Free Republic

President Joe Biden fumbled over his words while presenting the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award for valor in combat, to three men Thursday. The three men receiving the Medal of Honor were Master Sgt. Earl Plumlee, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Celiz, and Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe, according to a report.... ...Celiz and Cashe received the country's highest decoration posthumously, but mistakes in Biden's presentation were evident when the narrator declared that Plumlee had also been killed.... ...A very much alive Plumlee stood stoic next to the president...

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced it stopped housing evacuated Afghans at one of the military sites that has accommodated them since the summer, citing the increased pace of their resettlement within the U.S. The last group of Afghan families housed at Fort Lee, Virginia, left the U.S. Army post on Wednesday to be resettled in communities across the country, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said. More than 25,000 Afghans relocated to the U.S. following the Taliban's conquest of their homeland have departed domestic military installations to start new lives in America... ...As of Wednesday, 45,000 evacuees from Afghanistan...

TIJUANA (Reuters) - Emboldened by news that the United States and Mexico will reopen shared land-border crossings, hundreds of migrants have arrived at Mexican border cities like Tijuana, hoping the reset will make it easier to cross and seek U.S. asylum. Starting on Monday, the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border will be open again to non-essential travel after a 20-month closure aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19. Both countries have succeeded in lowering new infections and vaccinating border communities...

President Biden's and the Democrats’ Build Back Better Act includes a provision that specifically prohibits religious schools from using infrastructure grants to improve their facilities. The bill, which House Democrats hope to vote on this week, includes a provision that provides infrastructure grants to improve child care safety, specifically to help child care providers "acquire, construct, renovate or improve" their facilities. However, further down in the bill’s text, it includes a prohibition against religious organizations like churches and synagogues that also have schools or child care services from using funds....

Panama’s foreign minister warned Wednesday that up to 60,000 migrants, many of them of Haitian origin, are making their way through the Central American country toward the US-Mexico border — threatening the Biden administration with a fresh illegal immigration crisis. Erika Mouynes claimed in an interview with Axios that her government had notified the White House of the most recent migration surge, which culminated in more than 15,000 people gathering under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas ... ...Axios, quoting estimates from the Panamanian government, reported that nearly 27,000 migrants are expected to pass through the hazardous jungles of the...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — He crossed the Mexican border into Texas only two weeks ago, joyous at the prospect of building anew in the United States. Now part of the first wave of deportees rapidly ejected by the Biden administration amid a fresh surge at the border, Johnson Bordes, 23, stepped off a Boeing 737 on Sunday and into the Haitian capital... ...He mingled with other confused deportees, many of whom hadn’t seen Haiti in years and now spoke Spanish or Portuguese better than Haitian Creole. Several families told The Washington Post that they were never told they were being deported...

In the span of a week, the White House went from struggling to explain a rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan to beating its chest. Top Biden officials and administration allies have begun aggressively touting the success of their evacuation efforts in the war-torn country, offering frequent updates on the number of evacuees. They’ve framed the operation as historic —in line with the Berlin airlift — declared that they’re “over performing” their own metrics, and trumpeted the president as “defying expectations.” It’s a startling 180 from the defensive crouch Biden and his team occupied just days ago...

(CNN)Several hundred US troops have left Afghanistan, on the same day President Joe Biden decided not to extend the August 31 evacuation deadline, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby confirmed Tuesday evening. "These troops represent a mix of headquarters staff, maintenance and other enabling functions that were scheduled to leave and whose mission at the airport was complete. Their departure represents prudent and efficient force management. It will have no impact on the mission at hand," Kirby said in a statement, confirming CNN's earlier reporting from two defense officials that the US' troop withdrawal from Afghanistan had kicked off. The fact...