Free Republic

Sabreen Alrouh Joudeh was born an orphan. And her life, however hopeful, has proved brief. During a barrage of intense Israeli airstrikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah this weekend, one blast hit the family home into which Sabreen would have been welcomed, according to local health officials, hospital staff and family members. The blast killed her mother, Sabreen Sakani — who was 30 weeks pregnant with her at the time — as well as her father, Shukri Joudeh, and her 3-year-old sister she never got to meet, Malak. The family was declared dead at the city’s Kuwaiti Hospital...

Two senior Republican lawmakers, the chairs of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, say their colleagues are echoing Russian state propaganda against Ukraine. Researchers who study disinformation say Reps. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, are merely acknowledging what has been clear for some time: Russian propaganda aimed at undermining U.S. and European support for Ukraine has steadily seeped into America’s political conversation over the past decade, taking on a life of its own. McCaul, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Puck News he thinks “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately,...

Ken Paxton hit the campaign trail with a smile last week. Beaming in photos he posted of events in Collin County, Denton County, Grayson County and Tarrant County, the Texas Republican attorney general campaigned and promoted more than a dozen candidates on the ballot in this week’s primary election. Most are new faces to the Republican Party, because Paxton, the legally embattled but popular statewide official, isn’t seeking to shore up his party’s incumbents: Paxton is out for revenge. “It’s time for a whole new slate in Collin County,” he wrote in one post with a photo of him and...

For one day at least, Russia’s opposition came alive to mourn its lost leader. The funeral of Alexei Navalny on Friday almost did not happen at all. But thousands ultimately turned out — braving the snow, heavy security and weeks of Kremlin efforts to derail the event — so that they could pay their respects to the man who challenged President Vladimir Putin with a vision for a democratic Russia. Bearing flowers, candles and placards, the crowd chanted Navalny’s name as his body was first delivered to a church in southern Moscow for a brief funeral and then to a...

An NBC News review of available 2024 crime data from the cities targeted by Texas’ “Operation Lone Star,” which buses or flies migrants from the border to major cities in the interior — shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants. Overall crime is down year over year in Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, New York and Los Angeles. Crime has risen in Washington, D.C., but local officials do not attribute the spike to migrants.

The Supreme Court has announced it will consider Donald Trump’s appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar him from the state’s ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) tells MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart that the question the Justices have to answer is: “are we going to follow the Constitution?”

once-robust alliance of federal agencies, tech companies, election officials and researchers that worked together to thwart foreign propaganda and disinformation has fragmented after years of sustained Republican attacks. The GOP offensive started during the 2020 election as public critiques and has since escalated into lawsuits, governmental inquiries and public relations campaigns that have succeeded in stopping almost all coordination between the government and social media platforms.

TEL AVIV — Israel’s ferocious bombardment of the Gaza Strip will create an incubator for a new generation of terrorists, some extremism experts say, as thousands of young people who have lost families and homes risk being radicalized by the war and its likely chaotic aftermath. Israel says it wants to destroy Hamas, the terrorist group that carried out the massacre of more than 1,400 people and the kidnappings of 240 others on Oct. 7, according to official estimates. But Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign has killed thousands of civilians, many of them women and children; reduced swaths of the tiny,...

Epps entered Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 as a supporter of former President Donald Trump. He told the Jan. 6 committee that the conspiracy theories about him ruined his life. WASHINGTON — Ray Epps, a Jan. 6 participant whose removal from the FBI's Capitol Violence webpage sparked conspiracy theories that he was a federal informant, was charged in connection with the Capitol attack on Tuesday. Epps is charged with one misdemeanor count, disorderly or disruptive conduct on restricted grounds. He was charged by information, which suggests that he plans to enter a plea deal. The criminal information charges that...

Russian high school seniors will return to classrooms this week to find history rewritten in the image of President Vladimir Putin. A new textbook — churned out in just four months and touted as the first state effort to unify teaching of the subject since the Soviet era — echoes Kremlin propaganda justifying the war in Ukraine, the latest stage of a drive to shape the worldview of a new generation. The book will be used by history teachers across the country, including in Russian occupied Ukrainian territories, to teach students in their final year of high school about the...

A record number of bills aimed at restricting the rights of LGBTQ people have become law in the past three years, but the majority of those that have faced legal challenges haven’t held up in court, according to an NBC News analysis, legal experts and the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed legal challenges against some of the laws. Just this year, state representatives introduced 491 bills aimed at restricting LGBTQ rights, with 77 of them becoming law, according to the ACLU. The majority of bills proposed and passed focused on limiting the ability of transgender youth to receive...

WASHINGTON — The charges brought against President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden are rarely prosecuted, legal experts say. Like the gun charge, the tax charges are rarely brought against first-time offenders and even more rarely result in jail time, Andrew Weissmann, a former FBI general counsel and NBC News contributor, tweeted Tuesday. "This is if anything harsh, not lenient," he wrote. Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti agreed. "It insults the intelligence of the American people to compare misdemeanor tax charges to a scheme to steal Top Secret documents and obstruct justice when the government asked for them back," he tweeted,...

Just 24% of Americans surveyed have positive views of the Make America Great Again movement in a new national NBC News poll.President Donald Trump is still unpopular and so is the political movement created in his image, according to a new national NBC News poll. The Make America Great Again, or ‘MAGA,’ movement, which takes its name from Trump’s first campaign slogan, was the least popular individual or group tested in the new survey. Just 24% of Americans have positive views of the movement, while 45% voice negative views. These numbers come as President Joe Biden made Trump — and...

U.S. intelligence officials are watching for any influence campaigns from Russia or China that are aimed at amplifying existing political divisions or stoking unrest among Americans over the indictment of former President Donald Trump, according to two U.S. officials.Officials have been on alert since the indictment was confirmed last week and so far have not seen significant signs of Russian or Chinese interference in the country’s political discourse beyond the efforts that have become standard, the U.S. officials said.But after Trump’s arraignment Tuesday, one of the officials said the intelligence community is watching “very closely” for any signs of such...

Russian authorities on Thursday arrested an American journalist for The Wall Street Journal on spying charges. Evan Gershkovich was detained in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg on suspicion of “espionage in the interests of the American government,” the Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement, which was reported by state media. The FSB accused Gershkovich of collecting “information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

In the hours after the shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville on Monday, some conservatives rushed to blame the massacre on the suspect’s gender identity, connecting the tragedy to their national crusade against transgender rights.

WASHINGTON — The White House is exploring additional ways to ensure accountability for those who were responsible for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, administration officials said Tuesday. Pointing to the bonuses some bank employees got last week and stock sales made by senior executives in recent years, a White House official said, “All of those are worthy of a deeper look.” Biden privately told his advisers in meetings over the weekend that he wants tougher regulations on banks to prevent future failures, the second official said. Biden wants Congress to reverse the deregulatory actions lawmakers took during the Trump...

Outgoing Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) should not try and relegate the COVID vaccine. Anchor Chuck Todd said, “You spent a lot of 2021 trying to get some skeptics to take the backseat in Arkansas, so I’m curious what you think of this.” Discussing requesting his state’s Supreme Court convene a grand jury to probe wrongdoing related to the coronavirus vaccine on Fox News, DeSantis said, “Like anything, you take an MRNA shot, the way to view it is what are the benefits and the drawbacks? It seems like...

A Biden administration official recently told members of Congress that Ukraine has the military capability to retake Crimea, but some officials are concerned any large-scale offensive that threatens Russia’s hold on the peninsula could push Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons, say two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The late November Ukraine briefing to some members of Congress included discussion of the reasons Ukraine will continue to need U.S. weapons and equipment for the foreseeable future. The two officials said a Biden official, when asked during the briefing about continued support for the Ukrainian military and whether it would...

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that former President Donald Trump’s endorsements in important 2022 primaries contributed to the nominations of poor candidates who fell short in swing states. He made the remarks at his weekly news conference, responding to a question from NBC News about whether he intends to play a more active role in selecting candidates in the 2024 election cycle, when Republicans have a friendlier map. “We ended up having a candidate quality test,” McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters about the 2022 election. “Look at Arizona. Look at New Hampshire. And the challenging situation in Georgia, as...