Free Republic

India said on Saturday that the Trump administration’s move to increase U.S. H-1B visa fees to $100,000 per year was likely to have humanitarian consequences, warning of potential disruptions for families. India was the largest beneficiary of the U.S. H-1B skilled worker visas last year, accounting for 71% of approved applications. Companies will now have to pay the new $100,000 per year fee, which is set to take effect from Saturday midnight. (0400 GMT on Sunday). The move, announced on Friday, could further strain ties between India and the U.S., which hit their lowest point in decades after President Donald...

(Sep. 20, 2025) — Recently, I was advised by a fellow Texan, who supported an ineligible candidate for POTUS, that: “In order for your argument to have any merit at all, you must provide evidence that the authors of the Constitution intended that there be some class of persons who are born a citizen but are not natural born citizens. You could do that from their writing or from legal sources at the time, but you must prove that precise point, or you might as well be clucking like a chicken.” I wish to invite them and all other supporters...

Nigel Farage has criticised Keir Starmer's 'one in, one out' policy after more than a thousand people crossed the English Channel in small boats on Friday. The number of people making the crossing underlined the scale of the challenge facing Sir Keir Starmer's government as it battles to get a grip on the crisis. The latest Home Office figures showed 1,072 made the journey in 13 boats. Friday's arrivals take the number of people who have made the crossing so far in 2025 to 32,103 - a record for this point in a year. Reform leader Farage took to social...

Nearly a week after a Mexican immigrant was fatally shot by an immigration officer during a traffic stop in the Chicago area, his family in Mexico and community members continue to seek answers as they call for more transparency in the probe looking into the sequence of events surrounding his death. The Mexican Consulate in Chicago and local police confirmed the the FBI is leading the investigation into the death of 38-year-old Silverio Villegas González, a single father of two boys. A spokesperson for the FBI Chicago Field Office did not confirm or deny their involvement in the investigation, but...

President Donald Trump said on Saturday he had withdrawn the nomination of Erik Siebert, who has been overseeing an investigation of a prominent Trump critic, to be a federal prosecutor in Virginia. "Today I withdrew the Nomination of Erik Siebert as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, when I was informed that he received the UNUSUALLY STRONG support" of two Democratic senators, Trump posted on Truth Social. Siebert resigned on Friday after Trump called for his removal, Reuters reported, citing an internal email and a person familiar with the matter. But Trump posted: "He didn't quit, I fired...

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Every month, the electric bill arrives, and it’s larger than the month before. The region pays more for electricity than almost anyone else in America—higher than the national average and, outside of Alaska and Hawaii, higher than anywhere else in the country. This is not a coincidence. It is the inevitable result of politicians who pushed the risky and unreliable green agenda while forcing reliable power plants off the grid. The forced closure of coal, oil, and natural gas plants in the name of “climate progress” is why rates are climbing. In 2022, Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey...

Charlie Kirk’s murder proves free speech absolutism cannot withstand lies turned lethal—America must confront hate and incitement with lawful strength, not naïve trust.The murdered Charlie Kirk was a martyr to free speech and the belief in the power of reasoned argument to overcome lies and evil. “Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” he wrote on X in May of 2024. “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.” There is much to admire in Charlie’s devotion to those principles, but his murder put those principles to...

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, during an appearance on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, said the Trump administration is trying to “stifle dissent” following ABC’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. “Without question, they’re trying to stifle dissent,” Shapiro said after noting that selectively firing people for their viewpoints is “dangerous.” The indefinite suspension of Kimmel’s show came after his Monday night monologue about the 22-year-old man accused of shooting and killing right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. On Wednesday afternoon, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr on a conservative podcast threatened to cancel ABC affiliate broadcast...

This is merely one of the 'pied pipers' promoting the radical left's violence which they are publicly owning since 9/10/25 in the wake of their collective assassination of Charlie Kirk. The entirety of the post: Popular streamer Destiny refuses to condemn the assassination of Charlie Kirk, says "you need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed." "On Piers Morgan: "I won't condemn anything until [Trump] can go on air and say all of us need to calm down." On stream: "You need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed when they go to events so that they look to their...

Maureen Napleton, legal counsel at Napleton Auto Group in Hinsdale, is facing backlash over social media posts in which she celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk and called for violence against President Donald Trump.

An ABC TV station in Sacramento, California, was struck by gunfire days after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and media groups Nexstar and Sinclair pulled “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air “indefinitely.” On Friday afternoon, video showed at least three bullet holes through a lobby window of the Tegna-owned ABC affiliate. While there were people inside of the building at the time the bullets struck, police have stated that no injuries were reported. “We haven’t had a lot of attacks on our media partners, and we’d like to keep it that way,” Officer Anthony Gamble of the Sacramento Police Department...

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged the bodies of more than 1,000 soldiers who have fallen in battle, Ukrainian authorities have said. The vast majority of the bodies were received by Ukraine from Russia, while the bodies of 24 Russian soldiers were handed over by Ukraine. Earlier report from the BBC (June 11, 2025): The bodies of 1,212 Ukrainian soldiers have been returned from Russia, Kyiv says, as part of a prisoner exchange agreement between the warring countries. In return Russia received 27 bodies, Moscow's chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said. The prisoner exchange deal was the only tangible result of peace...

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo was confronted by loud critics inside a Queens mosque at a campaign event Friday as he tried to make his case to Muslim voters. The independent New York City mayoral candidate had been criticized by Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani for not campaigning at mosques. Cuomo blames heckling on Mamdani's campaign Cuomo campaigned at a mosque for the first time last week. He made another stop at a mosque in Jamaica on Friday, but he wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms. As he spoke, multiple people in the room began yelling, "Shame on you! Shame on you!"...

A security expert has claimed Russia 'could well be' behind a cyber attack that crippled operations at several major European airports today. Hackers targeted check-in and boarding systems operator Collins Aerospace on Friday night, sparking major disruption, flight delays and cancellations at transport hubs across the continent. The company is 'experiencing a technical issue which may cause delays for departing passengers' as a result of the attack, which crippled online check-in systems at Heathrow, Berlin and Brussels. One expert told the Daily Mail that Russia could be behind the hack, adding: 'The timing of the attack, coming just hours after...

Swiss archaeologists gained new insight into Roman engineering and provincial infrastructure when the remains of a 2,000-year-old bridge reemerged from a former riverbed during modern construction near Aegerten in the Canton of Bern, The Miami Herald reports. Workers uncovered more than 300 oak posts belonging to a wooden structure that once spanned the Thielle River, an important waterway during the Roman era. Dendrochronological analysis indicated that the bridge was first constructed around 40 b.c., shortly after the Roman conquest of the local Celtic Helvetti tribe. It was intermittently repaired and strengthened over a period of 400 years. The bridge once...

The New Yorker magazine used to be a showcase for great writers. That was many years ago. More recently it has become a cesspool of mediocre writers striving with great urgency to promote their leftist agendas. And the latest such example of a New Yorker writer crawling deep into the sewer came on Wednesday with this smear masquerading as a story by Kyle Chayka, "Charlie Kirk and Tyler Robinson Came from the Same Warped Online Worlds."To say that Chayka sickeningly attempted to put Charlie Kirk and his assassin on the same moral plane, as inferred by the story title, is...

Hours after the US administration put a prohibitive USD 100,000 (about Rs 88 lakh) as fee for H-1B visa applications, India said on Saturday that this measure is likely to have “humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families” and the Indian government expressed hoped that these disruptions can be “addressed suitably by the US authorities”. The Ministry of External Affairs’ official spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, “The Government has seen reports related to the proposed restrictions on the US H-1B visa program. The full implications of the measure are being studied by all concerned, including by Indian industry,...

Authorities detained a man at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on Friday evening after he attempted to enter the venue while armed with a tactical knife, at least one firearm, and inactive law enforcement credentials. The stadium is scheduled to host the memorial service for assassinated conservative icon Charlie Kirk on Sunday morning. The massive memorial service is expected to draw over 100,000 attendees, including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other members of the cabinet. The suspect, whose identity has not been released at this time, reportedly claimed affiliation with law enforcement and exhibited suspicious behavior...

Sinclair, the broadcasting company that makes up the nation's largest ABC affiliate group, is giving a list of demands for Jimmy Kimmel to return to air following the show being "indefinitely" pulled. The media company said in a press release on Wednesday, Sept. 17, that it "objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the assassination of Charlie Kirk" and, after discussions with ABC, made the decision to "indefinitely preempt" Jimmy Kimmel Live! beginning that night. "Mr. Kimmel's remarks were inappropriate and deeply insensitive at a critical moment for our country," Sinclair vice chairman Jason Smith said in a...