Free Republic

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has hit out at United States senator Josh Hawley for his “irresponsible” remark that Hong Kong is becoming a police state. Hawley, the youngest sitting senator in the US, arrived in the city on Sunday to observe the anti-government protests, which have raged for more than four months. At the end of the visit, he urged demonstrators in Hong Kong to shun violence, but he blamed Hong Kong police for aggravating the crisis, accusing them of ramping up their use of force. He also said the city is in “danger of sliding into...

History shows totalitarian regimes fall when brave people rise up. As the future of Hong Kong, time is on the side of Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, and Ivan Lam.Three prominent leaders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement were sentenced to prison this week for leading a protest last year. Joshua Wong received 13 and a half months; Agnes Chow, 10 months; and Ivan Lam, seven months. Wong has already been in prison a few times as the result of his activism.They are young. Lam is 26. Wong is 24. Chow turned 24 this past Dec. 3, the day after she received...

It's no secret in Hong Kong that I was with my boss (Jimmy Lai, the owner of Apple Daily) and a few others recently walking the halls of government in Washington D.C. Saw Speaker Pelosi and other leaders in the House and Senate. Visited the State Department. Met some folks from administration, the think tanks, and of course always see the very switched on human rights groups. This week I shot down to D.C. and saw a few folks in a follow-up. All staffs and officials. Working level folks have best info. Both trips to D.C. were in regard to...

Catholic philanthropist Jimmy Lai arrested in Hong Kong Arrest of media tycoon under new security law is ominous for press freedom in the city One of Hong Kong’s leading Catholic philanthropists, media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, has been arrested along with members of his family and company management as Beijing continues its swift implementation of the brutal new national security law (NSL). Lai, 72, has donated millions of dollars to Catholic causes and has been retired Cardinal Joseph Zen’s biggest financial backer. This has raised fears in some quarters that the prelate, who like Lai is a trenchant critic of...

Hong Kong police arrested 14 veteran activists Sunday — including two prominent politicians and a millionaire media mogul — in the biggest crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement since mass protests began last year. Among those detained were Martin Lee, 81, founder of the Democratic Party founder and a senior barrister; publishing tycoon Jimmy Lai, 71; and former legislator and barrister Margaret Ng, 72, the Associated Press reported.

Tucker Carlson's latest exposé is sending shockwaves through MAGA circles after the former Fox News host suggested that Trump's failed assassin, Thomas Crooks, may be connected to a foreign terror group.Carlson's investigative team released a 34-minute video diving into the online history of Crooks, the 20-year-old would-be assassin who shot Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024. Crooks' bullet came within less than an inch of penetrating Trump's skull.More than a year after the assassination attempt, the FBI has yet to release a clear motive for why Crooks tried to shoot Trump or whether he acted...

Dr. Li Meng Yan was on the Joe Hoft Show at 93.3 on Friday. At the end of the interview, Dr. Yan made a HUGE statement. President Trump was destroying China’s plans of world domination and China’s economy. We saw this back in early 2020. The US economy was setting records for the greatest economy in history, it had nearly doubled China’s. If there ever was a reason for China to drop a bioweapon, the fact that China’s economy was imploding and Trump’s economy was the greatest ever, was enough reason for China to drop the COVID-19 bioweapon intentionally. On...

Barack Obama will headline a fundraiser for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) at Alex Soros’s New York City home on Monday evening. Also expected to attend the event are the group’s founder and chairman, Eric Holder, and former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe. Founded in 2016, the NDRC is a super PAC aimed at positioning Democrats favorably in the round of redistricting after the 2020 census. Earlier this year, Obama’s political advocacy group, Organizing for Action (OFA), folded itself into Holder’s group and launched a campaign called “All On The Line” aimed at promoting redistricting reform. In August, the group...

The “All On The Line” campaign - which will also work to protect the Affordable Care Act, reduce gun violence, and expand voting rights – is part of a push in recent years by high-profile Democrats to curtail the use of gerrymandering across the country.

President Trump unleashed a fiery but mostly peaceful attack on Democrats Sunday evening, branding them “human garbage” for their latest desperate scheme to meddle in the upcoming midterms. Trump, in a post on his Truth Social media platform, tore into Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Barack Obama’s former Attorney General Eric Holder after the latter was added to a highly partisan, deceptively named “voter integrity” task force. Holder, of course, has been a driving force behind the Democrat party's obsession with rigging the electoral map through his and Obama's “Redistricting U.” operation since 2016. "So ironic that Cryin’ Chuck Schumer...

For years, Democratic politicians and their allies in the legacy media have spread the damnable Charlottesville Hoax: the propaganda myth that President Trump praised bigots who rioted in 2017 in the Virginia town. Of course, the opposite is true, as Trump actually said: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.”Now, we learn that the entire hoax of Trump and Charlottesville is, itself, built upon another grand lie. The media and people like Joe Biden have continually pushed the narrative that some big, organic gathering of hateful Americans descended upon Charlottesville and represented...

Two of Rudy Giuliani's business associates implicated in the impeachment inquiry of US President Donald Trump will refuse to comply with requests for documents and depositions, their lawyer has revealed. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two soviet-born Florida real estate entrepreneurs, have said that they will not accept the Democrat committee's ultimatum to hand in documents by Monday. They added they would also refuse to attend depositions scheduled later this week. 'While we have engaged with counsels for these witnesses, they have so far refused to agree to testify or turn over relevant documents. If they continue to fail to...

Two associates of Rudy Giuliani made their initial appearance before a federal judge on Thursday, less than 24 hours after they were arrested on campaign finance violations while trying to board an international flight with one-way tickets at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington D.C. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman appeared in federal court in Alexandria, Va. to face a four-count indictment alleging that they, along with two other co-defendants, conspired to violate a ban on foreign donations and contributions in connection with federal and state elections. The two men remained mostly silent during their appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge...

But Giuliani kept quoting this court decision, though it was never a rule of law. Once that decision was rendered, we appealed and in the summer of 2019, Sytnyk and I won the appeal and the decision was completely overturned. The appeal issued a new ruling, which states that all of Rosenblat’s claims are unfounded. Also, Rosenblat was ordered to pay me Hr 2,400 ($100 at the time) in court fees. But Giuliani has never apologized for spreading lies and even undermining my political career in Ukraine.

Australian war hero Ben Roberts-Smith said he would not encourage potential recruits to join the armed forces because of the lack of support veterans receive. The former soldier believes the heads of the Australian Defence Force are putting themselves ahead of servicemen and not providing the assistance that veterans need. The 41-year-old told The Daily Telegraph he would not endorse young people going into the military without a major shakeup in leadership. 'My opinion is the Australian Defence Force needs good young Australians… but when you look at what is happening at the moment it gives me pause to think,...

Was this illegal part of a Venezuelan or Cuban military intelligence operation? Why, again, was he let in? Joe Biden's open borders may be about more than just replacing the electorate. The New York Post found that one of the most malevolent of the border surgers, a Venezuelan illegal named Leonel Moreno, who famously urged other illegals to squat in Americans' homes and waved hundred-dollar bills around to boast of his public benefits on TikTok, is being investigated by the feds for his military intelligence work for the Marxist dictatorship back home. According to the Post: Joe Biden's open borders...

The Weekly Standard was a worthwhile publication. Unfortunately its rebirth as The Bulwark is set to be a good deal uglier with a radical leftist funder notorious for his backing of terrorist propaganda and anti-Semitism. A handful of writers and editors who worked at The Weekly Standard, the now-defunct conservative magazine that was deeply critical of President Donald Trump until its sudden demise in December, have a new home. Starting Monday, Bill Kristol, a co-founder of The Weekly Standard, and Charlie Sykes, the former talk radio host and conservative commentator, will beef up The Bulwark, a conservative website that has...

Hunter Biden referred to Massimov in a 2016 email as a "close friend." Former Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov, a known Biden family business associate, was detained Saturday on suspicion of treason, according to an announcement from the Kazakhstan National Security Committee, a body he chaired until this past week. Local media report at least 164 people have died as a result of riots that broke out Jan. 2 following an increase in fuel prices. An unverified photo shows then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden flanked by then-Prime Minister Massimov and Kazakh oligarch Kenes Rakishev in the...

The Department of Justice has been sent a criminal referral for two individuals who helped instigate the 2019 impeachment process against President Donald Trump. The two include a whistleblower whose name is not mentioned and former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, according to Fox News. A criminal referral is a means of asking the Justice Department to file charges. . . . "I want to refer information that may constitute possible criminal activity in violation of federal criminal law committed by one or more former employees of the intelligence community," the general counsel for the Office of the Director...

Democrats had set their sights on impeaching Donald Trump long before he assumed the presidency. The media was openly speculating how Democrats might impeach him if he won months before the election. Once they had control of the House in 2019, it was only a matter of time before they ginned up a pretext for impeaching him. Bizarrely, they launched an impeachment inquiry over a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Those charges stemmed from the accusations of whistleblower Eric Ciaramella, who took his claims to Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) office in 2019. Democrats accused Trump of...