Free Republic

In its diplomacy about the war, Kyiv has striven to maintain an axiom that great powers should not discuss the country’s fate over its head. “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” had been the approach. Now, as the Trump administration has negotiated a 28-point settlement plan in just this way — with input from Russia but not from Ukraine or from its allies in Europe — Ukrainian and European officials and commentators are responding with dismay. “For any plan to work, it needs Ukrainians and Europeans on board,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said on Thursday ahead of a...

A hateful mob of anti-Israel protesters descended on a prominent New York City synagogue Wednesday night, chanting “Globalize the intifada” and sinisterly urging the “resistance” to “take another settler out.” Some 200 demonstrators gathered outside the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and heckled Jews attending an event by Nefesh B’nefesh, a Zionist organization that helps Jews immigrate to Israel, according to the Times of Israel. “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events,” one protest leader told the crowd. “We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared. We need to make...

President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war between Ukraine and Russia would give the Russians parts of eastern Ukraine they don’t occupy, Axios reported, citing a U.S. official. As part of the deal, Ukraine will receive a security guarantee from the U.S. and Europe against future Russian aggression, the official said. While Ukraine would view the deal as a major surrender to Russia, the White House believes Ukraine would likely lose the territory anyway and the country could receive assurances Russia wouldn’t just resume the war, Axios reported. The deal would call for Russia to control the Donbas region,...

U.S. employers added a surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September, the government said, issuing a key economic report that had been delayed for seven weeks by the federal government shutdown. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in September, highest since October 2021 and up from 4.3% in August, the Labor Department said Thursday. The unemployment rate rose partly because 470,000 people entered the labor market — either working or looking for work — in September and not all of them found jobs right away. The increase in payrolls was more than double the 50,000 economists had forecast. But Labor Department...

It was the most momentous event in UK history since World War Two. As a new virus took hold, millions of us were told to stay at home and billions of pounds were spent propping up the country's economy. The Covid inquiry will publish its second set of findings on Thursday, looking in detail at the huge political choices made at the time - including how lockdowns were introduced, the closure of businesses and schools, and bringing in previously unthinkable social restrictions. Five years on from those dramatic 12 months, the inquiry's findings are long-awaited, particularly by the 235,000 families...

A former congressional staffer has been charged for allegedly staging her own violent assault, for which she paid someone $500 to slice dozens of cuts into her body, according to prosecutors.

It appears that Neom—Saudi Arabia’s hugely expensive, architecturally bizarre urban development project—is floundering and close to collapse. A new report from the Financial Times cites high-level sources within the project to paint a picture of dysfunction and failure at the heart of the quixotic effort. Neom was envisioned as a vast series of fantastical urban developments spread across the coast of the Red Sea. At the center of the project is The Line—a proposed 105-mile-long city which developers had initially projected could house as many as 9 million people by the year 2030. The Line is defined by bizarre architectural...

Criminals will be stopped from “gaming the system” by choosing trial by jury in order to increase the chances of proceedings collapsing, the courts minister has said, promising to enact radical changes to limit jury trials by the next election. Drug dealers and career criminals were “laughing in the dock” knowing cases can take years to come to trial, Sarah Sackman said, while warning that inaction would be a road to “chaos and ruin”. Ministers will legislate to remove the right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in one of the biggest and most controversial overhauls of the...

Gathering leading scholars, hierarchs, educators, and students, the conference addressed past statements, current research and modes of co-operation, and outstanding obstacles. Conversation included theological, liturgical, and pastoral approaches. “The second half of the twentieth century saw many unofficial consultations and official meetings between the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox church families. Their resulting documents—full of promise—were formally received by only a small number of churches from either side, while the rest have waited for an official response,” the conference description read. “It is time to see where the churches are and reassess the findings of the dialogues.” “As Christians from both...

Walmart is proving to be America’s antidote to the cost of living crisis. A growing number of Americans are heading to Walmart for groceries and clothing as inflation and high prices squeeze their budgets: Walmart’s business in the United States is surging and it’s gaining market share from rivals, the company said Thursday in its quarterly financial report. Walmart has used its massive size and scale to drive down prices and pour billions of dollars into investments such as raising wages, sprucing up stores and building a logistics network for online shopping. These investments are paying off for Walmart at...

In her long career, Nancy Pelosi has been known as representative, House Speaker and Speaker Emerita. But over the past few years, Pelosi’s been handed a much less official title: “The queen of stock trading.” And there’s more than $531 million backing up that sentiment. ---SNIP--- Here’s how the “Pelosi Tracker” is set up. The Ethics in Government Act requires that members of the House of Representatives disclose their own and their spouse’s sales and purchases of stock. Pelosi’s husband Paul is an active investor, so she turns in filings reporting those trades often. Autopilot then rearranges the “Tracker” portfolio...

Canada is preparing to launch a groundbreaking accelerated immigration pathway designed specifically for H1-B visa holders in the United States. This new stream is set to offer a faster, more predictable route into the Canadian economy for thousands of highly skilled workers who have spent years facing uncertainty under the American immigration system. The upcoming pathway, expected to be introduced in the coming months, signals a major strategic shift in Canada’s global talent agenda. It aims to attract professionals who are ready to move their careers, families, and long-term future north of the border. At a time when the United...

His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, in an interview conducted during the Sixth World Conference of the Faith and Order Commission in Wadi El Natrun, Egypt, reflects on the deep heritage of the Coptic Orthodox Church, its unique roles, and the importance of hosting the historic conference, which drew more than 400 people who explored the theme “Where now for visible unity?”Your Holiness, you mentioned in one of your statements that “A homeland without churches is better than churches without a homeland.” Can you clarify this statement? How do you describe the role of the Coptic Orthodox Church in this context?...

Frank Athen Walls is scheduled to be executed Dec. 18 for the murders of Edward Alger and Ann Peterson in their Fort Walton Beach-area mobile home. Source: Okaloosa County Sherrif's Office/Florida Department of Corrections Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant Tuesday for a man convicted of killing two people during a 1987 burglary in Okaloosa County. Frank Athen Walls, 58, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 18 at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Raiford, according to the warrant signed Nov. 18. Walls was first convicted in July 1988 of two counts of first-degree murder for killing Edward...

Two months after Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk's assassination at Utah Valley University, his security director said the tragedy exposed preventable flaws in how the event was coordinated and secured. Brian Harpole, a veteran law enforcement officer and founder of Integrity Security Solutions, told "The Shawn Ryan Show" his team repeatedly raised concerns about rooftop exposure, drone restrictions and staffing gaps in the days before the Sept. 10 event. "We were told the roof was covered," Harpole said. "The chief said, ‘I got you covered.’ I took him at his word. "We can’t break the law to do what...

Remember Arabella Advisors? Eighteen months ago, Scott Walter literally wrote the book on the dark-money organization that sought to remake America into its preferred Marxist image. ARABELLA: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America explained how billionaires, inside of America and out, supplied massive amounts of financing to supposedly "grassroots" organizations on the hard Left, using various issue-related "storefronts" to hide the high-level coordination by the oligarchs that the Left supposedly opposes. At the time, Arabella Advisors got its financing through names like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Pierre Omidyar, Hans-Jörg Wyss, and more. These billionaire activists needed...

Seth Rich Attorney Ty Clevenger fired off a blistering letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel back in April, accusing the FBI of flagrantly concealing critical records about the late DNC staffer Seth Rich and the now-discredited Russia collusion narrative. Seth Rich was murdered in the summer of 2016 before the release of the Hillary Clinton emails. His death has never been explained. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange suggested it was Rich who provided the Hillary-DNC emails to his organization and NOT Russia. In February 2024, Clevenger demanded that the FBI hand over the Seth Rich documents...

Suppose you’re a controversial left-wing speaker. Who do you think would be more likely to let you voice your opinions on campus: a slightly conservative man or a democratic socialist woman? Now suppose you’re a controversial right-wing speaker. Who do you think would be more likely to let you voice your opinions on campus: a slightly liberal man or a somewhat conservative woman? It may seem obvious that, regardless of gender, someone with a similar ideology would be more tolerant of your views. But recent data gathered by FIRE suggests that’s not always the case. Amazingly, it turns out that...

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist (communist) mayor-elect of New York City, is already walking back his completely insane plan to replace police with social workers in response to certain crimes. It was never a realistic idea to begin with. It was an effort on his part to appeal to the ‘defund the police’ wing of the Democrat party, of which Mamdani is himself a member. The truth is that police never really know what kind of dangerous situation they might be walking into, even on the most routine calls. The New York Post reports: Zohran Mamdani now says NYPD should...

U.S. job growth defied expectations in September, according to a Labor Department report issued nearly seven weeks late due to the government shutdown. Payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 119,000 on the month, the strongest gain since April, the Labor Department said Thursday.