Free Republic

For many Okinawa locals, the arrest of a US soldier accused of robbing and killing a woman in a hotel room has reignited decades of frustration over crimes involving US military personnel there. "Honestly my first reaction was, 'Not again,'" 52-year-old longtime Okinawa resident Ai Sato told the BBC. "Nothing has changed since I was a child. How many times are we going to repeat the same thing, create more victims, cause their families to suffer, and ultimately, cause the people of Okinawa to grieve?" Akemi Oshiro, a 62-year-old Ginowan resident shared similar sentiments. "I know we shouldn't get used...

Washington — Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who represented Illinois for two decades in Congress and was jailed for violating banking laws, has died, a coroner in Illinois said. He was 84. Both the longest-serving Republican House speaker and the highest-ranking elected U.S. official to serve a prison sentence, Hastert's stunning fall from grace came in 2016, when he was sentenced to 15 months in prison on charges related to his concealment of hush money payments made to cover up his sexual abuse of teenage boys during his time as a high school wrestling coach. Kendall County Coroner...

Hamam al-Hammami, the copilot accused of trying to hijack and crash a flydubai aircraft bound for Israel, stated during interrogation that he had researched which airlines operate routes to Tel Aviv and consequently chose flydubai, an Israeli source told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. "I tried to get hired by all the airlines. I planned the operation even before I was accepted by the company," the pilot said during interrogation. "The dream was to crash into Ben-Gurion Airport," Hammami added. In recent months, Hammami had been frequenting Ben-Gurion Airport in the course of his work as a pilot. One of...

Yemeni government forces claimed on Monday to have retaken control of key positions near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a vital chokepoint for global trade, as they launch a renewed campaign to roll back recent gains made by the Iran-backed Houthi movement. Military spokesperson Majid Al-Nuzaili claimed on X that government forces “have succeeded in controlling Bab al-Mandeb,” adding that they have “cut off” and taken control of the road between Dhubab district, which overlooks Bab al-Mandeb, and the port town of Mocha, previously seized by the Houthis. CNN hasn’t independently verified the claim. Forces, which are backed by Saudi Arabia,...

Iran’s worsening economic crisis has opened an increasingly bitter argument over who is responsible, as the government points to outside pressure and market psychology while hardliners accuse Tehran’s own economic officials of making the situation worse. On Thursday, the end of Iran’s market week, the rial fell to another record low. Year-on-year inflation has reached almost 90 percent, with food prices rising even faster. The deterioration comes as US sanctions and a naval blockade squeeze Iran’s sources of revenue. The blockade has severely constrained oil exports, while Washington on Thursday expanded sanctions into the automotive and rail sectors, targeting some...

No, we don’t want Canada as a 51st state; yes, we want to trade with you; and yes, your Prime Minister is on a crazed personal vendetta that could destroy you. Have you tried listening to Canadian podcasts? Once in a while, I do, and we can conclude that Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well north of the border. It’s comical, but it sadly represents what they are thinking up there. The problem is that the Canadian political class is barking up the wrong trees. I agree that President Trump took the “51st state” joke too far, but the...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested a Venezuelan national who was previously released by a New York City judge after he was charged with emerging from a Manhattan sewer. The man was reportedly part of the “mole man” trend, where individuals look for valuables in the sewer system. 25-year-old Samuel Reveron Ascanio was taken into ICE custody after being released. ICE said Reveron entered the country illegally and had a federal arrest warrant at the time of his September 24 arrest. The case started when the NYPD received a 911 call reporting three men emerging from a manhole in Manhattan....

A US judge dismissed a federal case on Thursday that accused a Jamaican national of illegally voting, finding the law criminalizing noncitizen voting was unconstitutional and delivering a blow to the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged election fraud. The ruling by Miami-based US District Judge David Leibowitz applies only to the case of Florida resident Chelsea Cox, who was charged in October 2025 with illegally voting in the 2020 election. It is not binding for judges in other cases. It marks a setback for President Donald Trump’s administration on noncitizen voting, a cornerstone of its push to highlight alleged election...

Flávio Bolsonaro defied the polls by finishing ahead of Lula, forcing an October 25 runoff as conservative candidates captured major victories across Brazil and strengthened their position in the nation’s Senate. ================================================================== WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Flávio Bolsonaro led Lula 47.24% to 44.91% with 99% of reporting completed Sunday night. The presidential contest will proceed to an October 25 runoff after Flávio fell below the 50% needed for an outright victory. Conservative candidates scored major victories across São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina. Michelle Bolsonaro won a Senate seat, while the Liberal Party...

Two terrorist attacks were attempted on Monday within hours of each other in Judea and Samaria. IDF forces operating near Bani Naim in the Hebron Hills saw a vehicle with three terrorists moving suspiciously. The vehicle then accelerated toward the forces' vehicle and struck it. In response, the soldiers fired toward the vehicle, and hits were identified. No IDF soldiers were hurt. According to reports from the scene, one of the suspects was killed, another was severely wounded, and the third was arrested. A few hours later, two terrorists, at least one armed with a knife, entered the grazing areas...

A group of 15 Democratic mayors governing in Republican-dominated states are building a new political operation that aims to influence national politics as a center-left alternative to both the MAGA movement and what they describe as "far-left dysfunction" from groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. The organization -- Blue Cities/Red States -- is led by Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and will launch next week in Miami with a kickoff event hosted by its mayor, Eileen Higgins. The founding mayors lead cities including Atlanta, Jacksonville, Boise, Tulsa and Memphis -- governing more than 7 million Americans across 11 red and...

A federal judge threw out drug evidence after ruling a sheriff’s deputy violated the Fourth Amendment by pulling a month of a driver’s location history from Flock’s camera network without a warrant. U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill granted Melisa Kyle’s motion to suppress and ruled the warrantless search of automated license plate reader data unconstitutional, according to the ruling. The drug prosecution against Kyle sits in the Northern District of Oklahoma. Tulsa County Deputy Freddie Alaniz began trailing Kyle’s Mazda SUV for no reason beyond its California plate, according to the ruling. He queried the Flock system for her...

Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone told Newsmax on Friday that newly declassified records point to CIA foreknowledge of the Watergate break-in, as a Justice Department review revisits prosecutor conduct in the 1972 scandal.Appearing on "Ed Henry: The Big Take," Stone linked his longstanding revisionist view of Watergate to a preliminary DOJ review examining whether the special prosecutor's office mistreated defendants connected to former President Richard Nixon.Stone, a political operative who has written a book arguing the agency sabotaged the break-in, said "a couple of things" now support his view that the 37th president was wrongly brought down.He pointed to records...

SEATTLE—Like New York, this West Coast city narrowly elected a Democratic socialist as mayor last year. On the campaign trail, Katie Wilson pitched an ambitious agenda: lower costs, tax the wealthy and build thousands of shelter units for the homeless. Then came reality. In recent days, the mayor stunned allies and observers alike by proposing a city budget with no new taxes, scaled-back pledges and nearly $50 million in cuts across various departments—all while boosting spending for police officers. The small-c conservative proposal bears little resemblance to the rent freezes, city-run grocery pilots and luxury second-home taxes emerging from Mayor...

In a big — though temporary — win for President Trump, a federal appeals court has blocked the reinstatement of a fired Democrat U.S. Attorney. Over the summer, President Trump fired U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington Roger Rogoff. However, an Obama-appointed federal judge ordered Rogoff to be reinstated, ruling that President Trump does not have the authority to fire U.S. attorneys. On Sunday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a temporary stay of the lower court order, meaning that Rogoff remains out of a job for the time being. Take a look at the ruling here:...

A recent internal investigation concluded that some Internal Revenue Service employees improperly used their official access to snoop through the tax records of public figures. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s (TIGTA) office identified 86 “suspicious accesses” into the records of 30 different taxpayers by 52 individuals employed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from calendar years 2022 to 2025 as of November 2025, according to a TIGTA report released Tuesday. The report noted the improperly accessed taxpayer records included those belonging to “United States government officials, business leaders, and entertainers.” The IRS did not immediately respond to the...

Doesn't democracy die in darkness anymore? Nothing about the substance of the meeting was recorded in the notes even though the U.S. Attorney's Manual requires agents in important cases to confer about notetaking ahead of time, memorialize that discussion and then take substantive notes of contacts with witnesses. Smith's team did neither. ================================================================ PDF LINKS AT SITE.............. Then-Special Counsel Jack Smith's team secretly met at the CIA in late 2023 with former Director John Brennan to discuss "expert testimony" in the classified documents prosecution of President Donald Trump, and the FBI agents who attended the interview left blank their notes...

Former-banker-turned-tiny-French-President Emmanuel Macron blasted what he called “American free speech” while speaking to reporters last week. Defending the European Union’s robust censorship policies, le petit fromage insisted that Europe’s speech-policing Digital Services Act should censor information that governments consider false “much more extensively, much faster, and much more forcefully.” Macron then did his Orwellian best to condemn free speech as oppression and praise censorship as liberation: “So-called American ‘free speech’—at least as it exists today and has been promoted by some people—is the opposite of free speech.” The terribly disliked French leader continued, “My freedom cannot mean that I am...

PDF LINKS AT SITE.................... Already in the crosshairs for spying on Congress, ex-prosecutor Jack Smith and his team monitored the activities of President Donald Trump’s legal defense team, journalists and campaign advisers using a pen register device that tracked the calls coming to and from his chief of staff Susie Wiles’ phone, according to newly declassified memos that reveal some of the FBI’s invasive tactics used to target Trump. Just the News reported last week that Smith obtained the phone records of several senators through a subpoena and secured a non-disclosure order from the court preventing the mobile carrier from...

While California is already notorious for having a massive welfare state -- accompanied by massive amounts of welfare fraud -- a new report revealed the extent to which California handouts bankroll illegal aliens. The report from City Journal fellow Christopher Rufo, joined by Kenneth Schrupp and Austen Hufford, even described the programs as a "shadow welfare system." Among other benefits, foreigners can receive "health care, rental assistance, college grants, tax credits, low-cost car insurance, and even smartphones on the taxpayers’ dime," the report said. The team from the City Journal visited four welfare offices in California -- where employees admitted...