with no further action. "Since September...

Lawmakers from both parties told Pentagon leaders on Wednesday that the Defense Department is undermining its own efforts to get military money by diverting billions of dollars for the construction of President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the committee’s top Republican warned Defense Secretary Mark Esper that overturning congressional funding decisions to shift money for the wall is an enormous problem that will have consequences. The plan to shift money has triggered rare Republican opposition to one of Trump’s priorities. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said the result may be that Congress...

On Saturday, February 22, I received near simultaneous text messages from an old federal agent buddy and my boss that a dear friend had been found dead from a gunshot wound to the chest. I could not believe it. I went to the Internet to search for any public reports to confirm this information, which I hoped would turn out to be some kind of horrible joke or “fake news.” I could find nothing.Yet it was not a joke or fake news. As the weekend wore on, reports from legitimate news outlets, seemingly all conservative, began to trickle out that...

15 Minutes of Fame How is the President supposed to get anything done while surrounded with people like John Bolton, who can't wait for their 15 minutes of fame? Gotta see more of Mark? https://t.co/ICZsTSuMg1 pic.twitter.com/eSvOo2idBL— LevinTV (@LevinTV) February 19, 2020