Free Republic

JoeLange@JoeLange·3hWhy “purposely” create confusion?This Trump appointment has thrown DC and the entire media into confusion.“Donald Trump has tapped a close ally to serve as the country’s top intelligence official, days after Tulsi Gabbard announced her exit from the role.The US president said that Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), and heir to a home construction company fortune, will serve as acting director of national intelligence.”“Pulte has used his role at the powerful housing agency, which oversees regulations of the federal housing lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to publicly level of a string of extraordinary allegations...

Maritime commerce has become increasingly more dangerous lately, with attacks on cargo ships in the Black Sea, the Red Sea, and the Strait of Hormuz, among others. Now, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa have returned to the list, as Somali pirates take full advantage of the instability caused by the Iran war to get back to their predatory ways. At one point last week, six captured vessels were being held off the Puntland coast as the pirates demanded hefty ransoms. Two of the vessels were released on Saturday.” The Iran conflict left...

Under Governor Abigail Spanberger, Virginia has become a hotbed of illegal alien crimeWASHINGTON – The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released the following statement after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested an illegal alien who has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual battery in the death of a 2-year-old girl in Virginia.According to local reporting, the child’s mother took her to the Goochland County Sheriff’s Office on July 4. Deputies began life-saving measures to save the child, who was then taken to a local hospital, where she later died.The Louisa County Sheriff’s Department arrested Raul Genesis...

Key PointsA senior U.S. Secret Service official said the "threat environment" for the agency's protectees, who include President Donald Trump, "is the highest we've ever seen."There have been about 10,000 cases involving threats to government officials, including Supreme Court justices, so far in 2026, the official said. That represents a 40% increase in such cases over the same period last year.The briefing came ahead of Friday's rescheduled annual dinner for the White House Correspondents' Association at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington. Trump is set to attend.The WHCA dinner in April was interrupted when a gunman stormed through a security checkpoint...

Federal immigration agents have nabbed more than 10,000 migrant gangbangers since the start of President Trump’s second term, the US Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday. The milestone, reached just a year and a half after Trump launched his sweeping mass deportations agenda, includes arrests tied to murder, assault with a deadly weapon, drug trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, robbery and extortion, according to DHS. “Many of these gang members were released into our country by Joe Biden,” said DHS Sec. Markwayne Mullin. “These vicious criminals murdered, assaulted, robbed, and terrorized innocent Americans for sport.” “Thanks to the Secure America Act, ICE...

WASHINGTON — The leaders of three Republican House committees threatened Monday to hold Democratic fundraising powerhouse ActBlue in contempt of Congress after the firm refused to turn over more than 400 documents, citing attorney-client privilege. A letter from House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) gave ActBlue until Friday to provide the messages, including statements by two members of its legal team indicating the fundraiser was not being forthcoming about overseas donations that were illegally funneled to Democratic campaigns. “These documents reportedly contain evidence that ActBlue accepted...

President Donald Trump issued a fresh military threat against Iran on Sunday, saying U.S. forces are prepared to “finish up the little that is left of Iran” after marathon peace talks failed to clinch a deal to end more than six weeks of war. U.S. officials left drawn-out negotiations in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, in the early hours of Sunday without a breakthrough or answers on what could come next after a temporary, two-week ceasefire expires. Trump announced the pause in attacks on April 7. Rounding off a lengthy message on Truth Social, Trump added: "We are fully “LOCKED AND...

INTRODUCTION On April 29, 2026, Sen. Bernie Sanders convened a 75-minute panel in the US Capitol on “the existential threat of AI.” Two of the four panelists were Chinese government affiliates: Zeng Yi, Dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, and Xue Lan, a Tsinghua University professor who chairs China’s national AI governance expert committee and serves as a Counsellor of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. From a US Senate platform, Xue called the US-China AI race “an inaccurate narrative” and argued for “safe zones” of cooperation on AI safety. The event was...

While American forces conducted an astonishing rescue of a downed Weapons Systems Officer, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) escalated the stakes against Iran's leadership yet again, going after the men in charge of Tehran's oppression and terror organizations. One of this weekend's big names is Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi, now confirmed dead, who until the moment of his vaporization served as the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence organization. Khademi's death was confirmed Monday by an IRGC statement carried by the Iranian state Fars news service. The same IRGC statement said that funeral and burial arrangements would...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s latest strikes on Lebanon and Iran have made clear that U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who started the war in lockstep, want different things.Trump had publicly warned Israel not to strike Beirut in its war with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants. When it did, on Sunday, Iran responded by firing ballistic missiles at Israel for the first time since the April ceasefire. Israel then struck Iran, with which Trump has been engaged in weeks of high-stakes negotiations.The fighting has since died down, but the differences between the two leaders are likely to persist.That’s...

In 1955, Algeria had over 1 million Catholics and 140,000 Jews. Today, as Pope Leo visits Algeria, there are some 8,000 Catholics in Algeria and there are fewer than 200 Jews.99% of the population of what was one of the old territories of Christianity are Sunni Muslims.Was Islam so popular that all the Christians and Jews decided to convert? Not at all. They were persecuted, murdered, tortured and driven out by Islamic violence that occurred in our lifetimes.Christians and Jews had lived in Algeria since Roman times. Now they’re gone.This Christian genocide was endorsed by major world powers, aided and...

This week, a National Public Radio (NPR) headline asserted "new poll finds a majority of Americans unsure if attempts on Trump's life were real." The article went on to disclose that "30% of Americans think at least one of those incidents was staged. Forty-five percent said each of the attempts was real." That leaves about 25% in the "unsure" category. The poll was conducted by NewsGuard/YouGov. NewsGuard has been a left-wing "fact checker" since it was founded in 2018. NPR's federal government funding was recently withdrawn for its consistent left-wing bias. In the July 2024 attempt at a Trump campaign...

Court documents show Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who faces possibility of life in prison, plans to take different approach in state case after pleading not guilty in federal one. FORT COLLINS, Colorado — A man accused of killing one person and injuring a dozen more in a firebomb attack on Colorado demonstrators showing support for Israeli hostages in Gaza plans to plead guilty this week to murder and other charges, according to court documents. Mohamed Sabry Soliman faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in the June 1 attack in downtown Boulder, according to the documents...

Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace named several lawmakers Monday who she claims used a congressional “slush fund” to cover up alleged sex scandals. Mace said she uncovered 1,000 pages of documents detailing how certain lawmakers allegedly evaded consequences for sexual scandals, according to a Monday post on X. Mace originally subpoenaed the House Oversight Committee in March in light of a string of sexual scandals that resulted in two resignations from Congress. (RELATED: REPORT: Two GOP Lawmakers Go Head-To-Head In Push To Expel One Another) Notably, Mace said that these documents are only from the last 22 years, claiming...

A Pennsylvania man who recently launched a campaign for U.S. Senate is accused of leaving a series of violent voicemails threatening President Donald Trump and a member of Congress’s family, according to unsealed federal court documents on Friday, May 1. Raymond Eugene Chandler III, of Wilkinsburg, was arrested and charged after a federal investigation into repeated threats made over voicemail, authorities said. Chandler is charged with influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a federal official by threatening a family member and by threat, according to the affidavit. The criminal complaint, unsealed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania,...

First lady Melania Trump savagely criticized ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel as a “coward” after he referred to her as “an expectant widow” two days before Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America,” Trump, 56, wrote in a post on X. The comic is facing severe backlash after Saturday’s shooting at the gala dinner, in which a Secret Service agent suffered minor injuries after a gunman charged a checkpoint in a bid to...

Chaos erupted in the heart of the nation's capital last night as the White House Correspondents' Dinner - Washington's most glitzy annual tradition - was shattered by gunfire. What began as a night of high-society networking and political ribbing at the Washington Hilton turned into a harrowing survival scene. A-list celebrities, government officials and media power players were calmly seated in the ballroom when the festive atmosphere was punctured by the sound of a violent security breach.

An al Qaeda affiliate and Tuareg rebels claimed responsibility on Saturday for coordinated attacks across Mali, in one of the boldest operations ​insurgents have mounted in their campaign against the military-led government.Mali's army said in a statement it had killed "several hundred" assailants and repelled the assault, which hit ‌multiple sites in or near the capital, Bamako. It said a large-scale sweep operation was underway in Bamako, the nearby barracks town of Kati and elsewhere in the gold-producing country.It was unclear how many soldiers or civilians were killed in the attacks. In a statement read out on state television on...

Japan for the first time has deployed ground troops to the Balikatan exercise, a series of multidomain drills staged across the Philippine archipelago. Participation by about 1,000 Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) Soldiers augments the annual training that began decades ago as a Philippines-United States exercise and now involves about 20 nations. Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) personnel previously attended Balikatan as observers and in noncombat roles focused on humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR). They participated in a maritime drill in 2025. A reciprocal access agreement between Manila and Tokyo, which took effect in September 2025, allows JSDF and Armed...

logo Three Decades Since the Panama Bombing: The Hezbollah Connection and Ali Zaki’s Extradition José Gustavo Arocha José Gustavo Arocha April 20, 2026 SFS Home Research Three Decades Since the Panama Bombing: The Hezbollah Connection and Ali Zaki’s Extradition Share EXPERT Three Decades Since the Panama Bombing: The Hezbollah Connection and Ali Zaki’s Extradition José Gustavo Arocha Senior Fellow Meet our expert KEY POINTS On April 20, 2026, Ali Zaki Hage Jalil arrived in Panama after Venezuela approved his extradition in connection with the 1994 bombing of Alas Chiricanas Flight 901, marking the most significant breakthrough in the case in...