Free Republic

A commercial airline pilot that spoke to MeidasTouch this evening has filed aviation safety reports after powerful lighting used during the construction and testing of the UFC octagon on the White House grounds allegedly shone directly into their cockpit during a nighttime approach into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), creating what the pilot described as one of the most severe visibility disruptions they have experienced in their career. ———- According to the pilot, the lights illuminated the cockpit during the final stages of landing, a critical phase of flight when pilots rely heavily on visual references. The pilot described...

Donald Trump has agreed to a major concession to end the war in Iran: allowing the Islamic Republic to retain some of its civilian nuclear program. 'Now, on the civilian nuclear program, I think that we have to be very careful and very precise here,' a senior White House official discussing the pending memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran told reporters on a call Friday afternoon. 'We're not bothered at all by the idea of civilian power plants in Iran; what we're bothered by is the type of infrastructure that would allow them to jump from civilian power...

The United Arab Emirates has agreed to unlock billions of dollars for Iran, four sources ​said, in a tactical shift after weeks of Iranian attacks on the wealthy Gulf Arab state during the U.S.-Israeli war with the Islamic Republic. (snip) Two regional sources told Reuters the UAE had agreed to release a total of $10 billion, more than $3 billion of which had already been delivered. Two other sources with knowledge of the arrangement put the total funds involved at $20 billion, adding that the move had been agreed in return for a ​halt to Iranian attacks on the UAE....

Republicans on Capitol Hill are seething that Donald Trump is not more focused on the economy as this year's midterm elections approach, warning it could obliterate the narrow GOP congressional majority. Polling indicates that voters are souring on Trump and his Republican allies in Congress ahead of his November's elections that will prove fateful for the President's agenda. In addition to the lack of attention to fixing the economy, senior aides also identified the nomination of Federal Housing Finance Director Bill Pulte, a close ally of the President, to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as an...

Iran insisted on Friday on its right to enrich uranium and maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz under any deal with the United States, after President Donald Trump said a draft accord was ready. US ally Israel has said that Trump had promised it that any agreement would see Iran stripped of its enriched nuclear material, but Tehran's official IRNA news agency said this was not even on the table.

The U.S. and Iran could reportedly sign a peace deal as soon as Sunday, after Iranian state media said the draft deal included a commitment from the U.S. to lift oil sanctions and a pledge from Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days. The 14-point document dictates that final negotiations will not begin until the release of half of Iran’s frozen funds, the suspension of Iran’s oil sanctions and the lifting of the naval blockade, the Mehr News Agency reported. All American forces would need to withdraw from Iran, and the U.S. and its allies would need...

During an interview Tuesday about the Iran war with ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, Trump wondered “if Bibi even wants to continue.” “I don’t know, he’s had an amazing career,” ... “Does he want to continue? Because, you know he’s a wartime prime minister. We will very shortly win the war one way or the other, and you know he’s a wartime prime minister.” Trump... added that he, too, is a “wartime president.” Likud responded to Trump in an X post Wednesday, saying Netanyahu “will run in the upcoming election, and, God willing, will win.” Meanwhile, a poll released on...

Hunter Biden has burst back onto the political scene with a social media spree marked by crude responses to Republican critics and self-deprecating humor about his troubled personal life. As the son of former President Biden, his return to the public eye has quickly drawn the attention of hundreds of thousands of followers on the social platform X in a matter of weeks. After spending most of his father’s presidential term under a cloud of controversy, social media users are flocking to Hunter Biden’s posts about a myriad of subjects — from resources for addicts to cryptocurrency to attacks on...

KAN Israel News, citing an Iranian-linked news network, reports that $3 billion was transferred from Abu Dhabi to Tehran aboard a private Boeing 737. According to the report, Iran agreed to halt direct attacks on Israel after receiving a U.S. message, delivered through Qatar, in from further strikes in Lebanon. The funds were reportedly flown to Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport aboard UAE Royal Jet aircraft A6-RJF, which was tracked traveling from Abu Dhabi to Iran. At this stage, the flight itself was genuine (it happened during Irans airspace closure) and the presence of a UAE delegation in Tehran has been reported...

Democratic state Representative James Talarico holds a 3‑point lead over Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the latest poll of Texas's U.S. Senate race released Tuesday. Despite Texas’s reputation as a reliably Republican state, Democrats are hopeful about their chances of flipping the seat in November due to a favorable national environment fueled by President Donald Trump’s negative approval rating, political baggage carried by Paxton and reversion among Hispanic voters who trended toward the GOP in 2024. Even as polls show a potentially competitive race, Texas is viewed as an uphill challenge for Democrats, but the new poll released Tuesday...

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...

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the crash involving a US Apache helicopter was not a “major incident” and that the pilot was safe, while affirming that sanctions and restrictions targeting Iranian ports would remain in place for as long as necessary. [ snip ] Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi denied Iranian involvement in the incident over the Strait of Hormuz, stating that “Iran was not behind the attack” and that there had been no deliberate action targeting the aircraft.

Given its oft-proclaimed calling as a peace project, the European Union can sound oddly bellicose when it sets about crafting policy. There are trade and fiscal “bazookas” to blast away crises, “silver bullet” solutions for every problem, and “nuclear options” to be used as a last resort. Yet in the absence of an EU army or even a police force, the pen-wielding Eurocracy rarely gets its hands on anything that looks like an actual weapon. The only exception—tellingly—is the club’s border-patrol agency. For over a decade after it was founded in 2005, Frontex agents wielded little more than whistles and...

One hundred days after they went to war together to thwart Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons program, radically degrade its ballistic missile industry, end its support for the Hezbollah and Hamas terror armies, and create the conditions for the fall of the regime, the US-Israel alliance against the Islamic Republic on Sunday reached its nadir. With its north battered relentlessly by Hezbollah in recent weeks, Israel resorted to a largely symbolic strike on the terror group’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut, reportedly without telling the disapproving Trump administration ahead of time that it was doing so. And, as it had warned it...

US President Donald Trump reportedly fumed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a Monday call, calling the premier “fucking crazy” and telling him that everyone “hates Israel” as he demanded Israel agree to a ceasefire with the Hezbollah terror group. Axios’s Barak Ravid cited a US official who summarized Trump’s message to Netanyahu as follows: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” A second source briefed on the call told the outlet that the US president was “pissed” at the prime...

Israel conducted strikes on military targets in western and central Iran early Monday local time, the Israeli military announced, escalating a conflict that had already broken through the ceasefire just hours earlier when Iran fired multiple waves of missiles at Israel on Sunday. The strikes came despite a direct phone call from President Trump to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him not to retaliate immediately for the Iranian missile attack. A senior U.S. official told the Associated Press, on condition of anonymity to describe a private call, that Trump believed he had convinced Netanyahu to wait. Israel struck anyway....

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy said the country and the U.S. will sign an agreement to design an underwater tunnel connecting Russia’s Chukotka region to Alaska across the Bering Strait. Kirill Dmitriev, who is also head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, made the announcement Thursday at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “As regards, the tunnel, we have a piece of news for tomorrow that we will continue tunnel engineering. The tunnel will take place,” he told Russian TV channel Zvezda, according to a translation by state-owned news agency TASS. He added that this will be one of...

The oil industry is warning the Trump administration that a Hormuz-sized hole in the world’s petroleum market is steadily draining inventories to levels that are likely to send global energy prices surging in the next several weeks, according to four executives. Industry executives have flagged the issue to senior White House officials and Cabinet members in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing dialogue with the U.S. energy industry, the people said. The warnings came as recently as late last month as data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources began showing that fuel makers were...

He has said he gets free health care and about $4,800 a month for a variety of injuries connected to his military service, including “a couple herniated discs,” injuries to his shoulders and knees, and post-traumatic stress disorder. He’s gotten a 100% disability rating from the VA, he said.

US President Donald Trump reportedly lashed out at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call earlier today, calling him “fucking crazy” as he demanded that Israel agree to a ceasefire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and claimed the premier owes him for keeping him out of jail. Axios cites a US official summarizing Trump’s message to Netanyahu as follows: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”