Free Republic

Donald Trump said he was willing to end the Iran war without a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The US president, with no concrete signs of a diplomatic breakthrough, suggested that if negotiations collapsed, he would “obliterate” Iran’s energy and water facilities, but leave the vital waterway under Iranian control. He wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business’, we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by...

Iran’s IRGC has confirmed the killing of Jamshid Eshaghi, a major general in Iran’s armed forces and an adviser to the chief of the General Staff, Al Jazeera reports. In a statement circulated by Iranian media, the IRGC said an attack killed Eshaghi with several members of his family, but it did not provide details. Earlier today, Iranian state media announced that the funeral for the IRGC navy commander, Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, who was also killed in an Israeli attack, will take place on Monday.

The mayor of Rhode Island’s capital city is calling for a mural reportedly backed by Elon Musk to honor Iryna Zarutska —the Ukrainian woman whose brutal murder while riding a North Carolina train prompted calls for harsher punishment for career criminals — to be taken down. The mural, located on the exterior of The Dark Lady, an LGBTQ+ club in downtown Providence, remains incomplete, WJAR-TV reported. The office of Mayor Brett Smiley told the news outlet that he wants the artwork taken down. “The murder of the individual depicted in this mural was a devastating tragedy, but the misguided, isolating...

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Monday his committee has received information showing the United States' Census Bureau in 2020 miscalculated the number of Americans in a way that cost Republicans multiple House seats. Comer claimed the basic count was biased against Republicans because the bureau made estimations instead of doing a physical count during the COVID-19 pandemic, and estimated high in Democratic areas like major cities and underestimated in suburban areas known to be more friendly to Republicans. "The basic count was miscounted grossly in the last census, to the tune of costing the Republicans anywhere from four...

Democrats don't hate all Christians, of course. Christians are great if they are genderqueer or love illegal immigrants, but if they conform to rather normal Christian theology and believe that such a thing as sin exists, or that good and evil are real things, they are quite scary. Postmodern, anti-Western Christianity=good. Cisgender, heterosexual, and especially white Christians=bad. You would think that their objections would be ideological, but that isn't primarily the case. The hatred of Christianity you see in many liberals is actually a hatred of the West itself. The West was called "Christendom" for centuries, and for a reason....

Italy has denied the use of an airbase in Sicily to US military planes carrying weapons for the war in Iran after the US did not follow the required authorisation procedure. A source at the Italian defence ministry confirmed a report in Corriere della Sera that “some US bombers” had been due to land at Sigonella – one of seven US navy bases in Italy – before heading to the Middle East, but that use of the base had been denied because the US sought authorisation to land only while the aircraft were already en route to Sicily. The source...

Held: Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy, as applied to Ms. Chiles’s talk therapy, regulates speech based on viewpoint, and the lower courts erred by failing to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny.

Wild footage shows three disgruntled women being hauled out of Miami International Airport in handcuffs for storming onto a Philadelphia-bound flight while refusing to pay for extra luggage. Nafisa Dockery, 30, DionjanaCochran, 21, and Davana Cochran, 26 were all slapped with trespassing after a warning and resisting an officer charges over the Sunday night airport mayhem, according to arrest reports. The trio was waiting to board a Frontier Airlines flight when an employee noticed they didn’t pay for a second carry-on luggage item and asked that they step off the line and fork over the extra fee, authorities said, according...

Not an entertainer or talk show celebrity, Postol has banks of lecture slides showing nuke-war damage, missiles & drones in eye-glazing technical detail. Take-away: if a cheap but accurate drone hits your apartment even with a reinforced safe-room, the building will collapse, so you'd better huddle in a shelter. But the destruction of radars means you have no warning. Your life is completely disrupted. While U.S. Defense Industries (Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics,TRW, etc.) have been getting fat pedalling us decades of useless, expensive whiz-bang systems that never worked but make fantastic Congressional pork: lean-mean Ukrainians, Russians, Chinese & Iranians have been...

Last year, Paula White offered her followers seven Easter blessings for a gift of $1,000. This Holy Week, she’s using support for Israel as a motivation to give money to her. In addition to being a health-and-wealth televangelist — soundly critiqued by most of mainstream Christianity — White leads President Donald Trump’s White House Office of Faith. This year, she’s drawing on the Trump administration’s unflinching support for the Israeli government by claiming a gift to her ministry is a gift to support Israel. White is a staunch Zionist and recently kicked a conservative evangelical woman off Trump’s Religious Liberty...

"It was pretty soon after James was born that I knew something wasn't right," says Laura. She and her partner, Beth, have two children - James, and their eldest Kate - both conceived through IVF treatment at a clinic in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus. The two women used their own eggs and carefully chose one anonymous, healthy sperm donor. They told the clinic which ordered the sperm for them that it was important the same donor was used for both babies - so their children would be biologically related. But when James was born, they both noticed that his "beautiful" brown...

Alberta’s push for independence reached a major milestone Monday after organizers announced they have surpassed the 177,000 signatures required to trigger a provincial referendum. The petition’s success means Albertans are now on track to vote on independence on October 19, marking a historic moment in the province’s political landscape. SNIP

The Chicago Bulls waived shooting guard Jaden Ivey “due to conduct detrimental to the team,” the team announced in a statement on Monday. Ivey had increasingly been posting on social media about his religious beliefs and recently made anti-LGBTQ comments. The Bulls’ decision reportedly came after he criticized the NBA for celebrating Pride Month, which he called “unrighteousness.”

Military victories are decided on the battlefield—but in modern America, they are too often lost in the politics that follow. The rare quick and total victory over an enemy at little cost often ensures unquestioned political support in modern consensual societies. In most cases, however, especially in the Western world, ongoing military success or failure is adjudicated through the lens of politics—in a way sometimes at odds with the reality of the battlefield. Politicians answer to the people. The best do not drift with the prevailing winds. On the other hand, all must face elections, secure legislative support, and ultimately...

The Chinese government is set to ban people from storing the cremated remains of their loved ones in empty apartments instead of paying for expensive cemetery plots. The new law will put an end to "bone ash apartments", which have risen in popularity as spaces in cemeteries remain scarce. Low property prices in the country mean that for many, it is more affordable to entomb the ashes of relatives in an empty apartment than pay for funeral costs. The legislation prohibits the use of residential properties "specifically for the placement of ashes" as well as the burial of remains outside...

No Kings protests in Portland, Los Angeles and Dallas grew violent Saturday — and one near Mar-a-Lago in Florida took a lewd turn — as thousands filled streets around the US in angry demonstrations against the Trump Administration. No Kings demonstrations in Portland, Oregon got out of hand in the evening with protesters sporting gas masks attacking police officers who were trying to control the crowd, according to video posted on X by FreedomNews.tv. There was no immediate word on arrests. In Dallas, Police had to separate No Kings demonstrators from “Pro America” counter demonstrators as the two groups engaged...

Democrats love to say their problem is messaging but sometimes it’s the message that’s the problem. Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is learning that the hard way. Leaked audio has surfaced of El-Sayed telling staffers he didn’t want to say anything about the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — because, in his words, “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad.” The New York Post reports the recording came from a March 1 strategy call, the day after Khamenei was killed in an Israeli strike. On that call, El-Sayed urged his team to...

WASHINGTON — One of President Trump’s most ambitious policy endeavors — his effort to end birthright citizenship — is set to face its moment of truth before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, just over a month after it axed the centerpiece of his tariff agenda. The Supreme Court will decide whether Trump’s attempt to block the kin of illegal immigrants born on US soil from automatically becoming citizens is within his power, something that is widely seen as the most consequential case left on its docket. “This is a glaring red line for the Supreme Court justices that they don’t...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ministers at a cabinet meeting today that new alliances are being formed with leaders of Arab countries who “are talking about fighting together on our side,” the Hebrew-language Maariv daily reports. “In the past, I had secret conversations with Arab leaders,” Netanyahu reportedly said. “I told them, ‘As soon as Iran can, it will conquer you and overthrow your kingdoms.’ Back then, they didn’t really internalize things. Today they understand.” Yesterday, Ambassador to Washington Yechiel Leiter said on a podcast that Gulf countries are asking Israel for help. “Some of our allies have become even...

The Nebraska Democratic Party denounced a Democratic candidate for Senate recently that they allege to be a “Republican Party plant,” CNN reported Monday, with the candidate being exposed for having supported President Donald Trump, opposed access to reproductive health care and attended a GOP-sponsored training event. Forbes spoke with CNN for its report Monday, in which he admitted that he had voted for Trump “in multiple elections” and had attended a GOP-backed leadership summit as recently as January. Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb also provided CNN with screenshots from a now-deleted Facebook page that she said show Forbes attending...